Pierre Gasly again starred during Sunday’s Eifel Grand Prix, with the Frenchman climbing from twelfth on the grid to finish a strong sixth at the Nürburgring.
The Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda driver was running eighth prior to the late safety car intervention, but on the restart, he managed to pass both Romain Grosjean for seventh and then Charles Leclerc for sixth. It was his seventh top ten finish in eleven races, and it helped him stay inside the top ten in the Drivers’ Championship with six races remaining.
Gasly praised the team for making all the right decisions throughout the Eifel Grand Prix, and he says everyone can be pleased that they were able to score eight more points in what had been a difficult weekend up until Sunday afternoon for AlphaTauri.
“I’m really happy today because yesterday was pretty difficult for us,” said Gasly. “I didn’t feel so good with the car as we didn’t manage to get the balance where we wanted.
“We know that on Sundays we usually have a bit more pace to fight and be in the mix for points, and today it was good fun. I had a lot of battles on track – attacking, defending…all sorts of situations and I must say I really enjoyed it out there!
“The team took all the right decisions in the right moments, so I think we can all be very pleased with sixth position today.”
“Pierre drove a really good race” – Jonathan Eddolls
Jonathan Eddolls, the Chief Race Engineer at AlphaTauri, felt Gasly drove superbly throughout the race at the Nürburgring, and the sixth place finish enabled the team to edge a little closer to Scuderia Ferrari in the battle for sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship.
The team came into the race low on information after all track action was lost to the weather on Friday, but it all came good for AlphaTauri when it mattered, at least on one side of the garage.
“Overall as a team, we’ve had a really good result today,” said Eddolls. “It was a challenging race as, like all the others, we headed into Sunday with very little information on tyre performance.
“Pierre drove a really good race, he managed the tyres well and gave us excellent feedback, allowing us to plan a good strategy. We reacted well to the late Safety Car, pitting Pierre while Leclerc in front didn’t pit, so with fresher tyres we were able to attack him and finish ahead in P6.
“Today we scored more points than our main competitors, which allows us to close the gap in the fight for sixth position in the Constructors’ Championship.”
