Alpine sinks again: Baku weekend ‘painful for everyone’, says Gasly

Alpine’s woeful performance at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix left the Enstone squad scraping the bottom of the results sheet on race day, with Pierre Gasly and rookie Franco Colapinto languishing in 18th and 19th places.

The team’s lackluster showing in Baku, a track that exposed their A525’s glaring deficiencies, prompted a grim admission from Gasly: “We’ve just got no pace here.”

Desperate to shake things up, Alpine rolled the dice with divergent tyre strategies – Gasly starting on hards, Colapinto on softs. The gamble flopped spectacularly, leaving both drivers stranded in the backmarker mire.

While other midfield teams continued to find breakthroughs, Alpine instead found themselves lost on the long straights of Baku with little to show beyond frustration.

Gasly: “Painful for everyone”

Gasly has now gone without points since July, and last weekend’s round of racing only deepened his team’s rut.

When asked what could be learned from Alpine’s miserable streak, the 29-year-old, clinging to faint optimism, suggested the team could glean insights for their 2026 car, but his tone betrayed little confidence.

“The cars will be very different, I think,” Gasly said. “I’m sure there’s stuff we can learn because obviously it hasn’t been good at all this weekend in terms of pace, and we’ve been slightly more competitive on other race tracks.

“This weekend we had absolutely no chance unfortunately, so there is fundamentally something on this track which we’re not doing quite well and it’s important to take the lessons from it.

“But, yeah, I must say it’s a bit painful. It’s painful for everyone, and I just think we’ve got to keep our head down and try to work together as a team and try to find a way to get better for next weekend.”

Painful has become something of a recurring theme for Gasly, who increasingly sounds like a man reciting Alpine’s struggles on repeat.

Colapinto’s Afternoon Unravels

If Gasly’s race was a grind, Colapinto’s was an ordeal. The Argentinian, already nursing the scars of a qualifying crash, lined up P16 only to see his hopes sink further after contact with Alex Albon.

The Williams driver was justifiably handed a 10-second penalty, but Colapinto’s race was effectively ruined.

“It was a tough day,” Colapinto admitted. “We didn’t really have any pace today and we just really struggled with the car, with the pace, and we need to keep working to get better.

“Of course I lost a lot of time with the contact with Alex, 12 seconds I think, and then a broken front wing that gave me a lot of understeer [and a] flat spot. So it was tough, but we just had no pace and we need to get better at that.”

Once again, Alpine leave a Grand Prix firmly entrenched in the wrong end of the results sheet, armed only with promises of lessons learned and hopes of improvement.

Gasly called it “painful.” Colapinto called it “tough.” For fans, it looked like more of the same: Alpine mired in mediocrity, waiting for a spark that never comes.

Read also: F1i Driver Ratings for the 2025 Azerbaijan Grand Prix

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