Pierre Gasly: “Our overall performance was competitive”

Pierre Gasly made a welcome return to the points at Autodromo Nazionale di Monza this weekend in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, with this weekend being only his second top ten finish in eight races. The Frenchman has struggled this season, mostly down to the Scuderia AlphaTauri being less competitive than in previous years, but he’ll be hoping to end the season competitively.

Monza was the track where Gasly won his first and only Grand Prix in 2020, so it was pleasing for the team to see him performing well at the team’s home race. The twenty-six-year-old qualified in the top ten, which is rare given the struggles for AlphaTauri.

Gasly spent most of the race stuck behind eight-time race winner Daniel Ricciardo ,both at the start and after he tried to undercut the Australian. However, he moved up a place after the McLaren F1 Team driver had an issue and had to pull over to the side of the track, causing the race to finish under the Safety Car.

“Looking at the result, finishing behind the top three teams is the best we could have done, and I am very happy to be collecting points again.

“It was a slightly frustrating race, I think I’ll have nightmares about Ricciardo’s rear wing for the next few nights, we tried a few different things to try and pass him and our overall performance was competitive, but we just didn’t have the pace to get past the Mclarens today.

“We’ll now prepare for Singapore, we know what we need to work on, how to improve, and we’ll aim to continue finishing in the points.”

Yuki Tsunoda – ““Starting last on the grid was always going to be difficult”

Unlike his team-mate Yuki Tsunoda was not beneficial of all the grid penalties, as he was one of the drivers who would start lower down the grid.

Tsunoda had three places added to his already ten place grid penalty, after he failed to slow for yellow flags in the latter part of Free Practice Two. The other ten place penalty was also for a fifth reprimand, which he was awarded following his bizarre stop-start situation at the Dutch Grand Prix.

Tsunoda was unable to make up serious ground in the race, despite a good opening stint. The result arguably leaves his Formula 1 future still up in the air, with the Japanese driver badly needing some strong results.

“Starting last on the grid was always going to be difficult today, but I think the start of the race was good for me and I was able to make some overtakes. I struggled with the pace on the hards, so we need to go away and look at our long-run pace and try and improve this for the upcoming races.”

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