Pierre Gasly hopes his P7 finish in Japan on Sunday will provide “good motivation” to everyone at Alpine after holding off Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who “would not leave my heels all the way through.”
The result, after “a long, intense race”, saw Gasly top the midfield in Suzuka, leaving the Frenchman eighth in the Championship standings – a fine return from the first three rounds of the season.
After impressing in pre-season testing, Alpine did not quite get the dream start to the season in Melbourne, with Gasly picking up just one point with a P10 finish. But sixth in Shanghai and seventh in Japan shows just how far the team have come since propping up the standings last year.
The Alpine driver had to work hard for his result in Japan, battling former team mate Verstappen for much of the race. The Dutchman did get past at one point, but Gasly was able to rally and sneak back ahead.
“I’m very happy. It was a long, intense race, especially after the Safety Car,” said Gasly. “The first part of the race was good, I felt comfortable, a bit of a gap to [Verstappen] but I knew there would always be a Safety Car at some point so I wasn’t getting too comfortable.
“[The] second part of the race this guy would not leave my heels all the way through! I had to check on him five times a lap just to understand exactly the gap and make sure I was pushing as hard as I could, make sure not to make any mistakes, really nail all my exits to not get too close.
“But in the end, I must say the pace was good, we finished only seven seconds behind Lewis [Hamilton], and 18s in front of Liam [Lawson] in P9. So, seems we were in the better train, and we need to build on that.”
The midfield battle looks set to be a closely fought once again, with Haas currently fourth in the Championship, two points ahead of Alpine. Red Bull are sixth on the same points as the French manufacturer, with Racing Bulls seventh – two points adrift.
It remains to be seen whether Gasly keeping Verstappen at bay will be pivotal come the end of the season, but it certainly gave the Frenchman something to smile about at the end of the race.
And with Gasly’s Alpine looking good at two very different tracks in Shanghai and Suzuka, there is plenty of cause for optimism.
“I’ll be at the factory in the coming weeks but hopefully it brings a good motivation to everybody,” he added. “We clearly have a good package, and I’m glad we managed to get a good [result] at all three tracks that are very different.
“I think it definitely brings some good optimism for the rest of the year and as I said, the gap to the guys ahead is too big to fight, but it is not too big to make it impossible. So [it is] important we keep working on it and I’m looking forward to the next few race weekends.”
