AUSTIN — Alpine is painting Austin's America with a special themed livery, an “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle” paint scheme with a touch of orange, to promote an upcoming video game release from Bethesda Softworks. Appeared in the Grand Prix. However, its orange color has drawn many comparisons to McLaren's MCL38.
But a similar comparison could be made to Pierre Gasly's performance during Saturday's qualifying here at the Circuit of the Americas.
Gasly surprised the entire paddock and made it all the way to Q3, but his progress was more than just the fact that the Alpine driver made it to the third segment of qualifying. Gasly was often at the top of the timesheets and was first in both Q1 and Q2.
It was a performance that even surprised Gasly himself.
“It's a nice surprise,” Gasly told the media, including the media. SB Nationfollowing the preliminaries.
“I’m very happy because we made quite a few changes after the Sprint. And it’s not easy on a Sprint weekend because you don’t have a lot of time to really understand. Especially with new packages and new parts installed on the car. You don't have a lot of time to figure things out and try things out when you're stuck. And we've made quite a few changes in terms of set-up, so the car is in a much better position,” added the Alpine driver.
“It’s very gratifying for our staff to know that the part has good potential.”
Gasly has made it clear that Alpine is really one of them and not just scraping by from segment to segment by the skin of their teeth.
“We were clearly in the lead today and lap after lap we were in a good position,” Gasly said. “So it wasn’t just one lap.
“That's what I'm most happy about.”
However, as the discussion turned to tomorrow's US Grand Prix, Gasly softened his comments and set more reasonable expectations for his performance in the main event.
“We got [George] with russell [Oscar} Piastri in front, and they’re in a different league, I think, at the moment.”
The Alpine driver then outlined how Saturday’s performance shows signs of progress, much-needed progress, for the team. “Looking at the last few races we were fighting to get out of Q1. Now we made it to Q3, I think that’s my best qualifying of the year,” said Gasly.
“So I think before looking at the top four, we’ll look at our battle, and I think [Fernando] Alonso, we will be able to fight him. Haas looked very strong all weekend,” Gasly added. “But yeah, I think we'll get there.”
Gasly concluded his comments by looking to the future. He said Alpine was not competing for any “significant positions” in either the drivers' or constructors' championships, but that if they could make some progress next year, they would leave the team in early 2025 in a much better position than before. He said he would be able to put it in position. They were in 2024.
“We're not competing for important positions in the driver or team championships, so we can do anything to be able to fight for points next year,” Gasly said.
“It's definitely positive. That's what the players gave me today.”
