Flavio Briatore has put Alpine’s driver discussion on hold and made the car the priority, saying the team’s performance gap is so large that not even Max Verstappen could erase it. The Alpine executive said the team must improve its machine and its process first, with pit stops among the areas he wants sharpened.
That is why Pierre Gasly’s future keeps coming up now. Alpine is under pressure after five race weekends, with the team fifth in the Constructors’ Championship on 35 points from Gasly and Franco Colapinto, but the numbers behind the scoreline are harsher than the table suggests. Alpine’s drivers have still not beaten McLaren in qualifying, and in the last two Grand Prix qualifying sessions, in Miami and Canada, the fastest Alpine driver was on average seven-tenths off the leading McLaren.
Briatore framed the deficit in blunt terms. He said Alpine is six or seven tenths behind teams running the same engines, a margin he described as unacceptable. “We are better, but I’m not happy in the way we are in this moment, because we [should have done] much better with what we have,” he said. He added that the team is improving, “but we’re not improving like I want. This is the problem we have in this moment.”
The comments matter because they cut across the usual driver market noise. Gasly signed a three-year contract extension last season that runs from 2026 to 2028, so Alpine is not shopping for his replacement. Colapinto, who was taken on via Alpine’s option for this year’s championship, is the name still under review, and Briatore said he is not ready yet to have the driver conversation. “Driver is less improving the package, after the driver. We have the contract with Pierre. We need looking at Colapinto,” he said.
That leaves Alpine with a clear order of priorities. Briatore said the car is “much more important in this moment,” and said he will think about who partners Gasly next season only after the team has improved the package. For now, the decision hanging over Alpine is less about personalities than pace: if the car does not close the gap, the lineup will matter far less than the stopwatch.
