AlphaTauri could be emerging as a dark horse in Formula 1’s midfield with Pierre Gasly promising “more to come”.
While Racing Point has gotten most of the attention, the rebranded sister team to Red Bull has often been not far behind in featuring strongly on the timesheets.
Indeed, on Thursday, a late run on the C5 Pirelli tyre saw Gasly end second-fastest behind Sebastian Vettel, just two-tenths behind the Ferrari driver on the same compound.
“I feel there’s way more to come,” the Frenchman said earlier this week. “It’s the same thing for everyone so we need to be efficient, from tomorrow we will try and push our car a bit more.
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“I felt good straight away and it feels all the time we explore new directions, some things are really good and other things are really wrong.
“So the good thing is that it really reacts to every setup change we do, but I feel we haven’t found the sweet spot yet to really maximise the whole performance of the car. We need to find a bit more over the next two days.”
Particularly impressing Gasly is the performance of Honda, with the team still on the first engine they used at the start of last week.
“They’re pushing as usual. Already last year they made a big step throughout the year and this year it’s even better than last year,” he told Crash.net
“I’m pretty happy we didn’t have any issue between the two weeks, so it’s quite impressive.
“That’s why I don’t want to say too much because that’s when you get all the sh*t, but so far everything has been really great, so we are pleased on this side.”
And looking ahead: “I think we have a bit more coming when we put everything together for Melbourne,” Gasly added.
“Overall, I think we have a pretty good car. I think we found some good directions but Melbourne will be a lot different from Barcelona, so I don’t want to get too excited. It was a pretty good test.
“I think as a package it’s a good evolution compared to last year. There are a couple of things that are better, some other things we need to work on, but overall I think we have good potential.
“We pushed a little bit more today and the car seems to behave quite well. I’m pretty happy with the test today.”