Pierre Gasly says qualifying went as he and AlphaTauri “dreamed” after securing fifth on the grid for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
The sister Red Bull team was competitive right from Q1, with the Frenchman sitting third after the first run of Q3 before losing two places to Valtteri Bottas and Charles Leclerc.
Still, it was a result Gasly admits caught AlphaTauri by surprise.
“It’s an amazing start for us,” he declared. “I don’t think I’ve achieved P5 that many times with this team and to start 2021 in that way is just amazing.
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“Honestly really happy about this first quali and at the start of the year, it’s really good to have a good baseline and kick off the season in the best way possible.
“We didn’t expect it, honestly. We knew we had a strong package but to qualify in fifth position, especially to go through on the medium tyre in Q2, was hopefully a good advantage for tomorrow, so a great start.”
That medium tyre call in Q2 was touch and go, with teammate Yuki Tsunoda falling to 13th after a bad final lap, but Gasly was delighted to make it work.
“The pressure was quite high,” he admitted. “We talked to the guys before qualifying and knew it was a big risk, but we knew there was potentially a big reward too for the first stint. It was close, but I managed to do it and put in a good lap.
“Everything went as we would have dreamed of and I think we are ready to give Charles a good fight tomorrow,” he added.
“Let’s keep it cool for now, I think there are clearly big points on the table for us, so it’s important to just execute everything perfectly with what we have learned from testing, but I’m excited.”
As for Tsunoda, he was surprised by the difference in performance between the C4 softs and C3 mediums.
“For me always when I use the soft it always works properly and the car feels okay, especially in this session,” said the Japanese.
“C3 feels completely strange, especially the second set of new tyres. Even for me, with another push lap, I don’t think I could go through with C3 – there was just no grip at all.
“We’ll have to see if there’s an issue or not. Q1 was amazing and Q2 suddenly goes really bad.”
Still, the experience of his first F1 qualifying was a valuable one for the 20-year-old.
“For the learning side, I think it was really good,” he added. “I think there was a lot of learning I got from this qualifying.
“There is still a lot of space to improve so I’ll just prepare to do better in Imola.
“I would say how I approached the qualifying and every Q1, Q2, was okay, just maybe today there was a lot of traffic before the lap, like I had to wait quite a lot.
“So maybe I have to see for traffic management and also how to adapt more to the C3 tyres from the C4, for me it’s just that.”
Tsunoda even led Gasly in Q1, finishing second to Verstappen, and Pierre was full of praise for his teammate.
“Yuki is fast, he’s doing a good job,” he said. “So far, he’s had a couple of mistakes here and there but when he’s managed to put things together he’s very fast and we’ve managed to work very well so far this weekend. All positive.”