Pierre Gasly, Red Bull, Hungaroring, 2019

Gasly says he didn’t have pace to challenge Verstappen or Mercedes

2019 Hungarian Grand Prix

Posted on

| Written by and

Pierre Gasly admitted he wasn’t able to get the best out of his tyres after qualifying sixth, over eight tenths of a second slower than his team mate at the Hungaroring.

The Red Bull driver said he couldn’t match the pace of team mate Max Verstappen, who took pole position, or the two Mercedes drivers.

“I struggled quite a bit with the tyres during all qualifying, not really managing to put the lap together,” said Gasly.

“In the end even the Q3 lap I wasn’t happy with it. I lost a lot at the exit of turn one and lost the car as well in turn two. I’d lost three-and-a-half tenths already coming up to turn four. So it wasn’t a clean lap at all.

“For sure [I’m] not really happy with my lap because I think I had the pace to fight with the Ferraris, not with Max and Mercedes, but at least with the Ferraris.”

Gasly at least managed to progress through Q2 using the harder medium compound tyres, which should aid his race strategy. He said he did not think about switching to the soft tyres after a slow initial run on the mediums.

“I knew after the first run I wanted to put the medium again because I knew doing a better lap and managing to get the tyres properly I had the pace to go through. We made it through still. [But] it wasn’t great and I struggled a bit with the tyres.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2019 F1 season

Browse all 2019 F1 season articles

28 comments on “Gasly says he didn’t have pace to challenge Verstappen or Mercedes”

  1. Today Max was in a devastating form. His final lap was jaw-dropping. Gasly must overtake one Ferrari car tomorrow otherwise this GP for him would go down as “mediocre”.

    1. You’re too kind to him.

      1. wowww man, I wasn’t able to watch Quali today, so I thought I’s go on my favorite website and read some reports, some fun comments, but like everywhere I look, every thread, it’s you being just a wonderfull bunch of salty negative internet trollyness , amazing …..

    2. Gasly must overtake one Ferrari car

      “Must”? Just stay in range, and the Ferrari pit wall will take care of the rest ;)

      1. Even Ferrari drivers will do him favour if he stays within range. No need to wait for Ferrari pit wall.

      2. Indeed, Phylyp! Red Bull pit crew is outstanding this year, so it really makes Gasly’s task a lot easier. So, if Gasly will not be able to stay with a Ferrari car on this circuit then Dr. Marko will be very upset.

    3. Too bad Alonso destroyed any odds of being allowed to drive for Red Bull due to his comments towards Honda when he was racing in McLaren. If Honda wants to win more races , kind of like Mercedes has done in the near past, and win the Constructors’ championship , then they need a driver like Alonso in the other car. Fast,reliable, mistake free and consistent. Gasly was out qualified by almost a second by his team mate in the other/identical car. They could have been fighting for second in the constructor’s championship with Ferrari and perhaps having surpassed them.

  2. F1oSaurus (@)
    3rd August 2019, 17:09

    Good to know

  3. I rather feel bad for the guy, sat there watching the inevitable celebrations of pole and knowing you weren’t capable of getting anywhere close as that must cripple his confidence as badly as seeing the gulf of time between him and Verstappen – let alone having seen him already take two race wins. I hope he’s got the strength to come back from the scale of defeat he’s had over this year as mentally this must take a severe toll on him.

    1. I wonder how a team like Red Bull can’t seem to help him find what he needs to make those tyres work for him on their car @rocketpanda

      I mean, sure, there’s probably something he might do better, but they are a rather experienced, clever and resourceful team, who clearly found and fixed most of the issues the car had at the start of the season. For one of their drivers, at least.

      Are they just not bothering, or is the driver-management so lame that they aren’t able to provide both drivers with good tech advice on how to improve somehow? (like to some extent, when Kvyat was on the path out of the door …).

