Pierre Gasly acknowledged he was upset with his tenth-place result at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, believing he lost out on a possible top-five finish after switching to slick tires too early.
The Scuderia AlphaTauri driver had trailed Lando Norris of McLaren in the opening lap of the race on Sunday, but he was one of the drivers to pit for medium compound tires earlier, and as a result, the time wasted in comparison to some of his rivals caused him to fall behind them.
Whereas Norris was able to advance up the order and finish fourth, Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren’s second driver, and both Aston Martin drivers also forged ahead, leaving him with only one point at the end.
Gasly said: “I’m very disappointed today, that’s not the result we should’ve had, we were having an excellent race, behind Lando and ahead of the two Aston Martins, but we took a massive risk boxing early and lost some positions.
“I don’t fully understand why we made this decision, so we’ll need to review everything and learn from this mistake.
“For sure we left a lot of points on the table today, so it hurts quite a bit, particularly in our Championship battle fight as there was a big opportunity there today to move forward and we didn’t grab it.”
Yuki Tsunoda, Gasly’s teammate, crashed out on lap 35, preventing him from seeing the finish line and forcing the use of the safety car.
The Japanese driver had just switched to slick tires when he drove too hard into turn 10 and crashed heavily into the barriers, thus finishing the race prematurely.
Tsunoda accepted responsibility for the incident and acknowledged that he erred in judging his braking position before the turn. He said that it was especially upsetting because he was starting to gain lap time on his fresh tires at the time.
He said: “The conditions were really tricky out there today, it was difficult judging the move from Inters to slicks but we went early, which meant it was super hard to drive, but we were starting to gain time, so things were looking positive,”
“Unfortunately, I made a mistake, I completely misjudged the braking point, carrying too much speed into the corner, and went into the wall, so I’m frustrated with myself.
“I need to go away and reflect on this weekend and then prepare for my home race next week, where I’m looking forward to driving an F1 car around Suzuka for the first time.”
