Pierre Gasly says his botched qualifying session in Montreal inflicted permanent damage on his race weekend as he was unable to extract himself from a DRS train on Sunday.
Gasly was left fuming on Saturday afternoon at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve after he had missed the Q2 cut through no fault of his own.
The Alpine driver was on his second flyer in the first segment of the session and on the verge of completing his lap when he was blocked by the slow-moving Ferrari of Carlos Sainz.
A forced move down the escape road left him a P17 in the pecking order. While he gained two spots on the grid thanks to penalties levied upon two other drivers, his lowly starting position consigned him from the outset to the lower tier of the midfield.
©Alpine
"I just want to get to Austria," a frustrated Gasly told the media after completing his race in 13th position.
"The damage we suffered [in qualifying] put us massively on the backfoot, and I think we saw why track position is so important."
To improve his chances of moving up the field in the race, Gasly opted for a two-stop strategy but the potential benefit of his early switch from mediums to hards on lap 10 was annihilated by the Safety Car on lap 11.
"I tried something different with the strategy which pushed us to pit early, then the lap afterwards, the Safety Car came out, which dropped us back to dead last," he explained.
"And from P18, on the same strategy as everyone on a track like this, we just can't do much.
"With the DRS train, it's difficult to pass. As soon as you end up in the DRS train, you're losing seconds [per lap]. Not even talking about hundreds or tenths – it's seconds!"
Despite his frustrations, the Alpine charger took some consolation from his car's race pace and the reasonably good performance enjoyed by his teammate Esteban Ocon.
"In free air, we have good pace. From what the team was telling me, we were the seventh fastest [car], after Ferrari.
"So there was clearly some pace, but we've just got to start there, and then we can aim at much bigger points."
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