French Formula One driver, Pierre Gasly has released an article that has revealed some very interesting, never-before-seen details. The Scuderia AlphaTauri driver revealed that he felt that the RedBull team had, “turned on him,” before his season with them even started. Courtesy of The Player’s Tribune, he wrote:
“From the moment I made my first mistake in a car, I felt like people there slowly began to turn on me. I’d had a crash in winter testing, and from that moment on the season never really got going. Then I had a tough first two races with Red Bull and the media just ate me up. Anything I said in the press was twisted into an excuse for my form, and nobody really stuck up for me.”
Pierre Gasly’s crash during Pre-Season testing in 2019
Written by Hafiz Akbar Edited by Aiden Hover
This small excerpt serves as a piece of evidence supporting the claim that the current rumours of Red Bull favouring their Dutch wunderkind, Max Verstappen, are true after all. Additionally, his words prove that the driver bias within Red Bull is excessively evident and further proves that the coveted second seat is one of the most stressful positions a driver could hold – especially those with championship dreams such as Pierre. Gasly described the feelings as very saddening, with the chance of becoming a world champion being stripped away from him when it was obvious that he needed time to grow accustomed to the feel of the car.
Furthermore, he revealed more about the now-infamous text message between the young Frenchman and his best friend and racing driver, the late Anthoine Hubert that was sent shortly after news broke of Gasly being sent back to Toro Rosso, just before the Belgium Grand Prix in 2019. He wrote about how felt at that time:
“I was sad. I can’t lie. I was broken up about it. I want to be a world champion. Who knows when I’ll be back in a car that good again? It’s really, really hard to take a step backward in this sport.”
When the news broke that Gasly would be swapped by Red Bull with Toro Rosso driver Alex Albon, he got a text message from Hubert, saying:
“Prove them wrong. Be strong, bro. You’re going to show them you deserve your seat in a top team and prove them wrong.”
He thought to himself that “there were 9 races left on the calendar. Nine times to show them that they’d made a mistake.”
Anthoine Hubert and Pierre Gasly
After the announcement of his switch, he details his transformation to a “new, more mature version of [himself]” in an attempt to find his way through the midfield in the Toro Rosso and prove something to the people in the industry.
Everything flipped, however, after the events on that fateful Saturday had unfolded. It began when the Trident of Giuliano Alesi suffered a puncture and lost control over Radilion. His teammate, Ralph Boschung, evaded Alesi whilst Hubert was not as lucky. His car was hit by a piece of debris from Alesi’s, causing Hubert to clip his front wing on the right rear tyre of Boschung. This sent him into the wall at an extreme angle causing him to bounce right back into the path of the ill-prepared Juan Manuel Correa. Correa would crash into Hubert’s pink car at approximately 250kmh, destroying the survival cell and sending both drivers to the circuit’s medical center, where Anthoine died of his injuries. Regarding the tragedy, Gasly wrote:
“But then Saturday happened, and my world got flipped upside down. I lost my friend, my brother. I lost one of the only people — like maybe there are two or three others — who truly understands what it’s like to live this life. Anthoine and I had been through so much together. We had shared this path, this journey. And when he left us, a part of me left, too.”
Gasly visiting the emotional site of the crash a year on
Fast forward to last season at the Temple of Speed in Monza. He stated that it was an unusually good day with lots of other cars having issues, whilst the AT-01 ran smooth as silk.
About this day. he wrote:
“And then, on lap 29, I took the lead when Lewis pitted for a stop-and-go penalty. And for the first time in three years, I wasn’t behind someone. I was leading a race”
And we all know what happened after that. Gasly won the 2020 Italian Grand Prix, proving to his doubters over at RedBull that he was capable of such a feat.
Pierre Gasly enjoying his race win at Monza with Carlos Sainz Jr and Lance Stroll
In 2021, he will return to his seat in the AlphaTauri but with a new teammate in Yuki Tsunoda. Will he continue to produce the work of legends, or will he start fading out of the scene? Only time will tell. For now, we can agree that he proved what he needed to prove to everyone.
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