Pierre Gasly has reflected on Alpine’s qualifying performance at Imola, following strong pace in practice.
Alpine and Pierre Gasly made a promising start in the opening two practice sessions. The Frenchman finished P6 on Friday morning, before improving to P3 in the afternoon.
Hopes were high of a good qualifying result, but the final practice session saw his pace fall away. Gasly and Alpine were forced to settle for 10th on the grid in qualifying. He did, however, out-qualify both Ferraris.
Speaking to media after the race, Gasly admitted dissatisfaction with his Q3 performance. He highlighted traffic and tyre issues on his final run caused his qualifying performance to fizzle out.
“I think we did a strong quali all in all. Strong Q1, strong Q2.Yeah not fully happy with the Q3. Especially the last run we left.
“We could not really enter the fast lane. And we were one of the last cars which basically pushed us to do a flat out outlap. So the tyres were kind of way too hot starting the lap.
The devil is in the detail for Pierre Gasly at Imola
Walking through his lap, Gasly revealed the cause behind the time lost during the lap, but said the result was a step forward.
“It was a great sector one but then the tyres just fell apart after that.So yeah it feels like we need to focus on these final details.
“Because there was slightly more to get out of that Q3. But if I look objectively where we are, especially coming from Miami.It’s definitely a step forward and good to build on that.
Gasly was also confident of beating rivals Williams and Aston Martin during Sunday’s race.
“I think yeah we’ll take the fight and hopefully it can be quite a surprising race. With the strategies and tyre deg.
So we’ll be on top of that but we’re starting the points.And definitely the target is to move forward and not slip backward. Great stuff, good luck tomorrow thanks.
Pierre Gasly enters Sunday’s race 12th in the driver’s championship, seven points away breaking into the top ten.
Alpine languish down in ninth place in the Constructors’ championship, one point behind Racing Bulls, and only one point ahead of tenth placed Sauber.
The team has endured a challenging couple of weeks. Jack Doohan has been ousted in favour of Franco Colapinto, and former Team Principal Oliver Oakes resigned after his brother was arrested by police.