During the early hours of Friday to Saturday in Europe, the team finally announced the Spaniard’s replacement, Pierre Gasly, who, according to his boss, has everything the Asturian doesn’t.
The Formula 1 grid of 2023 is almost completely set up. With a certain nocturnal character (in Europe) and quite treacherous, it was announced in the early hours of Friday through Saturday who will occupy the remaining seats in AlphaTauri and Alpine. Nick de Vries will become a full-time driver after shining on Monza as a last-minute replacement for Alex Albon, and will do so to team up with Yuki Tsunoda. Fact: The new Red Bull ‘B’ team pair will be the shortest in Formula 1 history, with 1.67 meters for the new Dutch driver and 1.59 for the Japanese.
The incorporation of De Vries (Mercedes youth driver, the laps that gives life) to AlphaTauri is due to the fact that Pierre Gasly has become a new Alpine driver. Although he was confirmed for the Red Bull ‘B’ team at the end of June, Fernando Alonso’s departure to Aston Martin was a butterfly stroke that ultimately moved the entire Formula 1 transfer market to the next campaign. Aside from the adequacy of Gasly’s integration alongside Esteban Ocon, with whom he has fought all his life (they have known each other literally since they were 6 years old and Gasly drove an Ocon family kart for the first time), it is the explanation that they have given by the Anglo-French team that has set the fans’ minds on fire.
The illustrious Otmar Szafnauer, guilty of both the departure of Alonso to Aston Martin and the departure of Oscar Piastri to McLaren, justified that Gasly has everything that those who were his regular driver and his star youth squad until a few months ago do not have. “The three things we wanted were speed, experience and youth at the same time. If we add up the three things, not many people have all that and Pierre certainly has it,” said the Romanian-American manager. According to these three premises, Alonso fulfilled at least the first two and Piastri the first and the last. Szafnauer didn’t care. “That’s hard to say for a lot of drivers who are still in Formula 1. Even the other two you mentioned (Alonso and Piastri) didn’t have those things. That’s why we are lucky enough to secure Pierre and we look forward to working with him,” he insisted.
Of the three conditions that Alpine wanted to replace Alonso, it is clear that Gasly meets at least one: youth. Alonso is 41 years old and his replacement in the Anglo-French team is 26. There are many more doubts about the other two.
Gasly has no more experience than Alonso, which makes sense. The Spaniard has been in Formula 1 for 20 years. When he made his debut, the man from Ruan got into a toy kart for the first time. Faced with the Spaniard’s two decades in the top tier of motorsport (and two years of deadlock in the Endurance World Championship), Gasly debuted in 2017 and has never left the Red Bull structure, giving him the opportunity. cared about made the jump to the first team and lasted twelve grands prix after being blatantly humiliated by Verstappen. Gasly is the example of a promising youngster who is trapped in the same networks that allowed him to reach Formula 1, in the pyramid that Helmut Marko created to become champions and who is now at the top of the grid: in 2023 there will be seven of the twenty drivers who have passed its prey.
This is the most critical and potentially complex point to answer: is Gasly faster than Alonso or Piastri? In his first year after returning to F1, the Spaniard proved to be better than Ocon, whom he surpassed in points and results. In the second, if it weren’t for the wall’s continued reliability issues and bad decisions, he would have added 60 extra points (according to his calculations). Being much more conservative, there would be at least 20 more, which would be enough to clearly outshine an Ocon that Alpine has placed the responsibility for leading the project.
Alonso, and with him all the social masses he brings with him, are not going to forgive him. Szafnauer and Alpine’s attitude towards what is their last world champion to date leaves a lot to be desired. The lack of respect with which the team’s attitude was perceived has largely obscured the fact that it was Alonso who made the move to leave and not the other way around, which could have been read as a betrayal of the French team’s promises. Given the difficulties they have had in convincing a pilot and after losing two, they may end up regretting it.
Source: La Verdad
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