Pierre Gasly admits that his Austrian Grand Prix weekend was a "disaster" from start to finish. Other than managing to qualify in 10th for the Sprint, the Frenchman struggled for pace throughout F1's visit to the Red Bull Ring. He slipped backwards in the Sprint to finish P14 following a first-lap incident with Lewis Hamilton, and race day proved even tougher for Gasly, with two separate time penalties and a lack of speed leading him to end the event down in 15th. "The whole weekend was a disaster, apart from qualifying," Gasly told media, including RacingNews365.com . "But then, we were nowhere in terms of pace. I tried to do everything I can inside the car, but at the moment there's just nothing to do, so I think we desperately need these upgrades on the car to to be able to get any decent results."
How Gasly felt about penalties
To add to his pace struggles, Gasly also had to take two five-second penalties during the race, with one being for exceeding track limits and a second due to the AlphaTauri driver being deemed to have caused a collision with Sebastian Vettel. Gasly was not the only driver to be caught out by track limits, and he has no ill feelings about the punishment. "[It's the] same rule for everyone. I didn't respect it so I got penalised," he said. "[It was] my fault. I saw quite a lot of guys getting the black and white flag. I think it was better in the past without these track limits, but at the end of the day whatever rule they set we've got to respect it." Gasly is also accepting of the penalty he received for his incident with Vettel. "I tried to fight as hard as I can, and I took a penalty so I guess I'm the one to blame," the one-time race winner explained. "At the same time, when you're fighting side-by-side it's always a risk. I think we've seen it in the past and it wasn't intentional. "Fighting for P15, [there was] nothing really exciting there, but I haven't seen the footage so I don't argue the penalty. I guess if they gave it to me that I was the one to blame."
"We can't keep going like this"
Gasly feels that, with the lack of pace hampering both his and teammate Yuki Tsunoda's efforts, no strategy call would have been able to improve the situation. "We just have no pace. You can do whatever you want, any strategy you want, [but] with the speed we have at the moment, we just can't keep going like this," he added. "We need to reset, and we should have some new parts coming. Hopefully they come for France [the next race on the calendar], and we can show a better pace there." With other teams having brought upgrades sooner, Gasly thinks that AlphaTauri have slipped behind because of this. "It's not surprising if you don't have new parts," the driver continued. "At the start of the year, we were fighting with the guys at the front. Now we're finishing 20/30 seconds behind, so we're losing four or five tenths per lap, and that's what we need to find."
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