Alpine is “very happy” with its preparations for the F1 2026 season, believing that everything is on track for the new championship.

Alpine finished in 10th place in F1 20256, with the A525 struggling for competitiveness in a season of change for the Enstone-based squad.

Dave Greenwood: Alpine ‘very happy with where we are’

With just 22 points on the board in 2025, Alpine finished 48 points behind the ninth-placed team in the Constructors’ Championship as the Enstone squad slipped to the back of the pack.

It was a year in which the development of the A525 was minimal, with the concentration of the team switching over to the much lower-hanging fruit that the new regulation set represents for any team that can gain a quick understanding of the requirements of the new rules.

Alpine was one of those teams, meaning it was a year of toiling around towards the back of the pack for most of the season, with only occasional pick-me-ups by way of a sixth-place finish from Pierre Gasly at Silverstone, as well as four other minor points finishes.

Gasly was the only driver to score points, with neither Franco Colapinto nor Jack Doohan contributing any to the team’s total.

Off-track, there were other distractions as Renault’s engine programme was wound down, as Alpine will become a Mercedes customer in 2026, while the team also had to search for a new team leader following the resignation of team principal Oli Oakes following the Miami Grand Prix.

Steve Nielsen took up the role of managing director, working alongside executive advisor Flavio Briatore, with Nielsen having put in prior stints at Enstone during his long F1 career.

With expectations of Alpine being higher for 2026 in light of its early switch in priorities, there is cautious optimism about how the A526 might reward these efforts once it hits the track.

“At the end of the day, that’s the stopwatch. I hope so,” Nielsen told the media, including PlanetF1.com, at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, when asked if he believes his team has something of a ‘headstart’ on rivals.

“I think we’ve done all the right things. The chassis has passed its crash tests. It’s lighter, it’s stronger. Looks good, but every team that builds a new car will tell you it’s good. What actually decides it is what happens on the circuit.”

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The team’s racing director, Dave Greenwood, said it won’t take long for the old regulations and working processes to fade into the background as the new rules challenge every engineer and team member.

“Next year looks a bit more complicated, but it’ll only be like that to begin with. Three races in, it’ll feel like that’s the norm,” he said.

“So, yeah, we get very used to what those things are quite quickly. For us, sometimes you forget about how things have gone before.

“So it won’t take very long for it to be the challenge that we look forward to.

“You’ve seen what we’ve got with the [straightline] mode, with the change in the power units, with the energy management, all of those things, they’re all going to add a significant challenge to the driver and to the engineering team as well.

“But that’s our job to develop our tools and help the driver as much as we can.”

Asked where the team is at in terms of its preparations for 2026, with the new car set to be revealed on the 23rd of January, Greenwood revealed that the Enstone squad is feeling optimistic.

“I think every team has milestones that they’re ticking through. We’re very happy with where we are,” he said.

“We’re not going to go into too much detail, but we’re absolutely on plan, on track for everything we need!”

This includes the challenge of meeting the new minimum weight limit of 770kg, although Greenwood opted against confirming just how close Alpine will get to this to start the year.

“I think most people have been on record to say it’s challenging, but that, again, is a challenge that our design team back at base takes with the sort of energy and vigour to try and meet it,” he said.

“I wouldn’t like to quote numbers of where we’re at, but we’re happy, and we know we’re doing the best job we can to hit what’s quite an aggressive target, but not an unachievable one.”

With Nielsen returning to Alpine after a previous stint of a decade at the team in its Benetton/Renault guise in the 2000s, including through its title wins in 2005 and ’06, he is one of the best-placed personnel to speak of the energy within the squad as it aims to rebuild to a position of becoming race winners and title contenders again.

“I think there’s a spirit. It’s not necessarily embodied by people who have been there the whole time, like me and others, on and off,” he said.

“I think there’s a spirit and a ‘can-do’. And this has been the nice thing about going back there.

“I know it’s a cliche, but there are a lot of people with racing running through their blood, and they want to be competitive, and they don’t mind putting in the hours.

“Our factory is now working… the average working week is 55 hours, because that’s what we need to do to get this car out. And we don’t have any trouble with people doing it.

“That’s where you realise it’s not a normal industry. We don’t have people saying, ‘Oh, well, I can’t. I’ve got to do this or do that, ‘ or ‘it’s my wife’s birthday’.

“But everybody understands that’s the sacrifice to get where you are, and it’s a very sobering kind of experience to be surrounded by so many people who are prepared to sacrifice so much.

“So I think that is a constant. From the beginning of Enstone to today, there are a lot of very dedicated people there who are willing to absolutely put the effort and the sacrifice in because they want to move the team forward, whether that’s people who have been there for 30 years or five years.”

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