Pierre Gasly says issues with Toro Rosso’s STR14 overheating cost the team in its bid to challenge for points at Formula 1’s Russian Grand Prix.
Gasly set top 10 pace during practice and only narrowly missed out on a Q3 spot in qualifying, taking 11th, which became 16th once a five-place grid penalty for an engine change was applied.
But in race trim, Toro Rosso lacked pure performance and Gasly finished 14th of the 15 classified runners, with team-mate Daniil Kvyat placing only two spots higher.
“It was quite difficult, [we had] a lot of overheating issues, all the race, and we just didn’t have the speed to fight for the top 10,” said Gasly.
“It was quite difficult inside the cockpit, just underperformed compared to what we’ve shown all weekend. I need to understand and analyse why and bring everything back for Suzuka.
“It was the hottest day of the weekend and in FP2 we looked pretty strong in the long-run, but in the race we had a lot less pace, so in these hotter conditions we just seemed to struggle more.”
Gasly was briefly involved in a fierce scrap with Kvyat for position, and on that battle he said: “You always try to fight for the position you have.
“At that time we were 12th so always imaging if something happens in front of you it’s 10th, tried to do what I could, braking wasn’t easiest so made it tricky for the battles but I tried my best.
“When you battle you always go over the limit, I was on the marbles, tried to out-brake him on the inside on the marbles, didn’t work.”
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