Scuderia Alpha Tauri’s Pierre Gasly says he believes that the Italian team can be pleased with their performance in qualifying for Sunday’s United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin Texas as the Frenchman qualified in ninth place but moves up to eighth place following Valtteri Bottas’ engine penalty.
Speaking following the action Gasly said:
“I think we can be pleased today, we’ve got the four top teams ahead of us, so we’re starting in a good position. Friday was slightly harder than we were expecting but we’ve made some good improvements for today, and with Valtteri’s penalty we’ll be in P8. It’s good that we managed to qualify with the Mediums, to give ourselves the best option tomorrow, but I think it’s going to be very tight here with the tyres, as this track is so tough on them. We’ve got lots of strategy choices available for us, so we’ll need to look at all the possibilities tonight and choose the best option for tomorrow.
Yuki Tsunoda who is making his first United States Grand Prix start on Sunday did a great job to qualify inside the top ten in tenth place but starts ninth after penalties.
I’m quite happy with today, especially with the step up we’ve taken from FP3. I thought with the pace that we had during the earlier session it was even going to be hard for us to get through Q2, so overall it’s been a good day. It’s my first time in Austin, so I just needed to make progress this weekend and build-up the pace. I’ve still got to find some time to my team-mate and there are some improvements I can still make, but it’s good to be starting in the top 10. The team have made lots of changes to the car across the weekend, which have helped a lot, so I want to say a big thank you to all the engineers and mechanics
Jody Egginton (Technical Director) said:
“With the performance of the car not where we wanted it to be yesterday, the team have had quite a lot of work to do to understand how best to address the balance issues. However, with the car working much better today, and both cars making it through to Q3, it’s fair to say the changes made overnight have been effective and we are well placed for the race tomorrow. Pierre’s Qualifying has gone pretty much to plan, meaning he will start the race on the medium tyre whilst Yuki has also made it through, although he will start on the soft tyre. Having both cars starting in the top 10, ahead of a number of our closest rivals, does provide us with a few more options in our fight for points tomorrow and our battle for fifth in the Constructors Championship.”