Pierre Gasly has said that he is “very pleased” with qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix, where he will start from sixth place. The Frenchman has been promoted to the third row, after initially qualifying ninth, as a result of the grid penalties that many drivers have opted to take this weekend.
Autodromo Nazionale di Monza, Italy is the track that Gasly won his maiden FIA Formula 1 World Championship race at in 2020 – a race that is just as chaotic as this weekend seems to be. Despite his great start position, the Scuderia AlphaTauri driver still says that he wasn’t able to “fully commit”:
“Overall, I am very pleased to make it into Q3. There was still some sliding in the high-speed corners, so I couldn’t fully commit, but the track is amazing to drive,” says Gasly. “We made some changes after yesterday and they seem to have paid off, but there is still more to get out of the car for tomorrow.
“There are some faster cars starting behind us tomorrow, due to a number of drivers having penalties, but we’ve seen that it might be more difficult to overtake in the race compared to past years, because the slipstream effect is less with the new cars.
“Our aim is to stay in the points and, as we’ve seen in the past, anything can happen here.”
“Our focus has been on our race pace rather than Qualifying” – Yuki Tsunoda
While Gasly was able to take advantage of penalties to start sixth, Yuki Tsunoda has done quite the opposite, and will start from the back of the grid as a result of some power unit changes and a fifth reprimand. The Japanese driver suggested that since his qualifying position didn’t matter, it made more sense for AlphaTauri to focus on race pace in order to make the number twenty-two driver as confident as possible in the race.
“Of course, we have the penalties this weekend, so our focus has been on our race pace rather than Qualifying, but I’m happy with the short-run pace we’ve had this weekend, I’ve felt quite comfortable in the car and we looked strong in Q1,” explained Tsunoda.
“I stayed in the car for Q2 in case I needed to help out my teammate – as tows can sometimes be useful around this track – but we decided that this wasn’t necessary for Pierre in the end, so we didn’t run.
“I will now focus on tomorrow’s race, it’s going to be difficult but it’s possible to overtake here in Monza and there’s a lot of people out of place tomorrow, so you never know what will happen.”
