Image: Twitter. Alpine F1 team
Pierre Gasly will start the Australian GP from 9th position and hopes to score as many points as possible in what will be, according to his words, ‘an interesting race’.
Pierre Gasly was today’s ninth fastest with 1:17.675 in Melbourne being the only Alpine driver to make it to Q3 while teammate Esteban Ocon could not make it from Q2 and finished 11th.
After the session, Gasly was optimistic having reached Q3 for the first time with his new team since joining from AlphaTauri.
“I would say it wasn’t a bad outcome to take ninth place in Qualifying today even if I felt there was a tenth or two left on the table. We did a good job to improve lap after lap and to reach Q3 – the first time for me in Melbourne – which is pleasing.” explained the Frenchman.
Gasly’s post qualifying remarks also highlighted the challenge which came from managing the tyres as he stated: “It was very difficult to get the tyres into a good enough window and we had to keep improving on each lap.”
Pierre Gasly was then eager to look ahead to race day and the unknown element due to having had variable whether so far in the weekend.
“Tomorrow’s race will be interesting as most teams won’t have much knowledge on long run pace.”
Alpine’s newest signing is currently P11 in the F1 Drivers’ Championship having scored only 4 points after two races. As such, Gasly is looking forward to an opportunity of scoring big points in Melbourne on Sunday.
“We’ll see what we can do starting from ninth and we’ll give it our best to score as many points as we can.” said Gasly.
Alpine have some daylight in the standings as they are currently P5 in the contructors with 8 points. This total has the French manufacturer 4 points in front of Alfa Romeo but still some way off from Scuderia Ferrari just ahead on 26.
