Tost says it’s ‘100% confirmed’ that Gasly will race for AlphaTauri in 2023

AlphaTauri Team Principal Franz Tost has seemingly put an end to the speculation regarding his driver Pierre Gasly’s future, confirming that the French racer will be driving for the Italian outfit in 2023.

Gasly has been at AlphaTauri since halfway through the 2019 season, after his tenure as a Red Bull driver lasted all but 12 races. However, despite impressing since his return to the team, Gasly’s hopes of heading back to Red Bull were dashed after it was announced that Sergio Perez had signed a new two-year contract to stay with the team.

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Despite calling Perez’s contract extension “logical,” Gasly made it clear that he planned to talk to Dr Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s motorsport advisor, about his future, leading to speculation that he might look to move on to fresh pastures next season.

But speaking ahead of Saturday’s action in Montreal, Tost said it was “100% confirmed” that the 2020 Italian Grand Prix race winner will be back behind the wheel of an AlphaTauri next season.

“He [Gasly] will be a driver of us, of Scuderia AlphaTauri in 2023,” said Tost. “It is 100% confirmed… He has a valid contract, there’s nothing to say more.”

Gasly comes into the Canadian Grand Prix fresh off a fifth-place finish at last weekend's race in Baku – his first top-10 finish since the Australian Grand Prix. But Tost believes his lack of points this season has been due to reliability issues, with the Austrian making it clear that his team had to do a better job of giving Gasly a car to allow him to compete closer to the front of the grid.

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“Pierre has also improved a lot; I must say he is showing a fantastic performance,” said Tost. “Unfortunately, at the beginning of the season we had a lot of reliability issues, for example in Bahrain, when the battery caught fire, and there were some other reliability issues. It was not his fault, it was coming from the team.

“And I’m really happy now that at least in Baku, he could show how good he is and I hope that we will provide him with a competitive car for the rest of the season, because Pierre has the ability to be in front and it’s just in the hands of the team to give him a really good competitive car.”