Gasly: My only goal is to get into F1

With drives at Manor and Sauber still not confirmed for 2017, newly crowned GP2 Champion Pierre Gasly has reiterated his desire to race in Formula 1.

The Red Bull junior claimed the GP2 Championship on Sunday, something he is immensely proud of after suffering a topsy-turvy year with the Perma team.

"It means so much, because this season has been really tough, mentally and physically: my mother was hospitalised for three months, and I had a broken vertebrae for two and a half months after Silverstone," said the French youngster.

"And tough times in races like at the Red Bull Ring, where I led the race but got stuck in the gravel, or in Monza when we were first and the safety car came out, and we lost the victory, or the extinguisher in Hockenheim.

"Honestly, I could write a book about my season! So many things happened, but we never stopped fighting: that’s a great achievement to see that all the hard work paid off in the end, my team never stopped working and supporting me, and all these people helped me to win this championship."

Earlier in the year, Gasly was confident that he would replace Daniil Kvyat at Toro Rosso, but once the Faenza-based outfit decided to retain their Russian driver for another year, the 20-year-old was left disappointed.

However, Gasly has still not given up on his dreams of starting a Formula 1 race.

"As I said to Helmut [Marko], my only goal is to get into Formula 1, so I will always keep pushing for that, but of course you always need an opportunity," he said.

"We will see what happens: at the moment I don’t know, and it is wide open, but you can be sure that I will keep pushing with everything to get into F1, and we’ll see what happens."