Pierre Gasly said that Alpine maximised everything they could as a team, but that their car just wasn’t good enough as he qualified 17th for the 2023 Italian Grand Prix.
Both of the Enstone cars suffered Q1 exits, representing a stark contrast from the Dutch GP, where they recorded a second podium of the season with Gasly in P3.
Alpine have the least power out of the four suppliers on the grid, and owing to the demands of Monza, that weakness was laid bare for all to see in qualifying, which is something Gasly alluded to.
“When we got here on Monday, we knew it will be the toughest weekend of the year with all these long straights,” Gasly said to the media, including Total-Motorsport.com.
“It’s clearly been the case and we expected to be out in Q1.
“I think hard tyre is probably the worst,” Gasly continued. “I felt I was really happy with the car on softs, pretty happy on mediums but with the hard, corner balance has been worse and not going in the right direction for our car.
“But we looked at the GPS and it’s very clear where we are losing. We knew that maximized everything we could, but the package doesn’t suit the layout.
“I think we will have to analyse and review and come with a better solution for next year.”
Not down to new quali format
Gasly further noted that the trial qualifying format Formula 1 introduced in 2023 did little to help them as they struggled on the hard tyre.
Drivers are required to run the hard compound in Q1, medium in Q2 and soft in Q3, presenting a disadvantage to cars that struggle with tyre warm-up as F1 bids to reduce its carbon footprint.
But the format received some criticism, despite success in Hungary, for artificially influencing the competition during qualifying weekends.
“I kind of like the fact that you put a bit more unpredictability into it,” Gasly added to media, including Total-Motorsport.com. “But at the same time, what I don’t like is you end up having four sets of tyres in practice instead of six so you are not really doing representative lap times.
“But ultimately, this weekend, this wasn’t the problem, the speed that we liked.”
