Pierre Gasly satisfied with his 12th place in Brazil

Pierre Gasly’s weekend had started badly, with 25 grid penalties accumulated. He was thus guaranteed to start on the last row, which explains why he focused entirely on race settings. It must be acknowledged that the strategy proved to be the right one as he managed to secure 12th place, his best result so far in his short F1 career.

The young Frenchman, who was only making his fourth start, did not hide his satisfaction after the race: “I think it was clearly our best race and performance since I arrived in Malaysia. It’s true that we knew it would be a difficult race starting 19th due to the penalties, but I think it was very positive to climb up from 19th on the grid.”

As for many, everything was decided at the start. The Toro Rosso driver was thus able to avoid the multiple collisions in front of him, allowing him to climb up the hierarchy: “We knew that the start was the key if we wanted to have a decent race. I went to the outside at the first corner, which worked well. I may have overtaken three cars in the first corner and another in the second. After that, with all the commotion in front of me, I just went full throttle and tried to avoid everyone,” he commented. Once that heated moment was over, he was able to calmly reach the finish as the degradation of his tires prevented him from attacking further.

But his teammate, Brendon Hartley, was not able to do the same, due to excessive oil consumption, to preserve the engine until the end: « I think I could have finished the race just behind Pierre if we hadn’t had such a high oil consumption… We knew there was an issue quite early in the race since I had to start transferring oil. I didn’t want to ask but I had the feeling we wouldn’t make it to the end and indeed we didn’t. »

But before that, the double world endurance champion and yet rookie had to manage on his own due to a disconnected radio. Despite calls from his pit, he was unable to communicate: « I lost communication with my engineer for a long time. It was a bit difficult, especially during the restart after the safety car, to remember everything I had to do! It took me almost 10 laps to reconnect the radio. It wasn’t easy to find the slot! »

On three occasions, he has only been able to finish under the checkered flag once. Fernando Alonso’s comments on the lack of performance of his Honda engine will not reassure him about his performance prospects for next season…