Gasly explains “short arms” comment amid F1 practice struggles in Turkey

The Frenchman finished inside the top 10 in both practice sessions at Istanbul Park but was unhappy with the understeer he had.

“My arms are too short to turn the wheel,” Gasly told his engineer over team radio in second practice after running off at Turn 6.

Explaining his message, Gasly said: “It’s just a balance issue – I was not happy with the balance with a lot of understeer and it was just a way of explaining myself! At the moment we just need to analyse everything. For sure [the balance is] a limiting factor, I believe not only for us, but we know that we need to improve it if we want to be faster tomorrow.”

As Gasly looks to build on a tricky Friday, he has his sights set on trying to beat the two Alpines.

“Today didn’t feel good and we were ninth, so I think tomorrow we’ll definitely try to do better,” he added. “For sure we’ll try to beat [Alpine]. It’s very close, I think it’s only a tenth, but we are a tenth behind instead of being a tenth ahead so we’ll try to find this extra pace for tomorrow.”

Teammate Yuki Tsunoda enjoyed one of his better Fridays, ending the day in 11th.

“It’s a really amazing track,” Tsunoda explained. “I’m really enjoying the track currently. I was watching last year’s onboard and I think between last year and this year, they did a little bit of treatment on the surface and I felt there was clearly a difference in the grip level compared to last year and it was really fun.

“I’m also improving the pace compared to previous races, which is good, and I just have to focus now and put it all together. This time it seems like I have good pace, so I’m just going to try and maximise this opportunity and aim for Q3.”