After years of wanting to return to a ‘factory’ side, Pierre Gasly is finally getting his wish in the form of a move to Alpine, where he’ll be joining his supposed rival Esteban Ocon.
The Enstone-based team find themselves with an all-French dream team for 2023, one they’ll be hoping will end in success rather than arguments.
It’s been a long journey for Gasly to get back into a top seat, something he’s been targeting ever since his embarrassing Red Bull departure halfway through 2019.
There is no doubt that the 26-year-old is impeccably talented, as proven on countless occasions, especially the 2020 Italian Grand Prix.
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The 2020 Italian GP remains as Gasly’s only F1 win and AlphaTauri’s first since Sebastian Vettel at the same race in 2008, with the Frenchman having also claimed podiums at the 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix and the 2021 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
For someone whose been in the sport since the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix, he really has experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, with the low point being something the Frenchman has always targeted to rectify.
The highest of highs was, of course, his victory, whereas his lowest of lows was his mid-season sacking from Red Bull.
Gasly was promoted to the Austrians in 2019 following a strong year and a half at Toro Rosso (known since 2019 as AlphaTauri), where he replaced Daniel Ricciardo who was moving to Renault at the time.
It was highly anticipated that Gasly would take the fight to Max Verstappen, with the Frenchman having proven in Red Bull’s sister side that he was extremely talented.
As is well known, the partnership simply didn’t work, with there being an argument that Gasly wasn’t given sufficient time to adjust to the pressures of racing for Red Bull.
Time is something Red Bull are known to be reluctant to offer, especially at a time when they were arguably the third fastest team on the grid.
Gasly failed to claim a podium at any of his 12 Red Bull appearances, with his best result having been fourth at the British Grand Prix.
On the other side of the garage, Verstappen had claimed five podiums which included two victories, demonstrating the disparity between the two.
Following the Hungarian Grand Prix, it was announced that Gasly would be demoted back to AlphaTauri, with Alex Albon to replace him; alas, we all know how Albon went on to suffer similar treatment.
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Many put the Frenchman’s demotion down to his poor performances; however, an ex-F1 senior systems engineer revealed on the Last Lap Show that there was another reason why Gasly was given the boot.
Supposedly, the Alpine-bound driver had a public row with Red Bull chief technical officer Adrian Newey, in front of advisor Dr Helmut Marko.
“There was one point where, again I wasn’t there so I can’t confirm or deny it, but apparently he [Gasly] got quite, Pierre got quite vocal with Adrian [Newey] over the set-up of the car it sort of became a bit of a shouting match in the garage and then once that happened you know in front of Marko and that it was back to the sister team you go,” said Dan, also known as “Dan – EngineMode11”, on social media.