Red Bull Junior driver Pierre Gasly will continue driving for the Caterham team in the Sochi round of the GP2 Series this weekend, and arrives feeling more confident having spent some time in the car at Monza last month.
The eighteen-year-old races primarily in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series in 2014, but joined the series for Caterham at Monza, and now with the experience he learnt from the races in Italy, he arrives hoping to have a good weekend.
“I will go there and do my best,” insists Gasly. “We learnt some good lessons at Monza and of course now at Sochi it will be very different, we are in a much better situation. We have at least done some running in the car and the track is new to everyone so the opposition have nothing like the advantage they had in Italy.
“I was in the sim on Tuesday morning and that went very well. I hope we can learn a lot more in free practice and be really ready for qualifying. The main problems in Monza were getting a car balance and brake balance that worked for me. I think we were pretty close in Race 2 in Monza but didn’t really get to try it to be sure because my crash was so early.
“We have worked hard since then so I think we are ready for Sochi and can really do something good this weekend. Like every race I go there wanting to win but realistically for our second event I think we can be in the top five.”
Gasly will arrive in Russia with a five-place grid drop penalty carried over from the previous round in Monza for causing a collision with Artem Markelov, a view the Frenchman and his team did not share with the officials. He feels the track at Sochi could be interesting, and believes the driver could make a lot of difference with track time.
“The track is very interesting,” said Gasly. “A bit strange in that a lot of the corners look the same but aren’t, ninety degree corners that develop differently. In the last sector there is a lot of braking, quite slow. It is quite a long lap, the lap time seems to be about 1m 46 or 47 so a driver can make quite a lot of difference.”
