Pierre Gasly finds himself grappling with a perplexing performance mystery that has plagued his Alpine Formula 1 car since the Miami Grand Prix, despite maintaining a strong championship position. The French driver currently sits eighth in the drivers’ standings as the highest-placed competitor outside the traditional top teams of Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari, and Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, having collected points in four of five races this season.
The 28-year-old’s frustration became evident during the Canadian Grand Prix weekend, where he struggled significantly compared to teammate Franco Colapinto’s impressive sixth-place finish. Speaking after qualifying in Montreal, Gasly expressed his bewilderment: “I don’t really know what’s going on since Miami, but at the moment on my side we’re absolutely nowhere. It was an easy top 10, the car was quite consistent, but I couldn’t brake, couldn’t turn in, couldn’t accelerate. There was no grip.”
Despite managing to salvage an eighth-place finish in the Canadian race after starting 14th, Gasly emphasized that the issues run deeper than simple setup adjustments or upgrade-related problems. “I think it is something more fundamental [than upgrades], which we’re trying to understand, and on the data, there is quite clearly stuff which does not make sense, but we haven’t found the fixes yet,” he explained, describing the situation as “damage limitation.”
The timing of Gasly’s struggles coincides precisely with the Miami Grand Prix weekend, where he had previously scored points in the Sprint race before suffering an early retirement when Liam Lawson’s incident left him upside down. Gasly noted that the data clearly shows the performance discrepancy but remains confident that Alpine can identify the root cause. “We see it on the data, it is pretty clear on what is happening, and we’ve just got to understand where it comes from,” he stated, adding that resolving the mystery will be a priority when the team returns to the factory.