Scuderia AlphaTauri endured a challenging start to their home Grand Prix, with 2020 Italian Grand Prix winner Pierre Gasly being the best AT03 on the opening day in fourteenth-place.
It certainly wasn’t the sort of day the Faenza-based team would’ve been hoping for, with the Frenchman ending Friday three-tenths of a second behind tenth-placed Alex Albon. It’s vital that AlphaTauri make a “step in the right direction”, with Gasly being somewhat confident that the team know where they are struggling.
The French driver knows there is “some work to do”, but is confident that he can deliver a top ten in Qualifying on Saturday.
“There is still some work to do, but tomorrow we have an opportunity to make a step in the right direction. We know what we are struggling with and that was noticed again today in both FP1 and FP2, there was especially a lot of sliding in the medium to high-speed corners.
“Though there was the Red Flag, it didn’t change the overall performance much, because we were still able to gather all the necessary data about our weaknesses. We will need to analyse everything tonight to allow us to deliver a strong top 10 in Qualifying tomorrow.”
“I wasn’t able to get a competitive lap in” – Yuki Tsunoda
It was a nightmare of an opening day for Yuki Tsunoda, who is very much in the race stewards naughty book at the moment. The Japanese driver ended the opening day in fifteenth-place; however, he was awarded two penalty points onto his super licence as well as a three-place grid penalty for ignoring yellow flags in Free Practice Two.
It means Tsunoda has a thirteen-place grid penalty for Sunday’s race, as the AlphaTauri driver was awarded a ten-place grid penalty after the Dutch Grand Prix for having been awarded fifth reprimand.
Tsunoda has identified that it’s going to be a “difficult weekend”, after not feeling comfortable in his AT03 on the opening day at the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza.
“We’ve mainly focused on race pace today, as we’ll be taking the penalties for Sunday. We did some short runs on the Medium that were quite strong, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a competitive lap in on the Softs. We need to go away and look at the long-run data tonight, as I didn’t feel quite as comfortable in the car as I wanted to – this will allow us to prepare as much as possible for the race. “
It’s going to be a difficult weekend, but a few cars have already announced they’ll be starting from the back of the grid too, so there are some opportunities there if we can find a good long-run set-up and some additional pace.”
