Qatar Grand Prix – Tough blow for Pierre Gasly

Pierre Gasly was once again brilliant in qualifying. 4th on Saturday. A performance that confirms him as the best of the rest in this exercise.

Thanks to the penalties imposed on Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas for not respecting the yellow flags caused by the Frenchman’s puncture in Q3, the Normandy driver starts 2nd on the grid. The first time in his career that he started on the front row.

An excellent grid position that was promising of a good race result, confirming his good form after the free practice sessions where he finished 2nd in FP1 and FP2.

Resistant against Fernando Alonso at the start, the Spaniard later overtakes the AlphaTauri and quickly a gap widens between the two drivers.

Losing positions consecutively to Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, the Norman is not able to keep up with his direct competitors and decides to pit relatively early on the 14th lap.

This switch to a two-stop strategy was supposed to allow Gasly to make his way up, but the pace of the AlphaTauri does not enable him to gain ground on drivers ahead of him such as the Ferraris and Lance Stroll.

On the 37th lap, Pierre Gasly stops again for medium tires. Coming out in 11th position, he never manages to find an opening on Sebastian Vettel in front of him and finishes a very difficult race just outside the points.

« We can’t perform miracles every day, but losing so much ground and having so little speed is not normal. We had no rhythm today. It was very frustrating.

After very strong races from AlphaTauri and Pierre Gasly, the small Italian team leaves Qatar with 0 points while its rival team, Alpine, leaves with a 25-point lead.