Alpine hid its true potential in testing at Sakhir by not operating gentle tyres or low gas, however Gasly picked up the tempo in second observe, 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 mentioned when requested by Motorsport.com what had gone fallacious. “I do not absolutely have the solutions now.
“However I appeared for extra entrance the entire weekend, and struggled with understeer. I do not know why, it was simply method too excessive for the circumstances, and was a bit everywhere on all of the exits.
“I used to be very snug all via observe. I used to be simply fine-tuning from session to session. However the common automobile stability has been at all times the identical each single time I’ve jumped in that automobile.
“In quali you form of go for it. And all of the references or expectations that I constructed up via the weekend simply disappeared, and it was very totally different by way of automobile 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 best begin, however I do know there’s far more based mostly on what we have confirmed and simply want to know somewhat bit why I wasn’t capable of extract it as we speak and deal with tomorrow.
“I am assured there’s far more in it than clearly what we present as we speak.”
Pierre Gasly, Alpine A523
Photograph by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Photographs
Requested if there was a difficulty with tyre warm-up, he mentioned: “It wasn’t best within the out-lap. And I suppose all people can just about say the identical. So on the finish, you are searching for small particulars. I am not going responsible 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 automobile stability than what I had in observe.
“I do not actually have the solutions, however we’ll look into it later as we speak and in addition 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 twentieth and final.
“We positively did not anticipate 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 automobile behaved very in another way to no matter I’ve skilled earlier than.”
