Pierre Gasly’s run of consecutive points finishes is likely to end at the British Grand Prix this weekend. The 28-year-old has been in the points in the last four Grands Prix as the Enstone-based team has made slow progress since Bahrain.
Even though we’re only at the halfpoint of the season, Alpine’s reliability issues have meant that Gasly is now over the amount of allotted batteries for the entire season, and thus having to insert one outside the pool, resulting in a 20-place grid penalty.
Unsurprisingly, they will also fit a new engine to add another one into the pool.
“We had to change the battery,” Gasly explained to French broadcaster Canal+.
“We had a few little problems earlier in the season which meant that I ended up with a faulty battery, another where we had two or three alerts at certain times. So, we needed to change the battery, which meant a 20-place penalty.
“We’re taking the opportunity to add an extra engine because I’ll have to start last in any case.”
Gasly also took the time to discuss Haas’ results in Austria last weekend. Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen scored a combined 12 points.
It was a blow to Alpine, as the team now has a 10-point gap to Haas and dropped a position to 8th in the Constructors’ championship.
Executing perfect weekends will be key as they aim to chip away at that decent gap considering the points these teams usually fight for at each event.
“That was a tough one in Austria.
“They scored more points in a race weekend than they scored since the start of the year, so as a team it was far from ideal, but they did a good job.
“They haven’t been competitive everywhere, but still in Austria somehow they always managed to pull off a very strong performance, and that’s what we’ve got to aim at as a team.
“We’ve got to maximise, capitalise on every single opportunity we have. We know we’re going to be in the fight for one or two points because the top eight is out of reach.
“We still have a lot of races to go. If we manage to get a point or two each single time then we’ll be fine, but it’s a tight battle.”
