Pierre Gasly, Alpine, Monza, 2023

Gasly wants “more rounded package” from Alpine for ’24

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In the round-up: Pierre Gasly says that he wants next year’s Alpine to be less peaky than its predecessor

In brief

Gasly wants “more rounded package” from Alpine for ’24

Alpine driver Pierre Gasly says he wants a car that works more consistently across all tracks next season.

Gasly and team mate Esteban Ocon endured their most difficult round of the season last weekend in Monza, with Gasly finishing well outside the points in 15th and Ocon retiring from the race. Asked where he expected Alpine to be strong in the remaining races, Gasly suggested next weekend at Singapore.

“I think we will have another update coming quite soon, so we’ll have to see,” Gasly said. “But I think Singapore could be one, but they took out some corners which doesn’t really go in the direction that we’d like.

“Mexico potentially is another one, so we’ll see. Obviously we’ll give it our best every single weekend, but it’s a clear trend in terms of the type of track where we get more or less competitive. I think that’s something we need to work on for next year to just have a more rounded package which works everywhere.”

Toyota fastest in Fuji practice

Toyota set the pace in practice for the Six Hours of Fuji on Friday with the number eight car leading its sister car.

Sebastien Buemi’s time of a 1’29.523 was almost six tenths faster than Kamui Kobayashi’s fastest lap in the number seven car. The number three JOTA Porsche was third-fastest ahead of the number 51 Ferrari, the number 5 Porsche Penske and the second Ferrari in sixth.

Qualifying for the penultimate WEC round of the season will take place later this morning.

Lotterer retires from single-seater racing

Andre Lotterer has announced his retirement from all single-seater racing to focus on competing in hypercars in the World Endurance Championship.

Lotterer has raced in Champ Car, Super Formula and even made a single grand prix start at the 2014 Belgian Grand Prix for Caterham. Most recently, he has been racing in Formula E, joining Andretti from Porsche this year. But while team mate Jake Dennis won the championship with two race victories, Lotterer finished well down in 18th place in the standings.

“It’s time for me to close my 26 year-long chapter in formula racing,” Lotterer said in a post on social media. I’ve decided to no longer take part in the Formula E world championship in order to fully concentrate on my challenge with Porsche Penske Motorsport at Le Mans (for the fourth time) and in the FIA WEC.”

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Comment of the day

With the second part of our exclusive interview with world champion Max Verstappen, SjaakFoo says Verstappen’s achievements are down to sheer hard work and determination…

I think it mostly goes to show that there’s no mythical ‘talent’ that makes you the best at things. Sure, there are perhaps some genetics that make you predisposed to be better at certain tasks (or worse), like eye-hand-coordination. But when people talk about Max having so much “raw talent” I always shake my head because it sounds to me like all you’re doing by saying it like that is diminishing the amount of effort it must’ve taken him to get to that level and stay there. He didn’t just wake up a multiple F1 champion one day, after all. Neither did Lewis Hamilton or Michael Schumacher or any of them.

Same goes for many athletes inside and out of motorsport. Most of the top household names have similar stories of dedicating their lives from early youth to their craft, they worked for that stuff.
SjaakFoo

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Mark Hitchcock and Prashanth Bhat!

On this day in motorsport

  • On this day in 1973 Jackie Stewart won his third and final world championship title at the Italian Grand Prix

Author information

Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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6 comments on “Gasly wants “more rounded package” from Alpine for ’24”

  1. Re COTD
    I know almost nothing about Max, but attributing his success to hard work is much more credible than it is to shear luck.

    1. notagrumpyfan
      9th September 2023, 8:21

      Helmut Marko would attribute it to him being born in Northern Europe.

      PS I know
      PPS I’ll show myself out

  2. Coventry Climax
    9th September 2023, 0:34

    If that’s COTD, then I’ll repeat my reply to that:

    goes to show that there’s no mythical “talent” that makes you the best at things

    The word ‘talent’ is also applied in the (insanely competitive) world of musicians, a world I spent many years in.
    An internal clock, sense of rythm, a fabulous hearing of tone, intervals and timbre, outstanding locomotion, a quick mind; these are all aspects, but certainly not all of them, that make up ‘talent’.
    Some musicians have a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ that makes them great. Because of the “I don’t know what”, that makes it hard to explain and describe, but the words ‘magic talent’ come close.
    Believe me, without talent, a musician can put in 24hrs of practice for 365 days a year and many years in a row, and still never get anywhere all the same.
    The other way round, a massive amount of talent and no practice at all, gets you at that exact same location; nowhere.

    Fortunately, most people without talent are wise enough to not try and waste serious effort on it.

    Unfortunately, some not recognising they are without talent still seriously try – and end up sour because the effort they put in doesn’t bring them the success others get with that same amount of effort.

    Then there’s the occasional musician that has the talent and the dedication, and those are unbeatable and go down in history.

    1. Yes, I was very surprised to see this one made it to COTD. Your view on talent in yesterday’s reply on that comment was much more sophisticated.

    2. Then there’s the occasional musician that has the talent and the dedication

      There’s also the sub-set of those that never make the breakthrough to the wider public due to the overwhelming noise promoting lesser talents who happen to: fit the promoter’s world view, be easier to exploit, …

  3. Well they can make the car plumper, no problem there Pierre.

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