Red Bull Racing driver Pierre Gasly was relatively pleased with his sixth placed finish in Barcelona, despite struggling with tyre degradation.
Gasly qualified sixth in Saturday’s qualifying session and maintained his position throughout the race. However, he finished the race struggling with his tyres and treading carefully as they began to degrade.
Gasly said: “The first stint was ok but towards the end I started to struggle with grip and degradation.
“We had a lot of rubber debris in the front wing which meant I was sliding around so the pace just dropped from the second stint onwards.”
While Gasly’s teammate Max Verstappen finished third and managed to keep to Scuderia Ferrari’s at bay, Gasly couldn’t catch them.
When the Safety Car came into play during lap 46, Gasly tried his best to make a move on the young Charles Leclerc and did end up kissing his car shortly after the restart; However, he couldn’t pass the Ferrari and, “I tried to push as much as I could but I couldn’t keep up with the Ferraris in front of me.
“At the Safety Car restart, I tried a move on Charles but I couldn’t make it stick. It was a pretty good fight and I think at the start we actually touched in Turn 3. In the end, it’s good to score some points.”
With another mid-season test coming up this week, Gasly is hopeful he can get more comfortable behind the wheel of the RB15.
Red Bull have enjoyed success at Monaco, Canada and France in recent years and, with those tracks coming up next in the calendar, Gasly is hoping he can climb higher up the grid.
“We have the test coming up on Tuesday so we can try some more things and keep pushing.
“Looking forwards, I think we have good potential on some of the upcoming tracks which should suit our car better.”
