Gasly earned two precious points in the Dutch GP
Pierre Gasly says a strong start that saw him charge past both Aston Martins was the key to earning a surprise ninth place for Alpine in the Dutch GP.
Gasly made Q3 and qualified 10th, and he gained a spot on the grid through the disqualification of Alex Albon.
Off the start he managed to pass both Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, leaving him seventh in the early stages.
He was unable to keep Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton behind, but he did a good job to bring the car home ninth, despite the queue behind Kevin Magnussen allowing the Astons to catch him at one stage.
“Yeah, big time,” he said when asked by this writer if he would have taken that result at the start of the weekend. “After Friday we definitely looked to struggle a lot, and the feel wasn’t great. So yeah, I would have signed straight away!
“It was a great start. I knew I wanted to go on the outside, if the space was available. And I saw Lance and Fernando kind of going on a tighter line. I just tried to roll the speed on the outside and got past these two guys, which I think played a big part in the rest of the race.
“I had some fun battles with Lewis defending, same with Carlos, and Fernando tried to show his nose a couple of times. So it was a pretty intense race, but I think as a team, we’re extremely happy to leave with two points, because it was very much looking very difficult.”
Gasly admitted that being able to run in clean air for much of the race was a luxury.
“Initially I thought Fernando is going to pull away if I don’t pass him,” he said. “I thought my race will be with Lance, and trying to get him at the start, but then get the free air behind Alonso.
“But in the end, I managed to get past both of them. I knew if I hold Fernando behind, he’s going to damage his tyres, or open a gap. And then after that, I just need to make sure I control my tyres as best as I could.
“So yeah, it was a luxury. They’ve been couple of moments, especially at the end there was that Magnussen thing, a couple of laps to the end where we all bunched up, and it was pretty hectic.
“But in the end, very well executed, and the feeling in the car was good today. So it was great.”
Gasly acknowledged that it’s not easy for Alpine to score this season.
“I think definitely we’ve showed this here that on some tracks, we seem to be able to fight for these last points,” he said. “Top eight is on a different league at the minute.
“We know we’re fighting for this P9, P10, if nothing happens. I think on pure pace we know Aston is consistently faster than us.
“But today we got ahead of them, and they were stuck basically, they could not really use their full potential the whole race. That’s what we need to target whenever we can.
“And I think it was important to do a good quali, start right behind them, and get a good start.”
Meanwhile it was a difficult weekend for Gasly’s team mate Esteban Ocon, who started and finished 15th.
“I think we did the maximum that we could on our side in this race,” said Ocon. “We see the positive is that Pierre and the team scored some points.
“So well done to them for that, and that’s a good thing, because we can hopefully point out the differences and where our performance wasn’t great.
“We have a couple days to do so. We will dig in with the team, and hopefully find what didn’t go to plan for the next race.”
Asked if his change of chassis between Spa and Zandvoort was one of the issues he said: “I won’t go into detail. That will stay within the team. But we have a lot to dig through, and it’s going to be important that we figure out how to have a normal performance weekend, like we had in the past.”
Adam Cooper F1 