Gasly: "Surprised Sauber haven't scored more points"

Toro Rosso's Pierre Gasly has said that he's surprised Sauber aren't further ahead of his team than they are, as the Swiss-Italian team overtook Toro Rosso two Grands Prix ago and currently are nine points ahead with one race left.

Sauber have arguably made the biggest improvement of any team on the grid this year, as they even got two cars in Q3 in Brazil. Rookie Charles Leclerc has finished best of the rest two straight races, making them pull away from Toro Rosso, who are now in ninth in the constructors' championship.

"In a way I’m surprised they didn’t score more points because it’s been quite a while since they were quite consistently in Q3," the Red Bull-bound Gasly told RaceFans.

"I think the fact that they’re working with Ferrari as well helped a lot the development and [they] came with a lot of upgrades every weekend. The car pace been a lot stronger than it used to be at the beginning of the year."

Toro Rosso themselves haven't been at their best as of late, even though they now have the vastly improved third spec of the Honda engine, which reportedly is more powerful than the Renault power-units. Gasly knows that making up the nine-point deficit in just one race in Abu Dhabi will be very hard for him and his teammate Brendon Hartley.

"They are clearly really competitive and [it’s] not going to be easy at all to catch them in the championship. But we kind of knew it [would] come at some point because based on the performance and the pace they show already since the middle of the season we knew it would be difficult to beat them."