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Alpine's about to face most critical test yet of new era What's happened to an Alpine team that started the 2026 Formula 1 season with designs on hunting down the big four, but has since slumped into the midfield? In Hungary, a second non-score in four race weekends, on a day when McLaren picked up the first win of its F1 title defence, was as good a reminder as any of where this new engine customer sits in the Mercedes-powered pecking order. If that seems like an odd point of comparison to make, well, it's not so long ago that the outlook was slightly different. Here's Pierre Gasly after he beat Red Bull's Max Verstappen to seventh in the Japanese Grand Prix, where the Alpine was the fourth-fastest car and was 1.028% off the pace using The Race's supertimes metric. "[We can] not forget that Shanghai with three tenths off the McLaren, [it's] a bit more here in Suzuka, but they're also world champion last year and we were last in the championship," Gasly said. "Overall, it's definitely a good progress and hopefully we can close that gap in the coming months." Contrast that with the mood in Hungary, where Alpine had the seventh-fastest car, was 2.120% off the benchmark (which just so happened to be McLaren), and was overtaken by Racing Bulls for fifth in the constructors' championship right before the summer break. Suddenly, those early-season performance peaks - that (eventual) Monaco podium - seem a distant memory. "It's not the reality I want to see, but there's no hiding from it and there's been a couple of races where it's kind of the same story: in qualifying 12th, 13th behind Racing Bulls and Audi and in the race, it’s like somehow you think that maybe we're going to be there and then I can see them, but it's just pure pace, we're not there," said Gasly, when asked by The Race about Alpine’s competitive outlook. Maybe it was never going to be the case this year that Alpine could break the frontrunning ranks; it would be unfair to fault a driver too much for showing some willingness and ambition too. Still, it's important to have those targets as reference points. And what's happening right now is nowhere near Flavio Briatore's January declaration that a good job in 2026 would constitute "fighting every race to be in the points; to be in the first six, seven". The deficit in Hungary actually wasn't dissimilar to other tracks. At Shanghai, for example, where Gasly should've been fifth with a perfect weekend, Alpine was 2.002% off pacesetter Mercedes. The trouble is that the buffer to the chasing midfield pack hasn't just gone, but Alpine's been usurped by Racing Bulls in particular and Audi to a lesser extent. And that's been the case for three or four rounds now - with Gasly and Franco Colapinto both speaking of "damage limitation" at Silverstone in early July. And so to the questions of why that's the case, and how it's rectified. The first part, Gasly insisted, is less about any specific Alpine missteps and more to do with its rivals. "I think it's just development," he said before the Hungaroring round, when asked whether that change in competitive order was down to the development race or Alpine's weaknesses being exposed. "They've [Racing Bulls] really brought a lot of upgrades. "It seems to work well, and from what we hear, even slightly better than they would have anticipated. "At the moment, it's credit to them for the work they're doing. It's up to us to deliver with the new parts that will come in the next races." It's a well-made point by now that the laptime boost that upgrades offer, while this regulatory era remains so immature, can be up two or three tenths of a second; McLaren team principal Andrea Stella even said he has never seen a development race quite like this one in F1. And it's the case as well that Racing Bulls has upgraded its car both effectively and extensively. It's been bullish about its "bring an upgrade and it works" hit rate and at the previous four rounds it has introduced 10 performance upgrades; Alpine has brought six in that same spell, five of which were at the Austrian GP at the start of that run of four races. So let's consider that contrasting upgrade rate the 'why'. But how about arresting this trend? There were no updates at the "load-sensitive" Hungaroring, as per Colapinto, and racing director Dave Greenwood accepted "we're slightly out of step with everyone else". But even though Greenwood insisted Alpine has stayed "in the race" while it's held back on new parts, it will head into the second half of the season with much riding on an upgrade package being brought to the Dutch GP. Alpine hasn't been forthcoming with what is changing on the car for Zandvoort, though an inconsistent aero balance - "a very loose rear end coming into the corners, going on power" - poor traction, and mid-corner understeer are the main issues Gasly has cited and expects to be fixed. But in any case, there's been enough mention of its arrival among the drivers and team personnel that it's fair to say there's a degree of optimism - even expectation - that Alpine will benefit from the same performance step as others have when the package does arrive. "It's the standard of Formula 1, I think if you bring upgrades, you expect it to definitely get better and on my side, I'm not doubting that it's going to do what the team expect, because Aston Martin improved by two seconds this weekend, they have another engine coming," said Gasly, when asked by The Race in Hungary about how critical the upgrade was. "Racing Bulls improved by a second since the start of the year, Audi as well and we just didn't do much steps. So yeah, I think it's critical for us if we want to keep the hope for that fifth place in the championship." The use of "critical" came from The Race first, so let's give Gasly some leeway for his use of it too. Still, what's coming will be an important proof of concept in a season that's meant to show what Alpine is capable of. Let's return to Briatore's words from pre-season. Then, he reiterated that the "only one condition for me to join the team was to have a Mercedes engine". That move was all about putting Alpine in the most competitive position possible. There's no doubt Alpine is a more competitive prospect than it was last year; probably than it has been since 2022. And nobody was expecting victories this year - that just wasn't a realistic expectation, even if Briatore said in his recent interview with The Race Business that Alpine now has "everything" it needs to become a race-winning force again. At the same time, if you set out that you have "at least three, four months of advantage" over the opposition on car development, then anything other than fifth in the constructors' championship this year probably has to go down as a disappointment. Towards the end of last year, Gasly was referring to the combination of the rules reset, Alpine's development headstart and Mercedes engine move as offering "probably the best opportunity I've had as a driver but also for the team over the last couple of years to really make that step to the front of the grid". So yes, it might seem like only one upgrade package, but there really is a lot more at stake for Alpine at Zandvoort. Ditching its own, in-house engine in favour of Mercedes customer power was supposed to set it free. Clearly with half of the season still to run all is not lost but, if all 2026 amounts to is a strong start that gradually unravels, then you really do have to start questioning the merits of this project.