Alpine managing director Steve Nielsen said the team was caught by surprise by how its midfield rivals continued to improve their cars during the 2025 Formula 1 campaign.
The Enstone-based squad started the season in decent form, carrying momentum from a strong finish to 2024. Pierre Gasly reached Q3 three times in the first six grands prix, including a stellar Bahrain Grand Prix with a top-five starting position and a seventh-place finish at the chequered flag.
However, Alpine began to lose ground after stopping development of the A525 around the Spanish Grand Prix in early June to focus on F1’s new 2026 regulations – despite others adding new parts to their cars. Haas proved to be the most extreme example of this, introducing floor and bodywork upgrades for the United States Grand Prix last month.
This meant the last few rounds were particularly painful for Alpine, as both Gasly and Franco Colapinto often found themselves fighting only each other at the back of the field.
“To sum it up, our biggest problem is our car’s not fast enough,” Nielsen told Motorsport.com. “Of course there are a million reasons contributing to that, both at Enstone and at the track, but a lot of our issues are that the car we put on the track is not good enough and we need to make a better one.
“We need to do that in time for next year, and I’m confident we will. But it’s also no secret that we were one of the first teams to switch over to next year, to the big raft of technical changes that are coming. The earlier you start that, the more developed your car will be when you start racing.”
Steve Nielsen, Managing Director at Alpine F1
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
Nielsen, who joined Alpine in September as the team’s new manager, defended the decision to switch early towards next year’s challenger, but admitted they didn’t expect some of their direct rivals in the paddock to keep developing their cars so late into the season.
“I think that’s the right thing to do,” he added. “The one thing that’s caught us out a little bit is that we were surprised how many of our competitors have kept developing throughout the year. Haas, for example, put a big aero upgrade on in Austin, I think it was. We didn’t expect that, but nonetheless, we’re clear on our mission and happy with it.
When asked why Alpine chose not to continue developing this year’s car while also focusing on the 2026 challenger – something others proved was possible – Nielsen explained the challenges of doing both.
“The short answer is I wish we were more competitive now,” he said. ”I just hope that the pain we’re going through now is vindicated next year when we produce a much more competitive car.
“But to be clear, the parallel development of two cars…most teams only have access to one wind tunnel. And it’s governed by regulation anyway. For us to keep our 2025 car in the wind tunnel means we cannot put our 2026 car in.
“So, you can do both, but it becomes a very inefficient way of working because to take one model out and put another one in, it’s downtime for the tunnel. You lose hours and days doing that, recalibration and so on.
“So we felt the best option for us to make the biggest step was not to develop this year’s car. I should also say that, of course, when the team was testing in Bahrain pre-season this year, the car looked quite competitive. So we were kind of surprised by the amount of work the others have done. Hopefully, in March, when we’re further up the group, we’ll get to say, ‘Well, this is why.’ You know, if we’re ahead of them. But right now, nobody knows.”
No extra pressure in 2026
F1 concept
Photo by: FIA
Nielsen isn’t worried that having discarded the 2025 season so early – a decision that has left the team currently last in the constructors’ championship with just 22 points, around a third of those scored by nearest rival Sauber – will add pressure on Alpine to perform next year.
“There’s always pressure in F1,” said Nielsen. “Whether you’re racing for first or for 10th, there’s always pressure. You either learn to live with it or you don’t. There’s always something you’re not happy about, whether it’s a slow pitstop, a poor strategy call, poor tyre usage, or something else. You never, or very rarely, go to bed at night thinking everything is perfect.
“So the pressure’s always there. And actually, the faster a car gets, the more the pressure builds. In the end – and I’ve heard people in other sports talk about this the same way – when you have a car that you know can win, and you deliver that, it’s more a feeling of relief than happiness.
“Because when you know you’ve got the potential to win, to do well, to come third or 10th or whatever it is, if you deliver that potential, great. If you don’t, you can’t be happy. I’ve done races in the past where we finished first and third and I was totally unhappy, because it should have been first and second.
“And because we’re all quite self-critical people, it’s very easy to always focus on the negatives, on the things you’re not happy with. So I think the pressure’s always there.”
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