Pierre Gasly was pleased with his Alpine debut – but his post-race radio message made it clear where he wants to see some improvement.
At first, it looked like his first ever F1 race outside of the Red Bull family was going to be something of a write-off. He failed to get out of Q1 in qualifying by setting only the 17th fastest time and then, to make matters worse, that lap was deleted as he had exceeded track limits.
So Gasly started his first race as an Alpine driver from the very back of the grid. But clearly he was determined to get off to a much better start with his new team and drove impressively on Sunday, finishing the Bahrain Grand Prix ninth.
Speaking over the radio after taking the chequered flag, the Frenchman seemed pleased with a good day's work. But he also laid down a challenge to his team so that he can be in a better position to fight for more points in the coming races.
His new race engineer Karel Loos said over the radio: "Nice work there mate, impressive last stint. And good to get in the points in your first race with us. We know what to work on and we'll definitely get some more points. This is a good start mate."
And Gasly replied: "Yeah, thanks guys. Really good strategy, really good pit stops. I must say that was fun! Nice race car, so if we start further up the grid we'll fight for bigger points. But yeah, nice recovery. We've got some work to do, but it's a good start."
Clearly, Gasly wants to be able to get more one-lap pace out of the A523 in future qualifying sessions. Though it may have been an issue with his own car setup as Esteban Ocon had no trouble guiding the other Alpine car in to Q3 to qualify ninth.
But while he had a better time than Gasly on the Saturday, Ocon's race was ruined by a series of penalties. He was punished for not being properly placed in his grid slot at the start of the race, but the team did not serve that five-second penalty properly and were hit with a 10-second time bonus as a result.
To make matters worse, the stewards later judged that Ocon had been speeding in the pit lane and so he was given another five-second penalty. With the Frenchman well out of points contention, the team made the decision to retire the car a couple of laps from the end.
