Gasly, Hartley: No news is good news…

Despite unofficially being given the green light for the final three races of the 2017 Formula 1 world championship, both Brendon Hartley and Pierre Gasly remain in the dark about their futures at Toro Rosso.

After Hartley was picked at the expense of Daniil Kvyat to partner Pierre Gasly for the Mexican Grand Prix, the team now has the most inexperienced driver line-up on the grid with just three race starts between the pair.

Both Hartley and Gasly said they haven’t directly spoken to Red Bull chief Dr Helmut Marko about their futures at Toro Rosso so are solely focused on impressing in the final three races of the season with the goal of securing a full-time race seat next year.

“The plan is always the same: be as fast as you can and do as much as you can for the team,” Gasly said. “My approach will be the same as in Malaysia and Japan but it is only my third F1 race weekend and I am still getting better.

“They didn’t tell me anything, as a driver in F1 you need to deliver a good job for the team and if the car is good enough for points you need to be in the points and if not you need to extract the maximum which is what I will try.

“I’ve heard that I will be in until the end of the season but it hasn’t been said to me since I’ve been in Japan. I will see him this weekend but this race weekend if my first target."

Hartley says aside from keeping his Toro Rosso drive after his F1 debut in Austin he hasn’t been given any indication of his future but is relishing the chance to soak up that pressure and deliver for the Italian team.

“I think it's clear that the pressure gets higher,” Hartley said. “Expectation was quite low coming in, everyone in the team understood that it was a very tall ask for me in Austin, and I'm going to do my best to stay as relaxed as I was in Austin.

“As a driver, especially from what I've experienced a lot of the pressure comes from within so I think it's about that and focusing on what's important, which is just driving the car as quick as possible and putting all the pieces that's required to put a Formula 1 race weekend together.

“To be perfectly honest I haven't actually spoken to Marko after the race. I'm waiting for him to appear at some point in the next few hours. Sometimes no news is good news.

“I’ve not heard too much, I've read a bit on social media obviously so probably not much I can really comment on to be honest with you. I'm pretty focused on this weekend, like I said before putting everything I learnt from Austin into practice.”