Pierre Gasly left quite disappointed with AlphaTauri’s strategy in F1 Singapore GP, as Yuki Tsunoda frustrated for himself again.
Having started in the Top 10, AlphaTauri’s Gasly ended up with just the one point where both the McLaren and Aston Martin drivers scored and neither of the Alpine did. Due to the damp conditions, strategy became a talking point for drivers to score.
Gasly had a steady outing inside the Top 10 until the pit stop sequence. The team brought him early and the subsequent Safety Car and Virtual Safety Car periods did him wrong where not only Daniel Ricciardo, but both the Aston Martin drivers jumped him.
On a track with similar pace to cars around him, it left Gasly whole lot to do especially with Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen also in the mix due to their errors. The Frenchman reckoned AlphaTauri easily lost about nine points as he could have been fifth.
“I’m very disappointed, that’s not the result we should’ve had,” said Gasly. “We were having an excellent race, behind Lando and ahead of the two Aston Martins, but we took a massive risk boxing early and lost some positions. I don’t fully understand why we made this decision, so we’ll need to review everything and learn from this mistake.
“There was no communication, and no dialogue, which I don’t fully understand why. We took a gamble in a moment where we didn’t need to. So we boxed, everybody stayed out on track, and we got overcut by four cars.
“For sure we left a lot of points on the table, so it hurts quite a bit, particularly in our Championship battle fight as there was a big opportunity there to move forward and we didn’t grab it. It’s nine points that we lost and nine important points. So yeah, I’m just sad. And not happy with our performance,” summed up Gasly.
Teammate Tsunoda was one of the cars that caused the safety car period which helped others and not Gasly. The Japanese driver was left frustrated again by his small mistake which ended his grand prix which cam after an earlier mistake where he dropped outside the points.
“The conditions were really tricky out there, it was difficult judging the move from Inters to slicks but we went early, which meant it was super hard to drive, but we were starting to gain time, so things were looking positive,” said Tsunoda. “Unfortunately, I made a mistake, I completely misjudged the braking point, carrying too much speed into the corner, and went into the wall, so I’m frustrated with myself.”
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