Gasly rues grid blunder and penalty that 'made life harder'

Pierre Gasly only had himself to blame for reaping just a single point in Sunday's Spanish GP, the AlphaTauri driver incurring a five-second penalty for lining up out of position on the grid.

After the formation lap, Gasly coasted to a halt on his P12 grid slot but, distracted, the Frenchman positioned his front wheels a few inches beyond his box, a mistake that implied an automatic penalty from the race stewards.

"Every time I try to gain every millimeter I can, but this time I just misjudged and went too far," Gasly explained. "I’m upset with myself for making the mistaken, it’s a very silly penalty to get and it made my life harder."

Racing on a two-stop strategy, Gasly spent the first part of the race in 13th position, falling further back after his switch to the medium compound and then fighting his way back up the order, twice, and concluding his afternoon P10, but hot on the heels of Alpine's Esteban Ocon.

"[The penalty] Compromised our first stop and potentially we could have undercut some other guys, and we finished a tenth from Ocon, so I know it cost us a point. I'm not pleased with myself."

Gasly admitted to also being frustrated by AlphaTauri's drop-off in performance of late compared to the pace of the AT02 in the first two races of the season.

"Overall, the performance is not where we want to be," he said. "We seem to have really lost in the last two races, in Portimão and also this weekend.

"We're clearly not in the fight with McLaren and Ferrari, we've dropped back in the order and we need understand exactly because I think there is some potential it seems to have lost its life in the last two races."

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While Gasly salvaged a point in Barcelona, teammate Yuki Tsunoda's afternoon came to a premature halt after just six laps after when the Japanese driver's car lost its drive on the exit of Turn 10.

"We don’t currently know what happened to the car, so we’ll investigate this after it returns to the garage and then we’ll review everything together with the engineers," said Tsunoda

"I just need to look forward to the next race in Monaco now, it’ll be my first-time racing there and I’m excited to drive on such an iconic circuit."

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