After a surprising double podium in Brazil for Alpine, he does it again. Pierre Gasly will start the Las Vegas F1 GP from P3, right behind polesitter George Russell due to an impressive final lap set in Q3 with a 1:32.664s, taking advantage of the improving track conditions and extracting the maximum out of the A524.
It has been a great progression to follow for the French team, who had started the 2024 season on the back foot, failing to score points with either driver for the first five rounds as the car was overweight and plain slow.
An unexpected second row
Gasly discussed his impressive performance, admitting he was not expecting to be able to achieve such a result, as he said in the post qualifying press conference.
“It’s absolutely incredible.
“You know, as a team we started Bahrain on the last row with both cars and all of a sudden the last few weeks have been quite a change.
“I’m really happy and pleased with the work the team has been doing on the season, where everything looked impossible, just to still stick together and put some more performance in that car.
“Going into qualifying today, I must admit we never thought we’ll be in a position to actually get in that top three, but yeah, I managed to have a very special lap at the right time on that last set in Q3 and it’s a very nice surprise.”
An aggressive setup
Asked why his A524 was so fast in Las Vegas of all places, Gasly brought up the aggressiveness of the aero package brought by the French team.
“We went with a pretty aggressive package in terms of downforce, so we are running very little downforce around this track.
“We try to maximise the straight lines, which obviously make our lives slightly harder in the corners.
“I think it’s a challenging track, it’s very cold conditions, it’s quite an outlier in the season, but I had a nice feeling in the car since P1, P2 went well, P3 went well, and then in that Q3 we managed to make it work with only one set of new tyres as well.
“There was definitely some good pace. For now I’m very pleased, obviously it’s only qualifying, but I think it’s probably the first time I qualify in the top three and it feels like it was a special one.”
Focused on the ultimate goal
The former AlphaTauri driver stated his goals for tomorrow’s race, which won’t be to score another, surprising podium but to keep behind the other midfield cars in order to outscore some of Alpine’s direct rivals for P6 in the Constructors’ Championship, such as Haas and Racing Bulls.
Yuki Tsunoda qualified P7, with Nico Hülkenberg in 9th.
“At the minute that’s not really what I’m thinking about.
“We know where the target is for us, we’re fighting Haas and AlphaTauri [now Racing Bulls] in the constructor.
“Obviously whatever happened in that quali is amazing, it feels good to be in front of Max and McLaren and these guys, but at the end of the day it’s not our fight, so we’ll give our best shot tomorrow.
“It’s a challenging one around here with the graining, so we’ll make sure we do our homework tonight to maximise the chances tomorrow, but for sure from P3 we increase our chances to get some good points,” Gasly concluded, excited for a new chance to prove his worth from P3 in the Las Vegas GP.
