Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri, Singapore, 2022

Gasly – AlphaTauri must make most of “big opportunity” for double points finish

RaceFans Round-up

Posted on

| Written by

In the round-up: AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly says the team must take advantage of having both cars starting in the top ten in Singapore to score points

In brief

Gasly – AlphaTauri must make most of “big opportunity” for double points finish

Advert | Become a Supporter & go ad-free

AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly says the team must take advantage of having both cars starting in the top ten in Singapore to score points for their constructors’ championship position.

Gasly and team mate Yuki Tsunoda will line up seventh and tenth on the grid for today’s Singapore Grand Prix. AlphaTauri are currently eighth in the constructors’ championship on 33 points, just one behind Haas, who have not scored any points over the last five races. Gasly says the team must take advantage of their starting positions to score solid points and improve their championship position.

“We know how important your starting position is here in Singapore, so being in P7 is really positive, with Lando [Norris] and Fernando [Alonso] just ahead of us, so we’ll see what we can do from there,” said Gasly.

“I think we have a big opportunity tomorrow to score points with both cars, so we need to utilise this to help in our championship battle, and we’ve seen today that we can do well in these difficult conditions so I’m hoping for some more rain.”

Risking slicks in Q2 the “wrong choice” – Zhou

Alfa Romeo driver Zhou Guanyu says that he and his team made the “wrong choice” in switching to slick tyres for the final minutes in Q2.

Zhou was one of three drivers – along with the two Aston Martins of Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel – to fit dry soft tyres in the closing minutes of Q2 in qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix. Zhou was already in the drop zone when he took to the track on slicks, but failed to improve his time and was eliminated slowest in 15th. Vettel and Stroll also both failed to progress to Q3.

“Looking back, definitely it wasn’t the right tyre to go,” admitted Zhou. “The track was pretty dry apart from like three or four corners and these four corners are very damp.

“Unfortunately I think we had a chance today but first lap in Q2, we got blocked by the yellow flag of Mick [Schumacher] in the wall and then I got my best lap, was second on inters so there’s a lot more potential. I feel like we have the chance, but unfortunately a wrong choice put us out.”

Garcia takes pole in rain-shortened W Series qualifying

Marta Garcia took pole for W Series Singapore race after a challenging qualifying session in heavily wet conditions.

The rain became heavier during the session, prompting a red flag 15 minutes in. By that time, Garcia had set a provisional pole time of a 2’30.762, which would ultimately turn out to be the fastest time.

The session restarted with nine minutes remaining but with no cars able to improve and conditions still treacherous. After cars began to aquaplane into corner runoffs, qualifying was red flagged again and not resumed.

Dominant championship leader Jamie Chadwick will start eighth, with Abbi Pulling ahead of her in seventh. Juju Noda and Bianca Bustamante were unable to set times within 110% of the pole lap but will be able to participate in the race based on their practice performance on Friday.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Social media

Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Comment of the day

Max Verstappen may have been furious at his Red Bull team after they called him in to abandon a likely pole lap in qualifying because of a lack of fuel in his car, but @f1mre argues that the Red Bull pit wall made a wise call to prevent Verstappen starting from much further back…

I appreciate Red Bull’s decision to pit him. (after realizing their error) They just threw away a pole lap because they knew they’d probably be disqualified otherwise. They could’ve finished the lap and stopped immediately and tried something. But they knew they had no chance so took the hard pill of 8th with an aborted pole lap instead of disqualification and pitlane start.

These decisions make a top team. After an error they limited the damage.

I wonder how other teams would’ve reacted in the same situation. I think half of them would’ve finished the lap.
Imre

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Scribe, Stacy and Silfen!

On this day in motorsport

  • On this day in 1977 Niki Lauda clinched his second world championship title by finishing fourth at Watkins Glen while James Hunt won. Lauda, who had already signed to join Brabham, then quit Ferrari with two races left.

Author information

Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

One comment on “Gasly – AlphaTauri must make most of “big opportunity” for double points finish”

  1. Profile Photo

    Jere (@jerejj)
    2nd October 2022, 4:59

    Nothing really happened in Ted’s situation, but surprising as he’s gone into interview pen areas before without anyone caring about his presence.

    RBR indeed did the right thing by preventing a DSQ (which doesn’t automatically mean a pit lane start, though, but at the back anyway), & yes, some other teams might do differently in a similar situation.

Comments are closed.