Pierre Gasly, Red Bull, Red Bull Ring, 2019

Cutting out mistakes “most important” for Gasly

RaceFans Round-up

Posted on

| Written by

In the round-up: Pierre Gasly says he needs to work on minimising his errors after a slip-up during Q3 compromised his starting position for last week’s Austrian Grand Prix.

[dietersinboxpromo]

What they say

I need to learn from it. Everybody does mistakes and it’s not the first time, it’s not my last time. I think what matters in this sport in the end is the one that wins is the one that does the least mistakes of all of us. The main thing is to understand and make sure you don’t do it again. That’s the most important.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Snapshot

Extreme E car
Extreme E car

The Extreme E electric SUV was revealed yesterday by series founder Alejandro Agag and Gil de Ferran at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The Odyssey 21 performed demonstration runs on the hillclimb course at Goodwood House.

Social media

Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Comment of the day

Changes to FIA safety standards have also made it easier for drivers to abuse track limits, says Jamie:

The original purpose of kerbs was to physically enforce track limits, often as a safer alternative to grass. Back in the golden days, kerbs were these raised things – a bit like the sausage kerbs they now sometimes use beyond the normal kerbs.

Now though, thanks to FIA’s strict standardisation of what kerbs have to be (another great idea to make tracks more boring), they are basically an extension of the circuit.
Jamie B

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to John H, Mitz1111, Sebsronnie, Elliot Horwood, Isaac Mwale and John H!

If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is via the contact form or adding to the list here.

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

18 comments on “Cutting out mistakes “most important” for Gasly”

  1. Gasly’s comment the one that wins is the one that does the least mistakes might carry a bit more weight if his teammate hadn’t had the issue at the race start and found himself behind Gasly.

    That shows that Gasly’s starting position was still good enough for a race win with the right driver.

    Gasly’s problem doesn’t seem to be little mistakes that he can learn from and correct, that’s been Verstappen’s story where he used to be error prone and got on top of them to become nearly flawless. Gasly’s problem is that regardless of little flaws, he just doesn’t seem special.

    1. Sadly, I agree. As far as I’m concerned, it’s pretty damning that Max fell behind him at the start & went on to win while he trundled around, seemingly riveted to 7th place. I initially had high hopes for Gasly based on his performance in the Toro Rosso last year, but he looks rather pedestrian compared to Verstappen. Max always manages to be in the fight for a podium while Pierre is busy fighting the mid field. He’s slow in qualifying & slow in the races. Max may have been a bit erratic early in his career but he’s never been this far off the pace.

      1. Aldoid, I am of the opinion that Gasly has never been an exceptional driver, though there probably are also some contextual differences between his time at Toro Rosso and his time now at Red Bull.

        At Toro Rosso, it was fairly clear that Hartley was there simply because Toro Rosso were obliged to have two drivers, and he was the only driver available to Red Bull who had a superlicence. He was never really part of their future plans, and that seems to have been reflected in the level of support that Hartley got, with Hartley being used more as a development driver to help Red Bull get up to speed with the Honda power unit and to test development parts.

        With that in mind, it seems that the majority of the resources of the team were dedicated to supporting his team and were used to help set up his car. The car itself also seems to have had much more benign handling characteristics too, which seem to have been more to his liking.

        At Red Bull, by contrast, it sounds as if Gasly is in the inverse situation to what he had at Toro Rosso. Red Bull appear to have placed the less experienced members of their team on Gasly’s side of the garage – especially his race engineer, whom I believe has very little experience in that role – which is likely to be exacerbating his problems with being unable to set the car up in a way that he likes (especially given the seemingly narrow optimum set up window of the RB15, and the more difficult handling characteristics that car seems to have in general).

        Furthermore, there have been occasions where it seems that Gasly was given older specification parts than Verstappen had, which may also be hindering Gasly as well. In Austria, when Verstappen crashed during the practise sessions, Auto Motor und Sport reported that Red Bull did not have enough spare parts to rebuild Verstappen’s car to the latest specification. According to them, Red Bull stripped Gasly’s car down for parts and then rebuilt his car with older specification parts, with the latest specification parts going on Verstappen’s car instead.

        In some ways, Gasly does seem to remind me a bit of Grosjean – capable of being a fairly fast driver when he is in the right window, but with a slightly narrow performance window and requiring quite a bit of support from his team in order to achieve that maximum performance.

        1. In Austria, when Verstappen crashed during the practise sessions, Auto Motor und Sport reported that Red Bull did not have enough spare parts to rebuild Verstappen’s car to the latest specification. According to them, Red Bull stripped Gasly’s car down for parts and then rebuilt his car with older specification parts, with the latest specification parts going on Verstappen’s car instead.

          They did this to Webber as well as I’m sure we probably all remember. But he still went on to win that race. Not bad for a number 2 driver.

          Gasly remains the only driver on the grid where I can reliably say to myself, that without total and complete mishap for Verstappen, that he will finish several places down on his teammate. The excuses are running thin.

