Gasly comfortably nullified Hamilton in DRS ‘train’

Jamie Woodhouse 24 Apr 2022 9:45 PM

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, follows Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri. Italy, April 2022.

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, follows Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri, both with DRS open. Italy, April 2022.

Pierre Gasly said keeping Lewis Hamilton at bay was not so difficult in a frustrating Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in the DRS train.

The 2022 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix was certainly not a race weekend to remember for Hamilton, who was outqualified by his Mercedes team-mate George Russell in both traditional qualifying and the sprint, before their respective races also became tales of mixed fortunes.

While Russell finished P4, Hamilton was unable to escape the midfield and despite DRS eventually being enabled, he still could not make a pass on Gasly, who similarly was stuck behind Alex Albon’s Williams. Gasly finished P13 and Hamilton P14.

Gasly explained it was not too hard to keep Hamilton behind him.

“Well, I would not say easy, but it wasn’t too hard,” said Gasly on the task of keeping Hamilton at bay, quoted by Motorsport.com.

This was not the first time Gasly had nullified Hamilton, referring to the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix when Hamilton could not find a way past Gasly, ultimately finishing P7.

“Unfortunately for him he always gets stuck behind me on tracks where it’s extremely hard to pass,” said Gasly with a grin.

“But I think I was as frustrated as he was. Just for whatever reason, even with the DRS, this year was very tough to pass here.”

LAP 41/63

Blue flags fluttering as Hamilton lets race leader Verstappen through on the main straight#ImolaGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/Bf3CYmmlB3

— Formula 1 (@F1) April 24, 2022

Gasly said his long stint in the company of Albon and Hamilton was effectively all that happened in his race.

And having started the race from P17, following contact with Zhou Guanyu in sprint qualifying, Gasly said he ended up paying the price for that by finding himself stuck in the DRS train.

“It was probably the only thing that happened the whole race,” said the AlphaTauri driver.

“He [Hamilton] was stuck behind me, I was stuck behind the [Williams] car, and that car was stuck with the car ahead. It was just a train.

“So it wasn’t a particularly exciting race and quite frustrating. Even with the DRS, we were not able to make it round and try to set ourselves up for a move.

“We know when you have a bad qualifying – we made a mistake in qualy – and when you start from the back, it’s always extremely difficult. And I think we paid the price this weekend.”