Pierre Gasly has called 2023 his unluckiest year in F1, as his Alpine team has fallen short of expectations. Gasly joined the Enstone-based squad this year after six seasons within the Red Bull stable, with hopes high at Alpine of consolidating last year's fourth-place finish in the Constructors' Championship and closing the gap to the top three teams. However, that has not materialised, with Alpine currently sitting a disappointed sixth in the 2023 standings, having been overtaken in recent races by a resurgent McLaren side. Aside from teammate Esteban Ocon's third place at Monaco, results have been thin on the ground, and the two Frenchmen have suffered the ignominy of colliding with each other on two occasions this season. There has also been considerable upheaval behind the scenes, with erstwhile CEO Laurent Rossi, Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer and Sporting Director Alan Permane all having departed Alpine in recent weeks.
Gasly rues "missed opportunities"
Speaking to media including RacingNews365.com , Gasly was open about the fact that Alpine had not hit their targets for the season. "I think, overall, we've been probably the most unluckyI've been in Formula 1 compared to all other seasons," said the Frenchman. "There were a couple of missed opportunities, which had asort of snowball effect and a pretty big impact on the final results, soobviously it doesn't reflect the full potential of the package. "But, on the other side, we haven't been as competitive aswhat we had targeted at the start of the year. "Alpine finished quite strong in fourth position [in 2022],and we started this year behind Aston, so as the fifth-best team. "Then McLaren had better development than we havehad so far, so we dropped to sixth, and it's obviously not the target for theseason. "It would be a lie to say that we matched expectations, butwe still have half a year to go and there's still quite a lot of stuff in thepipeline in terms of developments. "It's not going to turn the full season around, but I'mdefinitely hopeful that we can show better form in the second part of theyear."
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