Pierre Gasly had a very promising performance in the free practice sessions of the 2022 Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix, but he could not go beyond 17th position in the classification after being affected by the last red flag of Q1.
The French driver asked his team, AlphaTauri, to take risks with the strategy during the race and was the first driver to change the extreme wet tires for the intermediate ones, after the red flag restart.
During the first few laps on those tyres, it was a matter of survival for the French driver, trying to control the car rather than looking for performance, but conditions quickly improved and Gasly became the fastest driver on track.
One of his first victims was Daniel Ricciardo, the French driver brilliantly overtook the Australian from McLaren shortly before reaching the pool area, a succession of corners where overtaking is practically never seen.
Thanks to that decision, Gasly climbed back to eleventh position, staying on the doorstep of the points: “It was quite tight, but I was much faster than the others. I just had to calm down.”
“I caught up with them very quickly, but there was almost no space. I had to be creative. Ultimately Formula 1 drivers are like artists, we have to search and find new ideas all the time. I thought of unusual places to overtake and I succeeded. “.
Gasly acknowledged that he came close to crashing many times and initially thought switching to intermediates had been a bad idea: “I had to make it work. It’s a big challenge to find grip in those conditions, but I have to say I made it in the end. Unfortunately, we started too far back and paid a high price for our qualifying choices.”
Finally, the AlphaTauri driver crossed the finish line in twelfth position, but moved up one more place due to Esteban Ocon’s time penalty.
After missing out on the points, these were the Frenchman’s words: “I’m disappointed not to be rewarded with a point. I think I deserved it. We lost time at our first pit stop and again at the second gear change. tyres, that probably cost us a point.
“In the end, I draw a lot of positive conclusions from this weekend. Free practice was good and the speed in the race was also there, let’s see if we can maintain it,” he concluded.
