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Pierre Gasly did not have a great first day in Hungary. The French driver could only muster times that were 13th and 15th fastest in the two sessions, and the car appeared to be a handful for both AlphaTauri drivers.
Speaking to the media at the end of the day, Pierre Gasly admitted that he would not mind the rain that is forecast during qualifying. Instead, he'd welcome it.
Gasly said:
“I was pretty happy with my lap and managed to put a good one together in FP2. In terms of performance, we are not there yet. We are sliding too much, so we will have to see what we can change by tomorrow to be faster. There isn’t a massive issue with the balance, and I felt like I was really on the limit, putting a clean lap together, but the time does not seem to reflect that, so we will need to analyse it tonight.”
He further said:
“Based on the forecast it will be wet tomorrow for Qualifying, which are conditions I enjoy driving in. Hopefully we find some solutions to improve the car, but a bit of rain wouldn’t be a bad thing for us.”
AlphaTuari's chief race engineer Jonathan Eddolls also admitted that the performance the car showed in the hands of Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda was not in line with what the team had expected this weekend. Eddolls said:
“The performance we have shown today is not in line with our expectations, so we have a lot of work to do tonight. Tomorrow there are some questions marks over the weather, which means this could be the last dry running before the race. In any case, we will keep pushing to understand the limitations and try to make improvements for the rest of the weekend.”
It will be interesting to see if the team can turn things around before the qualifying session on Saturday.
Pierre Gasly's teammate: Today feels like a step-back since France
Pierre Gasly's teammate Yuki Tsunoda had similar feelings about the day and felt that the team had taken a step back from where it was in the last race in France. At Circuit Paul Ricard, Yuki Tsunoda was able to reach Q3, but this weekend the car does not seem to have the speed to replicate such a performance. He said:
“Today feels like quite a step-back since France, where the car was performing quite well. Here in Hungary, the balance of the car is not ideal, I’m really struggling with it a lot, so we need to go away with the engineers tonight and find out what the issue is, so we can improve for tomorrow.”
He further said:
“It’s looking like it’ll rain for Quali, I’m not quite sure how I feel about that yet, it really depends on what we’re able to learn overnight and how much more pace we can find in FP3.”
With both Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda unhappy with the car's performance, it will be interesting to see what AlphaTauri can do to turn things around.
