Gasly: "One of those special laps" not enough as Alpine chase Racing Bulls

Credit: Luca Martini / WHYOUT images

Pierre Gasly believes he extracted everything from a difficult Alpine on Saturday at the Circuit of the Americas — but it still wasn't quite enough to reach Q3.

Gasly qualified 11th, missing the top-ten shootout by just two hundredths of a second to Racing Bulls' Liam Lawson. He will nonetheless start 10th on Sunday after Arvid Lindblad's five-place grid penalty for taking a sixth internal combustion engine.

"If you ask me, I think it was actually one of those special laps," Gasly said. "When I crossed the line, I was really pleased. It was challenging the whole session, very tricky car to drive, and my last attempt I really managed to squeeze everything out of it, so it felt like it was one of those Q3 laps."

The narrow margin stung, but Gasly was clear-eyed about the pecking order.

"Unfortunately, I missed out by two hundredths, so yeah, just missed a little bit," he said. "On one hand, I know there wasn't more in it. On the other hand, i think it just shows we're kind of chasing [Racing Bulls], and on a day like today we didn't have quite enough to beat them. But hopefully we can do it tomorrow."

With Lawson directly ahead on the grid, Gasly knows where the fight will be — and he's not planning to be passive. He referenced Singapore, where a lack of power off the line allowed Lawson and Nico Hülkenberg to pass him immediately, ultimately costing him track position in a race where he finished outside the points.

"I think Singapore had a bad start and it cost me a bit, so hopefully tomorrow I need to be aggressive on Liam at the start and try to get him straight away," he said. "I think we'll just approach it that way. We need big points, we need to beat them, so I think there's only one way to go and I'm confident we can still take the fight on."

Alpine trails Racing Bulls in the constructors' battle, and with Gasly carrying the team's points hopes in Austin, that aggression isn't optional. The gap to Lawson is small. The margin for error is smaller.