Racing
© Jonathan Borba
Franco Colapinto qualified eighth for the Miami Sprint, his best one-lap result with Alpine, and beat Pierre Gasly for the first time this season as both team cars reached SQ3.
That made it Alpine’s strongest all-round Friday of 2026 so far, but Colapinto was the standout. On a Sprint weekend with only one practice session, he built through the day, cleared SQ2 with a clear margin over Gasly, then delivered a 1:29.320 in SQ3 to secure P8. Gasly ended up 10th with a 1:29.474, leaving Colapinto two places ahead and in the points-paying positions for Saturday’s short race.
The result mattered because Alpine arrived in Miami needing a step forward, and because Colapinto badly needed one himself. The team had not fully extracted his potential in the opening phase of the season, and he had scored only one point across the previous three race weekends. This was his clearest sign yet that he is starting to unlock the A526.
Colapinto said the breakthrough came after Alpine finally understood what had been missing earlier on Friday. The Alpine driver said he was happy not just with the result but with the way it came together after a difficult start, adding that it had taken time to understand how the car was behaving before the team “finally” got into a rhythm. He said they had done good laps all day on a Sprint weekend, which made the turnaround even more important.
He also felt the progress was not limited to one lap. Colapinto said the race pace “looks strong” and that Alpine appeared to be in a good place relative to the midfield, even suggesting the car could be competitive with Isack Hadjar’s Red Bull around the fight for the final points. After a month-long break in the calendar, he said Alpine had worked in the right direction and that the signs in Miami were far more positive.
Alpine’s wider picture was just as encouraging. It was the only midfield team to place both cars in the top-10 shootout, and Colapinto said that made it “a really positive result for the team,” especially as Alpine also saved a set of Soft tyres for Saturday. Steve Nielsen, Alpine managing director, called both cars in SQ3 “a real positive,” particularly with rival teams bringing significant upgrades, and said the team had a good comparison on new items after running a new rear wing on Gasly’s car.
Gasly’s session showed there was still more in Alpine’s package than the final order suggested. The Frenchman said he was disappointed because he had felt from the first lap that something was not quite right on his side of the car, leaving him with “a lot of wheelspin.” He said Alpine did not have enough time to get to the bottom of it during the compressed Sprint format and warned he could struggle in the race if it was not fixed, although he still saw the double SQ3 result as proof the car is competitive.
That left Miami as a potentially important turning point for both driver and team. Alpine has put itself in the fight for Sprint points with both cars, but Colapinto’s eighth place was the bigger development, a breakthrough performance that finally gave substance to the pace Alpine believed had been there.