Gasli: “We had everything in our hands and we threw it away”

Pierre Gasly says the AlphaTauri’s performance was not good enough as it dropped from seventh to tenth at the Singapore Grand Prix.

Starting from seventh, Gasly held the position for the first part of the race, trailing Max Verstappen after the stint, but then returned to the starting position when Fernando Alonso retired.

However, the Frenchman was the only driver in the top 11 to pit on slippery tires when Lewis Hamilton went off the track on lap 33, with most arriving a lap or two later as conditions improved and Gasly fell behind Daniel Ricciardo , Lance Stroll and eventually Sebastian Vettel.

“If you’re not doing a good job, usually I think it’s fair (to say so), just like that,” Gasley said. “I think we didn’t do a good job. We were seventh, ahead of two Aston Martins, we had track position, we had everything in hand and we threw it away because we decided to pit too early.

“And there was no communication, no dialogue, why I don’t quite understand. We took a risk when we didn’t have to. So we pitted, everyone stayed on the track, and we got cut by four cars.

“Obviously I’m very disappointed with the whole team and all of us because we’re down to ninth in the teams’ championship. Daniel was behind us, way behind, didn’t match the track – as we should have done – and took P5. So that’s nine points we’ve lost and nine important points. I’m just sad and I’m not happy with our game.”

Gasly felt the decision to make the pit stop was clearly wrong and says his disappointment is that he was not consulted to be able to express his opinion.

“It was too early (to pit). I don’t understand why we did it… Obviously we’re going to look into it, they have reasons for doing it, but at least we should have had a conversation, and we didn’t.

“I mean, in the position we were in, you’re ahead of your two main rivals, you have track position in Singapore, the conditions are dry, the warm-up will be difficult… I don’t see the point of risking it like that. And we just gave our position.

“Vwhen do we get a chance to kill P5? You know, this year it happened once out of 18 races. So now it’s frustrating because we’re pushing really, really hard and we just didn’t make the right call.”

Presented