Free Practice Friday was a day of data gathering and learning at the Canadian GP, For Alpine it was difficult, filled with spins for Franco Colapinto and tyre testing for both drivers.
Canada is known for its tight walls and unforgiving kerbs, with significantly less grip than Barcelona. The early sessions in the weekend saw spins and crashes from drivers throughout the grid, with Lance Stroll and Charles Leclerc making significant contact with the walls.
Most team used the Friday running to test out the medium compound and soft compound tyres. With the new C6 compound, some teams have been looking at potentially using the medium compound tyres in qualifying.
Pierre Gasly made it clear there were still a lot of unanswered questions regarding the tyre performance. He told media, “Personally, I don’t know, and it looks like nobody knows. Yeah, I’m sure it’s going to be a question. I think ultimately on our side, we’re probably more trying to just try to get the car in the best place we can.”
Car comfort
However, Gasly’s focus remained on the set-up of the car. The Frenchman admitted he felt happy with the car.
With every team no doubt close together come qualifying, every small change is going to be vital. He said, “I mean, I think we got a good picture of where we are, what we’ve got to improve. I’m pretty happy, things are quite obvious. How much we’re going to be able to fix, not too sure.”
Franco Colapinto struggled far more than Gasly. He spun multiple times in both sessions around Canada. It was the Argentine’s first weekend in Montreal, so naturally it is going to be a learning experience for the rookie.
He admitted that his biggest issue was the slow speed corners, an aspect that he was struggling with in the Alpine.
“I think just generally I’ve been struggling quite a lot in the slow speed. It’s just the car doesn’t feel very connected and, you know, I’m just struggling a lot with the balance and with the confidence of the car, really. When I try to go to a limit combining the corners, the car is not really staying there, and I’m just struggling generally with that.”
Weekend hopes
However, despite his comfort, Pierre Gasly still felt as though the team were steps back behind the other teams on the grid. Gasly’s biggest note was in the competitiveness of the grid, especially in qualifying.
He noted, “But yeah, once again it’s extremely tight so we’ll try to get through the entire day, what we’ve done and try to put all the pieces together for tomorrow. But yeah, it’s going to be another case of having a tenth between six, seven drivers. And yeah, we’re probably a little bit on the back foot.”
Meanwhile, Colapinto, despite being less at ease with the car underneath him, had higher hopes regarding the weekend performance. Especially regarding the longer runs.
Colapinto shared, “But the long run was really positive, so I’m trying to understand why it looked quite quick. So why it was that quick, the long run, and not the low speed.”
He admitted he confused over why the long runs were so competitive when he was struggling. Although, it had left him with larger expectations coming into the race.
He said, “So it’s just trying to understand what’s good in one, what’s bad in the other one and trying to put everything together. I think there is enough potential to do well tomorrow.”
“We turned around very well the weekend in Barcelona from Friday to Saturday and after being quite far on Friday we did a couple of changes on the car in Parc Fermé. So there is margin. I think we need to focus on winning now, the weakness that we have.“
With one final practice session before qualifying, it will be vital for both driver to use every minute to get comfortable with the car underneath them.
