It was a disappointing Saturday at the 2025 F1 Chinese GP for BWT Alpine F1 Team’s Pierre Gasly and Jack Doohan with both drivers failing to score points during the Sprint Race before being knocked out in the first round of Qualifying.
The morning’s Sprint Race brought disappointing results for Alpine, with rookie driver Doohan involved in multiple incidents during the race. After a small incident with Williams Racings’ Carlos Sainz, Doohan became involved in a final-lap incident with Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto. This results in both cars spinning on track and the Stewards later handed Doohan a 10s penalty and two penalty points on his licence. While Gasly avoided such misfortune, finishing P12, he failed to score points.
The team faced further disappointment during the afternoon’s Qualifying session, with both cars out in Q1. Gasly’s 1:32.092 placed him P16, missing out on Q2 by 0.364. His teammate Doohan finished behind him in P18, with a time of 1:32.092.
A tricky qualifying for Gasly
While speaking to the media after the Chinese GP Qualifying, Gasly reflected on his early exit, explaining that his A525 had simply lacked pace over one lap. He also highlighted the tight window that he had had to set his lap times, saying that he had tried his best to maximise his time on track despite this.
“I think we’re just fundamentally lacking pace over one lap here. It’s extremely tight so two-tenths get us six positions further up so we’ve been struggling a bit more than the others and that’s it.”
“It was a bit of a situation at the end but it seemed that everyone was tight on time, I got told to go if I wanted to make sure I had a lap so I passed Liam [Lawson] and actually started my lap, I think, a bit less than 3 seconds from Antonelli, so a bit less than I would have liked. But at the end of the day, I think we’ve been struggling a bit [on] the track.”
Confidence in a modified set-up
With an apparent drop in Alpine’s performance since their pre-season testing in Bahrain, Gasly believes that a performance review will be needed after the weekend.
“Yeah, I think at the moment I’m not too sure we have the answers, it’s just a different track, different layout, different type of corners. It clearly seems to be a bit more difficult for us here.”
“I’m sure we’ll review after the weekend.”
He also revealed that Alpine had made some changes to their A525 ahead of the Sprint Race. Despite these changes not helping their Qualifying, Gasly believes that they will deliver during Sunday’s race, having helped them in the Sprint.
“The sprint seems better in terms of race pace than qualifying pace so we made a couple of changes on the car which probably with insight now didn’t help the Quali.”
“But we’re confident that for the race it should help us so this morning we managed to come back five positions, 17th to 12th.”
“Hopefully we can do the same tomorrow with a bit longer, a bit more time, I think it should be quite hard on the tyres so hopefully it can come our way.”
Is the modified rear wing the problem?
As one of several teams which had to make changes to their rear wing, Alpine’s DRS delta has appeared noticeably different on track. Gasly, however, does not know the impact that this has had on their overall performance, explaining that the team needed to continue to analyse the data before he could make a suitable conclusion.
“I can’t really [say] at the moment,” Gasly replied when asked whether changes to the rear wing had impacted Alpine’s performance at the Chinese GP.
“It’s only the first weekend so it’s obviously stuff we’re going to analyse. But at the moment I really don’t have an answer.”
Tyre graining more of an unknown for Alpine at the Chinese GP
Gasly also addressed the role that expects tyre graining to play in his race on Sunday. With limited data on the performance of the hard compound tyres around the Shanghai Internation Circuit, its performance remains unknown to drivers and teams alike. What is known is that tyre management will play a crucial role in deciding the outcome of the Chinese GP Race. However, while many drivers have complained about tyre graining throughout the weekend, Gasly believes that Alpine managed that issue better than their rivals. While he does not know whether the new modifications will pay off in the race on Sunday, he plans to “do a better job than the others” regardless.
“I think we saw the graining was extremely high for everyone, and managed to clear it by the end of the race on our side so it wasn’t the case for everybody so yeah we’ll see.”
“I guess it’s more unknown, probably better for us and then we’ll just have to do a better job than the others.”
Doohan “learnt a lesson” from Sprint Race incident with Bortoleto
For Gasly’s Alpine teammate, Jack Doohan, the Chinese GP has also been a learning experience, albeit a disappointing one. The rookie driver suffered a difficult Sprint Race, with his progress hampered by a DRS train, which he claimed hurt his tyres.
“It was a difficult Sprint Race,” Doohan said, “I think that the DRS train was the most difficult [part of it].”
“[It was] difficult to move forward. You couldn’t go forward and you [were] sitting within six-tenths for 10 laps. That doesn’t do any good for the tyres.”
“To be honest, once I got passed by Nico [Hülkenberg] and got a bit of free air, it seemed like the tyres cam back a little bit which enabled me to come back past him. And I went for the move on [Gabriel Bortoleto] and we [collided] at the end of it.”
Doohan claimed responsibility for the incident with Bortoleto, before adding that he had learnt his lesson and was looking to move forward.
“So it was my fault. But, learnt a lesson on that one and we move forward.”
An “unfortunate” Qualifying session for Doohan
Unfortunately, Doohan luck did not improve during the afternoon’s Qualifying session, with him failing to make it out of Q1. While speaking to the media after the event, the Australian driver explained that he had struggled to put in a proper lap. He claimed that, ultimately, Alpine’s performance had been “quite good” given the circumstances.
“I think, [I pushed] a bit too much [on the first lap]. I lost it sort of late, late entry and it was one of these slow spins [but] you prefer those [to] the quick ones. And [we] regrouped for the second run, sort of just re-ground ourselves [and] put a steady banker down.”
“For run 3, It was just a little bit unfortunate, a lot of traffic in the pitlane and it got us very tight on time. We started our last final lap two seconds behind the car in front which was Liam and we know how much these cars like free air when we try to maximise their performance.”
“I think to only be over a tenth shy of Q2 considering our circumstances is quite good. It seems I’m saying these now a couple quail in a row but we just have to go back to the drawing board and see what we can do. It is so tight out there and there’s only a little bit for everyone.”
Doohan unable to explain drop in performance
However, Doohan could not explain why Alpine’s performance at the Chinese GP was so vastly different to that in Melbourne. He stated that the team would need to analyse their data and keep working to overcome identified challenges.
“Off the top of my head, no, I think that’s the magic question at the moment.”
“We really have to look into it and analyse. I’m sure there is going to be a combination of things that is why our package isn’t coming together but yeah we are just going to keep working on it. We are still very early on in the season.”
Doohan added that he doesn’t know if their dip in performance is due to the rear wing changes, as he hasn’t received much information on the matter.
“I haven’t been told anything on that, to be honest,” he replied, “Luckily, I’m the racing driver, not the engineer.”
Doohan hoping to maximise time in free air during Sunday’s race
As he looks towards Sunday’s Chinese GP Race, Doohan plans to find as much “free air” as possible, knowing that this will help preserve their tyres. He believes that if Alpine can do this successfully, they will have an advantage over their rivals.
“The most important thing is to try [to] find free air. At the end of the day, you’re not really going to be in free air. But to try and help that front left tyre when everyone’s struggling with it is going to be the most important thing.”
