Gasly explains difficult start Alpine: 'Does not reflect our potential'

Pierre Gasly has had a somewhat difficult start to the season since switching from AlphaTauri to Alpine. The Frenchman is currently 12th in the Formula 1 championship standings, with just over half the number of points of teammate Esteban Ocon.

Gasly on first half of the season at Alpine

"I think it's been quite tricky for many different reasons," Gasly answers the question from GPblog on how he looks back on his first six months at Alpine. "I think overall we've been probably the most unlucky I've been in Formula 1 compared to all other seasons. So there were a couple of missed opportunities which came from like a sort of snowball effect and had a pretty big impact on the final result."

He continued: "Obviously it doesn't reflect the full potential of the package and on the other side we haven't been as competitive as what we had targeted at the start of the year." Alpine finished the 2022 F1 season in fourth place among constructors but remains stuck in sixth place in the championship for the time being in 2023.

"We started behind Aston and McLaren had a better development than we have had so far so we dropped to sixth and it's obviously not the target for the season so it will be a lie to say that we match the expectations," the Alpine driver added.

However, he has full confidence in his own team and thinks there is definitely more in it than Alpine has shown so far. "We still have half a year to go and still quite a lot of stuff in the pipeline in terms of development. It's not going to turn the full season around but I'm definitely hopeful that we can show better form in the second part of the year," Gasly said.