Photo credit: BWT Alpine F1 Team
Pierre Gasly overcame new-upgrade teething pains on his Alpine and typically tense track conditions in Singapore to bring home sixth place, his second top-six finish in his last three races.
The weekend opened up with difficulty, and through practice and qualifying Gasly’s best placing in both was 12th. “I started very far from [the front] on Friday and couldn’t get a feel with the car. Tested quite a lot and only in qualifying, I feel like[…] we can start it[…] but then I was confident today we’re gonna be in that fight.”
“Don’t know how much I can say and what I’m supposed to say, but it was a bit compromised Friday. So yeah, I just couldn’t get a great feeling. I couldn’t really[…] get the flow until Q1 when I came out and and things felt better.”
Once the race started, Gasly was able to hold steady in the points as he cleared the Haas cars and Liam Lawson, as well as taking advantage of problems for teammate Ocon and Alonso.
But as the late race strategies unfolded–particularly in the wake of teammate Esteban Ocon’s retirement with 18 laps left–Gasly, sixth at that stage, stayed out to try and maximise his track position.
“They told me basically just go for qualifying laps and[…] the more I was pushing on these tires, the slower I was going[….] I was hoping Piastri would hold [Max Verstappen] off a little bit longer, but as soon as he get past, was catching like over a second and a half per lap.”
Thus Gasly missed out on being one of the few drivers to finish ahead of Verstappen this season, but he and the team were pleased overall as the Frenchman took P6 on the final lap thanks to Russell’s crash.
“We had good pace. We’re in the battle that we expected to to be in[…] managed to to come out on top and so and score some very good points.”
