Scuderia Alpha Tauri driver Pierre Gasly had another strong qualifying session, putting his AT02 in sixth place on the starting grid for the 2021 Grand Prix de Monaco. Gasly has shown comfortable pace all weekend, having placed inside the top 10 during all three practice sessions before making it through to Q3.
“I’m extremely happy with my Qualifying, I think we did the best with the car we had whilst others didn’t maximise their lap, and to Qualify where we have today is definitely a massive achievement.” Said Gasly. “I’m very pleased with all the work the team has done, to give me such a strong car when it mattered, I think it was one of my best laps of the weekend and I’m so glad it all came together today in Q3.”
The Frenchman is confident the team can take home a good haul of points during the race, as he believes the team can take advantage of Monaco’s ‘hard-to-pass’ characteristics – keeping rivals at bay behind.
He continued: “We need a strong start tomorrow and to really work hard on our strategy. We obviously have fast cars starting behind us tomorrow, but we know how hard it is to overtake here in Monaco, so we need to stay focused and have a clean race.
“I think we can aim for good points and I really hope we can come away with a big reward for all the work the team has been doing.”
“This weekend has obviously been a challenge, having never driven in Monaco before” – Yuki Tsunoda
It has been a challenging start to Yuki Tsunoda’s Grand Prix weekend, with the Japanese racer contesting a race at Monaco for the first time. A great start in first practice saw the rookie set the ninth fastest lap of the session however, in the second practice session Tsunoda crashed out in the final sector, after clipping the wall, setting the tone for qualifying.
Tsunoda managed the 16th fastest time, only just managing to miss out on scraping into Q2.
Tsunoda said: “This weekend has obviously been a challenge, having never driven in Monaco before, but I think my Qualifying lap was quite good and I was unlucky to miss out on Q2. We’d planned on doing three push laps but only managed two. Having to go to the weighbridge during the session affected our plan and then we hit traffic in sector two on my best lap.”
“We have to analyse all the data and see where my weaknesses are compared to Pierre and then hopefully, I can improve to be able to fight with him in Q3. I think we’re definitely seeing improvements race-to-race though and I’m happy with the performance in the car.”
