Pierre Gasly called Alpine’s charge to sixth place in the 2024 Formula 1 world constructors' championship “unthinkable” after recovering from its slow and overweight car at the start of the season.
Alpine started the campaign with a revamped car that was woefully off the pace and suffered from a number of engineer and senior personnel resignations, leaving it at the back of the grid.
But a steady flow of upgrades, and getting the car to its required weight by round six in Miami, enabled the Enstone squad to make progress with a run of seven points finishes over 10 races between Miami and the Netherlands.
Its season truly took off with a sensational double podium in Brazil, while Gasly’s fifth place in Qatar and seventh place in the Abu Dhabi finale secured sixth for the team in the standings.
“Sixth in the constructor was unthinkable at the start of the year,” Gasly said. “The lows of the season were extremely low and the highs were extremely high.
“The first part of this season, very tough for all of us in the team with an underperforming car, but very proud of the reaction of the guys and the way they've managed to bring that much performance to give me a car on the last few races, which really allow me to perform really, really strongly.
“It shows that we're heading in the right direction, that the mentality and the spirit inside the team is the right one.
“I was seeing all these positive changes already, back in April, in May, that there was a lot of progress inside the factory, and obviously it doesn't translate straight away onto the track. A couple of months later, we got all these rewards.”
The Frenchman also ticked off two further targets in Abu Dhabi: 10th place in the drivers’ standings by overhauling Nico Hulkenberg by a single point, plus not picking up any crash damage over the entire season.
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“Coming here, there were three targets: to get sixth in the constructor, 10th in the driver, and keep my nose clean so we still on zero, $0 damage,” he said. “We all completed the targets.
“[Flavio Briatore's] gonna like that. But also the $10 million I got them today [in extra prize money for finishing sixth], yeah, but this [no crash damage] is personal.”
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