Pierre Gasly feels he deserved a point for his impeccable car control during the Monaco Grand Prix, after completing overtakes on Zhou Gunayu and Daniel Ricciardo. Gasly had shown good speed throughout the weekend before the unfortunate timing of a red flag in qualifying left him starting P17 on race day. This put him in a determined mood, though. "I told the team, 'We're P17, so just be prepared because I have nothing to lose from there," Gasly told media, including RacingNews365.com . During the early stages of the rain-soaked Grand Prix, Gasly was the first of the drivers to make the brave switch to Intermediate tyres, and began working his way up through the field with some breath-taking car control and well-calculated overtakes. And he ended the race well up on where he started, but still one position outside the points as he crossed the line just 0.7 seconds being tenth-placed Sebastian Vettel. “I must say, it was really exciting. I enjoyed it a lot, driving these cars in these conditions and on this track," the Frenchman reflected after the event.
How Gasly's wet-to-dry race unfolded
"I boxed straight away because I didn’t want to stay on the same strategy as the others," he explained, fresh from the cockpit. "We took some risks, we gambled and I'm pleased with our mentality, especially starting from where we were. I had a lot of fun, trying to find different lines, trying to find some space in Monaco between these walls.| But were it not for two AlphaTauri pit-stop mistakes, Gasly says he could have turned 17th into a top 10 finish. "Obviously, I'm a bit sad not to be awarded a point in the end because I felt like I probably deserved it," he continued. "But we lost quite a lot of time in our first pit-stop, six or seven seconds, and about three seconds in our second pit-stop. "That’s 10 seconds of race time that we left which cost us probably a point at the end. “There are a lot of positives to take from the weekend, looking through practice and the race today.”
Gasly: F1 drivers are a lot like artists
On faster tyres, Gasly was able to pull off some incredible overtakes around a very narrow Monaco circuit, and without the use of DRS (Drag Reduction System). He breezed past Zhou before setting up an expert move on Ricciardo in the McLaren. "I was so much faster than these guys [on full Wets], I just needed to calm myself. If the guy is defending well then you have no space on the right and no space on the left but then I had to be creative," he said. "That’s what I tried to do and at the end of the day, F1 drivers are kind of like artists, we need to always find new ideas and I tried to come up with unusual places to overtake and that worked out.”
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