Pierre Gasly has delved into the behavioural issues he encountered with Alpine’s Formula 1 car in the Singapore Grand Prix, where he surprisingly failed to score points.
Gasly beat his midfield rivals to take the seventh spot on the Marina Bay grid, courtesy of Isack Hadjar’s technical woes and George Russell’s grid penalty; the Frenchman actually was significantly slower than Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson in Q1 and Q2 but edged ahead by 0.144s in the final phase of qualifying.
Gasly however lost two spots to Lawson and Nico Hulkenberg at the start of the race. “We had no power out of the line,” he commented. “We need to review, because this year we've had really good starts.”
Russell’s and Hadjar’s recoveries may have been slow, but Gasly still couldn’t hold them off and ended up right outside of the top 10.
By lap 55 of 62, the Alpine racer was holding on in 10th, with just an eight-second deficit to seventh-placed Lawson, but tyre degradation meant his pace substantially worsened – he lost 10 seconds to the New Zealander over the last six laps, and even 14 seconds to Hadjar, who snatched 10th place away.
That degradation was clearly linked to the car’s behaviour. “On a track with a lot of low-speed [corners], a lot of tractions, we just ran out of tyres after three laps,” Gasly lamented.
“In quali you have cold tyres, over one lap they don't have time to heat up so much. In the race, out of the box it feels good; one lap, two laps, third lap, our tyres are over the roof and we have no traction. We know it's a limitation of the car, but I was a bit more hopeful.”
Pierre Gasly, Alpine
Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images
Asked if he had been hoping to keep Russell and Hadjar behind, Gasly insisted: “Again, our problem is I can't get out of any corner. It's one thing to be slow, but if you can actually get out of the corner with reasonable speed, you can keep them behind. The problem is I'm sideways every time I touch the throttle.
“I was trying anything I could with the battery [against Russell], but again, I don't feel like today I was ever in a position to actually... Even I felt a tiny bit faster than Nico at times, but I just can't get out of the corner. Any time I go on power, I'm sideways, I'm losing a bit of ground and then I can't make it up later in the straight.
“I think it's pretty clear what we've got to work on. We know why we have some of these issues with the rims we're running. But it's just on a track like that, it's costing us a lot.”
Just over a month ago, Alpine was just three points behind Racing Bulls in the battle for fifth in the constructors’ championship, but that was when the FIA's International Court of Appeal’s decision regarding the Monaco Grand Prix controversy caused a 13-point swing.
Gasly’s Singapore woes were compounded by Franco Colapinto’s retirement due to a suspected driveline issue, marking a third consecutive non-score for Alpine, which is now a whopping 32 points down on Racing Bulls in the standings.
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