Pierre Gasly says that in a tense fight with Charles Leclerc in the final of the Grand Prix of Azerbaijan he desperately wanted the podium despite the problem with the loss of power of the power unit and that he was ready to do anything to keep third place.
Gasly had a great weekend in Azerbaijan with the best time in third free practice and the fourth fastest time in qualifying, and although he lost his place to Vettel due to problems with Honda’s powertrain he managed to keep third place ahead of Leclerc.
A good race for AlphaTauri was completed by Tsunoda who also placed in Q3 and finished in the poins in seventh place, which is the first time this season that both AlphaTauri drivers finished in the top ten.
“What an incredible weekend, topping FP3, then P4 in Qualifying and now a podium today – I’m so happy for the guys, it was a great result,” said Gasly.
“What a way to do it as well, the last two laps were so intense with Charles and I really had to fight hard to get that podium.”
“The entire race was really full-on, we managed to keep up with the guys ahead but from the middle of the race we had an engine issue and we started to lose some power in the straight, so I knew it was going to be hard until the end, but we managed to hold on to P4.”
“After the restart I thought that Charles would pass me on the straight because we had lost performance, but I saw the podium ahead of me and I tried everything, I just wanted it so badly.”
“It was hard but fair racing, just as we like it. The car was incredible all weekend, it felt really good, and it’s just a fantastic result for the whole team. I’m really pleased to reward them with a podium.”
“Moving forward to France, we need to analyse what went well this weekend and see how we can use these learnings at the next race. It’s my home race so I really want to do well there but for now it’s time to celebrate – I’ve already had a Red Bull, but I think we’ll be having something else tonight too!”
