alpine is fifth in the championship with an engine it didn't build
last in 2025, fifth after five rounds of 2026: how a mercedes power unit, gasly and colapinto turned alpine into the best of the midfield.
last october, in my beginner’s guide, i used alpine as the example sentence for the word “backmarker.” i stand by it. they finished 2025 dead last with 22 points, every one of them scored by pierre gasly. franco colapinto scored zero.
this morning, before the lights go out in monaco, alpine is fifth in the constructors’ championship. 35 points after five rounds. that’s more than racing bulls (21), haas (19), williams (7) and audi (2). only mercedes, ferrari, mclaren and red bull are ahead.
how? the short version is that renault shut down its F1 engine programme and alpine became a mercedes customer for 2026. the A526 is the first car out of enstone with mercedes power since the 2015 lotus, and the mercedes power unit is the one that has won all five races this season. good timing.
it can’t only be the engine, though. williams has the same power unit and 7 points. mclaren has it too and hasn’t won a race. so enstone has built a decent car around it, which is not a sentence i expected to write this year.
gasly has scored in four of the five races: tenth in australia, sixth in china, seventh in japan and eighth in canada. the one miss was miami, where his race lasted four laps. he’s eighth in the drivers’ standings on 20 points, the best of anyone outside the top four teams.
colapinto is the better story. zero points last year, 15 already this year, and 14 of those came in the last two races. he finished seventh in miami, a career best, then beat it two weeks ago with sixth in canada, after missing first practice with a power unit problem. he turned 23 at the end of may. i like it when the young guys make people look silly for writing them off.
now the painful part. aston martin has adrian newey, a works honda engine and my GOAT, fernando alonso. it also has zero points. alonso’s canadian weekend was a crash in sprint qualifying, a retirement in the sprint and a retirement in the race because of his seat. meanwhile the team i called a backmarker is fifth with an engine it buys from someone else. i’m fine. really.
the caveat is that it’s only five races. racing bulls is 14 points behind and haas 16, which is one good sunday for either of them. red bull is 22 ahead in fourth, and verstappen just got his first podium of the year, so i don’t see that gap shrinking.
still, fifth is fifth. monaco is the kind of track where a midfield car can steal a big result, and gasly starts ninth today with colapinto fourteenth. my prediction: gasly finishes in the top five, and alpine is still fifth when we get to barcelona. see you in the race report.