Is Alpine Really That Bad? F1 Has a Short Memory

Formula 1 has a fragile memory, a couple of discreet races are enough for a team to go from being the revelation of the season to becoming the target of all criticism. Alpine is paying the consequences of that short-term view that judges everything by the last thing that happened, it is true that the French team is going through a complicated moment: Racing Bulls escaped it in the constructors' championship and the last performances left an image very different from the one it had shown during a good part of the year, but stating that Alpine is the worst of the rest is at the very least, unfair.

To understand the real dimension of its season, it is worth remembering where it comes from. In 2025 Alpine finished last in the Constructors' World Championship with barely 22 points, it was a year to forget, with a car that was rarely up to the task and a general functioning that did not help either, even the pit stops an operation that should be perfectly oiled in any Formula 1 team, became a headache but today the reality is another: Alpine occupies sixth place in the championship, the same position in which it finished in 2023 and 2024 and multiplied by far the points achieved last year. Furthermore it notably improved its work in the pits, one of those problems that seemed to have no solution.

Is it enough to celebrate? Of course not, but neither does it seem reasonable to overlook such an evolution, there was an important part of the championship in which Alpine was the fifth best team in Formula 1 and not by chance. The A526 had weekends in which it was clearly superior to a good part of its midfield rivals, on certain tracks Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto had a car that allowed them to fight for points without depending on others' problems, that did not happen in 2025.

The constructors' standings also help to put things in perspective. Beyond the distance that Racing Bulls managed to establish, Alpine is very far from Audi, Haas, Williams, Aston Martin and Cadillac. That is to say that even in the middle of this negative streak, its results throughout the year keep it above several of the teams with which it should be compared, the problem then, is not in what Alpine was capable of doing but in what it could not sustain, while Racing Bulls continued finding performance, Alpine lost its course. The updates did not give the expected results and that car that on certain circuits could make differences ended up losing prominence.

There are also the strategies that remain a pending account, too many times Gasly and Colapinto end up conditioned by decisions that force them to defend positions when they should be trying to gain them, and when the margin between the teams is so small, a late reaction from the wall can ruin all the work of a weekend. You cannot always get it right but when certain situations repeat, they stop being simple mistakes and become a problem that needs a solution.

None of those issues turns Alpine into the worst of the rest, at most they speak of a team that took an important step forward and still did not find the way to take the next one. The difference is not minor, if anything made clear 2026 it is that Alpine has a base on which to work thinking about 2027, it is no longer about starting from scratch, as seemed inevitable after last year's debacle. Now the challenge is to take advantage of what has been built, correct what is still working badly and get competitiveness to stop appearing by moments to become a constant.

Gasly and Colapinto need that: a car that allows them to go forward and a team that accompanies them with decisions up to their possibilities. Alpine is not where it wanted to be but neither is it where it was a year ago.