Pierre Gasly has said that he is very concerned with how slow his Alpha Tauri car was at last week’s Qatar Grand Prix.
Pierre Gasly has been absolutely stellar in 2021. He has been putting in strong performances throughout and even stood on the podium at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in June. The Alpha Tauri driver’s consistency has been lauded by fans and pundits worldwide.
Gasly had an excellent start to the weekend in Qatar. He managed to qualify 4th, but penalties for Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas earned him a first front row start in his F1 career. He started the race from 2nd, behind Lewis Hamilton, on Sunday.
However, his ‘perfect’ weekend soon turned into a nightmare. Despite starting from P2, the Frenchman failed to score any points. He finished 6 seconds behind Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel in 11th.
Gasly admitted that he was clueless as to why this happened. The 25-year-old said that his car felt incredibly slow and couldn’t keep up with the others.
“Our pace was shocking for which we don’t really have the answer,” said Gasly.
“I tried to stick with Fernando for the first few laps. I could barely make that. After that, we tried to go for an aggressive two-stop strategy but the pace was never there. It was shocking.”
A change in tyres didn’t help them with the pace, says Pierre Gasly
Gasly met with a tyre puncture at the end of Saturday’s qualifying session. Alpha Tauri had to make changes to the car after the incident because the AT02 took a lot of floor and wing damage. The former Red Bull driver said he was unsure as to whether this was the reason.
“It was so frustrating. I don’t understand how we can be that slow during the race. We need to review everything.” he said.
“We changed the front wing and floor after the incident in qualifying. I don’t know if it had an impact, and we used the medium tyres in quali again in the race, so they were not graining. Again, I don’t know if that had an impact.
“We need to review everything because pushing hard on the tyres, the lap times were never there. We could have done five stops, three, two, one. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. It was a question of pace, we were just too slow.” Gasly added.
Also read: Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton aide wants “illegal Mercedes” chatter to stop
Frenchman praises Fernando Alonso and Alpine for their strong outing
The French driver said that his recent high place finishes were nothing short of a miracle. He realizes the fact that, finishing up top is not something he can expect every week.
However, he praised Alpine and Fernando Alonso particularly for their incredible performance in Qatar. “This was the most impressive performance they have done,” added Gasly.
“To go from Brazil from where they were there to Fernando being on the podium is just unbelievable. “I don’t know what they have found but this is massive. They were in front of McLaren, in front of Ferrari which hasn’t happened many times this year for them.
“At the end of the day, we can congratulate them as they did a much better job than we did.” he concluded.
