Alpine exposed in Hungary as Colapinto crashes

Alpine endured a bruising start to the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend, with Pierre Gasly admitting Q3 is beyond reach after finishing Friday 14th while Franco Colapinto lost vital preparation time by crashing in FP2 after sitting out FP1.

The difficult day underlined a weakness Alpine had effectively arrived expecting. It was the only team on the grid not to declare upgrades for the Hungaroring, while the rest of the field brought high-downforce packages, and that lack of performance showed immediately on a circuit that punishes any deficit through its slower, more technical sections.

Gasly said the car never came into the window Alpine needed. The Frenchman spent Friday outside the top 10 in both sessions and pointed to balance and grip problems, especially in the winding parts of the lap. “It was a very tricky Friday, we don’t have the car in the situation we would like, the balance is not good and we are struggling with grip, it’s very hard and I hope we find some answers tomorrow,” Gasly said. He added that “for now we just want to try to get into Q2, Q3 is not within our reach, so we will try to be as close as possible to the top 10.”

Things became more complicated on the other side of the garage. Colapinto handed his car to reserve driver Paul Aron for FP1, then saw his own running end roughly half an hour into FP2 when he lost the rear at the final corner and hit the barriers with the back of the A526.

“It was a pretty short day,” Franco Colapinto, Alpine driver, said after the session. He pointed to the challenge of the current cars on a low-grip track and the impact of missing the morning. “I lost the morning, so that wasn’t ideal. I lost the rear in the last corner and hit the tires with the rear of the car. Not a good day, not an ideal start. I also lost quite a lot of track time.”

That leaves Alpine heading into Saturday with less data than it wanted and with damage from Colapinto’s crash potentially affecting the rest of his weekend. For a team already lacking the pace to fight at the front of the midfield, the immediate objective has narrowed to recovering enough balance and grip to get at least one car into Q2.