Pierre Gasly endured a tough Belgian Grand Prix, finishing in a disappointing 13th place due to various issues with his car and race strategy that left the Alpine charger “very not happy”.
Starting from P12, Gasly found himself trapped in a DRS train, a frustrating procession that eventually saw him cross the line in P14, a position elevated to P13 only by the disqualification of race winner George Russell.
The result capped another challenging weekend for the French driver, who has been grappling with a series of setbacks in recent races.
“Very not happy, very not happy,” said Gasly. “We had an engine problem the whole afternoon, losing seven tenths down the straights every lap, engine temperature issue, steering isn’t straight the whole race, we missed the right strategy... We just did too many mistakes.
Gasly’s pain at Spa was compounded by the difficulties of the preceding races. A DNF in Hungary and a DNS at Silverstone had already left extremely discontented.
“The last three weekends have been absolutely frustrating,” he admitted.
“We are not on top of what we should be, basically, and I know the guys can do a lot better than that. It’s been a tough start of the year, then we scored roughly 10 points as a team.
“I want us to do a lot better than that, so I think it’s important we regroup together and we make sure the second part of the year is better.”
For team and driver, Formula 1’s summer break looms as a chance to reset, to analyze, and to rectify.
“I think it will be important,” Gasly commented. “I think right now it’s important we sit down and we look at ourselves objectively and what we’ve got to improve, and make clear actions on that.
“Very disappointed with today because there was definitely better to do.”
While Gasly was mired in disappointment, his teammate Esteban Ocon managed to salvage something from the weekend.
A solid qualifying put him in P9, and despite feeling the race could have been optimized for a higher finish, he ultimately secured two points thanks to Russell's penalty.
“Happy with the car pace,” said the future Haas driver. “I think we had much more pace than we usually have.
“We were able to fight, to get some overtaking done and look ahead, not behind, which was great obviously.
“But unfortunately we didn’t optimise the result, we didn’t optimise where we should have finished. We should have got at least eighth or ninth today, but unfortunately there’s a lot of things that we need to review on that.
“But we take the positive which is we were on for a good race if we maximised the strategy today.”
As the first half of the season drew to a close in Spa, Ocon reflected on a mixed campaign.
“It’s been a difficult first half of the season, but we improved well since the first part of the race,” said the 27-year-old.
“I’m happy with how we’ve progressed, how we finish as well the first half. We need to do more obviously for that second half, hopefully we can fight for bigger points and better results.
“But today that was a decent race and we should be happy with the car performance.”
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