Alpine boosted by ‘much better’ 2026 car and ‘big gains’ from Mercedes power unit

Alpine have created a “much better” car for the upcoming season and F1’s overhauled regulations, according to Managing Director Steve Nielsen, who has also noted “big gains” with their new Mercedes power unit.

After successive top six finishes from 2021 to 2024, Alpine placed 10th and last in the 2025 Teams’ Championship standings, having switched focus to the 2026 rules reset earlier than the majority of their rivals.

With Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto getting a solid number of laps on the board across the Barcelona Shakedown and the first pre-season test in Bahrain last week, the noises coming out of the Alpine camp are cautiously optimistic.

Asked to sum up how he was feeling about Alpine’s programme in the Sakhir desert, Nielsen said: “Pretty confident. It’s probably quite a dull answer, but we’re working through the programme, trying to understand what everyone else is doing, trying to second guess what their pace is, what our pace is.

“Very new cars, a lot of new things to learn. You’ve probably heard a lot of people talk about energy recovery and deployment; it’s a big learning curve for us, the drivers. How you use that has a huge effect on lap times on so on. So, there’s a lot of new stuff to understand, and drivers are having to drive in a completely different way than they used to.

“Honestly, I’m not really sure where we stack up. I think we’ve made a much better car than last year – well, I know we have. But, if the race was tomorrow, where we’d line up, I don’t know. I think reasonably strong midfield, but I don’t know.”

Pushed on the apparent step forward with Mercedes’ power unit, Nielsen smiled: “I think we’re happy with our PU supplier. That’s one area where we’ve definitely made big gains, yeah.”

Nielsen expects more answers over the competitive order to come during this week’s second test at the Bahrain International Circuit, where teams are likely to chase more performance ahead of the season-opener in Australia.

“We’re all doing the same, we’ve all got programmes,” he continued. “I don’t think anybody’s run low fuel yet – I think you’ll probably see that [at the final test].

“We did see a long run from Ferrari, a couple of other people, and the long runs are what help build the picture, because if someone’s done 20 laps, they definitely had a certain amount of fuel in at the start of it, for example. The more long runs you get, the more picture you can build.”

Alpine and the rest of the F1 field will be back in action in Bahrain on Wednesday.