Pierre Gasly scored his and Alpine’s first point since the Dutch Grand Prix back in August as he finished 10th in the Mexico GP on Sunday afternoon.
Starting P8, he was overtaken by Nico Hülkenberg at the start, and he would be passed by Oscar Piastri later in the race as the McLaren came through.
However, thanks to Sergio Pérez’s damage following his contact with Liam Lawson that saw him lose a lot of downforce, it gave Gasly the chance to finish 10th.
In qualifying, the 28-year-old was 0.006s away from beating Kevin Magnussen to P7. In the race, however, he was three places and over 40s behind come the chequered flag.
“Yeah, I mean I’m happy.
“Ahead of the race, well, we knew it was going to be that 11th if Perez makes it back, 10th if he doesn’t.
“So I think we clearly did the best we could.
“At the start I kind of hoped that maybe I could hang on with the Haas. On medium I wasn’t too far, but I could see them pulling away like a tenth or two, and then as we switched to hard they were just way too competitive, and looking at Magnussen where he finished, they’re definitely very strong on Sundays.”
In Austin, Gasly lacked pace on the hard tyre in the second stint and ultimately ended up in P12 after running in 6th during the opening stint of the Grand Prix.
On Sunday he finished 6.5s ahead of Lance Stroll when the flag fell. Once again, the pace on mediums looked better than on the hards.
While admitting there is still work to be done, he is satisfied with the progress made with the new updates.
“So I think on our side, yeah, just happy we managed to find and learn from Austin.
“Two Q3s in two weekends, P12 last week, it wasn’t a very strong race, and this weekend we seem to have a bit better pace.
“Still some work to do, but at least I think the last point finished for us was in Zandvoort, so I’m happy for the team that we managed to get back in the top ten.”
Qualifying was key to Gasly’s race as he could get towed along by Nico Hülkenberg in the early part of the first stint, gradually pulling away from Liam Lawson in the process. Once the Kiwi and Sergio Pérez came together, things became far easier for the Frenchman.
“I think we did a very strong job yesterday, which basically set us up for a strong race.
“We started ahead, tried to hang on with the Haas when potentially other cars were behind, maybe at a slightly more pace initially than us, and then after tried to use the free air, no mistake, and executed a strong strategy.
“I think it was well executed for sure, starting in that top ten made our lives a lot easier.”
It was not far from being over just after it started for the Alpine driver. Alex Albon and Yuki Tsunoda made sizeable contact on the run down to turn 1.
Gasly was to the right at them. Albon’s front wing hit his left rear tyre as he looked to leave some room for the RB, while the right rear tyre that came loose from Tsunoda’s car touched the left front of the A524.
Despite his first thought that he had a puncture, Gasly could continue without pitting.
“Yeah, I initially [thought I] actually had a puncture because I couldn’t really see Alex, I felt the touch on the rear on braking, and usually at high speed like that you can easily create a puncture. So we had quite a lucky escape.
“It was quite hectic as well, like when I saw the tyre, I didn’t expect that to fly right past the car. I think it touched my front left actually, so it was quite impressive.”
