Pierre Gasly scored points again at the Canadian Grand Prix in Formula 1, but Alpine has still not been able to solve a ‘mysterious’ problem that has been affecting the Frenchman’s performance in recent rounds. Despite the eighth place in Montreal, the team acknowledges that the difficulties presented since Miami remain present in the driver’s car.
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Alpine made an important performance step in 2026, but Gasly lost competitiveness precisely after the introduction of updates on the A526. Since then, the Frenchman was outqualified by Franco Colapinto in four consecutive qualifying sessions during the Sprint weekends in Miami and Montreal.
According to Gasly, the change in the car’s behavior appeared right in the first laps in Miami: “It’s the same thing since the first lap of the Miami session. We see it in the data, we have a pretty clear idea of what is happening, but we need to understand exactly where it comes from,” said the driver.
The main problem reported by the Frenchman is related to the loss of confidence in traction in low-speed corners. This has made it difficult to drive the car at the limit, especially in fast qualifying laps, precisely one of Gasly’s strong points in the early races of the season.
After a disastrous performance in the Sprint qualifying in Canada, when he finished only 19th, Alpine took the car out of parc fermé to make several setup changes. The team also started a process of eliminating possible causes, even using an old floor on the Frenchman’s car.
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This situation became even more complicated in the qualifying session for the Canadian GP, when Gasly hit a marmot in Q1 and suffered damage to the car. The incident contributed to his elimination in Q2, while Colapinto advanced to Q3, and also helped explain why Alpine did not push for a penalty against Lewis Hamilton after a traffic incident.
Even with the difficulties, Gasly managed to build a consistent race on Sunday and described the result as a ‘good damage limitation’. The Frenchman believes the problem appears mainly in qualifying sessions because of the need to extract maximum performance from the car in low-grip situations.
Steve Nielsen, Alpine’s managing director, said the team will continue investigating the case: “Pierre was not satisfied with the car’s balance throughout the weekend. It seemed to lack downforce compared to the other car, but that disappeared in the race. We need to analyze the details and understand what happened,” concluded the director.
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