Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto reflect on Alpine's rollercoaster Italian Grand Prix

Credit: Formula One

Alpine arrived at Monza with a car that had suddenly found pace, and left with two very different stories to tell about what that pace was worth. Pierre Gasly had claimed a sensational maiden pole position the day before, his first in 190 Grands Prix, built on a recent chassis upgrade and the switch to Mercedes power that had quietly transformed the team's form.

Franco Colapinto had qualified seventh and looked capable of building on it. By the chequered flag, one had turned a famous Saturday into a hard-fought seventh-place finish, and the other was in tears over a mistake that cost him a shot at the podium.

Colapinto's race had briefly promised everything. Charles Leclerc's red-flag-inducing crash at Parabolica reshuffled the order behind him, and the Argentine used the restart to climb as high as third, passing both a demoted Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen along the way. Then it unravelled.

A spin dropped him eleven places in an instant, and he fell as low as sixteenth before clawing his way back with a string of overtakes, eventually finishing ninth for two points. Asked whether the early promise offered any solace, he did not try to dress it up. "Yeah, it was a difficult race. A few things and then a big mistake that I just lost the car completely. I don't really understand how I lost it so aggressively," he said.

"It was very frustrating, I think a very frustrating mistake. It was a great opportunity for me and for the team, for second and third. I threw away a nice chance so I'm very frustrated of course with myself." He pointed to the choice he made in the fight rather than the car underneath him. "Maybe it's not really a good fight either, and taking risks for no reason as well is not so smart, so I think on my side I just try to learn from it."

Pushed on the weekend as a whole, the frustration only sharpened. "It's been very positive and that's why I'm frustrated. The team gave me a very good car and a very good opportunity and I didn't make the most of that."

For what it is worth, his final lap of the race was only a hundredth of a second shy of Gasly's fastest of the afternoon, a small consolation from a weekend he otherwise wanted back.

Gasly's disappointment carried a very different weight, tempered by history that only Monza could provide. His maiden pole arrived six years, almost to the week, after his sole grand prix win, also at Monza, also earned in unlikely circumstances. Leading into the first corner and holding on gamely as Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari found more pace across a long run, he eventually slipped to seventh at the flag, still good enough for six points.

"Yeah, we've got to be happy. We experienced something magical yesterday and obviously you want to dream after putting in a pole," he said. "We're all buzzing, but obviously you've also got to be realistic, and when you're coming into today things will be quite a lot harder for the laps ahead. I'm still very happy. The two good starts have been amazing, battling with the guys at the top has been extremely fun. For quite a while I was managing to stick to the right train with all the guys, fighting a bit with Lando."

He was careful to frame it as part of a bigger picture for the team rather than a one-off. "We won the last two races and it just shows how far we've come in the last few weekends. Obviously waking up this morning you think there's going to be more, but at the same time the best of the midfield and not too far from the cars are very positive."

On what the result means for Alpine's fight for fifth in the constructors' standings, he pointed to the data rather than the day. "This weekend we still need to go back to the factory and try to understand what the heck happened, because it definitely came a bit out of nowhere. I'm sure we have a few ideas of things that probably work better for this package. Hopefully we can take that performance forward. The last 24 hours have been absolutely amazing. I want to experience it again, and hopefully have a bit more pace in the race to stick in that battle."

Between them, Alpine still walked away from Monza with both cars in the points, a double top-ten finish built on a Saturday neither driver expected. What Sunday made clear is how differently the two are measuring what comes next.