Gasly unhappy with ‘too many mistakes’ in Belgium as he urges Alpine to regroup after ‘frustrating’ run of weekends

Pierre Gasly was left unhappy after finishing the Belgian Grand Prix in 13th place amid a number of issues with his car and strategy, marking the latest in a run of challenging weekends for the Frenchman.

Having lined up in P12 on the grid, Gasly found himself stuck in a DRS train for much of the race and crossed the line in P14, which became P13 following winner George Russell’s disqualification.

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Reflecting on the Grand Prix afterwards, the 28-year-old voiced his frustration at having another difficult event, having recorded a DNF last time out in Hungary and a DNS two weeks earlier at Silverstone.

“Very not happy, very not happy,” said Gasly. “We had an engine problem the whole afternoon, losing seven tenths down the straights every lap, engine temperature issue, steering isn’t straight the whole race, we missed the right strategy... We just do too many mistakes.

“The last three weekends have been absolutely frustrating. We are not on top of what we should be, basically, and I know the guys can do a lot better than that. It’s been a tough start of the year, then we scored roughly 10 points as a team.

“I want us to do a lot better than that, so I think it’s important we regroup together and we make sure the second part of the year is better.”

With that in mind, Gasly is hopeful that the summer break will offer the opportunity to address areas for improvement within the team.

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“I think it will be important,” Gasly commented. “I think right now it’s important we sit down and we look at ourselves objectively and what we’ve got to improve, and make clear actions on that. Very disappointed with today because there was definitely better to do.”

It was a slightly better day for team mate Esteban Ocon, who enjoyed decent pace from P9 on the grid and initially grabbed a point by finishing P10, which became two points after being promoted one place owing to Russell’s aforementioned disqualification.

However, there were still some areas that the French driver felt could have been executed more efficiently.

“[I’m] happy with the car pace, I think we had much more pace than we usually have,” Ocon said after the race. “We were able to fight, to get some overtaking done and look ahead, not behind, which was great obviously.

“But unfortunately we didn’t optimise the result, we didn’t optimise where we should have finished. We should have got at least eighth or ninth today, but unfortunately there’s a lot of things that we need to review on that.

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“But we take the positive which is we were on for a good race if we maximised the strategy today.”

Ocon will now head into his last few races as an Alpine driver prior to his switch to Haas in 2025. Reflecting on how the first half of the campaign has gone, the 27-year-old answered: “It’s been a difficult first half of the season, but we improved well since the first part of the race.

“I’m happy with how we’ve progressed, how we finish as well the first half. We need to do more obviously for that second half, hopefully we can fight for bigger points and better results. But today that was a decent race and we should be happy with the car performance.”