    2. Gasly’s comment the one that wins is the one that does the least mistakes might carry a bit more weight if his teammate hadn’t had the issue at the race start and found himself behind Gasly.
      That shows that Gasly’s starting position was still good enough for a race win with the right driver.

      Very good counterpoint, @philipgb

    3. About to say similar things. Gasly rarely made mistakes. Max is just too good.

      1. Vandoorne too was doing very few mistakes.

    4. @philipgb @Aldoid Same here. He’s one of those drivers who I hope to do well, but sadly, at the moment, I don’t hold too much hope for him, for a big turnaround, which I, of course, hope that would finally happen.

    5. @philipgb agreed.
      His occasional mistakes are far less of a problem than his overall lack of performance in my opinion.

  2. “The modelling industry ‘needs’ more men on the catwalk!!!”

    …Actually it doesn’t…. The sexes are different, they gravitate to different things growing up and that’s perfectly OK!

    Any amazing girl with enough talent will have more than enough support to go right to F1 (possibly even easier than a male)

  3. I find Suzie Wolffs interview to be out of touch with reality. She is the poster child of everything wrong with women in motorsport. While her team management career is a different conversation, and racing career was nothing short of a joke.

    Husband Toto is also a former driver and as shareholder and team principal at Formula One’s Mercedes team has been at the helm of a five-time championship-winning outfit with Lewis Hamilton in the driving seat. For all his accolades though, the question of nepotism Wolff has faced is an insult to her own trailblazing career in motorsport.

    With her total of ZERO wins, she becomes a development driver at the team where her husband is a shareholder and former executive director, and the head of the team that supplies her team with engines, then after that, she becomes an ambassador for his team. Yep, zero nepotism there…..

    When you finish 17th, 20th, 18th, 16th, 13th and 22nd in your six seasons of DTM I don’t think gender is the issue, its just a lack of talent.

    People can point to her lap times at the at the 2014 German Grand Prix but there is only one reason she was doing such short stints, with the other driver left to do all the setup work for that weekend. Its outrageous that we are made to believe she is only 2/10ths of a second slower than the guy who was one corner away from becoming the 2008 WDC on merit and in equal machinery.

    1. There have been studies showing that people are unable to distinguish a lack of pro-women bias from anti-women bias, if they favor certain forms of sexism. It’s one reason why many people who think they fight for gender equality, are actually fighting for a society with special privileges for women, like not being called out on nepotism, when they would do so for men in similar situations.

  4. Doug Webster
    6th July 2019, 4:46

    I was so excited for Gasly but it’s hard to imagine a scenario at this point where he thrives at RB….and that’s the standard…right? You should be thriving to keep a seat at the sharp end of the top serles.

    Also, NBC…Please No.

    1/3 of the broadcast is ads and David Hobbes is confused about who drives what every week. No thanks. It was not good enough. Good guys -and you can feel the passion but I can’t go back.

    1. 1/3 of the broadcast is ads

      Won’t somebody think of the c̶h̶i̶l̶d̶r media moguls?

  5. Regarding Joe Saward’s notebook: Should Spain and Germany be the two to face the ax then it’d mean that Mexico would remain along with Italy and Britain, but let’s wait and see since still nothing’s confirmed for any of these.

  6. Adam (@rocketpanda)
    6th July 2019, 11:16

    It doesn’t appear Gasly is making a lot of overt mistakes though – he just seems slow and doesn’t seem to be able to overtake very well. Perhaps he really isn’t gelling with the car and maybe it takes him a while to really find his feet. Or maybe this is as good as he gets?

    Thing is Red Bull must be aware that if Gasly’s car was scoring points closer to Verstappen’s tally – but still behind him, they’d be considerably closer to Ferrari – if not ahead. Nobody really expected Gasly to beat Verstappen, or even really be on the same pace – but I think everyone expected him to be closer than he is and every race that gap seems to be growing rather than getting smaller.

    1. @rocketpanda As far as I remember in GP2 Gasly had some 1 lap pace but his racecraft was poor. He’s been a bit unlucky at times but almost lost the title with a late charge from an impressive rookie that was Giovinazzi. Vandoorne had a far more impressive tenure and yet was bowed out of F1. If Gasly remains in F1 in 2020 its either he’s improved massively or it will be due to attrition in RB’s pool of young guns. Though Kvyat would make the pair stronger.

    2. Josh (@canadianjosh)
      6th July 2019, 14:14

      I too agree that Gasly from what they show during the races doesn’t appear to be making any mistakes, he just seems slow. From what I’ve seen he has trouble overtaking without DRS and Austria was a good example to that when he was fighting I think a Renault and Norris. I was thinking during that battle that Max would have been licking his chops every corner and would have been by both of them within laps but Gasly seemed very shy and content until he had a good DRS opportunity. To make mistakes you need to be going fast in the first place to make one.

Comments are closed.