F1 Tech | Alpine sacrificed 2025 to compete in 2026
Alpine completely sacrificed the 2025 season to have better opportunities in 2026, hoping to compete against Williams and Aston Martin.
The 2025 season has been particularly challenging for Alpine, primarily due to the team’s decision to focus exclusively on the new 2026 cars since the start of the year.
Thus, very few updates were fitted to the A525 and were brought to the track up to the Canadian Grand Prix.
The car's undeveloped design, combined with a lack of updates, meant Alpine finished last in the Constructors' Championship, earning just 22 points in 24 races. 2026 will represent a big opportunity for the team, as they’ll adopt the Mercedes PU as part of a 5-year agreement.
A difficult year for Alpine on track
2025 has been a year of transition for Alpine, a decision made at the beginning of the season to spend as much money and resources on next year's car. As a consequence, the A525 was unveiled as the basic evolution of last year’s challenger, with very few new components or updated elements, at least from the aerodynamic point of view.
The first significant result, however, came in the fourth round in Bahrain, where Gasly finished seventh thanks to a phenomenal performance in both qualifying, where he qualified P5, and the Grand Prix.
This performance on such high-degradation asphalt demonstrated the car’s ability to keep the tyres alive in hot conditions on an abrasive surface.
The Frenchman managed to score another point in the Miami Grand Prix, another track where degradation has a huge impact on performance.
As soon as the European season started, the team introduced updates as well, with a new front wing at Imola and a tweaked floor at the Spanish Grand Prix.
Up until Imola, both Gasly and Doohan used the same front wing spec from 2024, characterised by a long and pointy nose that connected directly to the endplate, as shown in the drawing below.
Since Imola, however, they started using an updated version (already tested and used by Gasly in Qatar in 2024), which featured a narrower and shorter nose that connected to the second element, as well as some major changes to the flaps, to favour the out-wash effect and produce more downforce on the front axle.
As for the floor introduced in Barcelona, it featured a new design of the SIS cover, together with some minor changes to the floor edge wing. As highlighted in the drawing below, the floor was shaped to create a step around the SIS, which was sunk into the floor, to try to direct the air coming from the front towards the floor edge wing (red arrow).
As for the changes highlighted by the yellow arrow, compared to the previous version, the floor edge wing was no longer connected to the main floor by a metal support, and the upward-facing lip was longer than the version used at Imola, to push the front wake outwards.
This new component, together with the updates already introduced for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, allowed Gasly to get a phenomenal P8 in Barcelona, conquering some more points in the Constructors’ Championship.
Another crucial weekend for the Frenchman was the British Grand Prix: after a good qualifying, where he managed to get into Q3, he was able to finish the race two places higher.
Gasly took advantage of the opportunities offered by the wet conditions, eventually finishing the race in P6, the best result of the season.
From that weekend onwards, he was able to score only 3 more points, due to the absence of new components that could have made the A525 more competitive and brought it closer to the other midfield cars, allowing both Gasly and Colapinto to score more points in the remaining weekends.
On the other side of the spectrum, the lack of updates gave the team time back at the factory to spend more time working on the 2026 car.
What to expect from 2026?
2026 will be a huge challenge for all the teams: as already pointed out in another specific article, the variables introduced by the new engines and the active aerodynamics will have a big impact on performance and on the hierarchies among all teams since the first race in Melbourne.
This said, Alpine was one of the very few teams that completely sacrificed their 2025 season to have as much advantage as possible for 2026, when their collaboration with Mercedes as Power Unit supplier will start.
For them, it will already be a positive result to fight for the 6th or 7th place in the Constructors’ Championship, which would show a good level of progression compared to the 2025 season.
If the results are good, then it’ll be important for them to keep evolving as a team and work not only on the car, but also improve their infrastructure to follow a similar path to the one made by McLaren in the last five years.
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