Pierre Gasly says memories of his win at Monza will “never go away” as AlphaTauri rate their 2020 season above 2008.
Just over a year after being demoted back to the junior Red Bull team, Gasly was in the right place at the right time to capitalise on Lewis Hamilton’s penalty and hold off Carlos Sainz in the closing laps to take victory at the Italian Grand Prix.
It was a moment that completed the restoration of the Frenchman’s reputation after his difficult six months at Red Bull, but he admits it took some time to sink in.
“I remember every single second of that race and of the celebration,” Gasly told Motorsport.com. “It’s something which is in my mind and will never go away.
“I would say this year was so compact and intense that it was actually hard to really take the time off, and get to relax and enjoy as much as probably I would have done in a more normal scenario without Covid.
“Still, when I had a week’s break between two races and I could get back home and I could realise, ‘OK, that’s what we’ve done’, and really try to think over and remember all of the emotions that we lived.
“It was something quite incredible. This year, Mercedes won pretty much all the races, except Max [Verstappen] and Checo [Perez] – and us. So it was really something incredible.”
As for what the Monza win means to him going forward, Gasly replied: “When I’m in Italy in my apartment, I’m sat exactly there in the same place I had my breakfast before my win, and I see the trophy and it kind of feels pretty special.
“It’s a great motivation. Every morning, I take my coffee with the trophy in front of me, and think ‘yeah, we’ve done it’. It’s not impossible, even though we were a midfield team.
“That should be a motivation for all of us in the team to try and repeat as much as we can, strong performances like we have had in Sao Paulo or in Monza.”
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That day though was just one of many good days for Gasly in 2020, as he secured 10th in the Drivers’ Championship ahead of names like Sebastian Vettel, Esteban Ocon and Lance Stroll.
And for AlphaTauri in general, team boss Franz Tost believes last season was superior to their last race-winning campaign.
“2008, yes it was a fantastic victory with Sebastian in Monza, but we didn’t have so many good finishes like last year,” he claimed, although under today’s points system, 2008 actually outscores 2020 by six points.
“In Faenza, the design team, production, worked really good and are coming together.
“We are getting stronger and stronger in every aspect from the processes, but also from the discipline side and also the track operations worked well. People are coming more and want to get up.
“We have two really good drivers. Pierre improved a lot and has reached a really high level now. Therefore, we could be so successful.
“The car, I must say, worked from the very beginning onwards. The aerodynamic upgrades fortunately brought an advantage and put us forwards. These points together came up to a nice clear picture with success.”