Pierre Gasly credits “great start” as the Frenchman takes home two valuable points for Alpine from last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix.
Following a surprisingly strong performance during the Dutch Grand Prix, helping Alpine to close the gap to Haas in the constructors championship, Pierre Gasly was on high. An impressive turnaround from Friday saw Gasly qualify in P10, before starting in P9 following Alex Albon’s disqualification.
Speaking after the Grand Prix, Gasly explained his strong opening corner from the left hand side allowed him to control his pace and run his own race in order to eventually cross the line in a strong P9, claiming 2 valuable points for Alpine in the constructors championship.
“I am extremely happy, I must say,” Gasly said following the Grand Prix. “We definitely not that optimistic after qualifying, it was a great quali to get Q3.
“Yeah, what a race it was, honestly, it was amazing. I had a great start, managed to go around the outside of Lance [Stroll] and Fernando [Alonso] in Turn 1 which I think was extremely important for our race. I liked the line.”
Gasly went on to express his sympathy for Albon on his disqualification, but noted his position gained opened the door for him to make the move around the outside of turn 1.
“I feel sorry for Alex, but when he got disqualified, it moved me to the left and I knew it gave me the opportunity to take the outside line. You never know if the space will be there but I saw both Aston [Martin’s] go a bit inside and so I managed to roll the speed on the outside.
“It was a bit bumpy on the curb on the exit but still made it work. Then I managed to control the race, manage the tyres, and Fernando behind who was putting quite the pressure all the way through. I had a couple of great battles with Lewis and Carlos as well. I’m pleased that we managed to get on top of the midfield.”
Contrary to Gasly’s strong performance, teammate Esteban Ocon on the other side of the Alpine garage struggled throughout the weekend, failing to progress to Q2 on Saturday and ultimately unable to make any reasonable gains during the race on Sunday.
Speaking after the Grand Prix, a disappointed Ocon congratulated his teammate. He went on to explain that he and the team will analyse data from Zandvoort in order to improve ahead of the Italian Grand Prix this weekend.
“It was a difficult weekend, unfortunately,” Ocon explained “I think we did the maximum we could on our side today, but the positive on the other side is that Pierre [Gasly] and the team had good pace, which is good information for us. Well done to the team and himself for scoring some points.
“And that’s a good thing, because we can hopefully point out the differences and where our performances weren’t great. Hopefully we can find what didn’t go to plan for the next race.”
“It’s going to be important to understand that ahead of next weekend, see where we struggled and hopefully turn things around for Monza. After that race there are some more clues, more information on where we think we can be working, we can be having a look. We just need to put the fingers on things and act to fix that for the next race.”
