Pierre Gasly described AlphaTauri’s British Grand Prix display so far as its “worst performance of the year” and believes his chances of points in the race are slim.
Gasly has been one of the standout drivers in Formula 1’s midfielders this year, taking points in seven of the nine grands prix, including a podium finish in Azerbaijan.
Prior to Silverstone Gasly had qualified on the front three rows of the grid at seven events.
Gasly lined up only 12th for Sprint at Silverstone and converted that position in the 17-lap race, losing out to Esteban Ocon, though profiting from Sergio Perez’s spin.
“Yeah honestly I think it is our worst performance of the year so far,” he said. “And it is very frustrating as I know the car has a lot more potential.
“All season we’ve been strong on pretty much every track and for whatever reason here we are extremely slow, in the straights, the high speed, huge amount of understeer, and it is just not working.
“I could not attack, I was just trying to stay on track for 17 laps, which is never what you want.
“I could not push, I could not brake, I could not follow closely, it was just frustrating. We’ll try our best [in the race] and I hope we can get at least a point.”
Gasly reckons “clearly something is missing” after an underwhelming weekend performance, with team-mate Yuki Tsunoda also struggling for speed.
“We knew with FP1 you have a very small window to change the car, we tried to make changes but you can’t go too extreme, and it was even worse in race trim,” he said.
“It wasn’t enjoyable and now for the race it is the package we have. We’ll just have to do the best we can, play something with the strategy and the start, but I’m disappointed as I know we should do a lot better.
“We are just slow in the straight, which doesn’t make sense, and slow in high speed, which is not what we have been.
“Clearly something is missed, but after FP1 we had that [issues], and in FP2 we had these issues and we can’t fix them, it is the car we have, and we will have to fight like this in the race.”
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