{"id":572550,"date":"2026-03-31T09:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/572550\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T09:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:00:10","slug":"pierre-gasly-labels-alpine-a526-his-best-f1-car-ever-after-beating-max-verstappen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/572550\/","title":{"rendered":"Pierre Gasly labels Alpine A526 his \u2018best F1 car ever\u2019 after beating Max Verstappen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pierre Gasly<\/a> described Alpine<\/a>\u2019s 2026 challenger as the best Formula 1 car he\u2019s had in his career, after beating Max Verstappen<\/a> to seventh position in the Japanese Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

After Alpine sacrificed its 2025 campaign to focus on F1\u2019s new technical regulations, Gasly has again spearheaded its effort \u2013 and this time higher up the grid.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old qualified seventh in the last three sessions (sprint included)<\/a>, each time faster than both Red Bulls; in the Japanese Grand Prix, Gasly comfortably pulled away from the remainder of the pack before the safety car bunched up the field, erasing his three-second gap to\u00a0Verstappen.<\/p>\n

The Alpine driver then withstood the four-time world champion\u2019s pressure during the remaining 26 laps, successfully fighting back when he was passed on lap 48, and took the chequered flag 0.337s ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a long race, I must say, with a lot of pressure,\u201d Gasly told Canal+. \u201cEarly in the race, I was quite comfortable with the mediums. But there have been many safety cars this year, so I knew it was bound to happen at some point.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe second part of the race was a bit different. He put huge pressure on me throughout the race, so I really had to focus to try and be as fast as possible \u2013 there was no management with those tyres \u2013 and make no mistake, because he was very, very close.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe managed to stay quite close, so they did a bit better than us on hard tyres. But in the end, we managed to keep him behind and get that seventh place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alpine had the eighth-fastest car in Australian GP qualifying, then the fourth-quickest at Shanghai and Suzuka, prompting praise from Gasly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, for now, this is the best car I\u2019ve had in my career, perhaps alongside the 2021 AlphaTauri,\u201d he pondered, referring to the AT02 he drove to the top six in 16 qualifying sessions out of 22 \u2013 but leaving out the Red Bull RB15 he competed in 12 grands prix with in 2019.<\/p>\n

\"Pierre <\/p>\n

Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri<\/p>\n

Photo by: Charles Coates \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Gasly is now among just six drivers who have scored points at all three grands prix so far this season, helping him to eighth in the championship with 15 points to his name \u2013 again ahead of Verstappen \u2013 while Alpine narrowly leads Red Bull in fifth in the constructors\u2019 standings.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Optimistic as ever, the Frenchman is aiming at the top teams, with Alpine helped by the Aerodynamic Testing Restrictions \u2013 the Enstone-based outfit currently enjoys more wind tunnel and\u00a0CFD time than any other, courtesy of its finish at the bottom of the 2025 standings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ve got a good baseline,\u201d Gasly continued. \u201cI\u2019m quite happy to see that the car has seemed to work well over the first few weekends, we\u2019ve managed to have performance all around. We know our limitations and what we need to work on. But we have one month ahead of us, we\u2019re working on stuff for Miami, so overall it bodes well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m happy with this weekend, the team did a good job, we made decent progress throughout the weekend. We managed to open up a pleasant gap to [Liam] Lawson, who I believe finished 18 seconds behind us, and we\u2019re seven seconds away from the Ferrari<\/a> [of Lewis Hamilton] in front. So if we keep moving forward, I hope we can catch the leading pack.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pierre Gasly described Alpine\u2019s 2026 challenger as the best Formula 1 car he\u2019s had in his career, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[1035,49,48,578,216537,576,577,215217,3022,220107,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-572550","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-alpine","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-f1-japanese-grand-prix","13":"tag-formula-1","14":"tag-formula1","15":"tag-japanese-gp","16":"tag-pierre-gasly","17":"tag-pierre-gasly-labels-alpine-a526-his-u2018best-f1-car-everu2019-after-beating-max-verstappen","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}