“I was super grateful,” Pierre Gasly reveals getting much needed help from Sebastian Vettel at a pivotal stage of his career
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Pierre Gasly and Sebastian Vettel
After Daniel Ricciardo’s exit, it was clear that Pierre Gasly was the future of Red Bull. The Frenchman came into the sport with immense potential and a huge baggage of expectations riding on his shoulders. He started his career in Formula 1 with Red Bull’s junior team in 2014 and was promoted to Toro Rosso in a matter of three years. Despite being a driver for a midfield team, Gasly showed what he could do if given the right car.
In the year 2019, the big break came for the 26 year old as he got a chance to drive for Toro Rosso’s parent team, Red Bull. It’s a dream for any Toro Rosso driver to get a chance to driver for Red Bull and the moment had arrived for the him to shine. But, unfortunately, it didn’t go to plan for Pierre Gasly as he failed to get on the podium while his team mate at Red Bull, Max Verstappen, was securing podiums after podiums in the same machinery.
After just half a season, Pierre was demoted back to Toro Rosso (now AlphaTauri). This was a major dent in his aspirations of becoming a world champion but he didn’t take that to heart and emerged as a race winner with AlphaTauri. This was not the only difficult period in his journey as a F1 driver.
Pierre Gasly reminiscences the time when he called Sebastian Vettel for help
Pierre Gasly recently opened up about a period when he didn’t get the chance to drive in F1 despite being the GP2 winner and how Sebastian Vettel helped him out. He said, “I remember once I got my my GP2 title, so 2016, and I didn’t get my chance straight away to Formula 1, it was quite a hard time for me because I felt like ‘okay, I’ve done all the steps before Formula 1’.”
“And yeah, I called him over that winter or towards the end of the season and I just called him, being very honest and asking him his opinion about my situation and how I should handle it for my career, what steps I should make and just to get his opinion as a champion and past Red Bull driver.“
“And we had a call actually in Singapore and he stayed with me for an hour. I was super grateful for that, I didn’t expect him to help me that much. So, you know, I’ve always been supportive of Seb and always respected him massively as an F1 driver but also as a person because I think he’s definitely, genuinely a very great guy.”
It’s not everyday that you see a four time world champion helping out a rookie trying to make it big in F1. This speaks volumes about the kind of driver and person Sebastian Vettel. Hence, he deserves every bit of respect shown to him.
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Shubham Bajpai
(776 Articles Published)