29/05/2022
NEWS STORY
Failing to make it beyond Q1 for the second time this season, Pierre Gasly has criticised some of the decisions his team has made.
In the final minutes of Q1, teammate Yuki Tsunoda clipped the barrier at the Nouvelle Chicane and while the Japanese was able to continue back to the pits the session was immediately red-flagged.
As the TV director anxiously sought to discover the incident that had brought about the stoppage, the drivers returned to their garages.
When the session resumed, with just 02:25 remaining, it was obvious that things were going to be hectic. At that point Ricciardo was in the drop zone, along with Ocon, Latifi, Tsunoda and Zhou, while Norris, Vettel and Stroll were hovering just above.
As expected, it was fast and frantic, and among the last to be sent out were the AlphaTauri pair.
As the times tumbled Gasly was caught in traffic and when the flag fell to signal the end of the session, he had yet to reach the line to start his final flying lap. He was out.
"Extremely disappointed," said the clearly frustrated Frenchman. "I don't think I can put words into how I'm feeling right now, because the whole weekend was so good.
"We were P5 this morning, P6 yesterday," he continued. "Every time I felt so quick in the car... I was comfortable to put the fast lap times.
"But we left the pitlane too late in Q1 and didn't manage to cross the line before the red light came out," he said. "We basically didn't have any representative time. Obviously there is a bit of bad luck, but at the end of the day it was the same session for everyone.
"I'm not happy with the strategic calls we made today," he admitted. "We had the pace to fight for the Top Six, and in the end we're not starting in the position we deserve to be in.
"I just don't understand some of the choices we're making," he continued. "Our mistakes are costing us massively, weekend after weekend, I'm very disappointed for everyone in the team."
Asked to clarify who he was referring to, he replied: "We as a team... I put myself in the team. Overall as a team, they try to do their best, and I'm giving them my best, but at the moment, these things should not happen. We need to do better."
"Honestly we thought we would be quite strong here," said technical director, Jody Egginton. "We thought mechanical grip and higher ride height aero performance was quite strong and we thought we'd be okay around here. We've been comfortable all weekend.
"We never felt we were chasing it," he continued, "the car's responded well, everything's been great, but we got to qualifying and we've not delivered, which is frustrating.
"As far as I'm concerned, both drivers and the car were good enough for Q3 here," he insisted. "So it's nothing more than we've let ourselves down.
"Yuki touching a barrier meant that everyone came into the pits for one final push lap before the end of the session. The problem was that we were not out close enough to the front of this pack. This meant that we were tight on margin for getting both drivers across the line before the chequered flag and Pierre missed it by one second. At the end of the day, we just needed to get him out slightly earlier.
"We need to go away and look at why this was," he admitted, "because in a midfield this competitive we can't be throwing away any advantages. We've missed a really good opportunity today to get both cars into the Top 10. The drivers and the team definitely deserved that today, and the car was good enough."
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