Pierre Gasly delivered his best qualifying performance of the season for AlphaTauri on the Baku City Circuit. Gasly’s strong P6 result in Baku was also his fourth top ten of the season and the Frenchman expressed how satisfying it was for the team to bounce back and show progress after experiencing dissatisfying back-to-back race weekends.  

“It’s best quali of the year, which comes at the right time I would say,” Gasly said after the qualifying session in Baku.

“To split the two Mercedes boys is definitely a really good job” he added.

After enduring two disappointing qualifying sessions previously for the Monaco Grand Prix where Gasly was only able to qualify P17, and P14 for the Spanish Grand Prix, the Frenchman expressed his contentment with the team and the car's performance.

“I’m happy for the team because we’ve had quite a lot of things happening in the last few weekends and the main mindset going into this race weekend was about trying not to make any mistakes, trying to keep things simple and that’s what we did. We managed to show a very strong performance today so happy with that.”

“I’m extremely happy, that’s my best Quali of the year, I don’t think we could’ve hoped for anything better for the team and it’s great we’ve got both cars in the top 10 today. 

Gasly secured a third-place podium for the 2021 Azerbaijan Grand Prix and believes that the Baku street circuit suits the AT03.   

“The team did a great job, the car works really well here, and it was a really strong Quali for us. Everything is possible here in Baku, we saw that last year with our podium. 

While the Baku City Circuit is notorious for its challenging layout which adds to the unpredictable nature of the track, Gasly feels confident that his P6 starting position will be a crucial factor in avoiding the opening lap chaos at the start of the race. 

“It’s very easy to make mistakes on this track, we normally see a lot of red flags, so we’ve got ourselves in a good starting position to capitalise on anything happening at the front. 

Looking ahead to race day, Gasly anticipates an obstacle with tyre strategy given that the team only has one set of hards to use, however, the 26-year-old remains untroubled and content after his promising qualifying result.      

“We’ve got one set of Hards compared to other teams that have two, so we’ll have to see in terms of our strategy what we want to do, but today I’m really happy with our overall performance.”