Pierre Gasly led F1's midfield contenders in qualifying in Hungary, but the AlphaTauri charger says he'll need a good launch off the grid to emulate in Sunday's race his P5 performance in Q3.
The Frenchman achieved at the Hungaroring his best Saturday afternoon performance since Baku, clocking in just 0.062s behind Red Bull's Sergio Perez who qualified P4, a result that Gasly didn't really expect given the speed of late of his McLaren and Ferrari rivals.
"To be honest we didn't expect to be ahead of the Ferrari and the McLarens, so this was a very good surprise," Gasly told Sky F1.
"I was really happy with my lap in Q3, I knew when I closed that this was a good one but still, didn't expect to be right in front of them, and for a very small margin we managed to make it happen, so really pleased with fifth place."
Assessing his prospects for Sunday, Gasly admitted that AlphaTauri's AT02 would perhaps be at a deficit to its competitors in race trim which highlighted the importance of executing a flawless launch off the grid and a strong opening lap on the soft tyre ahead of an expected two-stop race.
"We know that generally on long runs we seem to struggle a bit more," Gasly explained. "On a track like Budapest, the track position is so important because it's so hard to overtake.
"I think the key point will be to get a good start and then from there try to hold that fifth position. We expect the two-stop teams to pull away and use that free air to keep the tyres as we want them.
"The main target was to qualify as far forward as we could and I think today we achieved that.
"We know they are fast cars [McLaren and Ferrari] but we've got the track position. I expect a very tight battle.
"It's going to be a very long race, it's not going to be easy with the tyres, probably going to be a lot of fighting with the guys behind but I'm really excited about it."
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