Dr Helmut Marko Piles on More Criticism on Pierre Gasly

When Pierre Gasly signed for Red Bull in the wake of Daniel Ricciardo’s exit, little did he know that he was being thrown into the deep end without a float.

Early struggles for Gasly was enough for the rumour mill to churn and suggest that he would not survive to see the end of the season. However, he redeemed himself a little, courtesy a strong showing at Silverstone. Unfortunately, he undid all that by crashing twice at Hockenheim and further besmirching his reputation.

“In (German GP) qualifying he showed a strong reaction to his accident,” said the hard-to-please, Dr. Helmut Marko to Auto Motor und Sport.

“His pace in the race wasn’t bad, but Gasly is just too weak when fighting and overtaking. The crash with Albon was completely unnecessary.”

If Red Bull does elect to axe Gasly for 2020, the current Toro Rosso drivers Alex Albon and Daniil Kvyat are waiting in the wings. Kvyat even made a strong case for himself with a podium in this topsy-turvy race.

“Kvyat is a gifted racer, and Albon has again shown his fighting qualities,” Marko continued. “That’s a good prospect for the future.”

Gasly’s case was not helped when team principal Christian Horner noted that Pierre Gasly made a string of similar mistakes at turn one in Hockenheim. The Red Bull team boss dubbed Gasly’s weekend as “a bit up and down”.

In spite of a crash in practice, he made up for it with a strong qualifying in 4th place. Wen the race got underway, both him and Max Verstappen had poor starts owing to a problem with engine mapping.

Horner continued, “There was a problem with the right-rear wheel nut. And then they had to hold him because the whole queue of cars came in.”

However, when the slick tyre phase kicked off, Gasly made life difficult for himself with a series of similar mistakes.

“He recovered well and he was recovering, recovering, recovering,” said Horner. “And then on the last restart he passed Vettel but then went wide on three consecutive laps at turn one and that’s where the other cars got past him.”

The cherry on top was when he failed to see the chequered flag after colliding with Alexander Albon’s Toro Rosso.

“They tripped over each other which was frustrating because it was a good opportunity today to take a lot of points out of Ferrari,” said Horner. “So instead of taking 20-odd points out of them we’ve only taken seven or eight.”

“I think if we can start double-scoring, that’s our target the second half of the year, to really close that close that gap down.”