‘We couldn’t hope for any better’ – Gasly believes the stars are aligning for Alpine after Barcelona points haul

Pierre Gasly has insisted that despite struggling for performance at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, his P7 finish indicated that everything is falling into place for Alpine in their fight to top the midfield.

Including Sprints, the Frenchman has scored at every round so far this season, with his sole retirement coming at the Miami Grand Prix following an incident with Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson.

He extended that points-scoring streak again in Barcelona by crossing the line in seventh place, delivering an impressive recovery drive from a P14 grid slot after the team’s race pace significantly outshone their speed over one lap.

“You see all the stars? They’re all coming together at the moment,” Gasly said. “I’m very pleased. It was a very tough Saturday and it wasn’t an easy weekend for me behind the wheel.

“In the end we managed to find ourselves in the fight for best of the rest. With everything happening, we managed to get that P7 at the end of the day. The team did very good work. Good team work, so we couldn’t hope for any better.”

The 30-year-old went into the weekend with a major boost as Alpine discovered that their Right of Review into his penalties in the Monaco Grand Prix was successful, resulting in Gasly being reinstated to P3 in the final classification to claim his first podium since 2024.

However, he quickly faced a reality check as he was out-qualified by team mate Franco Colapinto before Alpine ordered a driver swap during the race in Barcelona, allowing Gasly to get closer to the battles ahead and capitalise on retirements to move up the order.

He explained: “At the moment it seems that every race has quite a few retirements. I think on our side reliability has been very good which is a positive. We’re best of the rest.

“We know at the minute we don’t have the performance to fight with the top four – the gap this weekend was actually very big. We definitely need to work on that and try to close up, but looking at the positives, we did the best we could with both cars.

“It was a very difficult weekend behind the wheel for me with braking at Turn 1 and Turn 4. During the race I still struggled a lot so hopefully we can have more pace in Austria.”

Colapinto marginally had the upper hand in Qualifying but was willing to obey team orders during the race and initially placed just behind Gasly in P8. However, he was later penalised for a yellow flag infringement and dropped to P10, which was still enough for Alpine to solidify their fifth-place spot in the standings.

Reflecting on the instruction to allow his team mate through – and before he learned of his 10-second time penalty – Colapinto said: “They had a much bigger picture from outside the car. It was a good decision, a team decision I think to score points with both cars. I’ve been very happy with the team performance.

“I think it was a pretty decent race and a very strong result for the team. We’re pushing to stay strong and keep building up these points and the Championship position within the team.”