After such a strong showing at the first Grand Prix of the season which took place at the Bahrain International Circuit, the Scuderia AlphaTauri team will be disappointed to now be fighting towards the back of the midfield and both drivers making mistakes leaves the Italian-Based Team with a lot of work to do ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix which returns for the first time since 2019.
Pierre Gasly leaves the 2021 Spanish Grand Prix with mixed feelings, making a good recovery but feels that he should’ve been fighting further up the grid had it not been for a mistake in positioning his car on the starting grid at the start of the race.
“I’ve got mixed feelings about today, I think in the race I made a good recovery but we’re really lacking pace compared to the first two rounds, which is frustrating. I’m upset with myself for making the mistake on the grid, it’s a very silly penalty to get and it made my life harder.”
However, the French driver had some good battles with other drivers during the race and needed another lap to overtake ninth-place Esteban Ocon. The car has a lot of potential, but there is still a lot to do to perfect set-ups which will allow the AT02 to be smoother around all the corners in a circuit. The team will be working hard at Faenza to make sure that the Monaco Grand Prix is a successful one.
“That being said, I had some good battles in the race and managed to pass a few cars to make it into 10th place. The car definitely has potential, we just haven’t made it work consistently in all corners around the lap yet. We’re going to work hard now ahead of Monaco and I trust in the team to make some steps forward in the next few races.”
A Frustrating Weekend For Rookie Yuki Tsunoda Ended With A Retirement
Yuki Tsunoda’s popularity amongst Formula 1 fans is growing at a rapid rate, due to his brash nature which is refreshing and something we haven’t seen for a while, but it was this nature that got the better of the Japanese Rookie who openly criticised his team after Qualifying – going against one of the ‘unwritten rules of Formula 1.’ His weekend didn’t get much better suffering an issue early on in the race that ended his weekend prematurely.
Tsunoda feels that the weekend as a whole was very frustrating and the Japanese driver was disappointed not to have finished the race as he felt that his pace was strong at the start of the race.
“It’s been a frustrating race weekend for me, I’m obviously disappointed to not have finished the race as I think my pace at the start was quite good, but it was completely out of my control.”
Tsunoda doesn’t know what happened during the race to the car so it will have been a long few days of investigation to understand what happened. The Japanese driver is looking forward to driving a track like Monaco as it is his first time racing at the track due to the race being cancelled last year.
“We don’t currently know what happened to the car, so we’ll investigate this after it returns to the garage and then we’ll review everything together with the engineers. I just need to look forward to the next race in Monaco now, it’ll be my first-time racing there and I’m excited to drive on such an iconic circuit.”
