Pierre Gasly feels there are “two sides” to his first year with Alpine after finally breaking away from the Red Bull family.
After being inducted into the Red Bull junior team in 2014, Gasly finally made his F1 breakthrough more than three years later late in the 2017 season with Toro Rosso.
An opportunity with Red Bull lasted only half a season in 2019 before being demoted back to Toro Rosso, which then changed its name to AlphaTauri in 2020, for three and a half years.
When the chance came calling for Gasly to leave and switch to Alpine at the end of last year, he jumped at the opportunity, and despite high hopes, the French team failed to live up to expectations.
Alpine finished sixth in the constructors’ championship, effectively no man’s land as it was 160 points behind fifth-placed Aston Martin and 92 ahead of seventh-placed Williams.
Gasly at least scored one of the team’s two podiums over the year by finishing third in the Dutch Grand Prix, and the 26-year-old was also ahead of team-mate Esteban Ocon in the drivers’ standings by four points.
Reflecting on his campaign, Gasly said: “I see two sides.
“On one side, a challenging year because we were clearly not at the pace that we expected as a team. We thought we would be fighting for better positions.
“But on the other side, very pleased with the way I’ve worked with the team.
“It was my first season, and I went into (pre-season testing) in Bahrain not really knowing how the team works, into a new car, and it takes a bit of time before you find your feet inside a new organisation.
“When I look back, I’m feeling so much better now in the car, with the way we’re working, and the understanding with the guys, and I’m really pleased with the evolution we have had through the whole season.
“I’m definitely confident we will start with much better foundations from next year onwards.”
It was a season, though, that ended with bitter disappointment for Gasly in Abu Dhabi as he was initially frustrated with a strategy call that saw Ocon pit first despite being behind, allowing his fellow Frenchman to perform an undercut.
Gasly was later hit from behind by the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton, an incident that damaged the diffuser on his car, costing him downforce and what he claims was “15 to 20 seconds of race time”, leading to him finishing 13th rather than in the points.
Gasly said the strategy call was “a mistake” that would be reviewed internally, whilst he felt the stewards’ decision not to punish Hamilton was “harsh”.
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