SAKHIR, Bahrain — Pierre Gasly turned in a star performance in Bahrain’s qualifying session to leave last-placed Alpine dreaming of their first points finish of 2025.
Gasly took a stunning fifth place, and was later promoted to fourth after both Mercedes drivers were given one-place grid penalties, in what turned out to be a mixed up Q3 session on Saturday.
Alpine is scoreless through three races this year but will be buoyed by their chances of converting Gasly’s grid slot into a top-10 finish.
“We need this,” the Frenchman said. “You know, we know it’s extremely tight, we still haven’t scored any points this year, and we’ve been more on the back foot and at the back of the midfield. And this weekend, we managed to put a very strong performance together, so far.”
Gasly felt the performance vindicated Alpine’s belief that there is pace in the car at certain venues.
“I just managed to just really nail the second run in Q2 and in Q3 and this put us in a great position. And I’m just happy, because it shows, as I’ve said, there is potential in that car. It’s sometimes OK.
“We were struggling a bit more on other tracks, but it’s just nice to see that we’ve proven it today and for the rest of the season. We know there’ll be some other tracks where we will have some opportunities.”
Qualifying produced a mixed up grid, with championship leader Lando Norris starting behind Gasly on the third row but expected to climb the order early on.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen starts directly behind Gasly and Norris, while Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton starts ninth.
“If Lando and Max want to battle it out behind for the first few laps, that’ll be that’ll be great. Jokes apart, and we, we know these guys have quite a lot of pace in the race. We expected to be around P9/P10 in qualifying and we did better than that. Tomorrow, we’ll try to make the best use of that track position at the start.
“We expect a very different race than Suzuka. So, I don’t know where that will put us in the end, but we’re clearly in the battle for the points, and it’s important as a team.”
Gasly’s teammate Jack Doohan will start 11th.
