Gasly making progress with Red Bull F1 car after driving style tweaks

Pierre Gasly says driving “a bit too aggressive” early on in the 2019 season has played a part in his struggles to adapt to Red Bull’s RB15 Formula 1 car.

Gasly has struggled to transition into Red Bull as he would have hoped following his graduation from sister squad Toro Rosso at the end of last year. The Frenchman’s performances have improved of late, with Gasly taking sixth in China, running highly until a late issue in Baku and then finishing sixth again in Spain.

After initially being unable to get to grips with Red Bull’s RB15 challenger, Gasly admitted he would need to alter his driving style and now finally feels some of the changes he has made is starting to pay dividends. 

“For me at the moment, the traction I need to get clean and the fact that I’m quite aggressive on power sometimes pays off and sometimes it makes the car quite snappy and overheats the tyres and then we know what happens with these tyres,” Gasly said.

“I think it is this area where I can improve myself. I think we’ve found something I’m happy with but still a few things I’d like to change. It is difficult to know exactly how far but at least with what we’ve found there is more consistency and predictability.

“It is a better baseline so I’m pretty happy with that but to find the last few tenths there are still a few things we need to change. And also on my side to really make it feel good.”

Gasly reckons the upgrades Red Bull brought to Barcelona helped make the car feel “more predictable” and pushed it towards his liking.

“In the end as the team said it wasn’t a massive revolution this weekend but we can see it is going in the direction of making the car more predictable which will also go towards my direction,” he explained.

“I think the work consistently from the start of the season, testing too, that is starting to pay off with my driving.

“The driving I had coming into the team with the package we had at the beginning, even in Barcelona it was fine in terms of performance, in Australia and the other races the performance on track was good but the driving style was a bit too aggressive and didn’t suit the car so well.

“I think it is the work, progressively, is starting to pay off but of course I want more and I will keep working to find more.”