Pierre Gasly believes that being able to fight against Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris during the Formula 1 Italian GP is a positive sign for Alpine.
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The Frenchman shocked everyone in Monza when he secured pole position for the race and even maintained the lead during the first lap before being overtaken by George Russell at turn 1 of lap 2.
Later, he dropped further back into the pack between Hamilton and Norris and in the end, crossed the finish line in seventh place, managing to take positive points from Alpine’s performance in Italy.
“The part of me that is realistic is very satisfied. Basically, starting from pole, you inevitably think: ‘Ok, what can happen over 53 laps? This and that…’. But, to be honest, before the race, we knew it would be extremely difficult to maintain the pace up front and fight with the top drivers,” he said.
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“I’m very happy with both starts. We had two great starts; we managed to keep the lead in the first and did very well in the battle in the second. I was able to stay in the front pack for the first 10 laps, which was very good. Battling for position with Lando, who won the last two races, shows that, considering where we came from, the result is very positive. Finishing 3 seconds behind Lewis was also good; he has been fighting for podiums this year, so I won’t be disappointed with that.”
“Obviously, the final result was seventh place, and we always want to get a little more out of the situation. But I think, overall, we have to enjoy all the positives from the weekend, and there were many, and try to build something from that. I knew that if I kept the lead coming out of Parabolica, George would overtake me; it was guaranteed, so I wasn’t surprised. But, in the end, we need to learn from all these situations as a team. I think it had been a long time since we saw ourselves up front, and yet we managed to handle the situation very well,” he continued.
“It was the best car I’ve had this year, and the most consistent. There are some things that explain this, and others that we still need to understand. I have some ideas about the reasons, but obviously we need more tracks; Monza is very special, very unique. I’m sure the next few days will be important to try to understand a bit more about this performance and try to repeat it in the coming weekends,” he concluded.
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