Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri, Imola, 2022

Gasly ‘paid the price for qualifying mistake’ in Imola

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: Pierre Gasly says that a mistake in Friday qualifying compromised his entire grand prix weekend at Imola

In brief

Gasly ‘paid the price for qualifying mistake’ in Imola

Pierre says says that a single mistake in Friday qualifying compromised his entire Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix weekend.

Gasly was eliminated in Q1 in 17th place, one position behind team mate Yuki Tsunoda, and finish the sprint race in the same position after opening lap contact with Zhou Guanyu.

He finished the grand prix out of the points in 12th place. Asked what lessons he could take from the weekend, Gasly said that “the lesson is we’ve got to qualify”.

“We can’t make mistakes in qualifying,” he continued. “We’ve had really good qualifying the entire season, made a mistake on Friday and then, yeah, we paid the price from there.

Gasly spent the final 43 laps with Lewis Hamilton behind him, and took the chequered flag behind Alex Albon’s Williams.

“[Hamilton] was stuck behind me, I was stuck behind the car who was stuck with the car ahead and it was just a train,” said Gasly. “So it wasn’t a particularly exciting race and quite frustrating.”

Porpoising a “virtual barrier” on Aston Martin’s performance – Krack

Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack says that the porpoising effect experienced in their AMR22 acts as a “virtual barrier” to the team’s performance.

Aston Martin finally secured their first points of the season in Imola after a frustrating opening three rounds of 2022. But Krack says that the team cannot fully exploit the performance of their car due to excessive bouncing created by the new ground effect aerodynamics.

“We cannot explore the overall potential that the car is having due to the porpoising,” Krack says. “This puts like a virtual barrier on how far we can go. So we cannot extract the performance that the car is really having. This is the main problem.”

Sky secures exclusive W Series live broadcast rights in UK

W Series will be shown exclusively live on Sky Sports in the UK in a multi-year deal, it has been announced.

Starting with the third season of the championship, which begins at the next grand prix weekend in Miami, the all-women racing series will be shown live on Sky Sports, with live coverage of each qualifying and race.

Channel 4 will broadcast highlights of the series’ races on free-to-air television, with the race at the British Grand Prix also shown live on Channel 4.

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Comment of the day

Valtteri Bottas almost experienced deja vu in Imola when a wheel nut was cross-threaded during his pit stop but recovered to finish fifth. @Geemac believes the former Mercedes driver deserves more credit…

I said it while he was at Williams, I said it while he was at Mercedes and now I’m saying it while he’s at Alfa Romeo: Bottas could win a race in reverse, on fire while being chased by a herd of angry Wildebeest and for some reason no one would notice. He never, ever, gets the credit he is due.

He makes the job of being a top level grand prix driver look so easy that people just overlook him. It annoys me no end!
@geemac

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Markd, John Beak and Terro!

On this day in motorsport

Author information

Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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14 comments on “Gasly ‘paid the price for qualifying mistake’ in Imola”

  1. But Krack says

    I’m 10 years old forever

    1. ….pfffffffft —-*

  2. ThreePurpleSectors (@)
    26th April 2022, 0:26

    That Mirror article is hilarious! That’s usually what happens when you have “sports” writer talk about a spork they don’t have knowledge of. How does Massa put an end to Hamilon’s dominance in 2008? That was LH’s 2nd year in F1! I thought you had to win a couple to be considered dominant?

    1. The word “dominant” gets thrown around so much in F1 circles that I think people are starting to misunderstand the word. I see it get used to describe anyone having any level of success irrespective of the competition. I think this Mirror article is a prime example! Sure Lewis was unexpectedly very competitive from the get-go but he in no way dominated during his McLaren years.

  3. Bottas was super conservative in Imola. He could have and should have had a few overtakes done but he was too nice braking down to t1.
    I don’t know why some drivers get a loads of credit and some don’t. Bottas has been beaten by Lewis though other than that he has had the upper hand of his other team mates, on the other hand Sainz jr beat Kvyat and was beaten by every other team mate he has had, at least on pace. Bottas is a joke and Sainz is a celebrity. I don’t get it too cotd.

    1. ThreePurpleSectors (@)
      26th April 2022, 1:27

      Its just fans playing favorites. There are drivers they love to root for and drivers they love to root against. BOT was generally respected at Williams. The disrespect started at Mercedes because they wanted him to give HAM a harder time. Same thing happened w/ Rosberg. Respected initially, then disrespected for not beating Ham. After he won 2016 he was respected again. I predict backhanded complements very soon for Bottas as a way of taking a dig at Merc/Ham.

    2. Yep Bottas is great. I get the feeling his reputation was largely impacted by the rather vocal Hamilton detractors. Rather than acknowledging Lewis to be an incredible talent, it was easier to say he was “only beating Bottas”. The first time he really impressed me was his P3 in the wet qualifying in Canada 2013. A cracking effort in a mediocre car for a rookie!

      1. ThreePurpleSectors (@)
        26th April 2022, 2:24

        Completely agree. Bottas has always been a good driver and has the resume to back him up.

      2. @tommy-c I’m not sure it’s about bringing Hamilton down – it’s more that, having been for five years part of the most dominant team in F1 history, he achieved only a handful of wins. Yes, he was driving alongside one of the best drivers the sport has ever seen, but it’s hard not to look at the level of performance Mercedes had and think he ought to have come away with more.

        Bottas’ record in a dominant team puts him on the level of a Rubens Barrichello or Mark Webber – both very good drivers on their day but not consistently fast enough to win a world championship (though Webber at least came close once). I think that’s probably a fair assessment of his abilities, to be honest.

    3. Bottas is a

      fast driver

      (few ‘unforced errors’), but not a

      fast racer

      (overtaking and defending); he seems to struggle overtaking slower cars or defending against faster ones.
      It was very good to see how he reeled in Russell, but disappointing that he did not even get one serious attempt in to overtake him.

  4. Only food words, but funny.

    Initially thought loyal to Mercedes.

    I couldn’t agree more with COTD.

  5. Disappointed about the W series Sky deal. That series needs to be free to air. And don’t give me the whole “highlights on Ch4 are free to air” rebuttal, it’s lost a good broadcast slot to be shunted into evening telly land.

  6. Genuinely sad to hear about the death of W Series

    1. It never really lived, anyway.

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