Pierre Gasly was frank in his assessment of how the Singapore Grand Prix went for Alpine after the Frenchman finished near the back of the pack in 19th place. With Franco Colapinto only 16th, this was the fifth race weekend in a row Alpine have not managed to score with either car.
The team expected to struggle in Monza and Baku given their lack of straight line speed, but hoped the Marina Bay Street Circuit might play slightly more to their strengths.
But it was not to be, with Gasly’s evening made doubly difficult by a pit lane start. That in itself came about after he was forced to park up in a runoff area in Qualifying, with reliability gremlins also hampering the French team.
“Today was always going to be difficult especially with the pit lane start. I have not been feeling too comfortable in the car recently so we changed set-up and changed floor to try and understand some things further, which should benefit us for the future,” Gasly said.
“We knew the race would be complicated and it was nice to have a few battles out there even if it was not for the points paying positions. I know the team is working exceptionally hard at the moment and we all know we are nowhere near where we should be right now.”
Alpine have scored in four races courtesy of Gasly, while Franco Colapinto has a best finish of P11 since taking over from Jack Doohan after Miami. It leaves the team rooted to the bottom of the pile in the Constructors’ Championship, but Gasly believes better days could be coming for Alpine.
“I am confident we can do better in Austin next time out compared to the last few races where the circuit characteristics have not suited our package – especially with the lack of grip and bumps that are common on street circuits,” he added.
Colapinto might have finished a few places ahead of his team mate, but points never looked likely for the Argentine racer. Nonetheless, he made up places off the line after gambling on the soft tyres for the start and fought hard, but things were always likely to be tricky in a race where all 20 cars made it to the flag.
“It was a long race with lots of close battles out there, which was fun but, ultimately, we didn’t have the pace and lost some places towards the end on older tyres,” he said. “I managed to get a good launch off the line and made up places through the opening sequence of corners.
“We were running quite well in the midfield pack on the softs at the time and knowing how difficult it is to overtake at this track, we pitted early trying to undercut and use track position to make up places.
“We tried our best to manage the tyres but with a lot of degradation and having to also move offline for blue flags, it made it difficult to hold off the cars on fresher tyres in the closing laps. It was not what we wanted but we just have to keep pushing and better results will come.”
Colapinto remains the only active driver yet to score this season, while Alpine are now 26 points behind Haas in the Teams’ Championship.
