Finishing P5 in the F1 Bahrain GP Qualifying session, Pierre Gasly demonstrated surprisingly strong pace in his Alpine machine.
However, the team has yet to score a point so far this season. Last season, the Alpine team secured a respectable 6th place in the Constructors’ Championship, despite a challenging start to the season.
Gasly’s Qualifying performance thus provides the team with hope to bounce back and increase performance this season, and it got even better thanks to Kimi Antonelli’s one-place grid drop.
This P4 Qualifying is a clear improvement from past experiences for the French driver. The previous two season he raced around the Sakhir track, Gasly started last on the grid.
Hard work paid off for Alpine
Speaking in the print media zone, Gasly lauded Alpine’s outstanding effort, enabling him to qualify in the upper ranks. The Frenchman was overall pleased with the feeling of his A525.
“Good work from everyone, you know, inside the team. I mean, it was a very strong lap in Q2. It felt very good.”
Proud of the team’s achievement, Gasly felt very confident about his Q3 lap. The Alpine driver was however not expecting to be so close to the top 3 and the pole position qualifying lap time, he explains:
“And Q3 was very strong, like I knew straight away, after my last corner, I knew this would put me in a very good place, but nowhere near close, thinking that it was going to put us like 400s from the top 3 and only 3 tenths of pole position, so no, I’m just very happy for the whole team.”
Evolving conditions throughout the session
While Gasly had a strong Q3, the French driver did not feel as secure in the first part of qualifying. The car heavily lacked balance before the team intervened to successfully adapt its set-up. He was slower than teammate Jack Doohan in Q1 before gaining 0.8s in Q2.
“Good improvement, even in Q1, I wasn’t feeling comfortable in the car, I was sliding a lot, I was, many snaps in many places and we’ve changed a few things, outlap, some of the settings I could do inside the car and we just managed to improve, session and run by run, so extremely happy.”
A critical qualifying for the last team in the Constructors’ standings
Although the 29-year-old driver is extremely positive about Saturday’s result, he remains realistic about the tough situation Alpine find themselves in. This P5 result is long overdue for the French team, Gasly elaborated.
“We need this, you know, I know it’s extremely tight, we still haven’t scored any points this year.
“We’ve been more on the back foot and at the back of the midfield and clearly this weekend we managed to put a very strong performance together so far.”
While the one-time race winner had a strong pre-season testing at this very Sakhir track, the first three races were far from ideal for Gasly. The car has however proved more cooperative this weekend, providing the Frenchman with the means to reach the final part of Qualifying.
“It’s more like the overall package and what the car is capable of doing today really felt like it gave me, you know, the control of I was able to push and actually drive it the way I wanted.”
A fitting set-up for the A525 at the Sakhir track
The A525 set-up perfectly aligned with the Sakhir track conditions yesterday. Working well around Bahrain’s high speed and medium speed corners with a highly responsive front end that was not giving lots of understeer, the car met Gasly’s expectations for the first time this season.
“The front was very reactive, through the high speed the car was extremely good, through turn 11 like medium high speed same, very strong front and yeah, I mean, I just knew coming out of the last corner that I managed to place the car exactly the way I wanted and hasn’t been always the case so far this season.”
The French driver commended the team’s success in managing to attain the right set-up.
“So I think there are many, many parameters, but we definitely managed.
“I think the window is probably very extremely narrow and managed to get it right.”
Gasly: the A525 has a very narrow working window
Though Gasly reached Q3 in the Bahrain GP Qualifying, the car felt unpredictable for parts of the weekend. In friday practice, the car turned out to be capricious, unsettling the French driver. It demonstrated pace on the hard and medium tyres while it had no grip on the softs.
“I think there is just so much into it because even yesterday I was fast on the hard, I was fast on the medium, we put the soft and absolutely no grip and it was very strange.”
The car proved unreliable again in Q1 detailed Gasly: “Today it started first set in Q1 again, I was just like sliding and could not really feel the same car as FP3 […]“.
Gasly detailed the challenging process he experienced to get his car in the right window.
“I think the window is just extremely small everywhere, you really need to fine-tune all these things and try to be smooth with all you do inside the car to really get the best out of it.”
Surprised by his ability to reach Q3, Gasly still lamented the complexity of the car.
“It was quite tricky to be fair, like the whole quality, I was not very happy, I wasn’t feeling comfortable, but I just managed to really nail it.”
The Frenchman was pleased to finally uncover the car’s potential, hopeful that there will be further possibilities throughout the season to prove it.
“I am just happy because it shows, I have said, there is potential in that car, sometimes we are struggling a bit more than on other tracks.
“But it is just nice to see that we have proven it today and for the rest of the season we know there will be some other tracks where we will have some opportunities.”
Gasly will be under pressure from fast closing rivals in F1 Bahrain GP
In an uncharacteristic performance, Lando Norris qualified in P6 whereas Verstappen reached P7. Jokingly hoping for the world championship contenders to fight it out behind him, Gasly expects his rivals to close in on him rather promptly.
“If Lando and Max want to battle it out here in the first few laps, that would be great.
“Jokes apart, we know these guys have quite a lot of pace in the race.”
Outperforming his own expectations, Gasly wishes to optimize his Qualifying result in the Sunday Race at the Bahrain GP. The Frenchman is confident, aiming for a point-finish today.
“We expected to be around 9th or 10th in quali[fying], we did better than that, tomorrow we will try to make the best use of that track position at the start.
“We expect a very different race than Suzuka, so I don’t know where that will put us in the end, but we are clearly in the match for the points and it is important for us as a team to get those first points.“
Gasly aims to capitalize on the gains from the upgraded car at F1 Bahrain GP
Contrasting his possibilities in high speed corners last year to this season’s, Gasly hailed the efforts the team dedicated to car improvements.
“In the high speed [corners], [turns] 6, 7, 11, when I think of 12 months ago what I was doing in those corners and what I was able to do here today, it is actually very impressive what the team has been able to do.”
Gasly further highlighted the stark contrast with last year’s qualifying pace. The Frenchman intends on optimizing performance for the rest of the season.
“A year ago we were qualifying P20, I could not believe it, and 12 months later we qualified P5, 3 tenths of the pole.
“We just need to keep that dynamic, that momentum, there are great things happening in the team, we just need to make sure it keeps going and use that as much as we can for next season as well.“
