Pierre Gasly gave a troubling account of his disappointing French Grand Prix, reporting that previously unencountered issues left him struggling to handle his Red Bull. Gasly took the final point-paying place at Paul Ricard after Daniel Ricciardo was penalised for his part in late-race action.
Gasly jumped Ricciardo off the line and did well to keep him behind on a longer-than-expected opening stint on the soft compound, which was then backed up by Red bull covering the undercut with a fine pit-stop.
However, things swiftly began to unravel from there as Gasly soon lost position to Ricciardo and also slipped behind Kimi Raikkonen and Nico Hulkenberg after the strategies shook out.
Gasly was too far back to take advantage of Lando Norris' late issues which saw him limp to the line and he only received a point as a result of Ricciardo's sanction, a situation that Red Bull Christian Horner did not hide his disappointment over.
Gasly in trouble? Red Bull blast disappointing French GPRead more
"There is a lot of work to be done to try and understand what happened," Gasly said.
"We were quite fast in FP3 but then from qualifying onwards, we have lost a lot of pace. There has been some setup work done on the car between FP3 and qualifying, I won't go into too many details.
"We were sliding a lot. There is a lot of work to do to understand why we're struggling so much with grip.
"It's disappointing to perform in that manner at home but the bigger issue is understanding what is wrong with the car. I'm giving everything at the wheel but I'm sliding everywhere.
"We lacked grip, which is not normal with the car we have. This was the first time I felt so little grip so we need to find answers."
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