Alpine hid its true potential in testing at Sakhir by not operating tender tyres or low gas, however Gasly picked up the tempo in second observe, when he was an encouraging seventh.
Nonetheless, 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 Motorsport.com what had gone mistaken. “I do not totally have the solutions now.
“However I seemed for extra entrance the entire weekend, and struggled with understeer. I do not know why, it was simply approach too excessive for the situations, and was a bit in every single place on all of the exits.
“I used to be very snug all by observe. I used to be simply fine-tuning from session to session. However the normal automotive stability has been all the time the identical each single time I’ve jumped in that automotive.
“In quali you form of go for it. And all of the references or expectations that I constructed up by 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 grasp 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 grasp a bit bit why I wasn’t in a position to extract it at present and deal with tomorrow.
“I am assured there’s far more in it than clearly what we present at present.”
Pierre Gasly, Alpine A523
Picture by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Requested if there was a difficulty with tyre warm-up, he stated: “It wasn’t excellent within the out-lap. And I assume all people can just about say the identical. So on the finish, you are on the lookout 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 automotive stability than what I had in observe.
“I do not actually have the solutions, however we’ll look into it later at present and likewise the weekend, however now we have to deal with the race.”
Gasly admitted he was shocked by the velocity of some the automobiles that stored him in twentieth and final.
“We undoubtedly did not anticipate these guys to indicate that a lot tempo,” he famous.
“However I imply, for now, it is primarily taking a look at 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.”
