Gasly has “the best feeling I’ve ever had going into a season” after first Alpine run · RaceFans

Pierre Gasly is in high spirits as he embarks on his first season as an Alpine driver, saying he has never felt better ahead of a new championship.

The 27-year-old will make his 109th grand prix start when the new season begins next weekend. A dozen of those starts came during his brief tenure at Red Bull in 2019, which started unpromisingly when he suffered a crash during pre-season testing.

The remainder came at AlphaTauri (previously known as Toro Rosso), who he moved on from at the end of last year. He tested Alpine’s 2022 car at Yas Marina at the end of last season, and was able to compare it to their latest machine after running the first half of today’s test for his new team.

“It’s the best feeling I’ve ever going into a season, that’s for sure,” he said in response to a question from RaceFans in Bahrain. “I was definitely excited to jump in the car and from the first feeling I get pretty happy, pretty pleased.

“We managed to run through most of our program. The car reacts well. It’s obviously a lot of new parameters and new things to learn for me with the team change and new engineers, new car, new environment, new ways. Even sitting in the driver room, things are slightly different.

“So everything is new and I need to kind of get used to that new environment. But so far I’ve been really happy with how the team welcomed me and how the whole preparation went over winter ahead of this new season.”

Alpine has high hopes for its A523, which is lighter than its predecessor and features revisions aimed at improving its efficiency and reliability. Gasly says it’s too soon to draw firm conclusions on how successful they’ve been.

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“It’s still quite early to compare because obviously [it’s] different tracks. This morning we didn’t look really for performance, mainly to do sustainable laps and try to get a read on the big picture on the car, how it works and how it functions and spot directions and areas, weaknesses to work on.”

However Gasly has a positive and clear first impression of the A523. “I’m pretty happy because it was very obvious to me sort of what car balance I want and how I want to improve the car and in which direction and what where this trend as well. So that’s always good.

“The car reacts well to what we changed in the car. It’s always a good sign that…