Alpine had distinct performances between its drivers in the Sprint qualifying for the Formula 1 Chinese GP. While Pierre Gasly secured a spot in SQ3 and finished in P7, Franco Colapinto was only in 16th position for the Sprint race grid.
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Gasly highlighted his satisfaction with the result, especially after the lower-than-expected performance in the previous Formula 1 round, held in Melbourne: “I am extremely satisfied with today’s result in Sprint qualifying, especially after last week in Melbourne, which did not meet our expectations. We found much more performance and good learnings from Australia that we brought into this weekend,” he stated.
The Frenchman emphasized that he felt more comfortable with the car since the start of activities in Shanghai: “We tried to put everything together and I felt much better in the car, right from the first lap out of the garage. It’s good to be more competitive here and manage to comfortably enter SQ3 and compete with the top four teams.”
Gasly also believes that the car still has potential to be explored and hopes to maintain the good momentum for the rest of the weekend: “I have been feeling good in the car and there is certainly more potential than we showed last time. We will try to keep this positive momentum for tomorrow and see if we can bring some points to the team,” the Frenchman concluded.
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Meanwhile, Colapinto assessed that the day was more difficult than expected: “Today was tricky and it wasn’t the result we expected. We didn’t take the necessary step forward to compete for spots in SQ3.”
The Argentine pointed to the lack of pace as the main factor for the result: “At the end of the day, we lacked pace today, and we need to understand why. We lacked speed compared to Pierre, who was fast today and did a great job, which is great for the team that is working very hard and it’s also positive that there is more potential in the car,” he added.
Despite the frustration, Colapinto believes it is still possible to use the Sprint race to evolve throughout the weekend: “I just need to understand better on my side how to extract that and where we can find improvements. We will try to learn as much as possible in tomorrow’s Sprint race, see if we can recover some positions and put the learnings into practice for the GP qualifying,” he completed.
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