‘We clearly seem to have made a step’ – Gasly hails progress after points finish for Alpine in Mexico

Pierre Gasly believes that Alpine have “clearly made a step” with their car after a strong qualifying performance at the Mexico City Grand Prix was followed by a P10 finish on race day.

After lining up in P8 and making contact with Alex Albon at the start – which was followed by the Williams driver’s subsequent collision with RB’s Yuki Tsunoda – Gasly managed to escape without damage and from there managed to hold onto the final points-paying position, with the Frenchman acknowledging that he could not keep up with the Haas cars ahead.

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Asked post-race how satisfying it was to claim a point following a difficult run of races – with his last points result coming at Zandvoort back in August – Gasly responded: “Yeah, I’m very happy. It’s been a while since we’ve seen that top 10 on Sunday, so very pleased for the team.

“We managed to come from a strong qualifying from yesterday, and Haas today were just too fast and I tried to hang on as much as I could at the start. On the first stint I wasn’t too far but I could see them pulling away, and then on the second stint they were just too competitive.