Luck was not on the side of either AlphaTauri this afternoon at the Losail International Circuit, with Pierre Gasly finishing in P11 followed by Yuki Tsunoda in 13th.
After a decent day out on Saturday, Pierre clocked a lap fast enough for fourth while Tsunoda would take off from eighth at lights out.
On Sunday morning, Stewards handed grid penalties to both Verstappen and Bottas for yellow flag infractions during qualifying – lifting Pierre onto the front row for today’s battle.
After a tough start in the opening lap, the Alpine of Fernando Alonso got around Gasly, and it seemed to be downhill from there for both drivers.
After struggling to find pace and grip over the 57 lap race, they voiced their disappointment as they head into the final two races of the 2021 season.
Speaking after the race Pierre Gasly said: “It’s a really frustrating day. Both Yuki and I started in the top 10, but went massively backwards during the race.
“I was giving everything I had inside the car today, but we were just too slow. Even at the start, I wasn’t able to stick with Alonso, so we tried to go for an aggressive two-stop strategy, but the pace just wasn’t there.”
The French driver suggested that a number of changes to the car overnight – following an incident during Qualifying – may be the reason he simply could not find pace today.
“It didn’t work today, which is really disappointing,” he said.
“After the incident yesterday we changed some parts on the car, I don’t know if these could have impacted our race pace today, but we’ll have to go away and review everything, as I just can’t explain it right now.”
On the other side of the garage was Yuki Tsunoda who said he was not expecting to have so many issues on track, and like his teammate, was extremely disappointed with his performance.
“That was a particularly tough race, I struggled a lot on the soft tyre, especially in the first stint,” he explained.
“We really weren’t expecting that as overall this week we’ve had really good pace, but today in the race it dropped off, so we’ve got to look at the data and figure out why that was.
“It’s a real shame, as Alpine had a very good race today, so we need a strong comeback for the last two races.”
Formula One will head to Saudi Arabia on December 5 for the second last race of the season with Pierre in ninth in the driver’s standings and Yuki in 14th.
