Portuguese Grand Prix – After qualifying in the top ten again, Pierre Gasly thanked his team for their overnight efforts to rebuild his car.
Midway through Friday’s FP2 session, Gasly had to stop at the side of the track when his AlphaTauri caught fire. To get everything fixed up and ready for the Frenchman to take out during FP3, the mechanics broke curfew, without repercussion as it was their first of two permitted curfew exemptions, and spent most of the night repairing the car.
Gasly repaid their efforts finishing fourth fastest in the final practice before putting in more strong performances to reach the top-ten shootout.
“The team did an amazing job to get the car ready today,” said Gasly. “They barely slept last night as they had to rebuild the chassis, and everything worked fine, so a big thanks to them for their effort! We were very competitive in FP3, but I’m a bit disappointed with Qualifying because we were fast all weekend.
“We saw that when there is no wind the car is working very well, but when it picks up it becomes more difficult, which was the case in Q2 and Q3. I’m happy with P9 but I think we could have been slightly higher up on the grid.
“It’s a new track to race on tomorrow, the last time we were on a new track in Mugello a lot of things happened, so it will be important that we grab the opportunities that come our way because there might be a few – it should be exciting!”
A dramatic fire ended Pierre Gasly's FP2 in Portimao 🔥#PortugueseGP 🇵🇹 #F1 pic.twitter.com/RLd1jPBFkd
— Formula 1 (@F1) October 23, 2020
Gasly’s teammate, Daniil Kvyat, who finished P13 was not overly happy with his car. The Russian said he didn’t have confidence to drive the car hard as it was moving around on track a lot, but he believes there’s a chance for points in the race.
“It was a difficult Qualifying session,” Kvyat said. “And I don’t think I had much more confidence to push the car more today, it was moving around a lot and it was sensitive to the wind.
“Every time I tried to push a bit more I was going off the line, so I didn’t have much more than that. I haven’t driven in difficult conditions like these in quite a while, I think it will be an interesting and complicated race, so there will be opportunities for us to get into the points again.”
AlphaTauri’s Chief Engineer, Claudio Balestri, added that optimal car balance was hard to find as the track was so slippery on Friday but their work in FP3 helped.
“During Friday practice we were not really able to optimize our cars due to the track being quite green and slippery,” commented Balestri. “The balance was hard to find, so we started today with many unanswered questions. As a result, we planned a very busy FP3 with an intense programme targeted to evaluate different loads and compounds across both sides of the garage to prepare our cars for Quali and the Race in the best possible way.
“Our Qualifying session this afternoon was not an easy one with a lot of traffic, especially in Q1, and an increasing wind throughout Q2 and Q3, but despite these difficulties, we have shown a good level of performance. Our attention now moves on race preparation, expecting it to be not an easy one as it’s the first time Formula 1 races on this track. However, our target remains very clear: to get into the points with both cars.”
