"Hopefully a rusty Yuki is a start": Gasly on Tsunoda's return and Alpine's fight with Racing Bulls

Credit: Formula One

Yuki Tsunoda is back on the Zandvoort grid, and Pierre Gasly isn't hiding his relief – even if that relief comes with asterisk.

The two were teammates once, back in their AlphaTauri – now known as Racing Bulls – days, and that history clearly hasn't faded. When asked what Alpine need to do to close the gap on a rampant Racing Bulls, Gasly's answer started with his old teammate rather than his own car.

"Hopefully a rusty Yuki [Tsunoda] is a start," he said, only half-joking. "I must say I'm happy to see him back on the grid, it's going to be quite a job to jump back in this car on a Sprint weekend in Zandvoort."

Gasly is identifying a genuine variable, instead of simply being generous. A Sprint weekend offers no FP2 to shake off the rust, no long practice runs to rebuild rhythm. If Tsunoda's return comes with any hesitation at all, Zandvoort is exactly the kind of circuit and format combination that will expose it. Gasly knows that better than most; he's raced enough Sprint weekends to understand how unforgiving they are for anyone short on recent mileage.

However, the warmth for Tsunoda doesn't distract from the bigger picture, which is that Racing Bulls have been the form team of the summer. "They are looking very competitive, the last few events were definitely impressive in terms of car pace and the amount of points they scored," Gasly said. "I think on our side all we can do is try to bring that performance which hopefully will be the case with that upgrade."

That upgrade is the real focus of Gasly's weekend as it's clearly been on his mind through the break. "It's going to be interesting, we have upgrade coming into the weekend which I was waiting for because the last few weekends has been more difficult in terms of performance," he said. "Hopefully it puts us back in the fight and hopefully we are able to fight for that fifth spot in the Constructors."

It's a fight Alpine did not expect to be having in quite this way. They opened the season as the fifth-best team on the grid, a position that looked reasonably settled through the early rounds. Racing Bulls had other ideas. Their development trajectory through the pre-summer break stretch has been the sharpest on the grid. What was a comfortable cushion for Alpine has turned into a genuine scrap heading into the second half of the year.

Gasly, for his part, sounds like a driver who's used the break well. "The feeling is very good. I'm very excited to start the second part of the year," he said. "It's been a very good break, good renergise and just go away for a few weeks from race tracks."

Whether that recharge translates into results will depend heavily on what Alpine's upgrade actually delivers on track – and whether Tsunoda's rust burns off as quickly as Gasly is hoping it does.