It hasn’t been a smooth start for Pierre Gasly with Red Bull Racing in 2019 F1 season as the Frenchman explains the problems he is facing with RB15.
A mistake in qualifying from Red Bull in Australia put Gasly on the backfoot immediately. He missed Q3 in Bahrain as well but managed to score his first points of 2019. He made it into Q3 in China and did well to end up sixth, but the problems continues on still.
Its been a hard task for Gasly to jump from Toro Rosso to Red Bull – two hugely different cars. Even with the Frenchman having the experience of the Honda power unit unlike teammate Max Verstappen, it has all gone to the bin already.
The Dutchman looks far settled, naturally, as he has been with the team for few years now. While Gasly looked better in China where he took his career’s first fastest lap as well, the Frenchman has plenty of things to look into which he explained over the weekend.
“Certainly, I am not satisfied with my driving still, so there is some work to do,” he said to the media in China. “It is mostly the tractions in all the exits, I struggle to put the power down and fight a lot with the car.
“I know the things I need to work on, probably [even] change a bit my driving style and work with the team to find a direction to make it a bit more suitable to my driving. We can see we are fighting more [than Verstappen with the car].
“Also, I am quite aggressive with the way I go on power which doesn’t help with that car [RB15]. I think it was OK last year [in Toro Rosso], but as I said, I need to change a bit the way I drive basically to get the maximum from the car.”
While he is doing his own work, he is obviously looking over at Verstappen’s data too. “The first thing you look [in F1] at is your teammate and the way he does things, especially with him and the fact that he’s worked with the team,” he said.
“Naturally, he is really fast and I have lot of things to learn from him and also his experience inside the team.” Team boss Christian Horner concurred to Gasly’s points regarding the Frenchman needing to adjust his driving style.
As we have seen in MotoGP so often, riders jumping teams take a year at least to adjust to the new bikes. Its been there in F1 too with certain drivers needing more time – something Sergio Perez said on the Beyond The Grid Podcast when discussing his McLaren time.
While Gasly gets to grip with the Red Bull car, a host of fans and media have already started spreading rumours regarding a switch mid-season, considering the team’s previous switches – although nothing has been said from the team’s side at all.
Check out the stats and information from 2019 Chinese GP
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