Gasly was 'angry and sad' to be passed over in 2017

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Pierre Gasly has revealed he was initially angry when he was told that he wouldn't be racing for Toro Rosso at the start of 2017.

Gasly has just swept to the 2016 GP2 title and had every hope of making his Formula 1 début within months. Instead, the team decided to give Daniil Kvyat another chance to show what he could do.

Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko had broken the news to Gasly at the United States Grand Prix.

"It was in Austin 2016 when Helmut told me that Daniil was signed for 2017," Gasly told the official Formula 1 website after he was asked when the last time he had been really angry.

"I thought that was not fair," he added. "I had just won the GP2 championship. It was a mixture of being angry, disappointed and sad."

Gasly turned his attention instead to winning the Japanese Super Formula. In the end he narrowly missed out on the title when the final race of the season was cancelled.

"I lost out on the championship by half a point – for weather conditions!" he sighed. "I would have preferred to lose by ten points for a reason rather than by half a point for a typhoon."

Marko: Gasly exile to Japan was character-building for F1

But by then, everything had already well and truly changed for Gasly. Three weeks earlier he had unseated Kvyat to finally made his long-anticipated Grand Prix début in Malaysia and Japan.

The next Grand Prix clashed with the Super Formula finale. Gasly opted to stay in Japan, only to have the typhoon hand the title to Hiroaki Ishiura.

Gasly then returned to Toro Rosso for the final three races of the season. He will now have a full season alongside Brendon Hartley to show what he can do in 2018.

"I want to start collecting again – trophies!" he said, looking ahead to his new challenge. "I still have all of them from past years, but somehow they could start rolling in again."

Asked by the website which famous people from past and present he would invite to a dinner party, Gasly nominated Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher and Barack Obama.

"I think they all made a difference," he explained.

Gasly also revealed a weakness for tiramisu and playing roulette, and said that football was his biggest buzz away from Formula 1. But he couldn't choose being able to fly and being invisible as his preferred superpower.

"Both," he insisted. "If I need to know what is said in a meeting I can just sneak in. And on a race weekend I can just fly out of the paddock!"

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.