AlphaTauri’s quest for points was left answered due to an early contact that damaged Gasly’s car, leaving him “sliding” around and lacking downforce. “We tried our best,” said Gasly after the race, having not scored a point since Australia.

“I’m extremely disappointed with today, it’s very frustrating. I had a small touch early on that damaged the car and from then on, I had no pace, we were losing downforce and sliding everywhere.

To add insult to injury, he was awarded a five-second time penalty for a clash with Lance Stroll around lap 28. The Frenchman’s car understeered into the side of Stroll’s as the Canadian attempted an overtake. But there was no difference of opinion in who was at fault, with Gasly accepting full responsibility.

“I take responsibility for the accident with Stroll, I was pushing it to the limit, so I want to apologise to Lance for that. We tried everything we could from then on, but at the end of the day there wasn’t much we could do.”

So far, the 2022 season has been very frustrating for Pierre Gasly, who has only scored six points and currently stands 13^th in the Drivers’ Championship, while he finished 9^th last year. Many of his races have been defined by moments of bad luck  - indeed, even in Barcelona, before his incident with Ocon, he was already playing catch up having been forced out of FP3 with a broken exhaust and fire.

“It’s just frustrating because every race at the moment we seem to have something coming against us,”

“And we just can’t put in, not even a strong performance, just a normal performance, with the car that we have,” commented Gasly.

“I just want to get back out there and have a clean weekend. That’s what we aimed for coming here.

feels great to be back in the top 10 again 😎

but it was a tough day for @PierreGASLY as he damaged his front wing on the opening lap which compromised his race pic.twitter.com/7Tw0p01epi

— Scuderia AlphaTauri (@AlphaTauriF1) May 22, 2022

“In normal conditions, I think we’re on the edge of the top 10 cars. But there is always something happening in the front so we should be there to make the most out of every opportunity”

However, at the moment it seems like the odds are not playing in his favour presenting “quite a lot of obstacles”, says Gasly. However, “we’re not the kind of people to give up and we’ll just work with the team and come back at it next weekend and with the best energy and ambitions to do well.”

Asked about Monaco, the Milan-based driver claimed that he feels excited to have two races back-to-back to try to obtain some points and register a good weekend in his books.

“It will be very interesting to see what happens in Monaco, with these new cars no track feels like last year and with the bouncing, it’s going to be interesting,” concluded the French driver.