AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly has stressed the importance of the Italian side finding some performance after an awful last few rounds.
Gasly and team-mate Yuki Tsunoda have scored six points finishes in 11 races between them this season, and the pace of the car has been nowhere near as capable of performing towards the front of the midfield battle as it was last season.
The Frenchman is 13th in the Drivers’ Standings in a stuttering start to the year, although the Frenchman had extremely promising pace in Monaco and Baku.
He was running in the top five during practice in Monte Carlo, but a red flag caused by a perhaps over-exuberant marshal in qualifying dumped Gasly out of Q1, but he got the Faenza-based squad’s best result of the season in Baku when he finished fifth.
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Like many others on the grid this season, the Red Bull junior side have been busy trying to get the car to work consistently under the new technical regulations, but that has not been an easy path.
In fact, the excellent performance in Azerbaijan was the last time the team have scored points in any capacity, but they could have got both cars into the top 10 in Silverstone had it not been for a rash move by Tsunoda that wiped them both out.
In Austria last weekend, Gasly was on the receiving end of more bad luck as Sergio Perez made it into Q3 after the Mexican had crossed the white line on his final Q2 run, and his weekend did not get any better after that.
The 26-year-old made contact with Sir Lewis Hamilton off the start as he finished the sprint race down in 15th, and he was given two penalties in the main race for hitting Sebastian Vettel and exceeding track limits four times.
After finishing 15th again on Sunday, the Rouen-born racer lamented the lack of performance in the car right now.
“Apart from qualifying, but then we were nowhere, in terms of pace,” said Gasly after calling his weekend a “disaster.”
“I tried to do everything I can inside the car but at the moment there is just nothing to do, so I think we desperately need this upgrade on the car to be able to get any decent result.
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“You look at Yuki, look at myself, even on the strategy we lost a position when we boxed.
“At the end of the day we just have no pace, you can do whatever you want, any strategy you want, with the speed we have at the moment [it makes no difference].”
AlphaTauri have some new parts arriving at next weekend’s French Grand Prix in Le Castellet, and Gasly sincerely hopes they work.
“[We] just can’t keep going like this so we need to reset, and as I said we should have some new parts coming and hopefully they come for France and we can show a better pace there,” he added.
“It’s not surprising if you don’t have new parts, others are improving and you see at the start of the year we’re fighting with the guys at the front and [now we’re] finishing 20, 30 seconds behind.”
AlphaTauri are currently eighth in the Constructors’ Standings having been passed by Haas in Austria.