Pierre Gasly has enjoyed his best finish of 2021, holding off a fast-charging Lewis Hamilton to finish sixth at the FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX DE MONACO 2021.
While it was a fine finish for Gasly, his teammate Yuki Tsunoda had a torrid day further back, unable to move up from his 16th place qualifying position, dicing with other back markers all day.
Pierre Gasly Fights At The Front
After experiencing a return to form since moving back to Scuderia AlphaTauri, Pierre Gasly relished fighting at the front of the Monaco Grand Prix, as he successfully held off Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes.
“It was a pretty long race and obviously with Lewis behind it wasn’t easy, I couldn’t make any mistakes and just had to focus on my own race ahead, but I really enjoyed it. Finishing P6 today is good, I think we can be happy with that result and it’s the best performance of the season so far. The car felt really good in the first stint but once we put the Hards on we really struggled, and it made it pretty difficult on a couple of occasions with Lewis but I’m happy we managed to keep him behind. I believe we took the right strategy today, we had to cover ourselves with Lewis’ pitstop, but it didn’t quite work out. It was very tight between Seb and I going up the hill, I was quite surprised to see him and there was maybe just a finger between our tyres, but it was great racing. The car performed well today, even if I think we could have achieved more and there are definitely some areas we still need to improve in compared to some of the cars we’re fighting against. I’m still pleased with this result though, it was important for us to be back up near the front and getting some big points again was great for the team.”
No Joy For Yuki Tsunoda
Yuki Tsunoda was down on his luck in Monaco, as the Japanese driver failed to make any sort of progress, scrapping with the Williams duo for the minor placings.
“Starting from P16 we knew it wouldn’t be easy. I struggled for grip in the first lap compared to other cars around me and we lost a few positions, after that I was constantly behind cars, despite having strong pace, so wasn’t able to make my way forward. The main thing for me is my Qualifying performance and how I can improve this. I’m going to work hard ahead of the next race so that we can hopefully be in a point scoring position next time out.”
Improvement Shown By Scuderia AlphaTauri
Team boss Franz Tost was delighted with the improvement his team showed in Monaco, and was proud of his teams work to vault Gasly ahead of Hamillton during the pit stops.
“Congratulations to Red Bull Racing, Max Verstappen and Honda for this fantastic victory here in Monaco. It was also nice to see spectators here in the grandstands, which added a good atmosphere for the race. Pierre started the race from sixth position and had a good start, defending well against Hamilton and managed his tyres in a very professional way. We called him in for the pitstop on to the Hards and even if we struggled while bringing them to the right window, he could defend well against Hamilton. As for Yuki, he’s never competed here in any other category, so this was his first race in Monaco, a track which is of course quite a difficult one to learn in a Formula 1 car. After showing a very good performance in FP1 he had a small accident in FP2, but he could continue to grow his confidence around the track during the Saturday morning session. Qualifying was more difficult for him, he lost some time with the weighbridge and wasn’t able to complete an additional lap, which meant he just missed out on Q2 by a small margin. Today he had a clean race and I’m sure he has gained a lot of experience here in Monaco, which will help him in the future. It’s good that we finished P6 as now we’re back where we started the season and I hope that we can have similar performances in the upcoming races.”