At the start of Saturday's events, FP3 was wet, and team AlphaTauri didn't get to test their dry settings to get into the qualifying rhythm. The team observed that they still functioned well in the conditions, which was encouraging ahead of qualifying.

Going into qualifying, the team opted to adopt a different strategy for each of their drivers this weekend.

The team wanted Gasly to optimise his racing strategy by utilising only the medium tyre compounds in Q2 resulting in a time of 1:23.817.  

In Q3, with a time of 1:23.326, Gasly made the most of every lap and had a fantastic Saturday afternoon. With a 10-place grid penalty for Lewis Hamilton, he was able to move up P4 to start alongside Scuderia Ferrari's Charles Leclerc. 

that’s Q3 for Pierre and Yuki!! 👏 @PierreGASLY - P4@yukitsunoda07 - P8 💪 pic.twitter.com/xUwIH3J07M

— Scuderia AlphaTauri (@AlphaTauriF1) October 9, 2021

Post-qualifying according to Gasly, "I’m very happy to have qualified fifth today, and then to be starting P4 tomorrow after Lewis’ penalty."

He continues, "The team have made such a big improvement to the car since yesterday, as I was really struggling with understeer. It wasn’t the easiest to see if these changes had worked this morning, as FP3 was wet, but as soon as we got to Qualifying, I was competitive and that was really positive."

He concludes, "I’m confident heading into tomorrow’s race after the big step-up we’ve made with the car today and I’m hopeful we can score big points in the race.”

such a close session! we'll line up P4 on the grid tomorrow for the #TurkishGP 😎

check out @PierreGASLY's Quali debrief 🇹🇷 👇 pic.twitter.com/xQtiNKdRGp

— Scuderia AlphaTauri (@AlphaTauriF1) October 9, 2021

tomorrow’s lookin’ good! 👊 plenty of points on the table from here 💪 pic.twitter.com/o8Mq2jM2xY

— Scuderia AlphaTauri (@AlphaTauriF1) October 9, 2021