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Pierre Gasly said the grip was so poor aboard his upgraded AlphaTauri Formula 1 car that he thought he had a puncture by the end of French Grand Prix qualifying.
Gasly and AlphaTauri arrived in Paul Ricard with big expectations as the team introduced a long-awaited upgrade that could improve the fortunes of a “dead slow” F1 car.
And those high expectations were further fuelled by a strong showing in Friday practice, where Gasly felt he could easily set top 10-worthy times “with some margin”.
That wasn’t the case on Saturday as his struggles in final practice continued into qualifying.
The Frenchman was knocked out of Q1 in 16th place while his team-mate Yuki Tsunoda progressed all the way to Q3 and claimed eighth on the grid.
“Extremely disappointed because yesterday was promising and since this morning I had a completely different feeling with the car,” Gasly said after qualifying.
“In FP3 I was just sliding a lot more, and qualifying was the same, clean laps but just sliding a lot in all the low-speed corners and having no traction.
“I don’t fully understand how we lost so much compared to yesterday.”
The AT03’s key weakness until now has been a lack of aerodynamic load, and therefore grip, in high-speed corners, so Gasly’s sudden loss of competitiveness at low-speed will come as a real surprise to AlphaTauri, which has so far had a relatively strong car in that profile of corner.
But that sliding and lack of grip was particularly evident through Gasly’s final Q1 flying lap.
“Yeah I almost spun, I thought I had a puncture,” Gasly said when The Race asked about his final run.
“I have to check with the guys what exactly happened. Not great at all.
“The last run was definitely the worst but it was just a trend, it seems from this morning, I just struggled a lot with the rear sliding pretty much everywhere.”
Gasly brushed off suggestions that the new upgrade package had caused his difficult qualifying, reiterating his belief that the upgraded car was “great” on Friday.
The team only made small set-up tweaks overnight but Gasly believes he lost half a second in performance.
He says he has “nothing to lose” starting from 14th place on Sunday – following engine penalties sending Carlos Sainz and Kevin Magnussen to the back of the grid – and Gasly believes the race will be “extremely hard” in the hot conditions.
