Comeback team of the year: 'Seemed almost unrealistic before'
F1 News
- Ludo van Denderen
One of the comebacks of the season came from Alpine in 2024. With a great effort, from one of the, if not the slowest team on the grid at the beginning of the year, the French squad finished sixth in the constructors' standings, and Pierre Gasly could also finish inside the top 10 in the drivers' standings. The French driver is very proud of his team's revival.
Things can turn around that quickly in Formula 1. "Everything that you see now was discussed and developed like in May, June," Gasly looked back to GPblog among others. "And I will say there was a bit of a reaction after March when we saw how back we were. You've got to make clear directions on where you're heading to and what are the limitations of the car, what you can change during a season and what you can't change with a car concept."
He continued: "I tried to guide the team as much as I could in terms of feedback, but the way they've reacted and what they brought was very impressive.."
No team could match Alpine
Not only Alpine and Gasly could fight for points, but they can reep the rewards of their hard work with a double-podium finish at Interlagos. In the end, Gasly says, "If you look in terms of performance at the development of any other teams, I would not be surprised that Alpine is probably the team that found the most performance out of them all. I think they should definitely get credits for that. At the end of the day, is the job good enough? No, we're still sixth in the championship and that's not where we want to be."
"But looking at things at the start of the year, it was almost unrealistic to make such a comeback. So it's very, very good. I must say I'm very pleased with what they found and also just the understanding behind the car we have. Going into 25 we have a lot more optimism that we understand how things are working now," the driver concluded.
This article was written in collaboration with Kada Sárközi
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