Alpine has suddenly gone from licking its wounds to dreaming of something extraordinary at Monza, with managing director Steve Nielsen daring Pierre Gasly to turn his sensational pole position into an even more unlikely Italian Grand Prix triumph.
Gasly produced one of the biggest surprises of the season in qualifying, edging George Russell by just 0.068 seconds to claim the first pole position of his Formula 1 career.
It was a stunning reward for an Alpine outfit that had hardly looked like a contender in recent races.
Now, with the Frenchman starting at the front of the grid, Nielsen sees no reason for the team to settle for simply enjoying the moment.
“We didn’t expect to be on pole position, but we are,” he told Sky Sports F1. “Tomorrow, good starts, good strategy, good pit stops, who knows? Let’s try and win it.”
From despair to a Monza dream
The prospect of victory carries an especially enticing sense of symmetry for Gasly. Six years ago, the Frenchman produced the defining result of his career at Monza, taking a remarkable maiden F1 victory with AlphaTauri.
A second triumph at the Temple of Speed would now have an entirely different meaning – and Nielsen is eager to see whether Alpine can seize an opportunity that appeared almost unimaginable only 24 hours earlier.
The team’s A526 had not exactly screamed race-winning machinery through the recent rounds, but upgrades introduced at Zandvoort appear to have unlocked something at Monza.
Gasly extracted every last fraction from the package when it mattered, putting Alpine in territory few expected it to reach. And the emotional transformation inside the team has been just as dramatic as its performance on track.
A remarkable Alpine turnaround
Friday had delivered a bitter blow when the FIA International Court of Appeal ruled in favour of McLaren and Red Bull, removing Gasly’s Monaco Grand Prix podium from the record books.
For Nielsen, the decision remains difficult to swallow. Yet Gasly responded in the most emphatic fashion possible, converting the disappointment into the most spectacular qualifying statement Alpine could have imagined.
“If you’d asked me this two or three days ago, we were all on the floor,” he added.
“So it’s really from sort of being really down to being on top of the world in just what, two days? And it’s amazing. We need to soak it up and make the best of it.
Alpine managing director Steve Nielsen with racing director Dave Greenwood.
“It’s a long time in politics and F1. When you think about what the mood was in the camp when we got the result from Monaco, which honestly is going to annoy me for the rest of my life, it’s a nice way to bounce back with pole position.”
The hard part, however, begins when the lights go out.
Gasly will need to survive the opening laps, manage Monza’s relentless demands and execute Alpine’s strategy without a mistake.
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Mercedes is expected to apply immediate pressure, while the long-run picture remains far less certain than the one-lap pace that propelled the Frenchman to pole.
But that uncertainty is precisely what makes Sunday so intriguing.
Five years after writing one of Monza’s great underdog stories, Gasly has another opportunity to produce something special. This time, with Alpine unexpectedly starting at the very front, Nielsen wants the fairytale to go one step further.
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