Following the Chinese Grand Prix, where Alpine once again struggled to make an impact on the points, Pierre Gasly expressed both frustration and optimism regarding the team’s performance.
Alpine’s lacklustre start to the season sees them currently sitting at the bottom of the Constructors’ Championship, with zero points. Gasly himself is in 19th position in the Drivers’ Championship, behind his teammate in 16th, both with no points to their names.
In the most recent race, Gasly finished 13th in the main event and 16th in the Sprint race, underlining the team’s ongoing challenges.
Speaking about his performance, the one-time Grand Prix was actually quite pleased with how competitive they were.
“Honestly, not that much. You know what, I’m actually quite pleased because from every race since the start of the year, that’s probably one of the closest from the top ten we finished.”
The Frenchman sees some big positives as the updated package used by Esteban Ocon got the team within 3s of the points last Sunday.
“So, on my side, I knew it was going to be difficult looking at the performance on the first four races.
“Without the upgrade this weekend, I knew it was going to be tough. But in the end, we still managed to make it to Q2, did a good Sprint race, quali and race, and today we actually managed to overtake a couple of guys and be in the mix.”
Gasly remains hopeful for the future, especially with upcoming upgrade to the car for him in Miami.
“For me, I’m just looking forward to being in Miami, get that upgrade.
“And looking at Esteban, he’s not that far from the top ten, so it’s definitely positive to see it’s bringing us closer to the points finishing [positions].
“But obviously we’ve got to keep working and the gap is still big and we’ve got to close it and keep bringing new parts on the car.”
However, Gasly also highlighted some issues during the race, particularly with the pit stop. A loose wheel hit the mechanic who was thankfully uninjured.
The French driver had been given the green light to go but stopped very quickly.
“Yeah, yeah, quite scary, actually. Like my green light, the light went green, so I dropped the clutch, but then it went red straight away and then I saw in the mirror the wheel wasn’t on.
“So yeah, the mechanic is fine, which I was a bit scared of, but yeah, obviously we’ve had a couple of instances this year where I’ve lost some time in the box, so I’m sure we’ll review exactly what’s happened and improve it for next time.”
