Pierre Gasly was surprised by Red Bull‘s decision to retain Daniil Kvyat within the Scuderia Toro Rosso squad for the 2017 Formula 1 season.
The Red Bull junior driver is currently second in the GP2 Series standings and was in the running to partner Carlos Sainz Jr in 2017. However, it was confirmed by Red Bull last week that Kvyat would continue with Toro Rosso, a decision that some were surprised by, including Gasly.
Gasly admitted that he did not understand the reasoning behind why they retained the Russian, but now it’s been completed he will look to move forward with his own career.
“Of course, I was a bit surprised,” Gasly told Motorsport.com. “Things were looking pretty good, and suddenly, everything went very quickly and they signed Daniil very quickly.
“I was a bit surprised and didn’t really understand why. That’s how it is. We know sometimes with Red Bull everything can go very quickly. We saw that with the decisions they made in the last two seasons. Now it’s done, so I need to move forward.”
When asked about Red Bull’s explanation for the decision, Gasly replied, “They didn’t really explain it to me. That’s why I don’t really understand.
“They just told me that they have some reasons why they did it and why they kept him [Kvyat] in the team. That was about it, I don’t know much more. I talked a lot with Helmut [Marko] in the last two days.
“We’re going to try to see what’s best… he knows my goal, he knows I want to get into F1 and that’s really my target, so I need to look at the options and see what’s best to achieve this goal.”
The Frenchman is currently seven points behind Prema Racing team-mate Antonio Giovinazzi ahead of the final at Abu Dhabi. He believes Red Bull should have waited until the end of the championship.
“It’s a shame they didn’t wait until the end of the championship to see if I was going to get the title,” he said. “It’s been a positive season, quite successful so far.
“Of course, it’s never as good as what I wanted. You always want to do better than what you have done, but I think it’s been pretty good and if we can grab the title at the end of the year, that would be a good achievement.”
