Toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly reckons lessons learned in Formula 1’s feeder series proved crucial as he profited from an “unbelievable” first stint on Hypersofts to make gains at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Gasly started from the foot of the top 10 but whereas most of his rivals pitted around the lap 20 mark, Gasly stayed out until lap 37, before bringing his STR13 into the pits.
Gasly jumped the delayed Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz Jr. to move into eighth, which became seventh when a transmission failure truncated Fernando Alonso’s race.
“It was quite unbelievable how many laps we did with the Hypersoft on the first stint,” he said.
“Before the race I wasn’t confident at all with the tyres, because we saw before the race the degradation was massive, so I tried to take really good care of the tyres at the beginning of the race.
“When everyone pitted, I started to push, and we were just faster than all the guys who pitted and went from Supersofts to Ultrasofts.
“We were really fast, and we managed to make up some positions with the pace we had.
“To gain three positions, two without Alonso, we know in Monaco it is really tough. So I’m really pleased about it, especially for my first Monaco race in Formula 1.”
When asked how he managed to run for so long on Pirelli’s new-for-2018 compound, Gasly pointed to the experience and knowledge he had picked up in GP2 across 2015/16.
Gasly’s driving style often left him on the backfoot in terms of tyre wear early on during his two-year stint in the series but he went on to pick up the 2016 crown, having got on top of Pirelli’s rubber.
“You need to be really careful on braking, not to have any locking, try to be as smooth as possible with the steering not to scrub the fronts in the middle of the corner,” he said.
“[You have to] be gentle with the throttle, but you need to do that and at the same time be fast, so it’s not easy.
“Actually I wasn’t good at it in the lower series. In my second year in GP2, I had to learn a lot with the Pirelli tyres, and I changed a bit my way of driving and my approach in the race.”
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