Gasly admits Red Bull tenure 'was never going to work'

Pierre Gasly has opened up on his botched stint with Red Bull Racing in 2019, admitting in hindsight that he was never going to be "a fit in that seat".

Gasly was promoted to the senior bull squad after a solid 2018 season, his first full campaign in F1, in which he scored five top-ten finishes and comfortably outscored teammate Brendon Hartley.

Measuring up to the intrepid Max Verstappen was always going to be a challenge for Gasly, but in the eyes of motorsport boss Helmut Marko, the performance shortfall versus the Dutchman at the mid-way point of the 2019 season was just too significant to ignore and warranted Gasly's demotion back to Toro Rosso and his replacement by Alex Albon.

But in hindsight, Gasly feels he built up a deficit at the outset - with both his team and in the public eye - that only swelled as the season unfolded.

"From the moment I made my first mistake in a car, I felt like people there slowly began to turn on me," he said in a candid interview for The Player's Tribune.

"I’d had a crash in winter testing, and from that moment on the season never really got going.

"Then I had a tough first two races with Red Bull and the media just ate me up. Anything I said in the press was twisted into an excuse for my form, and nobody really stuck up for me."

Looking back at his predicament, Gasly suggests he wasn't always treated fairly at Red Bull compared to the driver sitting on the other side of the garage.

"The car wasn’t perfect, and I was doing my best to try to improve and learn each week," he said.

"But like … here’s what I’ll say about it: it was a difficult time for me at Red Bull because I didn’t feel like I was really supported and treated the same way as others there have been. And for me … that’s something that I just can’t accept.

"I was working my ass off every day, trying to get results for the team, but I was not being given all the tools I needed to succeed," he continued. "I would try to offer solutions, but my voice wasn’t heard, or it would take weeks to see changes.

"For whatever reason, I was never going to be a fit in that seat — it was just never going to work."

• Read also: Albon ready 'to take anyone's space' if needed

Gasly was replaced after the Hungarian Grand Prix, during F1's summer break, at a moment in time where he felt he was finally making some headway.

"I called our team principal, Christian Horner, just to ask him what I could be doing more of on race weekends to improve, and to see if he could take a closer look at my side of the garage to see what could be done" he said.

"Christian said he would do all he could. And that was that."

Gasly's return to Red Bull's 'B' team came at Spa where the 23-year-old endured a devastating personal blow: the death on Saturday of his childhood friend Anthoine Hubert.

"I wasn’t prepared for that," he remembered. "Honestly, I had let my mind wander — to think that maybe Anthoine was in a coma or something like that. But death? Death? I never thought that was possible.

"I was completely broken. I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore. I’ve never experienced a worse feeling than that in my life. Never."

And yet he managed to collect himself to achieve a P9 finish on race day.

In the fifteen months that followed, Gasly closed his visor and put his head down to focus on restoring his confidence and his image with a collection of strong drives in the first half of the 2020 with AlphaTauri.

At Spa, he took a moment to remember his good friend Anthoine at the very spot where the young Frenchman had died at the top of Raidillion. It was a moment of personal reflection that offered  a semblance of closure. And allowed him to open his visor once again.

"Like really see again," he explained. "I found a piece of myself that day. And I took it with me to Monza, the following race."

Gasly snatched a sensational and highly emotional win in the Italian Grand Prix, a triumph that led to talk of a potential return to Red Bull.

Such a move didn't pan out for 2021, but could it happen in the future?

The Frenchman likely won't be holding his breath.

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