Pierre Gasly began the race in sixth place and got off to a strong start, defending well against Hamilton and managing his tyres with aplomb. AlphaTauri called him in for the pitstop on the hards a lap after Hamilton, and he fended off the seven-time World Champion, albeit losing out to Sebastian Vettel in the pitsop phase.

Post-race Gasly comments, "It was a pretty long race and obviously with Lewis behind it wasn’t easy, I couldn’t make any mistakes and just had to focus on my own race ahead, but I really enjoyed it. Finishing P6 today is good, I think we can be happy with that result and it’s the best performance of the season so far."

He adds, "The car felt really good in the first stint but once we put the Hards on we really struggled, and it made it pretty difficult on a couple of occasions with Lewis but I’m happy we managed to keep him behind. I believe we took the right strategy today, we had to cover ourselves with Lewis’ pitstop, but it didn’t quite work out."

To continue, "It was very tight between Seb and I going up the hill, I was quite surprised to see him and there was maybe just a finger between our tyres, but it was great racing." 

He concludes, "The car performed well today, even if I think we could have achieved more and there are definitely some areas we still need to improve in compared to some of the cars we’re fighting against. I’m still pleased with this result though, it was important for us to be back up near the front and getting some big points again was great for the team.”

It's nice that the team finished P6 as the team feels like they're back where they started the season, hoping for similar results in the coming race of Baku in two weeks.