Pierre Gasly was very unhappy with AlphaTauri's lack of pace in the Austrian GP and demanded updates for the car, which stagnated and saw rivals evolve
Sebastian Vettel was the last driver to cross the finish line at the Austrian GP - obviously, among those who completed the race - but the biggest nightmare of the weekend was with another team: AlphaTauri saw Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda finish ahead of only the German and not display the slightest bit of competitiveness during the race, which infuriated the Frenchman - who didn't shy away from saying what the needs of the car are for the team to get out of the current situation.
"This weekend was a disaster," Gasly said, "Apart from qualifying, we were nowhere in terms of pace. I tried to do everything I could inside the car, but at the moment there is nothing to do. I think we desperately need an upgrade on the car to get any decent results," he said.
"You look at Yuki [Tsunoda], look at me, even with the strategy we lost a position because we stopped and had no pace," he lamented. "You can do anything you want, any strategy you want, with the speed we have at the moment [it won't make a difference]," he criticized.
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The driver had already charged in a strong way when he named the AlphaTauri AT03 as the "slowest car on the track" at the moment, due to the lack of updates produced for the Italian team's single-seater. Gasly further highlighted the increasing gap to the cars riding in the front half of the pack, which gets bigger with every race.
"It's not surprising when you don't have new parts, the others are improving," he continued. "At the beginning of the year, we were fighting with the guys at the front [of the middle of the pack], and now we're finishing 20s, 30s behind. We're losing 0s4 or 0s5 a lap, and that's what we need to fix," he stressed.
Tsunoda, in turn, had already complained of an unpredictable balance of the car at the beginning of the weekend, a situation that continued for Sunday's race. When asked if the team managed to find a way to solve the situation, the Japanese driver said that the work was in vain, as he was again unable to understand the AT03's behavior during the race.
"Same thing. The new tires were able to hide these problems with grip a little bit, but as soon as I felt a little bit less of that grip, I started slipping too much," Tsunoda said. "So we definitely need to understand what the problem was," he finished.
"I'm really satisfied with what I did in the race, to be honest," Tsunoda continued. "Last time, what I did at Silverstone [referring to the crash into Gasly] was pretty bad. But it's just about continuing like that in any situation. I keep my head focused and I'm going to continue like that," he finished.