F1 | AlphaTauri, Claudio Balestri: “Our gamble didn't pay off”

Disastrous weekend for AlphaTauri, which leaves Russia with zero points scored. After an excellent Friday, which saw Gasly finish with the third best time, the Faenza team's mistakes began: in qualifying, in Q2, the wall called only Yuki Tsunoda's AT02 to the pits, leaving the French driver on the track on a set of used intermediates. Both remain out of Q3. In the race, however, the two tried to make their way into the group, but to no avail: a few laps from the end, with the rain looming, the pit wall chose not to take risks by fitting intermediates, on the contrary: he called the Japanese rookie back to the pits to fit a new set of soft, while Gasly remains out once again. The result is disastrous: Gasly is thirteenth, while Tsunoda is only seventeenth.

"The goal today was to score points and we didn't succeed. On the first lap we lost positions with both cars, but for the rest of the race, when we had a clear track, the pace of the car was quite good. To maximize the opportunities to score points, we decided to diversify the strategy between the cars: Pierre went long in the first stint on the Hard, then switched to the Medium; Yuki did the opposite, starting with the Mediums – explained Claudio Balestri – however, with just six laps to go, light rain arrived and the track became slippery. Some cars stopped in the pits to fit the intermediates, while we decided to continue with the dry ones, leaving Pierre on the track and fitting Yuki with the Softs. We believed that the rain would not last and we could take advantage of this opportunity. Unfortunately, the gamble didn't pay off and the rain intensified, so we were forced to return to the pits to fit intermediate tires. Now we have to go home and analyze what we could have done better in these complicated weather conditions".