That is what you call a brutal Sunday reality check. As Motorsport.com reports, Pierre Gasly walked away from the Singapore Grand Prix empty-handed despite sticking his Alpine into seventh on the Marina Bay grid. That brilliant qualifying slot came thanks to Isack Hadjar hitting technical trouble and George Russell picking up a grid penalty. Gasly had actually been significantly slower than Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson in both Q1 and Q2, but somehow pulled 0.144s out of the bag when it mattered most in the final phase of qualifying.
Unfortunately, the machine underneath him turned feral the moment the lights went out. Gasly lost two positions immediately to Lawson and Nico Hulkenberg off the line. “We had no power out of the line,” he noted, pointing out that brilliant starts had actually been a strength for them all year. Russell and Hadjar were on recoveries through the field, and Gasly simply could not hold them back as the afternoon wore on.
The problem is I'm sideways every time I touch the throttle,
By lap 55 of the 62-lap race, the Alpine racer was desperately clinging to 10th place with an eight-second deficit to Lawson. Then the tyres completely gave up. Gasly lost 10 seconds to Lawson over the final six laps alone, and leaked a staggering 14 seconds to Hadjar, who casually snatched 10th place away at the death.
The tyre destruction was a direct consequence of how the car handled low-speed corners. “On a track with a lot of low-speed [corners], a lot of tractions, we just ran out of tyres after three laps,” Gasly explained. Over a single lap in qualifying, the rubber never had time to overheat, but the race was an entirely different beast. The tyres cooked themselves almost instantly once the red lights vanished.
The real issue was getting the power down without turning the rear tyres into smoke. “The problem is I'm sideways every time I touch the throttle,” Gasly admitted. Even when trying to play games with the battery against Russell, the fundamental limitation of the chassis meant he was sliding on exit every single time he applied throttle. He pointed to known issues with the rims they were running as part of the puzzle, but the layout of the track exposed it brutally.
That missed haul compounds a rapidly worsening championship picture for the team. Just over a month ago, Alpine sat only three points behind Racing Bulls in the fight for fifth in the constructors' standings, before the FIA's International Court of Appeal decision regarding the Monaco Grand Prix controversy triggered a 13-point swing. With Franco Colapinto retiring from the race due to a suspected driveline issue, it marks a third straight non-score, leaving Alpine a massive 32 points adrift of Racing Bulls.
