Red Bull boss Christian Horner has explained why Pierre Gasly isn’t under pressure to keep his seat despite a poor start to 2019.
The Anglo-Austrian team always expected the Frenchman would need time to get upto speed having been thrust into his current position by the departure of Daniel Ricciardo.
However, his pace compared to Max Verstappen remains some way off and in Canada, he endured his most difficult race so far, dropping from fifth to eighth in the race, behind both Renaults.
Given the cut-throat environment that Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko has created over the years, some are surprised at how much leniency Gasly has been shown.
“Maybe he’s softening in his old age!” Horner joked to Sky Sports.
“Look, every driver’s different and even when we had Sebastian [Vettel] he would need an arm around his shoulder every now and again.
“Drivers work on confidence and we’re trying to build that confidence in Pierre.
“We know he can do it, we know he’s capable – he wouldn’t have won the Formula 2 championship the way he did and done what he did in Japan [if not],” he stated.
“We’ve seen his test performances in the car previously so I think if we can get him to a point where he’s comfortable and confident the lap times will come.”
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The Red Bull chief also maintains the signs are there that Gasly can start to show his potential but it is being overshadowed by the superiority of Verstappen.
“Obviously we’re working hard with him and like in any sport confidence is such a big factor, and he’s going up against a very tough teammate in Max,” Horner continued.
“But I thought in Monaco he drove very well, Montreal was a tricky weekend for him. Hopefully now, circuits he knows much better, I think hopefully we’ll start to see a bit more progress there as well.
“Of course he’s working very closely with his tight engineering team. His race engineer is Rocky [Guillaume Rocquelin] who navigated Sebastian to four consecutive world championships, so he’s got a lot of very strong people around him.”