Pierre Gasly looks back on his time at Red Bull and surprises with a statement—the Frenchman felt relief above all else when he was fired.
Pierre Gasly has spoken openly about the sense of relief he felt when he was transferred from Red Bull to Toro Rosso—now Racing Bulls—in 2019. The Frenchman, who currently drives for Alpine, contested his rookie season in Formula 1 in 2018 with Toro Rosso after joining the Red Bull junior team in 2014.
After a convincing debut season, which he finished in 15th place in the drivers’ standings and 25 points ahead of his then teammate Brendon Hartley, Gasly secured the coveted cockpit at Red Bull for the 2019 season.
But like many of Max Verstappen’s teammates in recent years, Gasly also suffered the same fate: Even before the Belgian Grand Prix, he was sent back to Toro Rosso and replaced by Alexander Albon. In an interview with F1.com, the now 29-year-old looks back on this difficult period in his career.
A bitter setback
“I’m not going to lie, it was sad,” Gasly admits. “In 2019, my second year in Formula 1, there was no support from any side in a very big team that was fully behind Max [Verstappen]—for good reasons, because he delivered the results.”
Gasly describes the internal hurdles: “But I started with a new engineer who came from Formula E and had no experience in Formula 1. So it was a strange dynamic. I didn’t really get the tools I needed to really perform.”
“I tried to fight my own way, because I wanted to, and at the end of the day, I’m there to perform. They weren’t happy, but I wasn’t happy either because I realized I couldn’t show my potential,“ explains the Frenchman.
Then the relief
The team’s decision to replace him in the middle of the season therefore triggered ambivalent feelings in him: ”It almost felt like a relief.”
He says of his first moments back in the Toro Rosso cockpit: “It’s not a nice energy. I’m there to do my thing and try to do my best, but there was a lot of negativity. I had to get through it. I just wanted to drive.”
