Gasly’s ‘unbelievable’ marathon Hypersoft stint delivers for Toro Rosso
Pierre Gasly says his long first stint on Pirelli’s Hypersoft tyres paved the way to his first points finish since Bahrain with an impressive seventh place for Toro Rosso Honda in Monaco.
With Monaco less engine-dependent, Toro Rosso saw Gasly jump into Q3 in qualifying to start the race from 10th place. All of the top 10 had to start on the tyres they qualified in Q2 on, as permitted by Formula 1 rules, which provoked fears of early stops which would risk a loss of vital track position.
Pierre Gasly says his long first stint on Pirelli’s Hypersoft tyres paved the way to his first points finish since Bahrain with an impressive seventh place for Toro Rosso Honda in Monaco.
With Monaco less engine-dependent, Toro Rosso saw Gasly jump into Q3 in qualifying to start the race from 10th place. All of the top 10 had to start on the tyres they qualified in Q2 on, as permitted by Formula 1 rules, which provoked fears of early stops which would risk a loss of vital track position.
While many F1 teams and drivers estimated a maximum of 14-18 laps on the Hypersoft tyres, which Gasly started on, the French driver preserved his tyre life to stretch to lap 37 before pitting for a new set of Supersofts.
The long stint enable Gasly to move up to eight place after his stop, before Fernando Alonso dropped out for McLaren, to see him take seventh place ahead of Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg.
Gasly, who takes his second F1 points finish after his outstanding fourth place in Bahrain, says his experience from the GP2 Series in managing Pirelli tyre life became key to his Monaco success.
“It was quite unbelievable how many laps we did with the Hypersoft on the first stint,” Gasly said. “Before the race I wasn’t confident at all with the tyres, because we saw before the race the degradation was massive, so I tried to take really good care of the tyres at the beginning of the race.
“When everyone pitted, I started to push, and we were just faster than all the guys who pitted and went from Supersofts to Ultrasofts. We were really fast, and we managed to make up some positions with the pace we had.
“You need to be really careful on braking, not to have any locking, try to be as smooth as possible with the steering not to scrub the fronts in the middle of the corner. Be gentle with the throttle, but you need to do that and at the same time be fast, so it’s not easy.
“Actually I wasn’t good at it in the lower series. In my second year in GP2, I had to learn a lot with the Pirelli tyres, and I changed a bit my way of driving and my approach in the race. On a day like today, it paid off.”
Gasly has moved up to 11th in the F1 world drivers’ championship while Toro Rosso jumped up one space to seventh ahead of Haas in the constructors’ standings.
