Pierre Gasly not worried about the impact weather disruptions could have on Alpine's new set of upgrades brought for the 2023 F1 Belgian GP

Pierre Gasly is unbothered by their upgrade testing getting affected by an interrupted or canceled practice session at the 2023 Belgian GP.

The Frenchman agreed that the sprint format weekend poses its challenges but felt it's the same at other sprint weekends as well.

Asked by Sportskeeda if a compromised or disrupted practice session worried him, especially with new upgrades on the car, Pierre Gasly said:

“No. I think it’s going to make the car faster for sure. We might not fully understand precisely all the benefits from it. But we overall know there’s no doubt on what its bringing to the car.”

Further asked if the weather forecast combined with the sprint format made the weekend a bit complicated, the Frenchman said:

“Yeah I mean its always the sprint, you got one FP1 and you come into then weekend some sort of settings which you don’t have the time to react. I would say its the challenge with all other sprint races. I’m still happy to get the floor here, rather than waiting another weekend around this year.”

With only a single practice session available all weekend, Alpine have limited run time to understand the new upgrades that they are bringing to the Belgian GP weekend.

Claiming that the new upgrades which include a new floor will enhance their performance, Pierre Gasly had no doubts about the performance they add to the car. He admitted that a compromised practice session could limit their ability to understand the upgrades completely but he wasn’t too worried about the limited run time as they were certain of its potential.

Further asked if it complicated the weekend, he felt sprint format weekends, in general, were tricky but he would rather have an upgrade on the car this weekend rather than later in the season.

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Pierre Gasly hopes Alpine can perform better in the second half of the 2023 season

Evaluating his maiden season with Alpine, Pierre Gasly admitted that they had not met the expectations or targets they had set out for the 2023 season. When the Frenchman spoke to Sportskeeda in Saudi Arabia earlier in the year, there was a hope and expectation of being in the mix at the front.

However, with a slump in performance as the season progressed, the 27-year-old felt it was one of the unluckiest seasons he had in his career. Despite the potential of their car, he believes the team have had too many unfortunate moments throughout the first half of the season.

Reflecting upon his maiden season with Alpine, Pierre Gasly said:

“I think its been quite tricky for me for many different reasons. Overall I think we’ve probably been the most unlucky I’ve been in Formula 1 compared to all other seasons. There've been a couple of missed opportunities which came from sort of a snowball effect and really impacted the final results."

"Obviously it doesn’t reflect the full potential of the package and other side we haven’t been as competitive as what we targeted at the start of the year. They finished (2022) quite strong in fourth positions, we started the year behind the Astons, we were the fifth best team and McLaren have had a a better development than we’ve had so far."

He added:

"So we dropped to sixth and it’s obviously not the target for the season. So it will be a lie to say that we matched the expectations. We still have half a year to go and still quite a lot of stuff in the pipeline in terms of development. It’s not gonna turn the full season around but I am definitely hopeful that we can show better form in the second part of the year.”

Far from where the team finished its 2022 season in fourth place, Pierre Gasly felt they need to work towards improving their results in the second half of the season. Alpine are currently sixth in the championship and far from the third place they were at in the opening races of the season.

They are 40 points behind McLaren who have had a sudden surge to the front after starting out as back-markers. With not many contenders to snatch the sixth place from them, they will have to focus on progressing further up by capitalizing on their opportunities through the rest of the season.