Horner: Gasly needs ‘reset’ but Red Bull will stick by him

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner reckons Pierre Gasly needs a mental “Ctrl+Alt+Del” reset in order to recover from his difficult start to the 2019 Formula 1 season.

Max Verstappen scored Red Bull’s first win of the season at last weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix and moved up to third in the drivers’ championship, with Gasly only able to manage seventh on his way to being lapped by the Dutchman.

The Frenchman has endured a tough campaign since his graduation from Toro Rosso and is yet to finish higher than fifth, leading to suggestions he could be replaced by Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat or Alexander Albon.

But Horner re-affirmed Red Bull’s support for Gasly, adding the driver just needs one strong weekend to turn things around.

“Pierre is having a tough time at the moment, we’re doing our best to support him, I think he just needs a reset,” Horner said.

“I think we have got to somehow go ‘Ctrl+Alt+Del’ in his head and start again. He is a quick driver.

“The problem he has got is that Max is delivering every week, and that puts more pressure on him to perform, but we’re sticking by him.

“We still believe in him and we’ll give him all the support we can to try and nurture the talent we know he has.

“There is no intention to change Pierre. He’s our driver, we’re going to work with him, we will try to get the best out of him.

“He’s having a tough time at the moment but we will do our best to support him through it.”

Gasly conceded he struggled with a number of issues throughout the race, including getting stuck in traffic, which had a “snowball effect” on his progress.

“I struggled with the traffic at the beginning and spent quite a lot of time there, and it kinda was a snowball effect with the time we spent behind,” Gasly explained.

“The hotter everything gets and I just struggled with that, struggled to get past Kimi [Raikkonen] and the cars around, and after the pitstop I pushed too hard and destroyed the front tyres after the first few laps.

“And after that, just struggled with blistering. It wasn’t the best management on my side, so it makes the afternoon quite tough.

“I think we’ve showed some more speed. Unfortunate that it was in free practice and you want to be fast on the Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

“But overall I think from FP1, FP2, also Q1 and Q2 there are improvements but for sure they are not as big as we want for sure.

“But there are a few things and we’ll keep pushing to get the results we should get and I’ll keep working to get the performance right.”