Pierre Gasly was announced as the driver to replace the outgoing Fernando Alonso at Alpine yesterday. After losing both the Spaniard to Aston Martin and their reserve driver Oscar Piastri to McLaren, Alpine were left without a driver to partner with Esteban Ocon the following year.
Fans reacted to the arrival of the French driver to the Enstone-based outfit, expressing disappointment that there will no longer be Tsunoda and Gasly content. Some of the tweets shared were:
"wait no more Yuki x Pierre content"
"I’m a child of divorce again"
Some fans even pointed out the turbulent relationship between Gasly and his new teammate Ocon. Both the French drivers raced together growing up and the competitiveness caused some friction between the two. Fans commented on the dynamic, tweeting:
"I wonder how him and Esteban are going to work...."
"I read somewhere there was an incident on track between them, in a junior category. Basically they both blamed each other. Since then they’ve disliked one another, they used to be really good friends apparently"
"Finally but fair to say everyone saw it coming these last few weeks. Probably Pierre’s most important decision in his career. Now let’s see how it’s gonna work with Esteban. They’ll be professional for sure but won’t be surprised to see some sparks"
"Even though these two dislike each other quite a lot, it’s nice to see how far they’ve come."
"I’m curious how it’s gonna work out with drivers disliking each other…could end up in friendly fire on quite a few occasions"
Pierre Gasly replaced at AlphaTauri by Nyck de Vries
AlphaTauri announced today that 27-year-old Dutch driver Nyck de Vries will be replacing Pierre Gasly from the 2023 season onwards. De Vries previously substituted for Alexander Albon at the 2022 F1 Italian GP when the latter was diagnosed with appendicitis.
The Dutch driver immediately made an impact on the sport, placing his slow Williams into the top 10 and scoring points on his debut. De Vries also out-qualified and out-scored his teammate Nicholas Latifi in the race, which attracted praise from the entire paddock. Multiple drivers and team principals called for the Dutch driver to receive a full-time F1 seat in 2023.
With de Vries now locked in at AlphaTauri for 2023 and Pierre Gasly occupying the Alpine seat of departing Fernando Alonso, there are only two unconfirmed seats left on the grid for the 2023 season.