Gasly: No blame in 'unfortunate' first-lap tangle with Tsunoda

Alpine’s Pierre Gasly described his first-corner collision with Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix as “unfortunate,” and refrained from casting blame, instead focusing on the promising performance his team showed before the crash ended his race prematurely.

Gasly’s hopes in Jeddah of building on Alpine’s early 2025 momentum were dashed on the opening lap right after the start when a contact between the Frenchman and his former AlphaTauri teammate in the middle of the Turn 4/5 complex sent both cars into the outside barrier.

While Tsunoda was able to nurse his car back to the pits, Gasly’s severely damaged A525 was out on the sport. The run-in was later deemed a racing incident by the stewards.

“I think I had a good run in Turn 4, managed to get good braking and get ahead of him,” recounted Gasly.

“I was aware he was on the inside, so I left as much space as I could on the exit of the corner – I had already two wheels off the track. I

“had to keep my inside wheels obviously inside the white line to make the move past, but unfortunately there was this touch and it sent my car spinning.”

Absolving Tsunoda, Accepting the Incident

While frustrated by the outcome of the incident, Gasly made it clear that he didn’t see the action as careless on Tsunoda’s part.

“I’m not going to really comment on that,” he answered, when asked if a penalty for the Japanese driver was warranted.

“I know Yuki’s intentions, I know him very well, I know he didn’t mean anything bad. It’s just an unfortunate outcome and obviously it should not happen, but it’s motorsport.

“It has been quite a long time since we’ve been involved in any of this sort of situation and it’s never great.”

Missed Opportunity for Alpine

The crash was particularly frustrating for Gasly and Alpine, who had shown encouraging pace throughout the weekend and looked primed to follow up their points finish in Bahrain.

“It feels like we would have been in the mix with Carlos [Sainz] and Alex [Albon] today,” he said. “The incident itself doesn’t matter too much to me today, it’s more that we looked strong and we could bag some good points for the team in that race.”

While Gasly’s race ended in the wall, Alpine’s reserve driver Jack Doohan struggled to make inroads and finished a distant 17th. Still, the Alpine charger remains optimistic.

“On a positive note, we have been competitive all weekend and it’s probably on paper not our best track, so it brings good confidence. We will have to move on quickly and just build on these positives from the weekend.”

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