Pierre Gasly was very happy to get back in the top 10 and take a point from the British Grand prix but that was before the stewards punished him for a late incident. The Toro Rosso driver got 5 seconds added time for the tussle with Sergio Perez. That sent him 13th and he was not happy about it.
Gasly called the penalty ridiculous and added that it was a close battle which he enjoyed. Otherwise, the Frenchman was pleased with his car’s behaviour on race day.
5sec penalty, ridiculous…
Every weekends there are contacts with no further action, that’s part of racing & what makes it exciting! Was close battle, I enjoyed it. Just let us race and stop all this bullshit with penalties! Will keep fighting. pic.twitter.com/l9RlU6XDyu— Pierre Gasly ?? (@PierreGASLY) July 8, 2018
The whole weekend at Silverstone was difficult for the Toro Rosso team. Brendon Hartley crashed heavily in FP3 after a suspension failure. He could not take part in qualifying and made only a couple of laps in the race.
“I’m not a believer in luck or superstition, but I think it’s definitely fair to say that the last few weeks have been unlucky for me”, Hartley said. “It was all out of my control – the suspension failure in FP3, and another technical issue before we could even start the race, so there’s not too much to comment. It’s disappointing, but I’ll hit the reset button now, take a couple of days to relax and prepare for the next race. I’ve got full trust that all of the people in Toro Rosso will be working hard over the next two weeks, as will I, to improve and show our maximum in Hockenheim.”
Team principal Franz Tost admitted Toro Rosso had other hopes for the British Grand prix but the weekend did not turn up as expected
“We had a big accident in FP3 with Brendon’s car due to the failure of the left front suspension. We assume the lower wishbone broke, but as we didn’t know what caused this incident, we decided to keep Pierre in the garage which cut his session short. As a consequence, it was very difficult for Pierre in Qualifying. Nevertheless, he did a good job to qualify P14 with just a handful of laps under his belt. As for Brendon, we had to change the monocoque on his car after the crash, therefore he had to start the race from pit lane”, Tost explained.
“During the warm-up laps, we recognised a problem on his car which we weren’t able to fully identify, so we called him back to the garage to try and fix the issue. Unfortunately, we had to retire him on the first lap, but I must make a big compliment to the team because at 8.30 on Saturday evening Brendon’s car was ready with the engine fired up. They put a lot of effort into this job so it was a big shame to see Brendon unable to race.”
“Pierre made a good start and showed a very strong performance, he kept his race pace consistent against our competitors. Now we look forward to the next race in Germany.”
