After qualifying 14th for the Canadian Grand Prix, Pierre Gasly looked in for a difficult afternoon at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. But the Frenchman put in a strong drive to climb into the points on Sunday and finish eighth, which he was quick to call “damage limitation.”
The Frenchman started the season incredibly strongly, scoring in the first three Grands Prix, but he failed to finish in Miami and in Canada was out-performed by his team mate Franco Colapinto. As such, hopes were not high for points on Sunday, but Gasly was able to make the most of every chance offered.
He managed to get off the line well despite being on medium tyres, with the soft being the preferred option in the cool conditions. From there, the Frenchman worked his way back up into the points – but ran out of time to force his way past Liam Lawson for seventh.
“I must say I’m happy with the… I’ll call it damage limitation. The whole weekend, with all the struggles yeah, I’ll take these four points definitely,” Gasly said after the race.
“Pretty pleased with that, a very good weekend for the team as well, sixth and eighth so 12 points, it’s been a while since we scored that.
“A lot of positives and I’m looking forward to the next coming days and I really like working with the team and digging a bit deeper into the performance and why there were the limitations on my car have been what they have been. We will work with the guys, and it will be important for Monaco with all the traction issues we have.”
Gasly elaborated that traction was his main concern since Alpine bolted on their upgrades in Miami, and he struggled in the Montreal conditions – qualifying only 19th for the Sprint before dropping a place to finish P20 in the dash.
He said on Saturday that he was “not comfortable” in the car, and that he needed to “understand” why.
As such, his Sunday performance really did surprise many, not least the Frenchman himself. Gasly was able to stick with Lawson’s Racing Bulls at the end too, despite that car appearing much faster throughout the weekend than the Alpine.
But there is work to do for the Enstone team to ensure some of their issues are fixed ahead of the next race in Monaco.
“I think we know exactly what to look for, on the data it is pretty clear since Miami,” explained Gasly. “F1 is not easy, sometimes I wish in one hour we could understand where everything comes from and this year there are so many parameters that affect car balance and so on.
“There is a bit more work [to do] but at least it is very clear what we have to work on with traction, and try to get it back to the level it was in.”
Alpine remain fifth in the Teams’ standings, 14 points ahead of Racing Bulls, as the only midfield team to score with both cars.
