28/08/2023
NEWS STORY
Pierre Gasly feels "stoked" after giving his team the perfect boost following its recent travails.
Ahead of the summer break, Alpine was a team in disarray, having fired team boss Otmar Szafnauer and sporting director Alan Permane, not to mention the loss of technical boss, Pat Fry to Williams.
However, at a time morale would have been at rock bottom, Pierre Gasly finished third in the Spa Sprint, while teammate Esteban Ocon added four more points to the tally the following day.
To further lift spirits, as the second half of the season got underway at Zandvoort, the French team scored another double-points finish, while Gasly gave the French outfit its first podium since Ocon stood on the top step in Hungary in 2021.
"It looks like that," said Gasly, when asked if the team was finally getting its act together again. "But it was extremely tricky. All the conditions were pretty much thrown at us from the start. We ended up on slicks in the dry, in damp conditions, then feeding the Inters in the wet, but then on a drying track. So it was all about adapting yourself to the conditions and really playing with the limits.
"But after the summer break, I was really excited to get back in the car and this was probably the most fun I've had all season," he added. "It's very exciting to be fighting for these positions.
"They were important goals to make but the whole team executed a very strong race, and I'm pleased because we haven't been very fortunate since the start of the year. We've been involved in some unfortunate situations on many occasions, which has cost us some points, and which kind of built some frustration.
"But you've got to keep your head down and always try to improve what you can in yourself, and here it paid off, so big congrats to the guys, and a great way to restart the second part of the year. I'm feeling so stoked!"
Starting twelfth on the grid, Gasly followed Perez and Leclerc into the pits at the end of the opening lap, rejoining the race in 16th. However, next time around, as other drivers began to pit, he improved to fourth, then third.
Once drivers switched back to slicks he lost out to Alonso, and though subsequently passed by Sainz, at the restart following the red-flag stoppage he was fourth, though Perez was to receive a time penalty for speeding in the pitlane. Ironically, earlier in the race, Gasly had been penalised for the same offence.
"I was pretty upset that I got a five-second penalty earlier in the race," he admitted. "But I was like 'OK, now it's 1-1'.
"Obviously, I tried to push as hard as I could to stay within five seconds, and I managed to do it. It's never easy to stay within five seconds of a Red Bull, that's for sure. But I saw the opportunity, I knew what was on the table and I just gave everything I had out there.
"I expected to struggle a bit more with the warm-up initially, but the conditions were not too bad, and it was pretty much a couple of qualifying laps at the end, which were really rewarding."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Zandvoort here.