A frustrating race in Canada for Gasly

Pierre Gasly’s misfortunes began on Friday when a problem with his steering wheel forced him to exit his race car. Free practice 1 had only been underway for 5 minutes. Fortunately for the Normand driver, a surveillance camera issue deprived the rest of the grid of track time. However, it was during qualifying that the Alpine driver’s weekend truly deteriorated. Approaching the final chicane at high speed to set a lap that should have allowed him to advance to Q2, an obstacle named Carlos Sainz forced him to abandon his lap. Eliminated in 17th position, work would have to be done on Sunday to regain some points.

To facilitate his comeback, his team decided to equip him with soft tires. This advantage was even more increased since Gasly was the only driver who chose the red-striped tires for the start. After 10 laps, being in 13th position, the advantage of his soft tires quickly diminished. Unable to continue his progression in the pack, the decision was made to have him pit on the 11th lap. That’s when a string of misfortune struck him. A slow 5-second pit stop saw him coming back out in a distant 19th place before the safety car deployment completely destroyed his strategy.

Stuck at the back of the pack, Gasly took advantage of the incidents of others and his good pace in clean air to climb up to 12th position. A result even more disappointing considering the speed of the Alpine this weekend, which benefited from improvements.

« It really wasn’t our weekend. Between the timing of the safety car coming out just after our pit stop, causing us to lose 5 seconds in the pits, and ending up at the back of the pack. Today it was difficult to overtake with the DRS even though we showed that we had a good pace in clean air. Starting so far back makes our lives much too complicated. The speed is there, but it’s frustrating to not convert it into points. »