Gasly admits that Alpine didn’t get it right in Austin
Pierre Gasly says that his Alpine Formula 1 team didn’t “execute the race in the best way” after tumbling out of a potential top 10 finishing position in the US GP.
Having qualified an unexpected seventh Gasly gained a further place on the grid when George Russell was consigned to a pitlane start.
He held onto P6 in the initial stages of the race until Haas “played their cards” and pitted the chasing Kevin Magnussen early.
Gasly was called in to cover the Dane when he was still comfortable on his medium tyres and wanted to stay out.
A slow stop then also proved costly, and as Gasly tried to recover ground he picked up a five-second time penalty for gaining an advantage by going off track while battling with Ale Albon. He eventually finished out of the points in 12th.
“It wasn’t good enough,” he said when asked by this writer about his race. “We haven’t executed the race in the best way. We took a good start. I was in P6 managing the tyre, everything was looking good, and Haas obviously played their cards.
“They had two cars, they decided to put the pressure with one. And we just fell for it, and reacted when the medium was the better compound for the race, at least for us.
“We reacted to it, slow pit stop, lost four or five seconds in the pit, exited in the traffic, and just struggled massively on the hard.
“I mean, just felt like we’ve left too much time on the table today, and it wasn’t a well-executed race from our side. So obviously quite frustrating after putting ourselves in a strong position yesterday.”
He added: “There is some positive, there is clearly the qualifying, we have some potential. There are conditions where the car seems to work.
“The first stint felt like it was well-managed. The pace was there to hang on to that sixth place. The hard tyre was very bad.
“So yeah, clearly things to understand. Still I’m frustrated right now, but looking at where we were the last few races, there is definitely some improvement.”
Like other drivers Gasly questioned the penalty that he was handed by the stewards.
“I don’t agree with it,” he said. “I accept it, and that’s the FIA, at the end they always have the last word, but I’m sure we’re going to talk about it. And to me, I’m side-by-side with Alex at the apex, I expect him to at least leave me 20cms of race track, so I can leave my inside wheel on the line.
“But if he goes on the line, the best I can do is be on the kerb. So I tried the best I could to stay on track, hoping he was going to leave me some room. But then I’d rather avoid a contact. There was just no space for me there.”
Gasly acknowledged that still finishing 12th on a day when things went wrong at least indicated that the Austin update package was working.
“Yeah, that’s the positive,” he noted. “At the end today, we didn’t do the best job in the race, and still finish P12, not too far from P10.
“So it clearly gives us hopes that if we execute a stronger race in the last five, we might have one or two occasions to fight for that last point.
“Obviously frustrating as a team when you see Williams get that last point. And I do feel with different decisions, we could have been there, but that’s F1, and there are clearly some improvements overall for next year.
“It’s important to see that what we’re doing is paying off in terms of overall competitiveness. Now we just need to make sure we keep improving, and keep adding more performance to it.”
Adam Cooper F1 