Pierre Gasly says he had a lengthy discussion in Hungary with F1's race directors over the thorny issue of track limits after a "very arguable" call by the stewards in qualifying deprived him of his fastest lap in Q1.
Track limits were once again at the center of many discussions among the drivers in Hungary where Gasly's teammate Yuki Tsunoda and Mick Schumacher were sanctioned for a track limit infraction while a penalty handed to Red Bull's Sergio Perez was rescinded by the stewards upon further examination.
Gasly failed to make the Q2 cut on Saturday as a result of a disputed transgression that took place at the Hungaroring's Turn 5, a decision that left the Frenchman a lowly P19 in the pecking order and very angry.
Given his back row start, AlphaTauri opted for a tactical change of Gasly's power unit, which equated to a pitlane start. Nevertheless, a spirited driver left him P12 at the checkered flag, a result that left the Frenchman to ponder what could have been if he had started further up the order.
"Still quite mad about it," said Gasly, commenting on his Q1 track limits penalty.
"Because from what I've seen, in the emails that I've seen, it's very arguable whether I was on-track or off-track.
"Similar things happened to Yuki and Checo, and from the onboards, they were clearly on the track. But anyway, that was it.
"And from our position, starting from the back, I think I was happy to just try to understand a bit more from our package, because at the moment, we know we were not displaying the performance that we should.
"And it's still not great, but at least there are a couple of good signs of performance."
On Sunday morning, still reeling from the steward's controversial call in qualifying, Gasly had a productive 40-minute discussion on track limits and their policing with Niels Wittich and Eduardo Freitas, F1's co-race directors
"I spent 40 minutes with Niels and Eduardo this [Sunday] morning trying to discuss and find a way that everybody is happier," he said.
"At the moment, they have a huge amount of work. They're not making their life very easy. Clearly in this Turn 5, they didn't have the right tools to police it in the most fair way possible.
"We just spoke about solutions going forward to have first a more consistent way of policing it, and making sure it's going in the right direction.
"They were quite open, I think, and expecting feedback. And I'll get back to all the drivers as well to see if over the next few weeks we can just try to find a way to also provide some solution for them to make it better."
Gasly pointed out that his infraction had been decided on the basis of CCTV footage, with no other source available to double check his position on the track.
"To me you either have the right tools to police in the fairest way, or in that case you should not do it. And that's what we discussed," he said.
"I know that for next year, they're already looking at different options but unfortunately, I was the one paying the consequences of this happening this season."
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