Kika Cerqueira Gomes had four words to comfort his boyfriend Pierre Gasly after the Alpine driver’s race in Saudi Arabia ended prematurely. This has come right after Gasly’s Bahrain jeopardy where Alpine failed to score any points. Amid this, the F1 star received crucial support from his partner, Kika.
Following the Jeddah DNF, Gasly took to his official Instagram account to share, “Gearbox failure on the formation lap. We unfortunately had to retire the car. Disappointed for all the team. Tough time at the minute, but we will keep our head high and continue to work.” Kika, replying to this, wrote in the comment section, “You’ll come back stronger, ly [Love you.]”
Gasly‘s A524 suffered a gearbox issue after the formation lap in Jeddah. Therefore, instead of going to the grid for the race start, the 28-year-old had to move to the pit lane straightaway. The former Red Bull driver faced a fairly uncommon fate as this is the third year of current regulations and cars retiring due to technical issues is very rare at this point.
The A524 lost its sixth gear and soon after lost synchronization with all other gears. It forced the team to retire the car, jeopardizing the Frenchman’s second race of the year, making it one of the worst starts to his F1 season. Before this DNF, Gasly qualified in P20 in Bahrain and finished the race in P18.
Pierre Gasly’s reaction post-Saudi Arabian GP DNF
Pierre Gasly seemed distraught and disappointed after the Saudi Arabian GP debacle. With this, he failed to score on back-to-back races as Alpine finds itself in deep trouble. Despite this, the Frenchman talked about keeping his head down and pushing harder.
In the post-race interview, Gasly said in a report published by Alpine, “Obviously, it’s a disappointing day for us in Jeddah. We have to investigate why this happened as it cost us valuable track time today. It’s disappointing for the whole team as everyone is working really hard, bringing good energy all weekend, but things just are not going our way.”
The start of the 2024 season has been a disaster for the Enstone-based team. Apart from looking extremely miserable on track, they are also facing employee jeopardy off the track. Several higher officials left the team following the team’s poor show in the inaugural race in Bahrain.
The team’s Technical Director Matt Harman and Head of Aerodynamics Dirk de Beer left the team, as Alpine languished at the bottom. In Bahrain, both Alpine qualified in P19 and P20 and finished the race in P17 and P18.
Coming to Saudi Arabia, they qualified in P17 and P18. However, Esteban Ocon managed to grab P13, thanks to Lance Stroll’s DNF, while Pierre Gasly could not start the race. All in all, it’s clear that the A524 is the slowest car on the grid right now and the Enstone-based team needs to have massive improvements if they want to hold on to Ocon and Gasly in the future.
