Gasly not distracted by Red Bull talk

A return to the Red Bull team could be on the cards for Pierre Gasly if he performs well over the next few races, but the Frenchman insists he is just focused on the job at hand at Toro Rosso.

With Daniel Ricciardo leaving for Renault at the end of last year, Gasly was promoted to the Red Bull team to partner Max Verstappen for the 2019 season.

However, he struggled during the first half of the campaign and the Milton Keynes squad pulled the trigger after the Hungarian Grand Prix as they promoted Alex Albon.

All was not lost for Gasly though as he was handed Albon’s seat at Toro Rosso.

The 23-year-old has done well since the summer break as he scored points in two of the three races.

Red Bull have already confirmed that Gasly, Albon and Daniil Kyvat are in the running to partner Verstappen next season, but the former is not distracted by the talk.

“I stopped reading and looking at all the talks because there are so many, and I need to focus on my job with the team,” he told Autosport.

“I think at the moment, as I said, I am pretty happy with the way it goes, with the performance we are showing, so we’ll see what they’ll do.

“I am happy with Toro Rosso, and I just need to perform as much as I can for this team, and we’ll see what they decide in the future.”

Gasly also feels he is now finding his feet again at Toro Rosso following his demotion.

“I didn’t really manage to drive the way I would have liked before, and now I just feel like I can do more what I feel, which is something natural for me,” he said.

“Especially with the work we’re doing with the engineers and the whole team.

“After one race there are things to improve, after the second there are always things to improve, but I feel like we are making a step every weekend.

“Also myself in the car, I get a better feeling and I get the car more or less where I want during the weekend. So I’m happy with the step we made during these last few weeks, hopefully, we can just keep going for the next couple of races.

“These kinds of Sundays are really the Sundays I enjoy because even though it’s a difficult track to overtake on, I had some nice battles and we managed to recover a couple of positions, even if the race didn’t really come towards us with the first safety car.

“We just pushed and the car felt good, and we managed to pass a couple of cars to get this eighth place.”

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