Pierre Gasly

Points 0 Position 21 Date of Birth February / 07 / 1996
Place of Birth Rouen Team Alpine Car Number 10

Profile

Pierre Gasly is a French Formula 1 driver, born in Rouen on 7 February 1996.

He made his Formula 1 debut in 2017 for Toro Rosso at the Malaysian Grand Prix and earned a full season with the team for 2018.

A member of the Red Bull driver programme, Gasly earned promotion to the main outfit for the 2019 season, replacing Daniel Ricciardo who had signed a two-year deal with Renault.

The Frenchman would last only half a season though as a series of poor performances compared to team-mate Max Verstappen prompted Red Bull to replace Gasly with Alex Albon.

Gasly would return to Toro Rosso and despite being in contention for a 2020 drive, Red Bull confirmed he would remain with Toro Rosso, now known as AlphaTauri, for the 2020 season.

In September of that year, Gasly achieved his first F1 victory in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

Remaining with the team in 2021, he continued to impress, securing nine top-six finishes to take P9 in the standings, with him widely considered to be one of the drivers of the season.

While 2022 was more of a struggle on track for AlphaTauri, the drama surrounding Oscar Piastri's move to McLaren and Fernando Alonso's departure from Alpine left a seat free at the French marque, with the team pouncing to land Gasly's signature for 2023 and free him from his Red Bull contract a year early.

While it was not the year he or the team had hoped, Alpine down in sixth in the standings, Gasly will continue as Esteban Ocon's team-mate for the 2024 season.

When away from the track, Gasly's favourite hobby is to play football with his friends. He is a fan of Paris Saint-Germain and goes to watch their games whenever he can.

He also claims to be scared of snakes and says he has no guilty pleasures because he "doesn't feel guilty about any of them".

Indeed the closest thing to a guilty pleasure for him is tiramisu, saying he can never hold back if he sees it on a restaurant menu.

Career

With Daniil Kvyat struggling at Toro Rosso in 2017, the door was slowly opening for Pierre Gasly.

He would finally force it open after Toro Rosso announced he would replace Kvyat for a number of races, starting with the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix.

Gasly would fail to score points in Malaysia or Japan and while he was expected to take Carlos Sainz's seat for the United States Grand Prix, a clash with the final round of the 2017 Super Formula Championship meant Gasly did not compete in Austin.

As it turned out, Typhoon Lan caused the last round to be cancelled, meaning Hiroaki Ishiura won the title over Gasly by half a point - something Gasly ranks as the most embarrassing moment of his career.

Gasly was back in the Toro Rosso come Mexico though and in November 2017, the team confirmed Gasly and Brendon Hartley as their full-time drivers for the 2018 season.

It did not take long for the youngster to make an impression. At just the second round in Bahrain, Gasly would qualify P6, which became P5 after a penalty for Lewis Hamilton, before finishing the race in P4 - the best result of his career at that stage.

Gasly recorded four more points finishes during the season, including a P7 finish in Monaco and a P6 finish in Hungary.

He ended the season in P15 in the Drivers' Championship with 29 points, comfortably ahead of team-mate Hartley who scored only four.

For 2019, Daniel Ricciardo's move to Renault opened up a space at Red Bull and although team boss Christian Horner admitted it was a year earlier than planned, the team had little choice but to promote Gasly if they were to continue their trend of promoting drivers from their junior programme.

It was a rough ride for Gasly. His best performance would come at the British Grand Prix where he finished P4, and in truth it was the only time he actually troubled his rivals in Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull colours.

Gasly struggled to get near to Max Verstappen's race performances, while his pace over one lap was also down on the Dutchman's.

Nonetheless, Red Bull continued to stress that Gasly's place in the team was safe heading into the summer break.

Despite that vote of confidence, Gasly got the call over the summer break to say he was being sent back to Toro Rosso with Alex Albon taking his seat at Red Bull.

Gasly was less than impressed with the news, accusing Red Bull of going back on their word and also making little or no effort to help him improve his performances.

He would, though, continue his relationship with Red Bull by returning to Toro Rosso, recapturing his form to claim five points finishes in the second half of the season.

Gasly's stand-out performance would come in Brazil as he claimed P2, winning an incredible drag race to the line with Lewis Hamilton - Honda's engine performance gains in 2019 had never been more important than in that moment.

When the curtain fell on 2019, Gasly had secured a P7 finish in the Drivers' Championship, three points ahead of Albon who had taken his Red Bull seat.

Gasly described his 2019 campaign as being like something out of a "Hollywood movie", while Helmut Marko branded Gasly's approach at Red Bull a "complete failure", saying he had eyes only for Verstappen and not his own progression.

Gasly’s renaissance in the AlphaTauri team, rebranded from Toro Rosso, continued apace in 2020 as he celebrated the greatest moment of his career to date.

