Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly hoping to ‘maximize’ their Mexico City Grand Prix

Alpine took a small step forward last week in Austin.

The team brought a series of upgrades for the A524 to the Circuit of the Americas, and the result was their strongest qualifying session of the season. Piere Gasly stormed into Q3 — often topping the timing sheets in both Q1 and Q2 — and ultimately qualified in seventh.

He was promoted to sixth on the grid thanks to a pit lane start from George Russell, and while he did not finish in the points, it was a sign of progress for the team.

Alpine is now hoping to build off that progress this upcoming weekend at the Mexico City Grand Prix.

“I’m looking forward to getting straight back to it in Mexico City this weekend. The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez is a very unique track being at such high altitude,” said Gasly in the team’s media preview. “The thin air means we have to run with high downforce wings but the car still feels light to drive and we hit some of the highest speeds of the season down the long main straight. It’s a very different challenge to Austin but we will do our best to use everything we learned in Texas about the car and have a stronger weekend.”

“I’m looking forward to returning to Mexico City this weekend. It’s an exciting circuit with a mega atmosphere. One of the best parts for all the drivers is the packed stadium section, it’s always really special to drive through there and it gets me even more hyped before the start of the race,” added Ocon. “The track is good to drive and the car handles differently to nearly everywhere else on the calendar because of the high altitude. We will use our learnings from the upgrades in Austin to extract as much performance as possible to maximise the weekend.”