Pierre Gasly says that Scuderia AlphaTauri is lacking performance compared to the other cars around them after finishing the fifteenth round of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship at the Dutch Grand Prix weekend in eleventh position on Sunday.
The Frenchman expressed his disappointment as he fell just short of being inside the top ten and scoring points at Zandvoort. For most of the first stint, Gasly ran in traffic on the medium compound tyres after losing a few places to BWT Alpine F1 driver Esteban Ocon and Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 driver, Lance Stroll.
Gasly believes that there are still positives to take from the weekend as the team were aware it was going to be a tough weekend after encountering some confusion during Free Practice sessions which lost the team track time. Gasly still seemed positive as he only missed out on points by one place, and is focusing on his performance in Italy this week.
“Finishing eleventh is never a great feeling, we tried our best to make it into the points, but I don’t think we quite had the pace to make it possible today.
“Ultimately, we’re lacking a little bit of performance compared to the other cars around us, we lost some time in the first stint and struggled on the Mediums in traffic.
“I think there are still some positives to take away from this weekend though, we knew this was going to be a track we would struggle on but the pace on the Hards this afternoon looked competitive.
We’re now heading to Monza for the last of the European races, where I hope we’ll be able to come back stronger.”
“When I went back out I could still feel there was something wrong” – Yuki Tsunoda
Like Gasly, Team-mate Yuki Tsunoda had hoped to finish inside the top ten but had a more disappointing weekend at Zandvoort as he suffered multiple setbacks during the race which resulted in the decision to retire the car.
Tsunoda was running in eleventh for the first stint of the race, but switching to the medium tyre compound meant that Tsunoda failed to maintain the pace alongside the two BWT Apline F1 drivers in front.
It seemed Tsunoda couldn’t regain the pace or grid position the team were hoping for as before switching to the hard tyre the car started to encounter some issues that led to a frustrating retirement for the Scuderia AlphaTauri driver.
“It’s been a disappointing day, as heading into the race our pace looked quite good and we were hoping to finish in the points. We dropped back a few places at the start of the race but were slowly making our way forward again and were positive we could finish in the top 10.
“Unfortunately, after I stopped for the Hards, I felt there was an issue with the car, the team could not see anything at that stage so they called me in to change the tyres.
“However, w, which the team then confirmed by radio and we had to retire the car.”
