Alpine hid its true potential in testing at Sakhir by not working mushy tyres or low gas, however Gasly picked up the tempo in second apply, when he was an encouraging seventh.
Nevertheless, whereas team-mate Esteban Ocon progressed to Q3 and earned ninth place on the grid, Gasly fought understeer and traction points and was slowest of all in Q1.
“It is clearly a one-off,” he stated when requested by Autosport what had gone flawed. “I do not absolutely have the solutions now.
“However I regarded for extra entrance the entire weekend, and struggled with understeer. I do not know why, it was simply means too excessive for the circumstances, and was a bit everywhere on all of the exits.
“I used to be very comfy all by means of apply. I used to be simply fine-tuning from session to session. However the common automotive stability has been all the time the identical each single time I’ve jumped in that automotive.
“In quali you sort of go for it. And all of the references or expectations that I constructed up by means of the weekend simply disappeared, and it was very completely different by way of automotive stability. I simply did not put the lap collectively and it is a disgrace.
“We’ll look to know what’s occurred, clearly not the perfect begin, however I do know there’s far more based mostly on what we have confirmed and simply want to know a bit of bit why I wasn’t capable of extract it right now and deal with tomorrow.
“I am assured there’s far more in it than clearly what we present right now [Saturday].”
Pierre Gasly, Alpine A523
Picture by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Requested if there was a problem with tyre warm-up, he stated: “It wasn’t best on the out-lap. And I assume everyone can just about say the identical. So on the finish, you are searching for small particulars. I am not going in charge the out-lap, it was only a poor lap and issues simply did not click on.
“It was primarily like simply the traction, could not actually get out of the opposite corners, and it is simply very reverse automotive stability than what I had in apply.
“I do not actually have the solutions, however we’ll look into it later right now and likewise the weekend, however now we have to deal with the race.”
Gasly admitted he was stunned by the velocity of some the vehicles that stored him in 20th and final.
“We positively did not count on these guys to point out that a lot tempo,” he famous.
“However I imply, for now, it is primarily ourselves. It is just about the primary time that we went all out, and simply the automotive behaved very in a different way to no matter I’ve skilled earlier than.”
