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According to Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto, the Alpine team was overtaken by Racing Bulls in the weeks leading up to Formula 1's summer break.
Both drivers attribute this simply to car development – Red Bull's sister team introduced more effective upgrades than the Enstone-based squad. This means Alpine is placing high hopes on its upgrade package for Zandvoort.
On a personal level, however, Colapinto found his rhythm after the April break. Before that, the gap to Gasly was often wider than he would have liked, but since the Miami Grand Prix, the Argentine has recorded five points finishes and outpaced his French teammate in four Sunday races.
These results align with Colapinto's feelings during winter testing in Bahrain, despite the subsequent initial race weekends proving challenging – a dip in performance that both the driver and team struggled to explain at the time.
"I think having a new car, and then two new cars, was different compared to testing. During winter testing, I felt very strong and confident, but once we moved to two cars for the first few races, I really struggled," Colapinto shared. Asked what exactly changed when the team switched to two chassis for Melbourne, Colapinto clarified that it wasn't so much about the feeling in the car, but rather what the stopwatch showed: "It wasn't that the feeling was gone, but rather the pace wasn't there. I still felt good in the car, but I was looking at the lap times, and that was the part I couldn't understand or make sense of. "I think the most important thing for a driver is always to understand why things are happening, and honestly, in the first few races, many times I couldn't understand," he continued.
During the first three race weekends, Colapinto didn't always understand why he was losing time to Gasly, even though his feeling in the car remained good. In Miami, Colapinto received a new, lighter chassis, though he emphasized he didn't want to speculate that there was anything wrong with the previous one. The problem was simply difficult to isolate within Alpine's overall package.
"I don't know if anything was wrong, but when we put the whole package together after the first three rounds, everything just improved, and the half-tenth I was losing per corner disappeared. It's hard to know exactly what happened or why, because when you change many things, it's difficult to say: 'This is why we are faster now.' "It's the same when you make many setup changes and you're faster – you don't know which one brought the biggest improvement," he explained.
The significant upgrade package and the new chassis played their part, although the team believes the latter also had a psychological effect. The April break also contributed to what can be described as the breakthrough in Miami.
During that month without racing, Colapinto and the engineers had more time to analyze all the data in detail, with the Argentine emphasizing significant progress in energy management – a key topic for 2026.
"Yes, I think energy management is a key element that we are now really consistent with. In Japan, I lost four tenths from one lap to another just due to different energy deployment or different throttle application out of the last corner. I think after that race, things became much more consistent, and that's one of the steps we've made as a team. "Personally, I think I was quite inconsistent in Japan too, so those lessons helped me a lot," the Argentine said.
All of this contributed to Colapinto's progress and allowed him to once again compete with Gasly. Alpine's next step is expected at Zandvoort with the upgrade package, with which the French team hopes to respond to Racing Bulls and find more overall speed.
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