Pierre Gasly is all but confirmed to remain with the struggling Alpine team past 2024.
While Esteban Ocon will not be renewed for 2025, the respected French sports newspaper L'Equipe emphatically states: "Pierre Gasly will extend with Alpine. He will be reappointed on Thursday to the team that welcomed him at the start of 2023," reported journalist Frederic Ferret from the scene of the Austrian GP weekend.
Ferret suggests that Gasly's renewed contract will span beyond just one year, securing his position at the Enstone-based team into the upcoming era of new regulations starting in 2026.
However, it remains to be seen whether Gasly, who might be joined by Ferrari's current driver Carlos Sainz according to L'Equipe, will continue with Renault power units in 2026.
Speculations are intensifying that Renault decided to re-engage their former celebrated boss Flavio Briatore as an 'executive advisor' to CEO Luca de Meo in order to facilitate Enstone's separation from their Viry-Chatillon engine operations.
Finnish publication Ilta Sanomat speculates this division might eventually lead to selling the chassis production sector of the team—including the official F1 entry—to Andretti-Cadillac.
Despite Alpine's poor performance throughout 2024, the team unexpectedly enjoyed a performance surge in Barcelona, puzzling the engineers who had made no recent upgrades to the car.
In a piece titled "How can the Alpine miracle be explained?" in Germany's Auto Motor und Sport, Gasly mentioned, "I fought for a long time with a McLaren and a Red Bull and only lost eighth to (Sergio) Perez on the last lap."
Team principal Bruno Famin commented, "We have to understand how this happened because we could benefit from the findings in the next races."
