The F1® Insider: Is Gasly top-tier, or on a road to nowhere?
Thursday, 16 February 2023
This week: is Pierre Gasly's switch to Alpine his chance to make 'the leap'?
Pierre Gasly wasn't the first choice to partner Esteban Ocon as part of an all-French driver line-up at Alpine this season; he wasn't the second choice, either. The Gasly of old would have let the perception that he was a consolation prize upset his emotional equilibrium. The Gasly of 2023, though, isn't bothered one bit.
For the 27-year-old, a job with Alpine – and an escape route from a Red Bull-backed road that had parked him in a career cul-de-sac – represents the chance to change his F1® story he's been craving for four years. It's not a chance he's going to let go.
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In case you've forgotten how we got here, let's rewind. Alpine wanted to continue with Fernando Alonso for this season, but were reluctant to offer a 41-year-old driver a multi-year contract. Alonso inked a lengthier deal with Aston Martin, but Alpine figured they had Oscar Piastri under lock and key to step in … and we know how that ended up. Suddenly, a seat at one of the sport's best four teams was available. Gasly didn't need to be asked twice, and a look back at his career explains why.
It all looked so rosy for Gasly when Red Bull elevated him to partner Max Verstappen in 2019 after Daniel Ricciardo moved on, but Gasly lasted just 12 races after a fraught pre-season pockmarked by several expensive crashes, and a general unease behind the scenes as he tied himself in knots with seat re-fits and peripheral distractions, seemingly spooked by Verstappen's searing pace in the sister car.
Booted back to Toro Rosso in a direct swap with Alex Albon, Gasly watched Albon get more than double the number of races (26) to do better, but the results were similar. When the Thai driver was jettisoned at the end of 2020 for Sergio Perez, a 30-year-old with no previous ties to the team, Gasly knew he had to get out of the Red Bull program to progress.
Gasly has spent the past two years at AlphaTauri comfortably having the measure of Yuki Tsunoda, and the easy option would be to stay where he was and become just another midfield driver for the balance of his career. But Alpine gives him a chance to flip that script, no matter how that chance came about.
It definitely won't be easy, and probably will be feisty. In Ocon, a former childhood karting buddy who he's had a lukewarm relationship with since, Gasly will be up against a compatriot who has won a race for Alpine (Hungary 2021), and who has had a tempestuous relationship with teammates (Perez at Racing Point, Alonso last year) and rivals alike (remember Ocon and Verstappen almost coming to blows after Brazil 2018?)
Ocon and Gasly have said all the right things for now, but the odds are slim that harmony will last long once on-track action gets underway in Bahrain. There's a lot at stake: Alpine beat McLaren to fourth in the constructors' championship last year despite McLaren's Lando Norris (seventh) finishing the highest in the drivers' standings from the quartet of drivers who raced for those teams, and there's a void to be filled on the days where Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes drop the ball. If a podium chance presents itself, the level of desperation to snare it will only ramp up the rivalry between Alpine's deux pilotes.
This year, though, Gasly looks ready – not like 2019, when he presented the air of a driver who was trying to convince everyone he actually was ready, not least himself. A driver Ricciardo has said is the most underrated in F1® gets the opportunity to salvage his career that looked like it would never come.
Free from the futility of trying to impress Red Bull's brass for a second chance, Gasly is in control of his own destiny. Is he a driver who occasionally overachieves in underwhelming machinery, or more than that? We're about to find out.
