Author of a solid seventh place in qualifying, Pierre Gasly confirms Alpine’s progress in Shanghai. The Frenchman now hopes to turn this performance into big points on Sunday.
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Pierre Gasly continues to impress at the wheel of his Alpine during the Chinese Grand Prix. The French driver took seventh place on the grid, slotting in between the McLarens and the Red Bulls, a performance that confirms the progress of the Alpine F1 Team.
In a highly contested session, Gasly managed to extract the maximum from his car, especially during his final lap in Q3. This time allows him to place himself just behind the top teams, an ideal position to hope to play the spoiler during the race.
“There is clearly some positive. We see that the gap with the cars in front has narrowed. We changed two or three things after the sprint to help us and, on the engine side, we managed the energy well. I managed to do a very good lap in Q3 and this puts us in a good position for tomorrow.”
A reaction after a frustrating sprint
This qualifying performance is all the more satisfying for Gasly as the sprint race held a few hours earlier had left a bitter taste for the Frenchman.
Despite a good pace during the weekend, the Alpine driver had suffered from rapid degradation of his front tires, which had prevented him from capitalizing on his performance.
“I was a bit disappointed after the sprint, because I felt good all weekend. But I quickly lost the front tires during the race.”
According to Gasly, the strategy and circumstances could have allowed him to fight for a more interesting position: “It could have gone differently, because we had the pace to go after Oliver Bearman.”
The objective: stay ahead of the Red Bulls
Thanks to his position on the grid, Gasly now hopes to take advantage of a clean start to maintain his place in the lead pack. One of the key elements will be to keep clean air in order to preserve the tires over time.
“I hope to keep this position tomorrow to have clean air and save my tires.”
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The Frenchman is ambitious and intends to take advantage of the relative uncertainty that still surrounds the hierarchy at this start of the season.
“I’m going to try to give them a hard time. We’re fighting with them and it will be close. They seem less competitive than in Melbourne, so we have to take advantage of that to score big points at the start of the season.”
Gasly also points out that teams are still continuing to understand the new cars, which can create unexpected opportunities.
“There are more unknowns, so inevitably more opportunities. We must continue the work we are doing. We are progressing session after session.”
Colapinto close to Q3
On the other side of the garage, Franco Colapinto set the twelfth fastest time in qualifying, missing out by only five thousandths on a place in Q3. An encouraging performance for the young driver, who believes he still has potential to exploit.
“We have progressed and I think we know where we are losing time. I could have found two tenths. When you’re that close to getting into Q3, it’s frustrating, but it was still a good session.”
Colapinto is confident for the future, convinced that the team has now better understood the difficulties encountered during previous sessions.
“We understood why I was so far from Pierre yesterday, and that reassured me. The team is helping me enormously to understand certain things that are difficult to explain.”
For Alpine, this double performance suggests encouraging prospects for the race, with Gasly in a position to score valuable points and Colapinto ready to fight in the pack.
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