The Italian Grand Prix winner accidentally caused the first of two Red Flag stops in practice on Friday afternoon at the Algarve International Circuit when the marshals had to keep running with fire extinguishers to put out the flames.
The Frenchman revealed that the incident had been completely unexpected and did not give him time to move the car to a safer location away from traffic.
“Literally five seconds before I stopped, I lost everything, the steering, all the power in the car,” said Gasly.
“We’re still investigating to understand what happened, but obviously there was quite a lot of fire and burning things in the back of the car. So we have to analyze and understand what happened. ”
Jonathan Eddolls, AlphaTauri’s chief race engineer, added: “Unfortunately for Pierre, his car had a power outage and subsequent fire. So we have to check the problem when the car is back in the garage. ”
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The car’s failure occurred on Gasly’s first lap after the usual tires were re-used in place of the Pirelli prototypes for 2021 that were tested in the first 30 minutes of FP2.
Gasly added, “Sure it’s not ideal, especially since we couldn’t ride the ‘Option’ tire. We only had the ‘base’ this morning so it’s never great on a new track like this one.
“But we’re getting that, so we’ll try to get as much data as possible on Danny [Kvyat] Page.
“In terms of pace, it looked pretty decent all day, but I’m still not particularly comfortable with the car so we can improve it for tomorrow and race three will be important because we need to restore those laps. ”
Even so, Gasly said he had his first experience driving a Formula 1 car in a hilly location that is the first to host a Grand Prix.
“For the first few laps when I went out, I felt like you were getting in your stomach on a roller coaster,” he said.
“After turn eight, uphill and downhill, I was like ‘Wow’, I’ve never felt that in a Formula 1 car.
“I have to say, it’s pretty challenging, lots of blind spots. It’s pretty unusual in a way. I like when tracks are unique and I think they are, so it was pretty cool. ”
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