Pierre Gasly joked to keep the 2025 Alpine car away from him somewhere in Enstone, as he points out F1 races where they could have done better.
After accumulating only 22 points in all of the 2025 F1 season, Gasly had his worst season in of his career spanning since 2018 season. His previous worst was 23 points in 2019 with AlphaTauri. The Alpine 525 ended up being a disaster from the get go which didn’t help.
He joked that it would be better for Alpine to keep the car away from him in Entsone. “Yeah, I mean, yeah, I told them to keep it out of my sight next year, and I’m sure you can put it in a corner in Enstone,” said Gasly. “And, yeah, hasn’t been the kindest car to drive in.”
Despite the bad run, Gasly felt Alpine could have scored few more points at certain races. He thought they capitalised whenever it was possible but there was chance for more, even to the extent to think that one additional update would have helped them do better. But he has no regrets that the tem did not bring updates, considering that they wouldn’t have scored a lot more.
It would have affected their 2026 run as well. “I think there have been a couple of races in September where we realised afterward that I was running with a floor which wasn’t quite performing,” continued Gasly. “We were in Monza, Baku, Singapore, which I think as a team we should have done a slightly better job. Apart from that, I think whenever we had a chance, we made it happen.
“We had China where it was a disqualification and a double Ferrari disqualification. There would have been a point or two to take from that one. You can always find a few races where it’s a slightly different pit stop, a slightly different strategy maybe. I think generally, considering the performance we had, we did quite well. 30 points, I can find ways to get them, but it’s probably the same around the grid.
“Generally, when we had to show up, we showed up. Qatar was quite an easy one to get another point out of. Yeah, I think many times I look at the ranking and I’m like, okay, what if we had this on the car? It’s nice, I think what I care at the end is just making sure that I’m able to provide my best for the team. Because ultimately I want to achieve much bigger things in F1 and I just want to know that I’m able to do it whenever the moment comes for me, always nicer if you can be 6th, or 5th, or 4th instead of 9th.
“Ultimately what F1 has been fighting for years, these wins. I must say I’m quite happy that the team took this very aggressive approach. I think I would have been slightly more annoyed if we would have tried to push the development 2-3 months further, to actually get 8th, 9th in the championship, but to actually affect next year.
“I’m quite optimistic and confident for next year just based on the sort of decisions we took. It was a rough 8 months and it hasn’t been really fun. But I think it’s for the better,” summed up Gasly, who felt Alpine improved on its communication and awareness since the first race to the last. The lack of performance allowed them to look at avenues to extract performance which will come in handy.
“Communication and awareness of what we’ve got to improve and what are we good at and how can we be even better,” said Gasly. “I think we’ve tried to push stuff as much as we could with the limitation of the package we had this year. Obviously, when you’re lacking overall performance, you go quite deep in these small details that don’t make much difference.
“But I think we took stuff quite to the extreme in the way that mapping and setup and work we do at the factory and how much debrief and how deep we go into things. I must say that’s the best work I’ve done with the team. Obviously, the performance of the car on a season like this year, you look at the Q1s and you have seven, eight times between all the teams.
“It’s not like we were miles away from everyone. We were just on the wrong end of the midfield. In actual work as a team, that’s why it brings me quite a lot of confidence that if we get the car to a good place next year, we have the right processes in place to actually perform,” summed up Gasly.
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