Pierre Gasly raised aloft the victor’s trophy at Monza but six days on at Mugello dropped out of qualifying at the first hurdle.
Gasly, having been towards the front of the midfield throughout practice, was only 16th in Q1 at the inaugural Tuscan Grand Prix.
It marked the first time since last year’s Belgian Grand Prix that Gasly failed to escape from the first part of qualifying.
“Honestly I’m very frustrated as the most important moment of the weekend we just didn’t execute things perfectly,” he said.
“The pace was very good, the car was in the right window, we made a few changes for qualifying which didn’t go in the right direction, though they were still pretty good.
“But in my two laps we pushed the engine more and ran out of energy 300 metres before the line and that cost us a tenth. The margins were very small and in the end it cost us.
“We know we are faster than where we are now. We’ll have to try something with strategy. It won’t be easy to pass but we need to find ways to recover for tomorrow.”
AlphaTauri team-mate Daniil Kvyat will start from 12th position.
“We definitely made a step forward, however, we were missing a couple of tenths,” he said.
“So in the last run since there wasn’t much to lose, I tried to take Turn 7 flat; you try to find time anywhere you can.”
