Alpine has made a step forward for F1 2026, believes Steve Nielsen, but he ruled out any thinking of a ‘100-race plan’ to get back to the front of the grid.
The Enstone-based squad languished towards the rear of the pack for most of the F1 2025 season, but a strategic choice to focus on the new regulations could bear fruit for Alpine this year.
Steve Nielsen: No 100-race plan for Alpine recovery
Alpine scored just 22 points over the F1 2025 season, firmly keeping the Enstone-based squad at the tail of the field in what was an uncompetitive year for the team in its final year as a fully autonomous constructor.
With Groupe Renault pulling the plug on its F1 power unit programme at Viry-Chatillion, the Alpine squad will race as a Mercedes-powered customer team in 2026 in a year in which expectations rise for the squad.
This is because Alpine opted to forgo any significant development of its A525 last season. Rather than throwing resources at an uncompetitive car in a regulation set that offered a dwindling return on that investment with every passing weekend, the team switched focus very early to the new regulations incoming for 2026.
It’s a regulation set that offers low-hanging fruit at this early stage of the rules cycle, with any team choosing this path likely to have developed a far greater understanding of the unique challenges ahead than a team that remained focused on the previous regulations until the very end of the 2025 season.
In the recent past, Alpine’s leadership has spoken about lofty ambitions over planned timelines, such as former CEO Laurent Rossi revealing a “100-race plan” for competitiveness as far back as 2021.
With a series of stumbles and numerous leadership changes over the four seasons since then, Alpine’s poor 2025 couldn’t have been further away from this stated plan.
For this reason, the team’s new managing director, Steve Nielsen, has ruled out making any plans based on guesstimated timelines and, instead, is choosing to try keeping a recovery back to the front of F1 grounded.
“I’m not a person who believes in a 100-year plan or a three-year plan or a five-year plan,” he told select media, including PlanetF1.com, at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
“I believe you put the best people you can get in the right positions, you give a clear mission, get the army marching all in the same direction, and you just work as hard as you can to do the best job you can.
“You mill away at it. It’s a slow, grinding process, and you hope eventually you do a better job than everybody else.
“But I can’t tell you. I can tell you we’re building a better car than we had last year. I can’t tell you whether that will line up on the grid in first or 10th through 20th. I don’t know.”
Nielsen’s optimism for the A526 ties in with that of the team’s racing director, Dave Greenwood.
“I think every team has milestones that they’re ticking through. We’re very happy with where we are,” he said at Yas Marina.
“We’re not going to go into too much detail, but we’re absolutely on plan, on track for everything we need!”
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Nielsen pointed to his past experiences at Enstone, which included building momentum through the early 2000s to become World Champions in 2005 and ’06, as to how the current team stacks up.
“I’m confident we’ve made a step, but the other nine are also doing the same as we’re doing. And so you don’t know how much progress they’ve made,” he said.
“All I know is we’re doing the best we can, and we’re improving our structure. We’re recruiting in the areas where we’re weak, and that grinding process starts now.
“You can’t turn these things around in a few months or even a year. I was here when Renault bought Benetton the first time around. It took us three years to win a race and five years to win the championship.
“That metric doesn’t necessarily hold true today. It might be shorter, might be longer. You just do the best you can.”
Alpine had only a few moments to celebrate during 2025, with Pierre Gasly proving his experience to wrestle his recalcitrant car to a series of mid-table points scores. His best result was a sixth-place finish at the British Grand Prix, and such results are what Nielsen hopes will become the team’s bread and butter throughout this year.
“I want to be racing every week and hopefully for points,” he said when asked about the target for the first year of the new regulations.
“I think we haven’t managed that this year [2025]. We’ve done the odd weekend when we’ve been racing for points and achieved points, but all too often, we’ve been distant at the back, and that’s not where this team belongs.
“It’s not where Enstone traditionally is. It’s not what Alpine wants, and it’s not where any of us want it to be. So we need to race at the top end of the midfield for points every weekend.”
Alpine is due to reveal its new A526 on the 23rd of January.
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