Although he hasn’t featured in Q3 since Baku, Pierre Gasly says he hopes AlphaTauri’s French Grand Prix upgrades will put him in the “fight for pole position”.
Gasly has been a frustrated man of late as AlphaTauri delayed updating the AT03, the team falling out of sync with its midfield rivals.
That resulted in a run of three point-less Sundays, the Frenchman’s disappointment growing with each passing week.
This weekend, after the “disaster” that was Austria, Gasly has an updated AT03 at his disposal, the team introducing a revised floor and new bodywork.
He’s hoping that such is the step forward he could be fighting for pole position at his home race, or at the very least mixing it up with Red Bull and Mercedes.
“Hopefully we can fight for pole position, we’ll see about that,” said the 26-year-old.
“I mean, if we can fight with these two guys on my right [Perez and Hamilton], I’ll be happy. That’s the target.”
El Alpha Tauri para el #FrenchGP
The Alpha Tauri ready for the French GP. pic.twitter.com/iwWKdAetxU
— Albert Fabrega (@AlbertFabrega) July 21, 2022
Realistically, though, Gasly’s best qualifying of this season was in Baku where he was P6 so a top-six result alone would be a step in the right direction.
“I don’t think we are missing much,” he said, “but it’s extremely tight in the midfield and two or three tenths can move you up and down like seven or eight positions at the moment.
“We’ve just being slowly sliding towards the back of the midfield in the last couple of races and hopefully these upgrades can put us back in the fight and boost this important weekend personally on my side.
“I’m extremely looking forward to see what it brings in what we were going to be able to achieve.”
Gasly followed up his best qualifying with a best grand prix result, P5 at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
That, though, was the last time he scored a point.
“It’s not really luck,” he said. “We just need to be competitive.
“And we’ve been dead slow in the last couple of races and we’ve just got to be honest with our performance, it hasn’t been strong enough.
“And we desperately needed this upgrade and now it’s coming this weekend. And hopefully it can turn things around for our season.”
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