Gasly has no regrets over VSC ‘gamble’

If anything it hindered his result, but Pierre Gasly doesn’t have any regrets about pitting during the brief VSC window in Sochi.

The Frenchman climbed up to P9 at the Russian Grand Prix with 19 laps left after finally getting past the Alfa Romeo of Kimi Raikkonen.

Nine laps later though, AlphaTauri opted to pit him for fresh mediums when a Virtual Safety Car came out.

It proved to be a poor decision as the VSC ended up being briefer than expected, dropping Gasly back down to P11. While he did fight back to finish in P9, the pit-stop made doing so harder than it had to be.

Despite this, the Frenchman has no regrets over him and his team taking the risk.

“Yeah, it was a bit of a gamble I guess. If it [the VSC] was slightly longer, it would have paid off quite well,” he said.

“In the end as soon as we came in it went green again. It wasn’t so lucky timing but in the end, we managed to recover to P9 and overtake Alex and Lando.

“Honestly, the car was good today. I felt like we could have fought for slightly more, especially the start of the race was good – I was in front of Charles [Leclerc] and… in that middle part of the race we lost too much pace fighting.”

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Given that he started two places ahead of his team-mate Danil Kvyat, it was disappointing for Gasly to finish behind him for the second race in a row, especially as he felt his pace was good enough for him to catch the Russian if he didn’t pit.

“I was a bit disappointed with P9 in the end because I really felt the car’s pace was slightly better and especially when I cleared Kimi [Raikkonen] on that second stint,” he added.

“I was catching Daniil [Kvyat] and [Esteban] Ocon quite quickly. I was looking forward to a nice battle in the last couple of laps with them for P7, I think.

“The Virtual Safety Car came out, we gambled, it didn’t pay off this time. That’s how it is.”

Nevertheless, Gasly is 31 points ahead of Kvyat in the Driver’s Championship and, with just seven races of 2020 left, is set to win his inter-team battle by one of the biggest margins on the grid.

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