Pierre Gasly: « We have work to do
Pierre Gasly is off to a good start this new Formula 1 season by managing to qualify his AlphaTauri in Q3. However, according to the Frenchman, scoring points is not guaranteed.
Despite a brilliant first free practice session in which Pierre Gasly finished at the top of the time sheet, the performance of the AlphaTauri continuously declined throughout the weekend.
While his teammate Yuki Tsunoda was eliminated in Q1, the Normand driver managed to reach Q3 thanks to an excellent lap during the second qualifying session.
Unfortunately for Gasly, only a 10th place was waiting for him at the end of the qualifiers.
However, in the post-race interview, Pierre Gasly did not hide his surprise at this result.
On one hand, I am very happy because we didn’t expect to make it out of Q1. That’s why we used 3 sets of tires during this session. It has been really challenging since FP2. I managed to do a great lap with only one set of tires in Q2 to make it to Q3, so it was really positive.
Contrary to previous seasons where finishing 10th would have been a disappointing result because the driver couldn’t select their tires for the start, Pierre Gasly will be able to benefit from the rule change to devise the best possible strategy in order to score points in the first Grand Prix of this new season.
However, the winner of Monza 2020 did not hide their fear of the competition.
« We can see that cars with a Ferrari engine are much faster than us. We have work to do to find more performance, but overall I am happy with what we have achieved today. »
In 10th place, the Normand sees himself finishing behind Bottas’ Alfa Romeo, Magnussen’s Haas, and Alonso’s Alpine. These are cars that AlphaTauri could easily outperform in 2022.
The battle for the midfield is shaping up to be closer than ever before.
