“It’s going to suck for everyone,” Pierre Gasly is certain, referring to the tire situation at the Formula 1 race in Le Castellet. Temperatures of more than 30 degrees Celsius are expected again on Sunday, which will present the tires with a tough task. “With a track temperature of 58 degrees, it won’t feel great – no matter which tire you put on.”
The AlphaTauri pilot already got a foretaste of this on Friday. “It was pretty bad,” he says. “And I think it will be the same for everyone else. The tires and the cars will suffer quite a bit on Sunday.”
For Gasly himself, things went pretty well on Friday. In the redesigned AlphaTauri AT03, the Frenchman finished seventh at the home game, and in the first practice session he was even fifth. “In terms of performance, we seem to be back in the top 10,” he says happily. “I’m glad we could find more performance.”
He was also very satisfied with the feeling in the car and how it reacts. “There were a lot of positive signs with the new parts,” says Gasly. “The front axle is a bit sharper and a bit more direct in the corners – especially in the very long corners where we usually struggle with washout and overheating.”
“Now it sticks a little better and I have more control in the car – that’s good. It didn’t really react the way we wanted it to before, but we made a step forward,” he says, praising the team’s work and feeling confident “100 percent” certain that AlphaTauri will be fighting for a place in Q3 tomorrow.
“It’s really good that we have this package for my home race,” he says. “Now we have to work on that and understand what we tested today and then bring it together for tomorrow’s qualifying.”
Tsunoda also praises the “new AlphaTauri”
Teammate Yuki Tsunoda, who finished the day only in 14th place, is also convinced of the new package: “I can definitely feel a bit more downforce in medium-fast and fast corners,” he says. “It was immediately positive.”
On Sunday, it should still depend primarily on what the car does with the tyres. “It didn’t feel great today already. We had a big breakdown and a lot of overheating,” Gasly worries a bit.
“We just have to be smart about how we drive the car and try to anticipate all these problems,” he says. “Then it should be a fun race.”