After four solid finishes in the points, he registered a remarkable triumph in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, benefiting greatly from a Lewis Hamilton penalty that was served when the race was restarted after a red-flag period and dropped the leader way down the order.

Coming under intense pressure from Carlos Sainz in the closing laps, Gasly held his nerve and took the chequered flag to spark delirious scenes in his Italy-based team.

An emotional Gasly sat on the top step of the podium for some time after the traditional presentation ceremony had ended, clearly finding it difficult to realise what was happening.

Three more top-six finishes came his way during the remainder of 2020 to complete an excellent campaign that had stamped him as the undisputed AlphaTauri team leader going forwards.

With 75 points, Gasly finished inside the top 10 of the World Championship standings by virtue of his Italian victory, just ahead of Lance Stroll who had joined him on the Monza podium in third place.

While he didn't taste victory again, the Frenchman's 2021 campaign was even more impressive than the previous one.

After retiring from the first race in Bahrain, he then scored points in six consecutive races with the highlights being a podium in Azerbaijan and a P6 finish in Monaco.

It wasn't long before he returned to the top six after that as he crossed the line in P5, P6 and P4 in Hungary, Belgium and the Netherlands respectively, consolidating his status as one of the drivers of the season.

Of the nine races that remained after that, he scored points in all but two of the seven in which he finished and secured further top-six finishes in four of them.

Those results were enough to give him his best points total, 110, since joining the F1 grid and P9 in the standings. He was also more dominant over his team-mate than the vast majority of the field, comfortably outperforming Yuki Tsunoda in every area.

AlphaTauri suffered a big drop-off in competitiveness in 2022, but contractual drama surrounding Alpine ended with a seat with a factory team becoming available, and Gasly became their prime candidate to partner long-time rival Esteban Ocon from 2023.

Alpine paid Red Bull a release fee to secure Gasly's services for next year, and he joined on a two-year deal with an option to extend for a further season, which would take his Formula 1 future until the 2025 season.

His first season with Alpine was not the year either the driver or the team had hoped as the A523 lacked the engine power needed to challenge for big points.

Although Gasly's season started with back-to-back P9s, it wasn't until the Dutch Grand Prix that he could celebrate his first podium with his new team as he brought the car home in third place.

That was his highlight of the campaign as he finished the year 11th in the standings on 62 points, four ahead of his team-mate Ocon.

Despite a few niggles, most notably at the Australian Grand Prix where they crashed in the last-lap melee, and new team order rants, the expected blow-up between Gasly and his boyhood rival did not materialise.

 

History

Pierre Gasly was just six years old when he made his karting debut in the French Minime Championship. He finished P15 overall in his first season, then leapt to P4 in his second campaign before he moved up to the French Cadet Championship.

He then progressed up to the KF3 category and was runner-up in the CIK-FIA European Championship in 2010.

Gasly continued to put his name on the map with a P3 finish in the French F4 Championship the following year and, in 2013, won the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 series with Tech 1 Racing.

Gasly was then added to the Red Bull young driver programme in 2014 and continued his development with Arden. He finished runner up of the Formula Renault 3.5 Series behind another Red Bull junior in Carlos Sainz.

He moved up to GP2 racing for the next season and, coupled with his new responsibilities as a test driver for Red Bull, won the title in 2016 with Prema Racing.

Gasly was racing in Super Formula with Team Mugen when he got the call-up to Red Bull junior team Toro Rosso with six races left of the 2017 Formula 1 season.

Networth

When Pierre Gasly became a fully-fledged Formula 1 driver with Toro Rosso for the 2018 season, his reported salary was £270,000 a year.

That reported salary jumped up to £1million when he was announced as Max Verstappen's new team-mate at Red Bull for the 2019 season after it emerged Daniel Ricciardo would be leaving the team for Renault.

But with Gasly being demoted back to Toro Rosso during the 2019 campaign, his annual salary would have more than likely taken a hit too, but after rebuilding his reputation and earning significant points hauls, his annual salary reportedly rose to around £4.5million with AlphaTauri before his move to Alpine.

His Alpine deal now reportedly puts him among the higher earners in Formula 1, his pay believed to be worth more than €5million with the factory drive he now has.

Gasly has an estimated net worth of around $33 million presently as of 2023.

He also earned money appearing in other reputable racing series such as the Japanese Super Formula and Formula E.

Pierre Gasly's official website lists audio company Blomm and Berger, The Grid driver agency and sunglasses company Hawkers as his main commercial partners. He also endorses other brands like Crypto Gaming and The Grid Agency.

Family

Motor racing runs throughout Pierre Gasly's rather large family. His grandfather, father and his four brothers all have racing experience but none reached the same heights as Pierre in Formula 1.

The Frenchman is currently dating Kika Cerqueira Gomes, the Portuguese model often seen in the paddock with him. They have been together since October 2022.

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