Gasly becomes the leader: "Tsunoda arrival means I will have more responsibility"

The new AlphaTauri car, the AT02, was presented by the team on Friday morning. Pierre Gasly will be using these colours for the second consecutive year. The Frenchman had a positive season as he became an F1 Grand Prix winner for the first time. He'll be hoping this year's challenger will allow him to repeat that feat in 2021. 

Gasly has made a great advance in 2020 after his relegation at Red Bull Racing in 2019. The Frenchman already had an upward trend at Toro Rosso in 2019, but as the leader of AlphaTauri, he only continued that trend in 2020. The victory at Monza was of course the icing on the cake for him and the team.

Gasly becomes the leader

“Of course, Yuki’s arrival means I will have more responsibility within the team and I’m ready to take on the role of team leader. However, he is a very quick driver and he will help us move the team forward," Gasly said in the AlphaTauri press release. 

"I know Yuki, he is a competitive guy and showed what he can do in F2, that’s why he was promoted to F1 after just one year. We will work together to achieve that. He lacks experience, so it won’t always be easy for him, but I think he is talented and it will also be up to me and the team to lead the way," the Frenchman concluded.

Nothing changes

In 2021, Gasly will continue to try and prove Helmut Marko and the rest of the Red Bull Racing team that he is ready to line-up next to Max Verstappen once again. The 25-year-old says nothing changes in his approach. 

"His arrival doesn’t really change my approach, which will be the same as last year, when we got the most out of what we had to work with at pretty much all the Grand Prix, apart from one or two. So, we must keep going with the same philosophy, as I really believe last year was the team’s best in terms of the way it worked, the development, the performance and in the way it managed the race weekends," he added.

"I think that goes for me too and we just have to keep going like this to try and do a little bit better than we did last year.”