Pierre Gasly has labelled Alpine’s climb up the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship to claim sixth place “unthinkable“ amid the team’s sluggish start to the season.
The Enstone-based squad endured a dismal beginning to 2024, not scoring points in the first five races and only fixing its weight issues come the Miami Grand Prix.
Alpine continued to languish down in ninth place with 14 points in 20 rounds until the team managed a shock double podium in Brazil to leapfrog its rivals into sixth.
Gasly then proceeded to claim a top-five result in Qatar and a seventh-place finish at the season finale in Abu Dhabi, helping Alpine to end seven points ahead of Haas.
“Sixth in the Constructors was unthinkable at the start of the year,“ he told media including Motorsport Week.
“The lows of the season were extremely low and the highs were extremely high.
“The first part of this season, very tough for all of us in the team with an underperforming car, but very proud of the reaction of the guys and the way they’ve managed to bring that much performance to give me a car on the last few races, which really allow me to perform really, really strongly.
“It just shows that we’re heading in the right direction, that the mentality and the spirit inside the team is the right one, I was seeing all these positive changes already back in April and May.
“There was a lot of progress inside the factory and obviously it doesn’t translate straight away onto the track.
“A couple of months later we got all these rewards, sixth in the Constructors.“
Gasly ‘couldn’t afford to do any mistakes’
With the result in Abu Dhabi, Gasly managed to also secure 10th place in the Drivers’ Championship, ahead of Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas.
The Frenchman also kept hold of his record of not costing the team any money by damaging the car himself during the entirety of the 2024 F1 season.
“There were three targets; to get sixth in the Constructors, tenths in the driver and keep my nose clean so we’re still on zero dollar damage – we all completed the targets,” he added.
“[Flavio Briatore’s] gonna like that but also the $10 million I got them today [in extra prize money for finishing sixth], yeah, but this [no crash damage] is personal.”
Gasly avoiding the Turn 1 collision, between Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri at the start of the Abu Dhabi GP to move up into third from fifth place on the grid.
Asked if he felt a podium was on at that stage, he responded: ”No, I was obviously in third and that was nice.
”I thought I’m in third, I have George [Russell] in between me and Nico, it’s better to keep him there.
”But he wasn’t too keen on staying behind me so I had to fight him quite hard and then after, I must say, Lewis [Hamilton] and Charles [Leclerc] were incredibly fast today.
”I knew the target was us and Nico, the entire race was within two seconds, keeping a lot of pressure.
”I couldn’t afford to do any mistakes and even with the tyre, trying to keep them until the end of the race, which was very tough because we had a very long stint on Hard.
”But we made it happen.”
READ MORE: Pierre Gasly: Alpine Brazil GP podium built on ‘personal relationship’ with Esteban Ocon
