Pierre Gasly’s Red Bull stint was one to forget. Despite getting the nod to drive alongside Max Verstappen in 2019, Red Bull sacked the Frenchman midway into the season. As a result, he recognizes the pressure this team puts on a driver to perform, and spoke about it on season 6 of Netflix’s Drive to Survive. The anamnesis arrived while reacting to Nyck de Vries’ sudden termination from AlphaTauri last year.
Speaking about this, Gasly said,
“You know as much as I know how good of a driver he is, Red Bull doesn’t have time. They got no patience, they got no mercy, good or bad, that’s the way it works there.”
After him, Alex Albon decided to open up about Red Bull’s extremity. The former driver stated how the Red Bull seat is never safe as there are so many drivers in the line for the seat. There’s no place to sit back and relax as no performance means immediate dismissal. Christian Horner, the team principal of the Milton-Keynes-based team has always mentioned how Red Bull puts their winning philosophy above anything else.
De Vries’ termination was not a huge surprise, but his inability to cope with F1 was. The Dutchman is a Formula E and Formula 2 champion and arrived at AlphaTauri with enormous expectations. However, his stint was far from satisfactory, as the team decided to sack him just 10 races into the 2023 season.
Experts believed de Vries, who had a good relationship with Marko and Max Verstappen, would get a full season at the Faenza-based team. However, after Daniel Ricciardo’s brilliant testing with Pirelli, Marko and Horner made up their mind to call the Honey Badger as a replacement for de Vries.
How was Pierre Gasly’s time at Red Bull Racing?
Pierre Gasly joined the Red Bull Junior Team in 2014. However, he had to wait a year before he could get his hands on Formula 1 machinery. He experienced his first F1 test in 2015 at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, and was regarded as a huge talent at the time.
The Frenchman‘s first call in the sport arrived in 2017 when he joined Toro Rosso to replace Daniil Kvyat. He raced with Brendon Hartley that year and the entirety of the 2018 season. He was impressive at Toro Rosso, and when Ricciardo decided to join Renault in 2019, Gasly was Horner’s first choice.
P1!! My first victory in F1!!
I’m lost for words, still struggling to realise, its just amazing!!
Everything was perfect, just missed the tifosis down under the podium. @alphatauri we have done it!! Thanks everyone for all the messages & support!! Today is a day I’ll remember. pic.twitter.com/3eILYSMsIu— PIERRE GASLY (@PierreGASLY) September 6, 2020
Gasy partnered with Verstappen for the first half of the 2019 season, as his stint was short and unfortunate. Midway, he was sacked, and he joined Toro Rosso again. This time, however, his Toro Rosso (soon to be AlphaTauri) stint was memorable. Gasly was an occasional contender for the podium places, and even won a race (2020 Italian GP).
But due to lack of progress made by the team, Gasly decided to leave. He exited the Red Bull fraternity altogether in 2023, joining Alpine.
