Pierre Gasly said AlphaTauri's struggles this year stemmed from their cars being "massively overweight".
Having produced some impressive results since returning to the team after his ill-fated spell with sister outfit Red Bull, expectations were high for Gasly at the start of this year. But despite some positive flashes, the campaign has largely been one to forget.
AlphaTauri started well enough, scoring points at six of the first eight races including five straight to begin the season. The highlight for Gasly in particular was in Azerbaijan, where he finished in fifth place behind the Red Bull and Mercedes cars – taking full advantage of the two Ferrari drivers suffering engine-related DNFs.
But in the 14 between that day in Baku and the end of the season, the team scored just eight more points in total and tumbled down the standings. In the end they were overtaken by Haas and finished ninth, above only Williams who themselves had a poor year.
Gasly, who has now left the Red Bull stable for the first time in his F1 career and will race for Alpine in 2023, was obviously frustrated by his car's lack of competitiveness, particularly in the final few weeks of the campaign. And he was blunt when explaining the root cause.
"It was a tricky year because there were obviously very high expectations coming from last season," he said. "There was a great momentum, a change of regulations with the target from F1 to put the field more together. So my hopes to have the best year for AlphaTauri were never as high as they were at the start of the season.
"I really thought we would have our chance with the budget cap coming in, so we would have no reason not to outperform all the midfield teams.
"I knew it would be a race of development throughout the year. It doesn't matter where you start, we just needed to put this development on the car race after race and unfortunately, we didn't manage to do that.
"I do believe the core of the car was great but we were just massively overweight the whole season. And just on that, it cost us a lot in qualifying. I do believe that was the main issue. Clearly, we didn't perform anywhere near what we would have liked and personally what I would have liked with the team."
