'Let's try and win it' - Alpine set lofty target after Gasly's astonishing Monza pole

Alpine managing director Steve Nielsen has set a clear target after Pierre Gasly took a shock 1000/1 pole position at the Italian Grand Prix. 

Gasly scored the first pole position of his Formula 1 career on Saturday at Monza, pipping championship-chasing George Russell in the closing moments of a dramatic session. 

The Frenchman's only F1 victory to date came at Monza in 2020 when driving for AlphaTauri - the team now competing as Racing Bulls - and Nielsen has set a repeat performance as the target for Sunday. 

"We didn't expect to be on pole position, but we are, he told Sky Sports. "Tomorrow, good starts, good strategy, good pit stops, who knows?

"Let's try and win it."

The result comes on the back of Gasly seeing his Monaco podium snatched from him following an appeal by Red Bull and McLaren in the International Court of Appeal, with the verdict placing a post-race 10-second penalty back onto his overall time. 

Put to him that the team must be in a very happy place after this on-track result, Nielsen added: "Well, today, right now, yes! 

"But if you'd asked me this two or three days ago, we were all on the floor. So it's really from sort of being really down to being on top of the world in just what, two days? And it's amazing. We need to soak it up and make the best of it."

Referencing the appeal directly, he said: "It's a long time in politics and F1. When you think about what the mood was in the camp when we got the result from Monaco, which honestly is going to annoy me for the rest of my life, it's a nice way to bounce back with pole position."

Alpine brought a major upgrade to Zandvoort last time out, but only ran the new parts on Gasly's car, with the performance difference between the two packages evident across the weekend. 

For Monza, both he and team-mate Franco Colapinto, who qualified in eighth place, have the upgrades. 

"We put a big upgrade on Pierre's car in Zandvoort," said Nielsen. "That's also on Franco's car here. I don't think we quite got the best out of the package in Zandvoort, it's a bit of a quirky circuit.

"But we've come here, and the car is responding very well. We got the gaps right, we got the tows right, the drivers didn't make a mistake, and the lap time is clearly in the car, because both cars were quite quick."