For a discontented Pierre Gasly, the best thing about Turkey on Sunday evening was likely the country's border as he sought to forget AlphaTauri's "embarrassing" weekend in Istanbul.
Gasly qualified P15 for last Sunday's rainy round, but was demoted to 19th on the grid following a breach by his team of Parc Fermé regulations involving a power unit change that his crews started but did not complete.
However, this year's Italian Grand Prix winner stormed off the grid to complete the opening lap an impressive 13th.
But Gasly's pace in the dismal conditions wasn't enough to improve his position by the time the checkered brought an end to a weekend to forget.
"The whole weekend was really bad," said Gasly after the race. "We had a very poor performance in the wet, and honestly, it’s a bit embarrassing, because we’re just so slow with the wets, with the inters, we can’t switch them on.
"It was the same in quali. We took a penalty, so a lot of problems. We need to do better, because honestly, it was a poor performance from our side since yesterday morning. We’ll have to work for the next races."
Gasly's teammate Daniil Kvyat hardly fared any better, finishing 12th, one spot ahead of the Frenchman, a result that contrasted with AlphaTauri's strong performance in its previous outing at Imola.
Istanbul Park's specific conditions offered the Faenza-based squad mitigating circumstances, but Gasly still believes the sister Red Bull outfit should have done a much better job in Turkey.
"It was obviously very unique conditions that I don’t expect we’re going to face [again]," added the 24-year-old.
"But just for all of us, I think we need to understand what went wrong and what didn’t work. We already have some answers from yesterday, but we could not make the changes for today.
"But still, we should have anticipated all these things and I think we could have done a better job. But now it’s done and we need to look at the next three races."
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