Pierre Gasly says he sees “no limit” to what he can achieve during his time in Formula 1 with the Alpine squad.
Gasly has joined the French manufacturer for the 2023 season, departing the Red Bull umbrella after almost a decade of association with it.
His time with Red Bull in F1 was turbulent, but ended on a strong note as he had a number of strong seasons with the AlphaTauri set-up following his disappointing short stint at the front-running sister team.
Gasly will partner Esteban Ocon at the squad for the upcoming campaign, marking an all-French line-up.
Speaking at the launch of Alpine’s A523 car earlier this week, Gasly has set his sights on claiming memorable results with the Enstone-based outfit.
“I’m not going to lie, for me it’s such a big change, big move, closing a chapter of nine years with Red Bull,” he said.
“Starting this new project with Alpine and just seeing everything available and all the resources they have, it feels like almost with a manufacturer nothing is impossible.
“There is no limit, no ceiling, which is what I used to have in a way in the past, that’s why I’m extremely excited.”
Alpine ended the 2022 campaign fourth in the Constructors’ Championship following a season-long battle with rivals McLaren.
It has already set its sights on retaining that position for the year ahead, acknowledging the leading three teams of Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes are likely out of reach.
“The team said they want to sort of consolidate this fourth place in the team championship in a more dominant way, improve the reliability, improve the performance, and close that gap with the top three,” Gasly commented.
“We know Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, they didn’t sleep over the winter and they’ll come with very fast cars.
“We know what we’ve done, we know we can close the gap, I’m confident in the people we have, the mentality, the processes put in place to be able to show some very good performance.
“But yeah, we have got to wait and see our performance once we put the car on track in Bahrain.”
Gasly made his debut for the Alpine team at the post-season test from Abu Dhabi last year.
Having already completed its initial shakedown run at Silverstone, the 2023 Alpine car will be back on the race track next week during pre-season testing from the Bahrain International Circuit.
