“In F1, although I was quite competitive, I have always had some bad luck, but I plan to change that this week” – Gasly
AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly left Monaco with a heightened sense of confidence after a brilliant weekend for the team.
The French driver remained in the top ten throughout Qualifying and managed to land P6 for Sunday’s race.
In a complete grid shake-up, Gasly found himself ahead of the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton from lights out and managed to keep him in his mirrors for the duration of the Grand Prix to come home in 6th.
Looking ahead to Baku, Gasly says it’s another unusual track but is similar to Monaco in terms of its layout and tyre compounds used.
Expecting the weekend to be a difficult battle, running lower downforce with a major lack of surface grip, the 25-year-old is hoping to rewrite his past bad luck at the circuit this weekend.
Speaking on Tuesday, Gasly said; “Since then [Monaco] I have spent some time in the simulator in the UK and then I headed off to Baku via Dubai.
“It’s a lot of travelling but it’s all for a good cause because we are heading for a very busy part of the season.
“I’d say Baku is a really unusual track and it has something in common with Monaco, being a street circuit in the centre of a town, so it’s not a normal sort of track.”
“That means you have to set up the car a bit differently”, he continued.
“You run with much lower downforce than in Monaco, and the corners are much slower in Baku, but it is similar in terms of grip and in some other characteristics, and we will be using the C5 softest tyres again.
“The lack of surface grip and the low downforce means it is not a straightforward challenge and it is difficult to find the best set up for the car with the long straight that means the tyres and brakes lose temperature a lot and there are other factors to take into account to get everything out of the car over one lap and also in the race.
“I quite like the circuit, I finished second in GP2 a few years ago but in F1, although I was quite competitive, I have always had some bad luck, but I plan to change that this week.
“I hope we will be able to perform at a similar or even better level than in Monaco.”
Free Practice begins on Friday, June 4 at 10:00 am in Azerbaijan.
