Amid the chaos and attrition of the Canadian Grand Prix, one team walked away quietly delighted. Alpine left Montreal with both cars in the points, Franco Colapinto taking a career-best sixth and Pierre Gasly eighth for a 12-point haul that marked the team's best day of the 2026 season.
For Colapinto, the result was the high point of his Formula 1 journey so far, and he was visibly proud of how the whole team had executed under pressure.
"Really proud. As a team we've done an amazing job to maximise everything out there," Colapinto said. "With a very good start we kept the position, and then at the end we just brought the car home in P6 and a lot of points for the team, Pierre in P8."
He did not hide what the result meant personally.
"Personally, my best ever finish," he said. "So, very, very happy and very proud of what we've done."
Gasly, who has carried much of Alpine's load this season, framed his own race as a hard-earned exercise in damage limitation after a difficult weekend, and was quick to recognise the significance of the combined result.
"I'm happy with what I'll call damage limitation," Gasly said. "The whole weekend, with all the struggles, I'll take these four points definitely."
The Frenchman underlined how rare a double-points day had become for the team.
"A very good weekend for the team as well, six and eight, so 12 points," he said. "It's been a while since we scored that, so a lot of positives."
The points were the reward for a clean, opportunistic afternoon on a day when several rivals undid themselves. With wet-weather decisions catching out a number of teams at the start and reliability claiming others, Alpine kept its noses clean, nailed the launch and banked the positions when they came.
Gasly is already looking ahead, and sees reason for cautious optimism at the next round.
"I'm looking forward to the next coming days, working with the team and digging a bit deeper into the limitations on my car," he said. "It's going to be important for Monaco, especially with all the traction that we have there."
For a team that has spent much of the year scrapping at the lower end of the points, a double-points finish, headlined by a driver's career-best result, is exactly the kind of weekend that lifts a garage. Alpine will hope Montreal is a turning point rather than an outlier.
Source: youtube.com