Pierre Gasly was left frustrated at the Singapore GP after being “sacrificed” to help the race of Alpine Formula 1 team mate Esteban Ocon.
Ocon started 15th with Gasly three places behind him on the grid. After Ocon pitted on lap 29 Gasly stayed out on track in an effort to hold up other cars and allow Ocon to jump them.
When he came in on lap 37 he was given soft tyres for the 25-lap run to the flag, and he’d fallen behind some of the cars that he’d been racing earlier.
“Today, I got sacrificed, left out on track to block the others and try to help Esteban to catch up,” he said when asked by formu1a.uno about his race.
“Fundamentally, we are just too slow, and it forces us to try some interesting strategies.
“When you’re lapping five second off the pace the last 10 laps, not much point. But I understand we try to help one car in a way, because we are obviously not able to fight on pure pace for the top 10.”
Asked if he was surprised to be given soft tyres at his stop he said: “I was just surprised to be in the first place to be left out like that. I think, obviously I started out of position, made my way back, I think we were running three or four seconds behind Esteban.
“And then after I’ve been left out for another 15-20 laps when everybody around me was just overtaking right, left.
“There’s not much to do on afternoon like that, but I obviously, hoped that we will be able to do slightly more than just use me for blocking the others.”
Like its rivals Alpine still has an update package coming, although the team has yet to confirm that the new parts will make it to Austin.
“It’s going to be a step when we have some more upgrades,” said Gasly. “But at the moment, we just need to look at the delta.
“Three races ago I finished ninth in Zandvoort. The last three races, we’ve been absolutely nowhere. So I think we got to be objective about what we do. We got to review what we have in our hands.
“We are clearly the ninth fastest car at the moment. I think there are just the Saubers behind us, and the gap with the guys with the guys ahead is just growing weekend after weekend.
“So we do need some new parts to come, which is going to come. And I know we got the team and actually the people to make the right steps. It’s just at the moment it’s coming too slowly, and season is almost coming to an end.
“Next year’s car is going to be very different. Got to maximise what we have, but on a day like today, we probably maximised what we could do on one car, and on my side, it was just a compromise from the moment we decided to leave me out on track.”
Gasly stressed that the team has to make significant progress: “This year it’s 13 points. Since January, we’ve been telling that the car was completely out of the window.
“We’ve managed at times to get a P9/P10, but then we need next year to clearly make a big step forward, not even in the midfield, the goal was to try to get close to the top three.
“We drifted away from the midfield and drifted back, actually, so just need to make sure we put ourselves in a much better position.”
