Pierre Gasly is enjoying a “fantastic surprise” after a strong showing in USGP qualifying

AUSTIN — Alpine showed up at the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin with a special themed livery, an orange-toned “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle” paint scheme to promote Bethesda Softworks’ upcoming video game release. But this orange color drew a lot of comparisons to McLaren’s MCL38.

However, Pierre Gasly’s performance during qualifying on Saturday here at the Circuit of the Americas could draw similar comparisons.

Gasly surprised the entire paddock, progressing to Q3, but beyond the simple fact that the Alpine driver reached the third segment of the classification was how he progressed. Gasly was often at the top of the timings, spending time in P1 in both Q1 and Q2.

It was a performance that surprised Gasly himself.

“It’s a fantastic surprise,” Gasly told the media, incl SB Nationafter the qualification.

“I’m very happy because we made a lot of changes after the sprint. And in a sprint weekend, it’s not easy because you don’t have a lot of time to figure it out, especially when you have a new package and new parts in the car, you don’t have a lot of time to understand or try things. and we made a lot of set-up changes and the car was in a much better place,” added the Alpine driver.

“Very happy for the boys, to see that the parts have good potential.”

Gasly made it clear that Alpine was really in the mix, and not just going from segment to segment by the skin of its teeth.

“Obviously we were in the mix today and every lap he was doing, he was putting us in a decent position,” Gasly said. “So it wasn’t just a lap.

“That’s what I’m most happy about.”

However, Gasly moderated his comments when the discussion turned to tomorrow’s US Grand Prix, setting a more reasonable set of expectations for his performance in the main event.

“We’ve got (George) Russell and (Oscar) Piastri up front, and I think they’re in a different league, at the moment.”

The Alpine rider explained how Saturday’s performance shows signs of progress, much-needed progress for the team. “Looking at the last few races, we struggled to get out of Q1. Now we’ve reached Q3, I think this is my best qualifying of the year,” said Gasly.

“So I think before we look at the top four, we will look at our battle, and I think that (Fernando) Alonso, we will be able to fight against him. The Haas look really strong all weekend,” Gasly added. “But yeah, I’m sure we’ll be there.”

Gasly concluded his comments by looking to the future. He noted that Alpine is not fighting for any “major positions” in either the Drivers’ Championship or the Constructors’ Championship, but any progress that can be made next year could help put the team in a much better place at the start of 2025 , which were in 2024.

“We’re not really fighting for any major positions in the driver or teams championship. So it’s anything we can take that will allow us to fight for points next year,” said Gasly.

“Definitely positive. That’s what the guys gave me today.”