Pierre Gasly hindered by traffic during sprint qualifying in China
The Frenchman was eliminated in the first qualifying session. He complained about the traffic which caused him to lose several tenths.
They met the same fate. An elimination in the first phase of the sprint qualification. In China, the two Alpines were not at ease. But some external factors must also be taken into account. The French brand had to stiffen its rear wing to comply with the new FIA directive and thus lost performance. But that is not everything.
During his final attempt, Pierre Gasly was hindered by traffic from the first corner. He was then disrupted, but less significantly, on the rest of his lap. This caused him to lose precious tenths, costing him passage to the second phase of the sprint qualifying.
The car felt good, it had the pace and we just got caught up in traffic at the start of our push lap, which cost us time. These small margins can be very costly, as was the case today. We made good progress between free practice 1 and SQ1 and I really think we should fight for SQ3 because it is very tight between several midfield cars, analyzed Pierre Gasly.
The Tricolore will start from 17th place, just behind his teammate. A notable performance for an Australian who encountered some reliability issues during the first free practice session. This is clearly not the result we wanted today, but I am satisfied with the feel of the car. Ultimately, a combination of factors contributed to the frustrating result of the sprint qualifying, particularly the track traffic during the push lap, but we will keep our heads down and aim to maximize what we can do in the Sprint race in the morning. Fortunately, I completed most of our program during the free practice 1 session before the track issue, and it was important to get up to speed on this circuit, he recalled.
