122 MH.CO.ZA/ August 2019any normal person might be chewing their
fingernails, if not the fingers themselves, the
23-year-old driver couldn’t be more relaxed if
we’d caught him smack-bang in the
middle of one of his pre-race snoozes.
“It’s different from one driver toanother, but I think I’ve always just been
quite a calm guy. And I find the best way to
stay calm is to make sure I’ve gone through
all the things I needed to do to get ready for
a race,” he says.
“Once I feel I’ve done my job and I’m readyto fight, there’s no point in getting excited or
stressed – everything should be under control
by now.”
Unconventional, sure. But nobody cansay Gasly’s 40-winks strategy isn’t working
wonders. “Meteoric” doesn’t quite do his
career justice. The young gun (his career is
littered with wins in the junior categories,
including claiming the 2016 GP2 series
and finishing runner-up in the 2017 Super
Formula Championship) is in only his
second year of Formula One, and already
he’s received the call-up most drivers wait
their careers for: a promotion from Scuderia
Toro Rosso to the senior Red Bull Racing
team, plonking his behind in a race seat just
vacated by Daniel Ricciardo.
That kind of thing rarely happens (it’s
the F1 equivalent of winning the lottery),
but it was a good call – at time of print, Gasly
was sixth in the drivers’ championship. Not
bad for a rookie!PLAYING WITH THE BIG BOYS
At the end of most qualifying sessions, mere
tenths of a second will separate the top three
teams. Everyone else is largely making up the
numbers. This year, Gasly’s suddenly at the
pointy end of that lofty pyramid. It’s a chance
he has no intention of squandering.
“Clearly there are differences in the cars –
you can see it in the top three teams,” he says.
“They have more resources than others, and
they are clearly faster. Today, if you are not in
a Red Bull, a Ferrari or a Mercedes, you have
no chance to fight for a win.
“It’s the details that make such adifference at this level. So, if you want to be
successful you need to have the right people
around you. As a driver in my second year,
I still have a lot to learn. And I think I’m in
the best place with Red Bull Racing, what
with all the experience they have in winning
Championships. And being next to Max,
who has proved himself in F1, and is one of
the most talented drivers on the grid at the
moment, it’s a great place for me to keep
developing as a driver.”
Teamwork. It’s not something
immediately associated with Formula One,
given there’s only room for one person in each
car. But the quality of the people around them
is what makes or breaks all drivers.
Every single time Gasly straps into his car,
he straps in alongside some 600 support staff- from engineers to aerodynamics experts,
tyre masters to a person employed, and this
is not a joke, to point a handheld fan in the
rough direction of his crotch every time he
pits during practice – and it’s the efforts of
that broader team that make the difference
on race day.
“They do most of the job, even if at the end
of it all we’re the ones driving the car,” Gasly
says. “It’s not something you see on camera,
and people might not realise it, but at Red
Bull we are 800 people back in England, and
there’s between 300 and 400 others, so that’s
over a thousand people just to build these
two cars and get them ready to be as fast as
possible on a Sunday.
“So we’re the ones taking all the credit,
because you see our faces, but without the
right people around you, the right engineers
and the right people designing and building
the car, then none of this is possible.”
TIME TO SHINE
That team extends beyond those wearing
Red Bull shirts, of course. After all, those
ocean-deep pockets of cash have to come
from somewhere, and that means big-name
sponsors who can help carry the load.
Red Bull Racing, for example, just
celebrated a three-year extension of its TAG
Heuer sponsorship deal, which has seen the
luxury Swiss watchmaker sign on again as
both offical timekeeper and official watch of
the team.
And so, as Gasly naps, he wears a TAG
Heuer Carrera 01; all exquisite detailing
and black skeleton dials, it’s a happy perk
of making the big team.THE WRITE STUFF:
GASLY SIGNS
AUTOGRAPHS WITH
RED BULL TEAMMATE
MAX VERSTAPPEN.