Gasly ‘pissed off’ after “really silly” F1 start error in Spanish GP

Gasly was awarded a five-second time penalty after overshooting his grid box ahead of the start of the race.

The Frenchman managed to recover to finish tenth, narrowly missing out on ninth as he pressured Esteban Ocon to the line on the final lap.

Explaining what happened at the start, Gasly said: “Every time I try to gain every millimetre I can but this time I just misjudged and went too far. I’m really upset with myself for the penalty for the start because it was [a] really silly penalty and I just misjudged the position. I always try to gain everything I can, every millimetre possible, but this one I just went too far, and I paid a pretty big price.

“Because five seconds', knowing that we finished just a tenth behind Ocon for P9, I obviously lost the point, and it pisses me off but it’s like this.”

The AlphaTauri was handed a penalty point for the incident on his super license.

Gasly went from 13th to 10th in the closing laps as he overtook Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, moving up to the points-paying positions.

“Yeah I think that’s objectively the position where we should have finished, Gasly added. “I think overall the performance is not where we want to be… we’re clearly not in the fight with McLaren nor Ferrari and we dropped back in the order. I think there is some potential, but we seem to have lost it slightly in the last two races.

“We finished [two] tenths behind Ocon. I know it cost us a point and I’m not pleased with myself except that the last stint was quite exciting; I gave everything, and it was a pretty good one.”