Gasly: I'm quite shocked to be able to get P6

On Saturday, Gasly shone on a dull and wet day, rising to the occasion to claim a remarkable sixth place on the grid ahead of both 'senior' drivers in the sister Red Bull team.

Although Max Verstappen was quick to dispatch of Gasly, but the Frenchman stuck to his game plan by making the Pirelli ultrasofts last nearly half the race, at which point he was back in sixth where he remained unchallenged to score yet another impressive result.

Speaking to reporters after the race the 22-year-old Frenchman said, "My start wasn't fantastic, but then after into Turn 1 I stayed on the inside and fought a bit with Max. I got Carlos on the exit, and after that I knew that I had my chance in my hands. I just had to push as hard as I could with the car, try to keep the tyres alive, and it just went exactly as in a dream. It was great."

“I had quite a lot of pressure from Kevin behind, but the car was great. I just pushed, and I was pulling away from Kevin, and I think at some point I had a 10-second margin, and it stayed like this for 40 laps. I was pushing like flat-out, because I knew that Haas is pretty fast… If it looked like a lonely race, it was hard work!”

“Of course we know it's impossible for us to do better. I think I was the only guy in the 'B-class' not lapped in the race, so it's a pretty nice feeling. Honestly I'm really happy because we knew that with Toro Rosso, two, three times in the year you have big opportunities like this where the car works better than expected, things come your way."

“I really wanted to make sure that this year I take the opportunities when they come to me, and that's what we did in Bahrain [fourth], in Monaco the same [seventh]. Then again this weekend, we knew there was something big, played it well yesterday, and again today. Really happy about it.”

“After the last three, four races, honestly I'm quite shocked again to be able to get P6,” he said. “Last weekend in qualifying, we got stuck in Q1, behind one Williams, and this weekend we lapped one of the Williams in the race. There are just tracks where the car works much better. It's quite surprising. But when it does work like this, we need to make sure we can take all the points we can.”

“Today, we didn't have any issues at all. This is the best way to motivate and show [Honda] that we have potential and to push them forward, especially before the summer break, just to give a big boost to everyone, and hopefully get more performance on their side for the second half of the season,” added Gasly.

No doubt the Red Bull chiefs will have been pleased to see Honda delivering, in fact beating the entire Renault brigade apart from their own Daniel Ricciardo who finished fourth, while Verstappen's race only lasted six laps - the teams sixth power unit related DNF in 12 races so far this season.

Next year the Bulls will also shift over to Honda power.