Pierre Gasly

Pierre Gasly will compete with Alpine for the 2024 F1 season, his second campaign with the team. 

Pierre Gasly F1 Career (2017 - Present)

With Gasly remaining in Red Bull’s good books with his impressive stint in Super Formula, while massaging those Honda relations ahead of what would be the start of its engine collaboration (via Toro Rosso), the Frenchman was always expected to be promoted to an F1 drive for 2018.

As it happens, Gasly’s debut came early in 2017 when he was called up to replace the out-of-favour Danill Kvyat in five of the final six events (he would miss the United States Grand Prix in favour of the final Super Formula round as he chased the title, even though it would go on to be cancelled anyway due to a typhoon).

Coming in fresh with little preparation, Gasly kept his head down and finished all five races, but didn’t score any points. 

Getting a full campaign for 2018, Gasly’s status was elevated on the back of Red Bull’s decision to end a long-held engine supply agreement with Renault in favour of Honda, despite the Japanese firm’s miserable return to F1 in the three years previous as part of a now nullified agreement with McLaren.

It meant Red Bull played it safe by only accepting Honda power units to supply Toro Rosso with a view to a Red Bull Racing switch in 2019.

As such, Toro Rosso’s - and by extension Gasly and team-mate Brendon Hartley’s - efforts came under closer scrutiny than in previous years, not least because of an underlying theory Honda’s poor performance had more to do with its fractious relationship with McLaren under new ownership than necessarily mere technical concerns.

In the end both accounts were probably true; the Honda unit did appear to work more effectively in the Toro Rosso architecture, but it was still technically compromised, while Toro Rosso’s meagre budget versus McLaren was also a factor in what was still a modest set of results.

In Gasly’s hands though there were some impressive highlights, most notably during Round 2 in Bahrain when he qualified sixth and finished an excellent fourth. He went on to cause amusement by saying on the radio across the finish line ‘now we can fight’ in a dig against Fernando Alonso (a fierce critic of Honda) saying the same thing when he took the now Renault-powered McLaren to fifth in the season opening Australian race.

By all accounts it wasn’t an outstanding season for the Toro Rosso-Honda set-up but Gasly was generally regarded to have performed well - at least versus his struggling team-mate Hartley - and a seventh in Monaco, plus a sixth in Hungary showed what he could do in a car better suited to lower speed venues. He ended the year 15th overall.

With Red Bull caught somewhat napping when Daniel Ricciardo announced he would be Renault-bound for 2019, it responded by promoting Gasly in a move some saw as being potentially premature and a touch ironic since the driver it was grooming for a top seat - Carlos Sainz - had left a year earlier because he didn’t expect a drive to come any time soon.

Levelled up against highly touted (and now clear No.1 driver) Max Verstappen, Gasly’s promotion drew parallels with Ricciardo before him having come up from Toro Rosso with some critics, only to easily confound them with three wins in his debut year.

However, this was not to be the case on this occasion, Gasly finding a team united squarely behind Verstappen and left to find his way in a car not to his liking. Though he had experience of the Honda power package, he struggled to adapt his smooth driving to a machine suited to being hustled.

While his results were positive on paper - peaking with a fourth place at Silverstone - it belied the fact Red Bull had a de facto sizeable gap over the midfield runners Gasly often found himself mixing with. Indeed, the stopwatch didn’t lie either and Gasly would be on average 0.6s slower than Verstappen in qualifying when they reached Q3.

With Christian Horner not exactly singing Gasly’s praises and rumours Red Bull would play to reputation by shuffling its drivers mid-season, it was announced during the summer break he was to be contentiously dropped in favour of Toro Rosso’s Alex Albon (the Thai racer would fall foul of something similar come the end of 2020).

Despite the blow to his reputation both internally and externally, Gasly bit his tongue and accepted a ‘relegated’ spot at Toro Rosso once again, where in seemingly more compliant surroundings he could tap into his talents and achieve arguably better results in lower budget machinery.

This was brought into ironic sharp focus in the Brazilian Grand Prix when Gasly out-lasted his rivals to secure a surprise second place finish, at the expense of an unlucky Albon who was spun out of the same position by Lewis Hamilton. 

Toro Rosso’s first podium since Sebastian Vettel’s 2008 Italian GP win, the effort was made all the more satisfying by the fact he achieved it by out-dragging Hamilton’s Mercedes to the line, seemingly confirming the step forward Honda had made with its engine.  Scoring in five of the nine races he started with Toro Rosso, Gasly ended the year seventh overall.

With Red Bull sticking with Albon for 2020, despite Gasly’s renewed vigour during the final rounds, the Frenchman stayed put as part of the rebranded (but still Red Bull associated) AlphaTauri squad for 2020.

In a year that would see Albon suffer from the same issues as he did at Red Bull, Gasly kept his head down and racked up positive results during the opening rounds, scoring in four of the first seven events.

However, his season - and career - were turned on their head in an extraordinary Italian Grand Prix when Gasly benefited from a well-timed pit-stop followed by a safety car that vaulted him up the order to run in second place. When a red flag forced a restart on lap 28, Gasly held the position behind Hamilton, before taking the lead when the Mercedes driver was forced to serve a stop-and-go penalty.

In a remarkably tense final few laps as he was hunted down by Carlos Sainz in the McLaren, Gasly held his nerve to take the shock victory, making him the first Frenchman to secure an F1 win since Olivier Panis, who won in similarly surprising circumstances for Ligier in the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix. Fittingly, the win was both the team’s (when you include Toro Rosso) second win outright and second to occur at Monza after Vettel won 12 years earlier.

Inspired by his efforts, Gasly continued to perform strongly to the end of the year, claiming a top six finish at the Nurburgring, Portimao and Bahrain to secure tenth in the final standings. 

Gasly was a consistent performer in 2021 as he continues to up his game to show to people that he perhaps deserves another shot at a top team.

The Frenchman was regularly in Q3 and scored points on 15 occasions to secure a top 10 finish in the drivers' championship. 

Gasly finished on the podium in Azerbaijan, while he finished fourth at Zandvoort and Mexico City.

AlphaTauri seems to be the perfect environment for Gasly so it will be interesting to see whether he can make another stepforward in 2022.

With AlphaTauri struggling for form in 2022, there weren't too many highs for Gasly.

His P5 at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was impressive, but it was clear that the Frenchman was looking forward to life with his new team - Alpine.

Arriving at Alpine hungry to prove himself, Gasly did just that by getting the better of teammate Esteban Ocon at the first attempt.

Easily the highlight of his solid first campaign with Alpine came at Zandvoort after the summer break. Here, Gasly recorded his first podium in his new colours with an impressive drive in tricky conditions. 

Gasly ended the year 11th in the championship, managing four points more than Ocon in one of the closest-fought intra-team battles of the season.