As Alpine waits for the FIA’s Contract Recognition Board (CRB) to make its ruling after Monday’s hearing over the Oscar Piastri dispute, the Formula Two champion is not their “preferred driver” anymore, according to Sky Sports News.
Instead, they’ve reportedly inquired with Red Bull about Pierre Gasly, who is under contract with AlphaTauri through the end of next season. Alpine team boss Otmar Szafnauer has continued to express his confidence in the team’s contract with Piastri, adding during Saturday’s press conference that when the F2 champion was told he’d replace Alonso, he “smiled and was thankful.”
Sky Sports News understands that Gasly would be able to depart from the Red Bull family early if Alpine pays a fee. The Frenchman has been within the Red Bull pipeline, both with the team and sister program AlphaTauri, since joining Formula One in 2017.
“At the moment, I don’t really want to make too many comments because I haven’t seen anything,” Gasly said to Sky while at the Belgian Grand Prix. “The most important is to perform with the car that I have, and then we’ll see.”
When asked about whether there would be news this week, Gasly commented, “Not from my side.”
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner did not exactly shut down the possibility of Gasly leaving early while talking with Sky Sports News' Craig Slater over the weekend.
“The market is fairly fluid at the moment,” Horner said. “We’ll see what is the outcome with the CRB with Piastri, Alpine and McLaren and then we’ll go from there.
“For us, obviously Pierre is still a Red Bull Racing contracted driver until the end of next season. But of course, we’ve got a contract with Checo [Perez] for the next couple of years and Max is very much on a long-term contract.
“We have to consider all possibilities. Of course, until they fix what is going on with the contract recognition side, everything else is just purely speculative.”
Meanwhile, Red Bull reportedly has been looking into another driver—IndyCar’s Colton Herta, according to RACER's Chris Medland. But Herta, who does have a deal with McLaren to do F1 testing, does not have a Super License, per Medland, and an FIA exemption would be needed. While there are ongoing rumors about Gasly, teammate Yuki Tsunoda’s F1 future is still up in the air as his contract is set to expire at the end of the season.
