Pierre Gasly says there are lofty ambitions within the Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda team to get onto the same kind of performance level as their sister team at Aston Martin Red Bull Racing.
The Frenchman and his AlphaTauri team took a superb, if not emotional, surprise victory in this year’s Italian Grand Prix at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, just over a year after being dropped from the main Red Bull team in favour of Alexander Albon.
Since then, Gasly has regained his confidence and has been one of the standout drivers on the grid in 2020, with four points finishes on top of his win in Italy. He currently sits tenth in the Drivers’ Championship after the first nine races, thirty-three points clear of team-mate Daniil Kvyat.
But now, Gasly says AlphaTauri are not thinking of themselves as the junior team to Red Bull, and instead he sees the gap between the two closing up, with the team aiming at joining their sister team at the front of the grid.
“There’s a clear will and a lot of ambitions coming from AlphaTauri,” Gasly is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “I think it’s a different situation to Toro Rosso/Red Bull, and how it was before.
“I think the project is exciting. As I said at the moment, the Red Bull team is clearly the top team of the two, but I think that the ambition of AlphaTauri is to, at some point, match their performances.
“And this means we also need the resources and to have bigger facilities to have this sort of thing.”
Gasly says those in the AlphaTauri factory at Faenza are eager to make the breakthrough and become a front-running team and come out of the shadows of Red Bull.
“I think that’s the target of the factory really – in making their own status and position in Formula 1,” Gasly added. “I think it’s clear that they have big ambitions.
“It’s not a one-year project and we know how long it takes for a team to really build its identity and also its status as a top team. “So, it’s something that is probably going to take some time, but I think it’s not really a sister team as much as it could have been in the past.
“It’s more trying to make their own space inside F1.”
