At the inaugural Qatar Grand Prix, Gasley started in the front row for the first time in his career. He started from second place, followed by Alonso, who started from third place. But when Alonso finally took the podium, Gasly finished only 11th.
Gasly started the weekend in very good shape, finishing second in both practice sessions on Friday. He also played extremely well in qualifying, finishing fourth and moving to second after Verstappen and Bottas defied yellow flag penalties.
Despite starting in the front row, his two-stop strategy ultimately failed. He was overtaken by Alonso on the first lap, and Alonso used a one-stop strategy to successfully win his first podium since his return.
Gasley said: "To be fair, we didn't have speed throughout the game. Hiroshi Kakuda and I both started in the top ten and finished after the top ten. So to be honest, I don't know the answer. ”
"From the start, we didn't have the speed. In the first five or six laps, I tried to follow Fernando, but after that, our tyres quickly failed. We tried the two-stop strategy, but we weren't fast enough. ”
"Even though I adopted a two-stop strategy and pushed as far as I could, we couldn't match the pace of McLaren and Alpine, which was frustrating."
Assessing whether the qualifying accident affected his performance on Sunday, Gasley replied: "I don't know, after Saturday's accident, we replaced the front wing and bottom plate, I'm not sure if it will have an impact. The two sets of neutral tires in the main race were also used in qualifying, so I don't know if that's one of the reasons. ”
"There are a few things that aren't quite the same as usual, but they don't match the speed of other people, which makes me very frustrated."
Kakuda also made it to Q3 on Saturday, but his two-stop strategy was equally bad, falling from 8th to 13th, hinting that the team had deeper problems.
"Before the first stop, even the soft tires were too slow. We struggled, it's a pity. Overall we were really fast, but suddenly dropped a lot in the most important race. ”
"(Hard tires) feel much better, and there's some reason behind that, not just the difference in the tyres, it's another problem."
Both Alpine drivers trailed their Counterparts in starting positions behind their Respective Toro Rosso drivers, but in the end Alonso and Aucom finished third and fifth, with Gasly and Kakuda missing out into the points zone. It also means that after this race, Alpine is already 25 points ahead of Toro Rosso in the constructors' standings.
Gasley is more concerned about what problems the team has in Qatar, saying: "It's tough, but after it's over we need to look at ourselves objectively, they're doing a lot better than we are, it's that simple. ”
"Alpine finished in third and fifth place, yet we started in front of them. They're much faster today, and there's nothing we can do about it. Alpine did better, congratulations to them. We will try to perform better in the last two games. ”