Finally freed from the Red Bull ecosystem to pursue a new lease of life in Formula 1, Pierre Gasly arrived at Alpine hungry to prove that he was an upgrade from Oscar Piastri, who was originally supposed to occupy his seat.
A change of team brought with it new opportunities as well as a new team mate – none other than Esteban Ocon a driver with whom he shared a tumultuous history with. But Gasly arrived at Alpine with a cloud hanging over him.
Sitting on 10 penalty points following a series of incidents over 2022, Gasly was sitting on the precipice of a race ban. Just one significant incident over the first eight rounds could have earned him the two points that would have left him on the sidelines for a weekend as the first driver in F1 history to miss a race under the superlicence penalty points system introduced in 2014.
Thankfully, for Gasly and his team, he successfully navigated his way through to June without copping a ban, avoiding an awkward opening to his career as an Alpine driver. In fact, it was a fairly promising first few months at Enstone for Gasly. Even in his first race for the team in Bahrain, while Ocon suffered an embarrassing evening with multiple penalties, Gasly drove from the very back of the grid up to ninth at the finish and would have even scored the bonus point for fastest lap had it not been for Zhou Guanyu sniping it from him in the final laps.
He followed Ocon throughout the race in Saudi Arabia to claim a second successive ninth place finish. He should have scored the next round in Melbourne, sitting as high as fifth for the second red flag restart. But when he ran wide at turn one and rejoined the track, he failed to realise that Ocon was there in his blind spot and drifted into his team mate, sending both into the wall and out of the race, robbing his team of a potential haul of points.
While Melbourne may have ended in heartbreak, his weekend in Baku was one to forget. He lost crucial practice time over the sole hour of running when his car caught fire, then he crashed in qualifying trying to find enough time to reach Q2. From 19th on the grid, he could only make his way up to finish in 14th place.
He did a lot to help redeem himself for his handful of early season mishaps in Miami. He scored a top five start in qualifying with help from the session ending under red flag and finished ahead of Ocon in eighth for his third top ten result over his first five grands prix for his new…
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