The black series continues for Gasly after a catastrophic weekend in Baku
Affected by several reliability issues, Pierre Gasly had a very sad weekend in Baku. After two retirements in qualifying, he finished each race in the lower part of the midfield.
Pierre Gasly’s weekend started with a black Friday. His free practice session indeed ended prematurely after a fire, caused by a hydraulic leak, forced him to retire. Finally able to start the qualifying session thanks to the remarkable work of his team, the Frenchman would have liked to thank them on the track. That was without counting on his collision with the wall, breaking the rear right of his car and forcing him to retire… once again.
The catastrophic scenario then continued on Saturday. While the new format offers a second chance to drivers who missed their first qualifying, Pierre Gasly couldn’t take advantage of it. An exhaust issue prevented him from continuing the session, placing him in 19th position on the starting grid for the sprint.
He finally managed to survive in the race, coming back each time to snatch a few positions. He finishes the sprint in 13th position and the Grand Prix in 14th position, just ahead of his teammate Esteban Ocon, who finishes 15th.
“Quickly move on to something else.”
This Azerbaijani Grand Prix, marked by reliability issues, is one to forget for the French team who is already looking ahead to the Miami appointment coming up next weekend.
« We want to quickly turn the page on this very frustrating weekend for all of us in the team. We need to ensure that this kind of performance doesn’t happen again. We are clearly not where we should be and we need to come back stronger next week in Miami, on a more conventional circuit. As for my race, we tried something different with the strategy and we were hoping for success, but ultimately we couldn’t do much more. I made some overtakes. It’s always satisfying, but it’s much more rewarding when points are at stake,” he said in a statement published by Alpine.
