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Red Bull team principal Christian Horner believes Pierre Gasly enjoyed his strongest weekend of the year in Baku.
The Frenchman was forced to start the Grand Prix from the pit lane after he breached rules regarding being called to the FIA weigh bridge during the second free practice session.
However, Gasly fought his way through the pack and was running in P6 on lap 40 before he dropped out with an engine issue.
"Whilst he doesn’t have the result on paper I think he’s pretty happy with his weekend," Horner said.
"In Q1 he was quick, Friday he was quick, he’s driven a good race and should have been an easy P6 today from the pit lane which is a really strong drive.
"I think even more encouragingly than that his pace, certainly compared to a Ferrari on the same strategy, he was definitely quicker than. So I think a lot of positives for Pierre out of this weekend."
Gasly struggled at the opening two races of the year, competing with the midfield pack before making improvements in China.
However, he remained far off the pace of teammate Max Verstappen in Shanghai, but Horner believes the confidence from the third round of the championship is carrying over.
"You could see it. I think the confidence that came out of China came into Azerbaijan and I think even though he doesn’t have the result to show it he knows it’s been a much stronger weekend for him," Horner added.
After four rounds, Gasly sits in seventh place in the world championship, tied on 13 points with Sergio Perez and Kimi Raikkonen.
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G. Zhou
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Replies (4)
Login to replycalle.itw
Posts: 8,527
Certainly, it was a pretty impressive pace, but he also had equally impressive bad luck sadly. It was just not meant to be this weekend. I just hope he'll have more impressive weekends with less impressive bad luck, but time will tell. Still not convinced.
ajpennypacker
Posts: 2,475
Really? I still don't think he did that great. The Red Bull was about as fast as Ferrari. Should we be surprised that Gasly cut through the field?
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
About as fast, but was still lacking compared to them on the straights, so overtaking wasn't quite as easy for them, even if they still seemed to do pretty well. Bear in mind, I'm not saying it was Max level pace, it wasn't, but he had a much better weekend as a whole compared to earlier GPs, and he did nevertheless manage to carve through the field pretty well.
f1ski
Posts: 726
I would say that Gasly was running a different engine map from verstappen and was a sacrificial lamb for rbr. His performance was very good.