“We’re gonna be the best of the midfield” says Gasly after a head-to-head with Verstappen in Shanghai

This became evident during the Chinese Grand Prix, where Gasly out-performed Verstappen in both the sprint and main race Qualifying. With Verstappen’s Q1 crash in Australia during the week prior, Gasly now has a three-for-three record against his former teammate in terms of grid positions.

The two drove side by side for Red Bull during the first half of 2019, before Gasly moved to Racing Bulls (then Toro Rosso) in August of that year. Now it seems like they’ll be facing off more often as Red Bull has fallen behind in this new era of F1 while Alpine have a solid foundation to build upon. 

Gasly commented on Sky Sports about the performance of the Alpine following Qualifying for the race, saying, “I think in Melbourne, we showed better race pace than quali. And so far, from the few sessions we’ve had this weekend, the quali was good, but the sprint not as good. But I think that the race pace was quite there to fight in the pack.”

Compared to how his car felt in Australia, Gasly said, “This weekend, I must admit the car has felt a bit better… I felt confident in the car from [FP1], managed to put the lap in in the quali. The sprint didn't really go our way, and I was a bit disappointed to come away with nothing, but I think tomorrow we’ll be in the fight with Red Bull and Haas.”

Meanwhile, Red Bull continued to face struggles throughout the whole weekend. Even with a reset between the sprint and the race Qualifying, they could not find much extra pace in the car.

"It was the same,” said Verstappen to Sky Sports after Qualifying.

“We turned it upside down and it was exactly the same, so I'm expecting exactly the same [in the race], where we are probably fighting a bit with Pierre. But, that's it. Not more in it."

Verstappen did come out ahead of Gasly in Australia as well as both the Chinese Grand Prix sprint. Despite trouble at the start of the sprint, dropping him from P8 to the near back of the field, Verstappen fought back to P9, whilst Gasly was P11. 

Sunday, however, is where the two actually came to butting heads. After another poor start and unlucky timing with a safety car, Verstappen had to climb from the back of the field yet again until he found himself just behind Gasly. The two stayed close for several laps, with some tight back-and-forth overtakes traded between them until Verstappen was finally able to break away. 

Things stayed pretty stable over the next 20 or so laps, until Verstappen’s car lost power and he was forced to retire from the race. Meanwhile, Gasly finished in 6, and his teammate, Franco Colapinto, in P10 to score his first points for Alpine since joining them in May of last year. 

“I like to believe we’re gonna have similar pace for the next coming weekends that we’ve shown in China,” Gasly said to F1TV reporters after the race. “Obviously, Melbourne was a bit more tricky. Here was better. But I think, objectively we’re gonna be the best of the midfield.”

It may feel strange to think that a team like Red Bull, who dominated the sport for much of the last five years, is now competing with Alpine, the team that came in dead last in the 2025 Constructors Championship. But such is the nature of a regulations overhaul as significant as the one F1 is going through. Some teams will start on the backfoot, while others will be in a better position than they ended the last season in. 

Alpine is benefitting from the Mercedes engine, which has been extremely powerful so far this year. Yet the engine alone is not enough to guarantee results, as evidenced by the struggles other Mercedes customer teams like Williams and McLaren have had in the start of the season, and indeed Alpine seems to have emerged as a genuine midfield contender in this new era of the sport.

And if things continue on this way, fans can look forward to a season of interesting midfield match-ups, including that of two former teammates fighting it out side-by-side for crucial points. Battle lines have shifted, bringing teams that were once on opposite ends of the pecking order–like Red Bull and Alpine–on more equal ground. 

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Cover image via Red Bull Content Pool

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