‘We clearly seem to have made a step’ – Gasly hails Alpine progress after points finish in Mexico

Pierre Gasly believes that Alpine have “clearly made a step” with their car after a strong qualifying performance at the Mexico City Grand Prix was followed by a P10 finish on race day.

After lining up in P8 and making contact with Alex Albon at the start – which was followed by the Williams driver’s subsequent collision with RB’s Yuki Tsunoda – Gasly managed to escape without damage and from there managed to hold onto the final points-paying position, with the Frenchman acknowledging that he could not keep up with the Haas cars ahead.

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Asked post-race how satisfying it was to claim a point following a difficult run of races – with his last points result coming at Zandvoort back in August – Gasly responded: “Yeah, I’m very happy. It’s been a while since we’ve seen that top 10 on Sunday, so very pleased for the team.

“We managed to come from a strong qualifying from yesterday, and Haas today were just too fast and I tried to hang on as much as I could at the start. On the first stint I wasn’t too far but I could see them pulling away, and then on the second stint they were just too competitive.

“I tried to keep that P10 until the end, but we haven’t scored points for a while so it definitely shows some progress from the whole team.”

While Gasly had also made it to Q3 last time out in Austin, he slipped backwards and outside of the points during Sunday’s Grand Prix. In terms of what had been the key to the improved performance this time around, the 28-year-old said: “We clearly seem to have made a step with the car since we brought the upgrades in Austin.

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“We’ve managed to do two Q3s in a row now in the last two weekends. The race in Austin was difficult, today was also quite tricky but at least we managed to finish in the top 10. There is still some work for us, but at least we’re definitely making progress.”

It proved to be a more challenging weekend for Gasly’s team mate Esteban Ocon, the French driver having started from the pit lane after the team opted to change power unit components under parc ferme conditions.

Despite gaining some positions, Ocon ultimately crossed the line in 13th and cut a downbeat figure as he commented afterwards: “A long race this afternoon, I would say.

“A couple of fights, but we are not quick enough to be able to come back from starting last so we ended up 13th – that’s all there was today.”

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Reflecting on if it was disappointing not to be able to get the most out of the package, Ocon continued: “Yeah, [I’m] disappointed from this weekend, from quite a few weekends to be fair. Hopefully we can turn things around.”