Pierre Gasly tried to bring home a good result for Scuderia AlphaTauri during last Sunday’s São Paulo Grand Prix, but it was not to be as he ended up outside the points.
The Frenchman ran inside the top ten in the early stages but found himself shuffled down the pack as the race went on, and a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pit lane rounded off his day in Brazil.
Gasly was ultimately classified in fourteenth position in his penultimate race with AlphaTauri, with his final outing with the team before he moves to the BWT Alpine F1 Team coming this weekend in Abu Dhabi.
“I gave everything I could today and I’m happy with my performance, it’s just frustrating not to be able to fight for points,” said Gasly. “I had a strong start and was able to get up to P9, we were quite competitive on the Softs, but then on the Mediums we struggled.
“I fought as hard as I could, but we just did not have the pace and there wasn’t much we could do this afternoon.
“We’ve got one last opportunity to score points in Abu Dhabi and hopefully finish the season in eighth. It’ll be my last race for the team so it’ll be an emotional one and I hope we can finish our journey together on a high.”
“It’s been a difficult weekend” – Yuki Tsunoda
Team-mate Yuki Tsunoda ended seventeenth and last of the classified finishers, with the Japanese driver losing a position and a lap to the field due to a computer anomaly during the safety car period.
Whereas his fellow lapped runners Alexander Albon and Nicholas Latifi were able to unlap themselves, Tsunoda was not given the same luxury, meaning he fell behind the second Williams Racing driver and meaning he found himself in the middle of the battle for points.
Despite the anomaly, Tsunoda did not feel he had the car under him to challenge for the top ten in any case, and they will be doing everything they can to understand why they struggled all weekend long in Brazil.
“After the changes ahead of the race the car felt slightly better, but I still wasn’t that comfortable in it, and we didn’t have the pace today,” said Tsunoda.
“Normally, you’re able to unlap yourself under the Safety Car, but today I was told to stay in my position, so we ended the day a whole lap behind the pack, with no opportunity to make my way forward.
“It’s been a difficult weekend, so we need to go away and investigate why we’ve struggled so much ahead of the final race in Abu Dhabi next week.”
