Alpine’s Pierre Gasly managed to get into Q3 once again in the F1 2026 Malaysia Qualifying session. The Frenchman finished P9 for the three sessions in Saturday.
Gasly scored a time of 1:37.174 in Q1, over 0.6s behind Verstappen up front. In Q2, he got a tow from teammate Colapinto, who received a five-place grid penalty following his incident in Baku and later an additional 10-place penalty after taking his fifth ICE of the season. It did not matter too much as the Frenchman was easily the quickest midfield runner through Saturday.
Finally, Gasly set a last fast lap of 1:37.210, over 2 seconds behind Verstappen’s pole in Q3 as he went for a used set in the last segment.
Gasly on “feeling pleased” after qualifying P9 for the F1 2026 race in Malaysia
After the session in Sepang, Pierre Gasly reflected on his result and the fact they have more race data thanks to his teammate completely focusing on long runs in FP2 especially.
“I think it has been good. I mean they’ve mainly focused on the race pace, so I think in the end, maybe a bit more data than we would have on a normal weekend.”
“I think generally very happy, and managed to feel really good throughout the whole weekend,” he summed up.
“In FP3, my last run we kind of got it wrong with the warm-up, but at least we had clear direction.” The Frenchman had finished P13 in FP3 with a lap time of 1:38.241.
“And then straight away from Q1 we were back on top where we needed to be. Feeling pleased, managed to get to Q3 quite comfortably.
“I think we had like half a second margin on P11 [Lawson] and we saw that P9 was the best we could get,” explains Gasly about the tyre strategy. “So we just decided to run a used tyre in Q3 and save a set of extra soft for tomorrow, which we might not need – maybe not; we’ll see, but at least it didn’t really change our qualifying position.”
“I’m quite confident” says Gasly on Alpine’s recent consistency
The driver of car #10 praised his team’s effort to consistently provide upgrades throughout the season. Since the latest one at Zandvoort, they have firmly established themselves as the leading midfield team once again.
“Honestly, the last few weekends since Zandvoort I think we made a step forward in terms of overall car pace.”
“A couple of weekends I’ve tried one thing on the setup, which I think with these upgrades just allow me to get a slightly better balance for my driving style.
“So I’m really feeling quite at ease at the moment with the balance of the car when we get the tyres right, etc,” he stated: “So yeah, I’m quite confident.”
“Now it’s been a couple of tracks that we are there. I think we have a couple of points that we need to catch up on Racing Bulls.”
As it stands, Racing Bulls is P5 in the constructors’ championship with 83 points. Alpine is just behind in P6 with 68 points. Both teams are also fighting in the drivers’ championship. Lawson is currently ahead in P9 with 59 points, Gasly is P10 with 41, Lindblad P11 with 37, and Colapinto P12 with 27.
“But I’m confident with the pace we have at least we’re going to give them a hard time till the end of the year,” Gasly concluded.
Gasly on tyre degradation and strategy ahead of Sunday’s race
When asked about how the tyres and how the set-up is looking for the race in Malaysia, Gasly admitted: “I still don’t know. But that’s the job of our guys overnight, and try to come up with the best plan without really having the answers.
“But I think it’s going to be a tough race, quite different to what we’ve been experiencing lately with no deg on the last few tracks. Here it’s very tough for the rear axle.
“Usually it’s not one of our strengths,” warned the Alpine driver. “But that’s why it’s quite good to see that we have a good pace over one lap. Hopefully tomorrow I can get a bit of clean air and manage to stay ahead of them.”
On whether Sepang provided a rough surface for better grip, Gasly pointed out: “It’s not as much because you just get a lot of temperature on the rear tyres.
“We’ve seen we are hitting the rear tyres more than the others, for reasons that we know and reasons that we’ll fix in the future. That’s one area where usually we struggle a bit more, but that’s why having these extra tenths of performance, I think, will help us more.”
