Having started the Hungarian Grand Prix from the pitlane, Pierre Gasly did a good job to recover to twelfth place in what was a chaotic race on strategy. In a year where Scuderia AlphaTauri have been struggling, recovering to a position near the points is certainly a good result.
“I must say I’m happy with today. Starting from the pitlane is never easy and we managed to recover to twelfth position. There were some changes made to the set-up of the car for the pitlane start, which showed a bit more pace and allowed us to make some good moves,” the Frenchman explained.
“The most important thing is that we use the upcoming three weeks to extract more from our package and finish inside the points consistently.
“I know the team and what we are capable of achieving, and with these new cars being difficult, we need time to understand how to get the best out of it,” the number ten driver concluded.
“It didn’t feel like I had much of a race,” says Tsunoda after mid-race spin
Yuki Tsunoda started the race around the Hungaroring, Budapest from sixteenth place, but suffered a spin during the race that dropped him down to the back of the pack. The Japanese driver claims that it was “so difficult to keep [the car] on the track”, despite running the Soft tyre for the majority of the race. The cool track conditions did, however, make it tricky to get temperature into the tyres; which may explain the reasoning behind Tsunoda’s lack of pace.
“It’s been a really difficult day, it didn’t feel like I had much of a race. I struggled with the car throughout, as I had absolutely no grip at all out there. I was finding it so difficult to keep it on the track and made a small mistake which meant I spun.
Tsunoda says that the upgrades AlphaTauri have, which were fitted before the French Grand Prix, don’t seem to be working, which is something AlphaTauri will definitely be looking at over the summer break.
“This weekend has not been an easy one, we need to go away and look at all the data to understand why the upgrades we have are not paying off in the way we thought they would.
“We’ll have a reset now over the summer break and then look to come back stronger for the second half of the season,” said the number twenty-two driver.