  4. Gasly your response should be kept as concise as possible, and never, ever, mention your teammate’s performance, that’s embarrassing for you. How can he say he didn’t have the pace to match his teammate, and not burst into tears? He makes Max appear to be a force. It’s like Max gets into the car with 100hp in his pocket, and he lost his.

    Gasly: “I was slow” and walk off… that’s his pr for the remainder of this miserable season.

  5. Today was another bad result for Gasly. I don’t think he is the same caliber as verstappen or Leclerc but he is currently seriously underperforming. I believe that his problem is that his driving style is quite different from Verstappen and he is unable to adapt. The Car is largely designed en developed with Verstappen in mind and at this stage in the season Gasly has lost the credit to demand developments that suit his own. I hope he wil find a sloution but it looks quite bleak.

  6. Its so hard to judge these Red Bull drivers. Is Max really that good or is Gassly so poor? Wish Ric had stayed at RB, at least he’s a known quality so could have told us which it is.

    1. Is Max really that good or is Gassly so poor?

      Yes.

      1. Max is that fast.

        1. I meant both :)

    2. Reality is Max quite had the overhand on Ricciardo (formerly known as ‘quali beast’) as well.
      Francly Max got beaten 3 times on true pace last season..
      – Baku by 0.083 sec, Dan enjoyed a good tow
      – Mexico by 0.026 sec… due to poor engine braking
      – Abu Dhabi by greater margin cause Max got is wrong

      1. F1oSaurus (@)
        4th August 2019, 0:27

        Actually over the whole period together Ricciardo qualified in front 38 times and Verstappen in front was also 38 times. So.

    3. @ivan-vinitskyy, well, the picture is complicated by questions over whether the two drivers are necessarily getting equal treatment within the team, as I believe that Auto Motor und Sport has reported that there have been occasions when Gasly has had to run older specification parts than Verstappen this season.

      It has also been pointed out that, when Gasly joined Red Bull, most of the mechanics and engineers that were allocated to his side of the garage were the less experienced staff within the team, with the more experienced staff all being transferred into Max’s engineering crew – that less experienced crew might be compounding a number of the set up problems Gasly has had this season.

      1. I did read that first bit, but didn’t realise the last bit – have to say, that answers my wonder above – so yes, their management is seemingly really only able to give one guy the full top team treatment.

        I suppose that also answers ‘how would Ricciardo feel after this Quali’ – bad because Renault is also not showing up great, but knowing he’d likely be with the Gasly team/car, so not too sorry in that respect.

        1. That last oart seems strange. Last year they were perfectly capable of manning to teams of engineers and mechanica, not many key persons left Red Bull so how on earth can jt be that the the difference between the two engineering teams is this big now?

          1. @mosquito, you may find it surprising, but back when Marko talked about Gasly having to use Verstappen’s race set up, he confirmed that the team of engineers that Gasly is working with are the less experienced members of Red Bull.

            It’s not so much of a case of Red Bull being unable to provide a set up which has two teams with a more balanced split of experience between them, as they have been able to do that before. This looks like a conscious decision of the team to ensure that the majority of their most experienced and most highly rated engineers are allocated to Verstappen, even though allocating less experienced members of staff to a less experienced driver would surely create the risk of the sorts of set up problems Gasly was having in the earlier part of this season.

  7. It’s sad to know Max is up against Mercedes on his own. It would be so much easier for him if he had a competent teammate.

  8. Does he ever had it ?

  9. …I think I had the pace to fight with the Ferraris…

    I guess this means you need to do more homework. Maybe then you’ll have the pace to take the race to them.

  10. Imagine if gasly was teammates to kubica, Robert would be doing okay.

  11. Its pretty much over for him, unless by miracle he starts matching Ver for the rest of the season.

    Red Bull says they won’t replace him before the end of season. I think this translates to – they no longer want him, even sent back to Toro. They’d rather see out his contract and let him go nice a clean, then promote Kvyat or Albon.

Comments are closed.