The scrap for fifth place in the World Championship has turned into one of the defining subplots of the 2026 season, and right now, the Italian team is firmly holding all the cards. Racing Bulls have carved out a 32-point advantage over Alpine heading into this weekend's United States Grand Prix at COTA, leaving six rounds left on the calendar to settle the score.
That healthy gap was forged during a brutal Azerbaijan, Bahrain, and Singapore triple header where Racing Bulls hauled in 23 points while Alpine walked away with nothing. The Enstone squad's frustration is palpable because the A526 has shown genuine speed at every single venue, frequently out-qualifying the VCARB 03. Yet that one-lap pace hasn't translated into Sunday points, most infamously in Azerbaijan when Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly collided on track.
At the same time, with that team I've seen back in 2024 we've had that amazing double podium in Brazil, and all of a sudden we had plenty of points scored. So it's never impossible.
Racing Bulls, by contrast, have grabbed every chance that came their way, even with a spot of friendly contact between Arvid Lindblad and Liam Lawson at that same Baku round. "Baku we got lucky, the team got lucky," Lawson admits. "And I feel like that outside of that, we've actually just done a really good job."
Alpine now faces an uphill climb to reset and stop the bleeding. Four days after Singapore, the team spent a marathon session in the factory to dissect their issues and hunt for future performance. "It's clear that we lost the last triple header, and we need to win this one," Colapinto says. "We need a kind of stop, a reset, and a start from zero again."
While the car clearly carries more teeth on Saturdays than on Sundays—largely tied to tyre usage—Gasly maintains that the team isn't fundamentally broken. The Frenchman points to Q3 appearances across the triple header, including Sprints, as proof of their raw speed. But Sundays brought a mixed bag of misjudgements and misfortune, from a 50-50 starting tyre call in Sepang that went the wrong way to the race limitations exposed in Singapore.
Despite the steep deficit, neither driver is ready to throw in the towel with six races left. Gasly is even looking back to the madness of Interlagos in 2024, when Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly dragged a massive 33 points home in a single soggy afternoon with Alpine's predecessor. "It's a big gap," Gasly notes. "At the same time, with that team I've seen back in 2024 we've had that amazing double podium in Brazil, and all of a sudden we had plenty of points scored. So it's never impossible."
