The Alpine F1 Team’s Pierre Gasly had a solid U.S Grand Prix Sprint Race at the Circuit Of The Americas in Austin Texas on Saturday.
Starting the race from ninth place on used Medium tyres, Gasly completed the 19 lap sprint in seventh and in doing so, new team investor, Golfer Rory McIlroy witnessed the team score two points.
Speaking following the action, Gasly said:
I’m really happy today. We had a strong race from ninth, passed Alex [Albon] straight away and then I did a nice move on Oscar [Piastri] for eighth. After that, I had to try to keep up with George [Russell] and Carlos [Sainz] ahead knowing George had a penalty and that I needed to keep a five-second gap. The pace was good in general, even if we had a bit of tyre degradation towards the end. There is definitely some good things for us to analyse from the race today and the two points is a nice bonus. The hard work will continue ahead of tomorrow and we will see how we can put ourselves in the mix for strong points. Right now, I’m pleased with our pace, and I’m fully focused on tomorrow’s race.”
Esteban Ocon started the race from 13th and came home in 11th place.
Speaking following the action he said:
“It’s not been the smoothest of days on our side here in Austin. The Sprint Shootout started strongly and we were comfortably through SQ1. We did not have enough to reach the top ten and we will look into the reasons why as that would have put us in a much stronger position to compete for points in the Sprint Race. We started the Race well, made some positions at the start but, after that, we could not go much further and points were out of reach. We certainly have many things to review and some learnings to take forward for tomorrow. We are in a good position for the race, it will be a long one, and we will do our best to come away with a good result.”