Pierre Gasly believes he has made a “massive step” with Red Bull’s RB15 but cautioned against calling it a “breakthrough”, amid improved pace at the British Grand Prix.
Gasly has struggled for pace through the 2019 Formula 1 season but led the way during the opening practice session at Silverstone, and headed team-mate Max Verstappen in the other sessions.
Verstappen moved in front during qualifying but Gasly was able to take fifth, three-tenths down on the Dutchman, and was buoyed by the gains.
“Not a breakthrough, but what I’m happy about is that there were quite a lot of things to improve,” he said.
“As I said coming here, we had a plan on what changes to make these things better, and we clearly made a step forward. I think it’s a massive step.
“Calling it a breakthrough, we’ll see how it goes and which sort of race we have.
“I’m clearly happy about what we have changed and to see that it’s paying off.”
Gasly insisted that he has not changed his driving style or approach, but believes putting together “a few missing pieces of the puzzle” have had a transformative effect.
“To be fair, the last 10 days, except working really hard with the team and having meetings and discussing what we need to do better, on my side and on their side, I spent exactly the same time back at home, I trained in the same way,” he said.
“I’m confident things are going to get better together. It’s just finding out with the team these few missing pieces of the puzzle that we missed.
“I don’t think I have reset, I don’t think I have changed my driving massively compared to last week.
“I think we put a lot more things together which seemed to work. We still need a few things, but on every aspect, we’ve made a step forward this weekend.”
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