Pierre Gasly admits he is ‘still quite mad’ on losing Q1 laptime in Hungary
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Pierre Gasly
AlphaTauri driver Pierre Gasly was left frustrated after a horrendous Qualifying session during the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend. The French driver was left stuck in P19 after he lost the laptime due to an alleged track limit violation. His lap time would have been enough to promote him to Q2 although this did not happen.
Sergio Perez’s laptime was also deleted because the officials thought that the Red Bull driver had crossed the white line. Although a replay showed that Perez was not fully across the white line and his lap was reinstated. This did not make any difference as the driver still failed to make it to Q3.
The track limit offence occurred on turn 5 which had been a menace to all the drivers during the whole weekend. Pierre Gasly was its most recent victim. The race officials were using CCTV footage as reference for monitoring purposes. The Alpha tauri driver decided with the team to opt to take a new power unit for this race which meant that he would start from the back of the grid.
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“Still quite mad about it,” said Pierre Gasly when asked about how the unnecessarily acquired engine penalty affected his race
“Because from what I’ve seen, in the emails that I’ve seen, it’s very arguable whether I was on-track or off-track. Similar things happened to Yuki and Checo, and from the onboards, they were clearly on the track. But anyway, that was it. And from our position, starting from the back, I think I was happy to just try to understand a bit more from our package, because at the moment, we know we were not displaying the performance that we should,” Gasly said.
And it’s still not great, but at least there are a couple of good signs of performance,” he said.
Pierre Gasly also said that he had talked with the Formula One Race directors Niels Wittich and Eduardo Freitas on the topic of track limits, which has been a regular point of discussion in the FIA drivers’ briefings and GPDA meetings in recent times.
“I spent 40 minutes with Niels and Eduardo this morning trying to discuss and find a way that everybody is happier. At the moment, they have a huge amount of work. They’re not making their life very easy. Clearly in this Turn 5, they didn’t have the right tools to police it in the most fair way possible. We just spoke about solutions going forward to have first a more consistent way of policing it, and making sure it’s going in the right direction,” he added.
Pierre Gasly finished P12 from the pitlane in the Hungarian Grand Prix. This was a result representative of what the Alpha Tauri driver’s pace could have been if he would have gotten the chance to qualify better. Finding a solution to this ever occurring problem in recent seasons is key to making Formula One a better sport.
The French Driver currently sits in 13th place in the world championship standings with 16 points to his name after the first half of the season. AlphaTauri is 8th in the constructors standings and teammate Yuki Tsunoda is placed 16th with 11 points to his name. Where do you think Pierre Gasly will finish at the end of the season?
Also Read: Sergio Perez feels ‘consistency is key’ when it comes to beating Max Verstappen
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Varad Joshi
(940 Articles Published)