Pierre Gasly did not mince his words when asked his opinion on the opening lap chaos at the start of last weekend's 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix after Valtteri Bottas lost control of his Mercedes into a wet Turn 1 and clattered into rivals.
Much has been written about the damage done not only to cars and egos but also to the F1 world championship title race for Red Bull, whose drivers Sergio Perez (DNF) and Max Verstappen, as was McLaren's Lando Norris, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc - all victims in that lap one melee exacerbated by an equally wayward Aston Martin of Lance Stroll.
Looking back on the Bottas instigated incident at Hungaroring, AlphaTauri driver Gasly told reporters: “I don’t know what to say except that Valtteri fucked-up, took the first six cars pretty much out of the race. Luckily we didn’t get damaged from it, compared to Max, Lando and Checo too."
In a race of high attrition, Gasly might have scored a podium had some luck been dished out his way that Sunday, nevertheless sixth place from the back of the field (after a technical issue when the AlphaTauri was grid bound) was his reward; notably, he ended the day best placed 'Red Bull' driver on a day the A-Team took a pounding.
Gasly explained: “The target was to qualify high in the midfield, to be in the best possible position for the race, that’s what we did and, in the end, we can say we almost over-performed when we qualified ahead of the Ferrari and the McLaren.
"In the end, it would have been better to be in our natural position, slightly further back and benefit from this situation. But you never know when these things will happen, but it’s just a shame. From the first corner, we were dead last, and on such a track it is extremely difficult to recover, so we had a really good day to still finish P6.
"We also managed to get the fastest lap, but we should've been looking at a podium. So it’s a bit disappointing because we think there would have been more to gain had we been slightly luckier at the start.”
Pitlane chaos during the race, when Kimi Raikkonen (Alfa Romeo) and Nikita Mazepin (Haas) collided, did Gasly no favours after he pitted for mediums: "I got stuck in the pitlane, I don’t know what happened with the Haas but I lost all the positions.
"I didn’t even start the race at the same time as the others. A lot of things happened and we were not very lucky but, still, we recovered, scored some good points. I think we can be happy to have recovered to sixth position," added Gasly, who lies eighth in the 2021 F1 drivers' standings after 11 races.
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