The conditions for an exceptional weekend were all there for AlphaTauri. The start of Pierre Gasly in the front row at the Qatar Grand Prix and the Top 10 obtained by Yuki Tsunoda the previous day in qualifying had opened up rosy scenarios for the team from Faenza, but things did not go as expected or, at least, as hoped.
The Frenchman, after starting from the second spot of the Losail grid next to Lewis Hamilton, began to lose positions, without having the opportunity to change pace in any way. The AT02s showed an unusual rejection of performance, whether on Soft, Medium or Hard tires.
As the laps accumulated, Gasly and Tsunoda dropped out of the Top 10, without having the opportunity to rejoin. There was no performance, no inspiration, no rhythm. This, at least, is what emerges from the words of Pierre Gasly, pronounced at the end of the race with no small disappointment.
“It was all very frustrating. We had a shocking pace and at the moment we have no answers, we don’t know why. We tried to stay with Alonso in the early laps, but I could barely do it. Then we tried an aggressive two-stop strategy, but we never had the rhythm. “
“It was shocking. I tried to push as much as possible, but even with the cooler tires than Alonso I was a long way off. It was really frustrating.”
Fernando Alonso, Alpine A521, Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri AT02, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B and Lando Norris, McLaren MCL35M
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Gasly later claimed he couldn’t understand how he could be so slow. He wondered if the changes made to his car after the damage in Q3 on Saturday might have played a role in his pace and performance.
“We changed the front wing and the bottom after yesterday’s crash in qualifying. I don’t know if that had an impact on my performance. We used medium tires that were already used in qualifying, not if it had an impact. We will have to. review everything, because today I was pushing very hard, I used the tires a lot, and the laps have never been good “.
“In the end we could have made 2, 3, 5 stops. But all that wouldn’t have changed. We were just too slow and when I found myself behind Vettel, I couldn’t pass him. I didn’t have the pace, it was very frustrating.”
“Honestly, I don’t understand how both of our cars managed to qualify in the Top 10 and have a good pace, only to sink back during the race and show no sign of speed.”
“This is the main problem. It is very frustrating to see the positions that the Alpine riders have managed to get, but at the end of the day we have to be objective with ourselves. They did a better job than ours, and we can only congratulate they”.
Thanks to the third place obtained yesterday by Fernando Alonso and the contemporary fifth of Esteban Ocon, Alpine has stretched a lot on AlphaTauri in the Constructors’ World Championship. The two companies are competing for fifth place, but currently Alpine really seems to have something more than the blue-white single-seaters, which have impressed so much for a couple of years now.
The classification sees Alpine in fifth place with 137 points accumulated, while AlphaTauri is stuck at 112. A very heavy 25 to 0 in Losail, because it brought Alpine ahead of 25 points over Franz Tost’s team. At the end of the World Championship there are still two appointments and the possibility of recovering is there, but Alpine really seems to have put AlphaTauri in check in the most delicate moment of the season.
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