Pierre Gasly and Charles Leclerc were encouraged by the overall progress and F1 Eifel GP results even though they felt the car wasn’t the best at Nurburging.
With a myriad of impressive race results to his name in the 2020 F1 season, Gasly has been hailed for his venturesome approach to racing other cars whilst behind the wheel of his AlphaTauri AT01, as well as his race craft in other senses.
His efforts have earned him a win, and two seventh-place finishes, and most recently, one sixth place at the Nurburgring’s F1 Eifel GP, having been on course for another P7-P8 if not for the DNF of a frontrunning car of Valtteri Bottas and Alexander Albon.
In that particular race, an ability to muscle through the pack enabled Gasly to fight for more meaningful positions later on in the race after starting outside the Top 10 position, and that he did, providing spectacular overtaking in the process.
The Frenchman argued in favor of this point, saying later, “I think [the Nurburgring] wasn’t necessarily the best track for us, the types of corners, like we see with the McLaren, [in] really specific areas we are struggling more than them,” said Gasly to TV media.
“But generally on Sundays I think we have a good package to fight through the field, especially in [last Sunday’s] conditions when I knew it could be very hard for everybody, and I knew there could be some opportunities.
“I think on Sunday we got the maximum we could, we can be pleased with that, and I’m quite excited for the coming races. It was a lot of fun, a lot of battles – some defense, some attacking, a bit of everything. I’m really pleased with that,” summed up Gasly.
One battle he faced saw him fight Ferrari’s Leclerc, marking the second time they have had a sustained fight since the start of 2020 F1 season. The Monegasque ultimately came seventh, one position behind his close adversary – another good result for him.
Leclerc was happy with his result, particularly as it was indicative of developmental progress on the SF1000. “I am happy with the overall improvement we have seen in recent weeks,” he said. We are not yet where we want to be, but every small step is going in the right direction and this is what we need.
“Despite qualifying in Top 4, we expected a difficult race, but not this much [actually], especially the first run compromised our race massively. After our second and third, it was quite positive, but not enough to do better, although we still scored points,” summed up Leclerc.
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