Gasly had to retire early after a PU issue
Pierre Gasly says his retirement from the Las Vegas GP was “a slap in the face” for his Alpine Formula 1 team after he stunned the pitlane by qualifying third.
The Frenchman lost places to quicker cars in the early laps, but he was still set for a healthy haul of points.
However he felt a PU issue even before the team spotted it on the pitwall, and he had no choice but to stop the car with just 15 laps completed.
The retirement had special significance as Alpine’s double podium finish in Brazil had propelled the team from ninth to sixth place in the constructors’ championship.
With Gasly dropping out Nico Hulkenberg scored four points for Haas and put the US-owned team back ahead in sixth place, while RB also closed the gap to Alpine thanks to two points earned by Yuki Tsunoda.
“It’s a tough one to swallow, because obviously we had such a high yesterday,” said Gasly when asked by this writer about the costly retirement.
“Going into the race we were very optimistic that we’ll be able to fight for some good points. I think the first stint was good, and as we expected with Norris, Max and Lewis overtaking us – but we knew they were quite a few tenths faster than us.
“I think we were on for a good fight for best of the rest with Yuki. We were ahead of him, and he jumped us in the pits. But then I think we’d have taken the fight on track.
“So we know there were big points on the table. It was such a good weekend so far that it’s frustrating just to end up having to retire after only a few laps.”
The team is still investigating the cause of the PU issue.
“We need to review exactly,” said Gasly. “But for me, it was pretty clear when it happened. I just lost all the power, I could not achieve downshift.
“I don’t want to go into too much detail because I’m not too sure, but when we know how important these points are, especially in the championship, it’s going to cost us big time today.”
Gasly is hoping that that he won’t face any grid penalties: “I think I have quite a few PUs in my pool, so I think I should be fine. You never know.
“But obviously this season, I had quite a few problems, quite a lot of races which didn’t take part in. And it’s just a tough one to have another one, starting from P3.”
He conceded that his strong qualifying result did give the team some reward from the weekend.
“I think there are definitely a lot of positives,” he said. “It’s obviously a lot of disappointment right now. And there is obviously a lot of positive looking at yesterday, it was definitely a fantastic qualifying.
“There is some performance. We know we’ve got work to do in some areas, but I think we are in a position to take the battle, the new battle that we sort of gave ourselves after Brazil.
“And it just feels a bit tough now going from such a high in Brazil, such a high in quali yesterday, and it’s like a bit of slap in the face right now. But anyway, we have two more chances.
“It’s going to be a matter of executing strong weekends. Unfortunately, we don’t score points for qualifying, but for the races, and we didn’t get it right this weekend.
“So we’ve got to learn from it and make sure we get last two good weekends in Qatar and Abu Dhabi to finish on a high.”
Adam Cooper F1 