Gasly ‘giving everything but sliding everywhere’ at French GP

Pierre Gasly has endured a home race to forget at the French Grand Prix as he blamed setup changes to his Red Bull for losing pace and “sliding everywhere” at Circuit Paul Ricard.

Having gained confidence from practice, Gasly’s home round became a nightmare situation when he qualified down in ninth place, before suffering similar problems in the race as he finished down in 11^th place – only to be promoted to 10^th due to a post-race penalty for Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo.

Trying to find answers to his drop in pace, the French driver believes key set changes made between practice and qualifying on Saturday wrecked his chances as he couldn’t find grip in his RB15.

“There is a lot of work to be done to try and understand what happened,” Gasly said. “We were quite fast in FP3 but then from qualifying onwards, we have lost a lot of pace. There has been some setup work done on the car between FP3 and qualifying, I won’t go into too many details.

“We were sliding a lot. There is a lot of work to do to understand why we’re struggling so much with grip.

“It’s disappointing to perform in that manner at home but the bigger issue is understanding what is wrong with the car. I’m giving everything at the wheel but I’m sliding everywhere.

“We lacked grip, which is not normal with the car we have. This was the first time I felt so little grip so we need to find answers.”

Gasly’s difficult start to 2019 with Red Bull has continued, especially compared to teammate Max Verstappen, with the French driver now 63 points behind in the standings while his best result of the season so far remains fifth place at the Monaco Grand Prix.