Gasly delighted to split the Mercedes pair with ‘best quali of the year’ in Baku

AlphaTauri have looked competitive throughout practice in Baku – and they converted that pace into their best qualifying of the year with Pierre Gasly in sixth, two places ahead of team mate Yuki Tsunoda.

The Italian team have looked quick in phases this season, but failed to string a run of form together. But in Baku, they’ve looked comfortable from FP1 onwards.

Gasly – who is on a run of four races without scoring – nailed his second successive top-six grid slot in Baku, in between the Mercedes duo of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, while Tsunoda delivered his best Saturday performance of the season with eighth.

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“It’s best quali of the year, which comes at the right time I would say,” said Gasly. “To split the two Mercedes boys is definitely a really good job.

“I’m happy for the team because we’ve had quite a lot of things happening in the last few weekends and the main mindset going into this race weekend was about trying not to make any mistakes, trying to keep things simple and that’s what we did. We managed to show a very strong performance today so happy with that.”

Tsunoda got the job done in qualifying, continuing his smooth and consistent build up through the weekend to make it two AlphaTauris inside the top eight.

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“I’ll take it, definitely,” said Tsunoda of his qualifying. “I got a bit lucky getting through to Q3, but I think the lap I did was good, especially considering it was an old set of tyres, so I’m pleased with my performance today.

“As a team, I think we did a fantastic job, so I want to say a big thank you to everyone. Hopefully we can carry on this performance tomorrow and we’ll look to finish the race with both cars in the points.”