Pierre Gasly bemoans ‘absolutely terrible’ Alpine problem hurting his chances

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Alpine have left Pierre Gasly to bemoan an ‘absolutely terrible’ problem that ruined his attempts of scoring points for a third successive round during the Belgian Grand Prix.

The 28-year-old was enjoying a solid run of form before failing to start the British Grand Prix in July. A gearbox issue meant Gasly would not even take the lights at Silverstone, where the Alpine driver also served a 50-place grid penalty after needing several new engine elements.

A fresh internal combustion engine, turbocharger, motor generator unit – heat (MGU-H) and motor generator unit – kinetic (MGU-K) resulted in five separate 10-place grid penalties. The Frenchman then hit trouble, again, at the Hungarian Grand Prix owing to a hydraulics failure.

Pierre Gasly bemoans Alpine’s engine issues that ruined his Belgian GP

Gasly contested 33 of the 70 laps at the Hungaroring, where he was even the slowest driver in qualifying. The Belgian GP then gifted the Alpine star a chance to get back on track before F1’s summer break. But Gasly had to settle for just 13th place at Spa after starting from P12.

Esteban Ocon at least scored Alpine two points at Spa after the 27-year-old regained P9, his starting spot, following George Russell’s disqualification from winning the Belgian GP. Gasly came home 11.813 seconds from his compatriot and teammate after further engine issues.

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The Renault E-Tech 23 1.6 V6 turbo-hybrid power unit in Gasly’s A524 matured temperature problems during the Belgian GP, which cost the Alpine pilot 0.7 seconds per lap. He finished 9.439 seconds from the top 10 and scoring one point after 44 tours of the Ardennes circuit.

“It was absolutely terrible down the straights,” Gasly said, via quotes by Motorsport.com. “It was supposed to be a couple of kph, and I ended up losing seven-tenths every lap with some engine temperature issue. It was just very frustrating.”

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His temperature problem in the Belgian GP marked the latest issue Gasly faced in the three rounds before the summer break. Those problems also terminated his run of scoring points in four straight races after taking two P9s and two P10s to outscore Ocon (5) with six points.

Gasly only scored the Alpine driver’s first point of the 2024 Formula 1 season in the Monaco Grand Prix with P10 after surviving the first lap contact that saw Ocon retire. He then sealed back-to-back P9s in the Canadian GP and Spanish GP before earning P10 in the Austrian GP.

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Ocon has three P10s to his name, plus the P9 the 2025 Haas driver gifted Alpine at Spa. The Frenchman scored the Renault-owned team’s first point of the year at the Miami Grand Prix in round six. He also added further single-point finishes in the Canadian GP and Spanish GP.