{"id":431982,"date":"2026-01-23T10:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T10:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/431982\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T10:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T10:25:09","slug":"the-challenges-facing-alpine-ahead-of-f1-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/431982\/","title":{"rendered":"The challenges facing Alpine ahead of F1 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

After finishing dead last in the 2025 constructors\u2019 championship, Alpine<\/a> will attempt to bounce back in the upcoming Formula 1 season.<\/p>\n

What can the French outfit do with a largely unchanged team alongside a new engine partner? Ahead of its season launch in Barcelona on Friday, let\u2019s delve into its prospects.<\/p>\n

What’s new at Alpine?<\/p>\n

The main change for 2026 at Alpine is the team\u2019s switch to customer Mercedes<\/a> power units. For the first time in the brand\u2019s history, a Renault-owned F1 outfit won\u2019t use its own engines.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t be a first at Enstone, as it raced with Mercedes power in the 2015 season under the Lotus name. As Benetton, it only started to use Renault powertrains in 1995.<\/p>\n

The decision was made by then Renault CEO Luca de Meo, who has since departed the company, and was deeply unpopular within the Viry-Chatillon engine division.<\/p>\n

The team has also lost some partners, in particular Microsoft, which has switched allegiances to Mercedes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, reserve driver Jack Doohan has left the squad<\/a> to pursue a potential career path in Super Formula, leaving Paul Aron<\/a> and Kush Maini<\/a> as its test and reserve drivers \u2013 but only the Estonian is eligible to a superlicence.<\/p>\n

What’s the biggest challenge to Alpine?<\/p>\n

Proving that it\u2019s capable of building a race-winning chassis \u2013 and when we write \u2018race-winning\u2019, we specifically mean \u2018on merit\u2019. Esteban Ocon\u2019s<\/a> victory in the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix was not undeserved, don\u2019t get us wrong, but it wasn\u2019t exactly a truthful reflection of the car\u2019s actual pace.<\/p>\n

\"Esteban <\/p>\n

Esteban Ocon, Alpine A521<\/p>\n

Photo by: Andy Hone \/ Motorsport Images<\/p>\n

Other than that, the Enstone-based squad hasn\u2019t won since the 2013 Australian Grand Prix with Kimi Raikkonen<\/a>, and its lack of success has often been blamed on its engines.<\/p>\n

The team finished last in the 2025 constructors\u2019 championship, so it has a lot to prove.<\/p>\n

What’s the strongest asset to Alpine?<\/p>\n

In 2026, Alpine\u2019s strongest asset might just be its Mercedes power unit.<\/p>\n

Mercedes is believed to hold an advantage over all other engine manufacturers, partly thanks to an astute interpretation of the new rules regarding the compression ratio of the internal combustion engine.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

If this translates into an actual performance gap, Alpine will have all cards in hand to succeed.<\/p>\n

What’s the goal in F1 2026 for Alpine?<\/p>\n

Alpine openly stopped the development of the A525 remarkably early last year \u2013 pretty much around May \u2013 in order to focus on the new rules. That\u2019s partly why it scored just 22 points when its closest rival, Sauber, had 70 to its name.<\/p>\n

Lead driver Pierre Gasly<\/a> has been performing rather consistently at a high level and took those hardships on the chin, but he would now grow restless in the absence of meaningful progress.<\/p>\n

Alpine will hardly have anywhere to hide in 2026.<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After finishing dead last in the 2025 constructors\u2019 championship, Alpine will attempt to bounce back in the upcoming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[821,64,63,817,813,816,85,226074],"class_list":{"0":"post-431982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-alpine","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-formula-1","13":"tag-formula1","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-the-challenges-facing-alpine-ahead-of-f1-2026"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}