Bahrain Grand Prix: Gasly unlucky

Pierre Gasly: retirement

The weekend had started well for the French driver. After a very good qualifying session, Gasly had made it to Q3 and managed to set the fifth fastest time.

After a start in which he saw Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo take the lead over him, he collided with the rear of Ricciardo’s McLaren at the exit of turn 4 during the 4th lap of the race, after locking up his wheels by missing his braking point. His front wing did not survive and caused the intervention of a virtual safety car to clean up the track from the debris.

He then returned to the pits at a very slow speed, which cost him a lot of time, as the race was restarted when he stopped to change the front wing, causing an immobilization of over ten seconds. From then on, his race was over, forcing him to run at the back of the pack for the remaining laps. In order to be free to change his gearbox in the next race, he chose to retire four laps from the end.

Pierre Gasly: everything was decided in the first few laps…

As soon as the Grand Prix ended, Gasly reflected on his disappointing race: “Honestly, everything was decided in the first few laps. I haven’t watched the footage yet and I still don’t know if it’s my fault or not but it’s a bit painful because we had a lot of performance all weekend but the race ended for me at the 4th corner.”

The French driver also admitted to having encountered additional problems, forcing him to retire at the end of the race: We had some damage later on the floor and it was really complicated to do anything. At the end of the race, we had problems with the car, which forced us to retire on the 52nd lap.

He will be even more disappointed with his race as his teammate, the rookie Yuki Tsunoda, scored two points for ninth place in his first race in the category.