Pierre Gasly says that his Alpine Formula 1 team is wasting chances to score points after encountering “too many issues” in recent races.
In Hungary the team kept the drivers in the garage as the track dried at the end of Q1, leaving Esteban Ocon stranded in 19th on the grid, and Gasly in 20th.
Gasly started from the pitlane after taking new PU elements and he was making good progress and potentially in contention for points when he was told to stop because of a hydraulic issue.
The retirement came right after he failed to start at Silverstone following a gearbox failure when going to the grid.
“I’m extremely disappointed,” he said when asked by formu1a.uno about the second consecutive mechanical issue. “Because when we started from the pit lane, the race actually turned out to be perfect for us.
“We go on hard, we go long. Everyone boxed early. We’re in contention for some points all of a sudden, after 30 laps, and front of Fernando [Alonso], fighting for one or two points. And then, yes, we have this issue.
“But there’s just too many issues at the moment. Today’s is hydraulics, yesterday was strategy. The weekend before was the gearbox, I didn’t race.
“And I know we’re just a lot better than that. I know the team is a lot stronger than that, and we’ve got to be more on top of everything, because at the moment, we don’t give ourselves a chance to capitalise on any chances.”
Gasly remains upbeat about the potential of the A524.
“The performance today was actually very good,” he said. “We saw in high fuel with these conditions we seemed to be quite good with the tyres. And it’s frustrating, because it’s one or two points which we drop again, and we don’t give our chances to even fight for it.
“I know the guys I work with, I know they’re very competitive, I know that we’ve got everything to do well, and we’ve just got to be more on top of these things.”
Gasly conceded that Britain and Hungary provided a wake-up call after a strong run of top 10 performances for the team in the previous races.
“I think these last two clearly haven’t been good at all in terms of just problems and issues we’re having,” he noted.
“So there is some performance in the car. There is obviously more to come, and we need more. We should put ourselves in a position to fight.”
Regarding the upcoming Belgian GP he said: “Spa is very different, very low downforce. But I think for me, what’s most important at the moment is just to at least be in a position to fight for the race until the chequered flag.
“So in performance, obviously we’ll have a look at that. But I we need to collectively do a much better job, and stop making mistakes or having issues.”
