Pierre Gasly admitted dropping out the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix was "very sad" on Sunday.

The Frenchman had matched his best ever result of fourth in qualifying at Imola but the first signs of trouble emerged on the grid when mechanics were seen working on his AlphaTauri.

Though it was hoped the issue had been fixed, that was dashed six laps when Gasly was called into the garage to retire for the first time since Mugello.

“That was quite hard, especially for our own race,” he commented “All weekend was going so well until now. It was very sad to retire.

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"The guys spotted a drop in water pressure on the laps to the grid, they tried everything on the grid to fix it and unfortunately it didn’t work out, which meant we had to retire after a couple of laps.

“You always hope for the best and I had a great start – the reaction time was really good," Gasly added. "I tried to go alongside Lewis but decided to back out from it. After that, we were running in P5.”

Highlighting AlphaTauri's performance, Daniil Kvyat passed three cars at the Safety Car restart to finish fourth, keeping them in touch with Ferrari in their battle for sixth in the Constructors' standings.

“The car was so fast all weekend,” Gasly continued.

“I felt good behind Daniel [Ricciardo], I think we had slightly more pace than them and there was clearly a top-five to fight for.

“On such a weekend for our home race it feels quite hard, but that’s motorsport, unfortunately.”