Alpine faced a demanding opening day of practice at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, with drivers Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto both highlighting the circuit’s challenges and the limitations still facing the team at the 2025 F1 Singapore GP. Although the bumpy street track and multiple red flag interruptions hindered running, both drivers remained optimistic about overnight improvements before Qualifying.
Gasly seeks margins to close the gap
Pierre Gasly admitted that driving at Singapore is always physically and mentally taxing, but he emphasised that Alpine had been working hard to adapt the car to the difficult conditions.
“Busy at the wheel. I mean, it’s a tricky track but we know it’s not going to be easy. It’s very bumpy around here. We know it’s usually where we struggle but I feel we’ve tried a lot of things and sort of understand what we need for our package,” he explained.
Nevertheless, Gasly acknowledged that Alpine is still lacking outright pace compared to the leading teams.
“But, yeah, for sure ultimately the gap with the cars ahead is still very big. So I think we’ve just got to focus on ourselves, there are two or three corners where I really feel like we can do better for tomorrow so we’ll try to work on those ones and see what we get.”
Although Qualifying in Singapore is notoriously difficult due to limited overtaking opportunities, Gasly remained quietly confident that he could deliver something special.
“Yeah, we’ll definitely need more than one [strong lap] tomorrow. I must say I’m feeling quite good in the car in a way that I feel I can really take it to the limit, so I guess on that note, it’s quite positive but obviously we still need more than that so we’ll work tonight.”
Colapinto stresses the need for overnight work
Franco Colapinto echoed Gasly’s sentiments, explaining that Alpine had experimented with a number of different set-ups throughout the day in search of improvements.
“We change a lot of things in the car. We try different stuff and hopefully they work for tomorrow. We’ll try to understand tonight and come back stronger for Quali,” he said.
Like his team-mate, Colapinto highlighted how the two red flags across the FP1 and FP2 sessions at the 2025 F1 Singapore GP had disrupted Alpine’s programme.
“Yeah, it’s tricky with red flags always, they [stop us in the session] and they stop us from making some progress so they are never welcome. But yeah, it is what it is and we have to work tonight to come back stronger.”
The Argentine driver also addressed the driver cooling systems being trialled in Singapore, with some drivers testing vests integrated into their race suits.
“Ah, it’s I think the decision of the driver, to see if it works or not, we are trying it, testing it,” he noted, suggesting Alpine is still evaluating its effectiveness.
Alpine looks ahead to Qualifying
Although Friday left Alpine short on long-run data and still chasing performance, both Gasly and Colapinto pointed to clear areas for improvement. Gasly’s confidence in pushing the car to its limits, paired with Colapinto’s methodical set-up changes, gives the team reason to believe they can extract more speed before Qualifying.
At a circuit where track position is everything, Alpine will hope that the overnight work pays dividends and allows them to edge closer to the front of the midfield fight at the 2025 F1 Singapore GP.
