Gasly: Final laps in Jeddah most painful, like getting stabbed

The Frenchman, who finished eighth for the Red Bull-owned team after retiring his car in Bahrain the previous weekend, said the closing laps in Jeddah had been an agonising experience.

"The last 15 laps I never had that much pain, I don't know what's happened in my intestine," he told Sky Sports television. "The last 10 laps was like getting stabbed every left corner.

"The most painful laps I had...I'm just happy the race is over and that we got these points."

Gasly said he was still feeling bad after the race and had seen a doctor, and said: "It was not a nice feeling, it was more like surviving than anything else."

"I'm really happy with how today went and glad I'm coming away with points," the 26-year-old added in the team report. "We got really unlucky with the safety car, as we boxed around 30 seconds before it came out and so dropped down the field, which wasn't ideal.

"We managed to make our way back up though to P8, so really pleased with that. I'm feeling good in the car though, I'm able to push the way I want to, but I think we need to just find some more downforce. We know the areas we need to improve so we just need to go away and find the solutions now," Gasly explained.

His Japanese team mate Yuki Tsunoda did not start the race after his car suffered an oil pressure problem on the way to the starting grid.

"It's been a really frustrating weekend for me with reliability issues," he said. "Firstly, we missed Qualifying and then today I believe we had a driveline issue on the way to the grid.

"I think the track was suiting our car quite well, compared to Bahrain, so I think the pace today could've been quite good for us, especially if you see how Pierre has performed, getting through to Q3 and then his performance in the race.

"It's such a shame, I think it's going to be very tight in the midfield battle, so getting points at every round counts and we've missed out today. These things happen though and hopefully we'll come back strong in Australia," Tsunoda concluded.

"From a pace side we need to catch up, as currently we are not on the level that we expected to be at," said team boss Franz Tost.

"It was a difficult race for us, it's always disappointing when a car isn't able to make it to the starting grid. We had a problem on Yuki's car with the oil pressure, therefore we had to stop.

"We now have to go away and investigate what the reason for this was," he added. (

Reporting by Alan Baldwin

, Additional reporting by Grandprix247