Pierre Gasly says he had to channel his inner "artist" and get "creative" to pull off a series of impressive overtakes during the opening stages of the Monaco Grand Prix.
The AlphaTauri charger was on a mission from the outset last weekend in the Principality, clocking in convincingly among the top-ten in all practice sessions, which gave him high hopes for qualifying and race day.
Unfortunately, the Frenchman was caught out by circumstances in Q1 and his team's decision to send him out too late in the segment, which left him P17 on Sunday's grid and fuming.
On a circuit where overtaking opportunities are scarce, let alone on a wet track, Gasly's race appeared compromised from the get-go. But the AlphaTauri charger was still determined to pull out the stops.
"I told the team, 'We're P17, so just be prepared because I have nothing to lose from there," Gasly told the media in Monaco.
AlphaTauri opted to bring its driver in for a switch from wets to intermediates after just two laps, after which Gasly made minced meat of Alfa's Guanyu Zhou and then of McLaren's Daniel Ricciardo at Monaco's Swimming Pool complex , progressing to P10 after 20 laps.
"I must say, it was really exciting. I enjoyed it a lot, driving these cars in these conditions and on this track," Gasly said.
"I boxed straight away because I didn’t want to stay on the same strategy as the others.
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"We took some risks, we gambled and I'm pleased with our mentality, especially starting from where we were.
"I had a lot of fun, trying to find different lines, trying to find some space in Monaco between these walls.
"I was so much faster than these guys, I just needed to calm myself. If the guy is defending well then you have no space on the right and no space on the left but then I had to be creative.
"That’s what I tried to do and at the end of the day, F1 drivers are kind of like artists, we need to always find new ideas and I tried to come up with unusual places to overtake and that worked out."
Gasly crossed the checkered out of the points however in P12, blaming the shortfall on a couple of uninspired pitstops executed by his team.
"Obviously, I'm a bit sad not to be awarded a point in the end because I felt like I probably deserved it," he lamented.
"But we lost quite a lot of time in our first pit-stop, six or seven seconds, and about three seconds in our second pit-stop.
"That’s 10 seconds of race time that we left which cost us probably a point at the end.
"There are a lot of positives to take from the weekend, looking through practice and the race today."
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