Gasly laments his 'unluckiest' year in Formula 1 so far

It hasn't proved to be the most productive year for Pierre Gasly, who joined Alpine at the start of 2023 after years as part of the the Red Bull stable.

Gasly was recruited by the team from AlphaTauri to fill the gap left by Fernando Alonso. The idea was to create a French national team, with Gasly joining compatriot Esteban Ocon in the driver line-up of the Renault-owned squad.

But the season did not start well for Alpine, which failed to finish in two of the first four races. Coming into the season expecting to compete with McLaren for P4 in the constructors championship, it now finds itself in sixth.

The team is stuck in no mans land - 46 points behind McLaren ahead, and the same margin ahead of Williams and Haas who were tied on points behind going into the summer shutdown, with ten races remaining on the calendar.

The team's situation was further rocked by news at Belgium that its team principal Otmar Szafnauer, sporting director Alan Permane and technical director Pat Fry have all left Enstone with immediate effect.

It's left Gasly ruing his situation and the run of bad luck that he personally has experienced this season, which have included two on-track collisions with Ocon - the most costly coming in a messy finish to the Australian GP.

• Read also: Alpine car still 'not suiting my driving style', says Gasly

"I think it's been quite tricky for many different reasons," Gasly told the media in Spa-Francorchamps at the end of July. "Overall we've probably been the most unlucky I've been in Formula 1 compared to all other seasons.

"There were a couple of missed opportunities, which had like a sort of snowball effect and a pretty big impact on the final results," he explained.

"Obviously it doesn't reflect the full potential of the package," he insisted. "But on the other side we haven't been as competitive as what we had targeted at the start of the year.

"Alpine finished quite strong in fourth position," he continued, referring to their 2022 campaign. "It would be a lie to say that we matched the expectations [for 2023] but we still have half a year to go.

"There's still quite a lot of stuff in the pipeline in terms of developments," he added. "It's not going to turn the full season around, but I'm definitely hopeful that we can show a better form in the second part of the year.

"Obviously there are different areas of improvement," he said. "There is the overall downforce, which will bring you load and will make you faster.

"And then there is obviously improvement of the through-corner balance, which is another topic with the sensitivity through different conditions.

"At the minute we're chasing all of that to be fair, so it's not like there is one area which is weaker than the others.

"We're just trying to make the package stronger. And we haven't really made the step that we had hoped for."

He acknowledged that their rivals had got the jump on them in terms of development over the past nine months, with Aston Martin in particular having a stand-out start to the season.

"We started this year behind Aston, so as the fifth best team," he conceded. "Then McLaren had a better development than we have had so far, so we dropped to sixth. That's obviously not the target for the season."

There was cause for optimism in the Belgian sprint race, where Gasly held on to third place in the Saturday sprint, although he missed out on points in the Grand Prix the following day.

Following the management purge at Alpine, Bruno Famin has taken over as interim team principal amid rumours that Renault are seeking to hire former Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto as a long-term replacement.

But it's unlikely that Famin, Binotto or anyone else will be able to turn things around in the short term, and that Gasly might have to resign himself to continued ill fortune for the remainder of the season.

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