Gasly: Just a finger between mine and Vettel's tyres

The Frenchman continued his exceptional qualifying form, going sixth quickest in Q3 on Saturday to start the race ahead of Lewis Hamilton.

From there Gasly was able to hold off Mercedes man well during the first stint, before covering off the attempt at the undercut.

However, like Mercedes, AlphaTauri did not calculate the potential for an overcut, a strategy that Aston Martin and Red Bull pulled off to jump both Vettel and Sergio Perez ahead of Gasly.

The battle on the pit exit between Vettel and Gasly was tight, with the German just about coming out on top after a tense wheel to wheel run up the hill.

As a result, the AlphaTauri driver had to settle for P6, a finish he described as the "best performance of the season".

"It was a pretty long race and obviously with Lewis behind it wasn't easy, I couldn't make any mistakes and just had to focus on my own race ahead, but I really enjoyed it," Gasly said. "Finishing P6 today is good, I think we can be happy with that result and it's the best performance of the season so far.

"The car felt really good in the first stint but once we put the Hards on we really struggled, and it made it pretty difficult on a couple of occasions with Lewis but I'm happy we managed to keep him behind. I believe we took the right strategy today, we had to cover ourselves with Lewis' pitstop, but it didn't quite work out.

"It was very tight between Seb and I going up the hill, I was quite surprised to see him and there was maybe just a finger between our tyres, but it was great racing. The car performed well today, even if I think we could have achieved more and there are definitely some areas we still need to improve in compared to some of the cars we're fighting against. I'm still pleased with this result though, it was important for us to be back up near the front and getting some big points again was great for the team."