Why Gasly’s AlphaTauri haven is a blessing and a curse

There is no doubt that Pierre Gasly was one of the star performers in the 2020 Formula 1 season.

Even before his shock and terrific win at Monza, he had been ranking among the top echelon of racers. He was a Q3 regular, with a car that did not get there practically automatically, and he displayed a flair that had been much diminished after his Red Bull disaster in 2019.

He'd ended that year very much on the up and came into 2020 reaping the benefit of staying in familiar surroundings - albeit renamed ones as Toro Rosso morphed to AlphaTauri. His great campaign was capped by his victory in the chaotic Italian Grand Prix, but there would be no Red Bull return.

Red Bull moved quickly to play down outside expectations about its second seat alongside Max Verstappen. It publicly backed Alex Albon's position to the end of last season - so there would be no further sudden promotion/demotion among its F1 cohort - and two months after Monza, with four races of 2020 remaining, Gasly was announced as AlphaTauri's first confirmed driver for 2021.

The messaging around Red Bull's second F1 team has changed. It is no longer referred to as the 'junior' squad, instead considered a 'sister' team. And all of Red Bull's F1 drivers are contracted with Red Bull itself rather than the individual teams - so it chooses where to distribute them between its four seats.

Daniil Kvyat is gone, Sergio Perez is signed, Albon demoted to a reserve role and Yuki Tsunoda promoted into F1 altogether. Verstappen and Gasly remain at the same posts as they held this time last year. And this is both good news and bad for F1's 109th race winner (Perez is number 110 thanks to his Sakhir GP win).

Staying put - not that he had much choice - worked a treat for Gasly going into 2020.

He highlighted the benefit of being able to work with the same engineers over the off-season as one of the key reasons why he had continued on his upward trend from the end of 2019. He was clearly mentally and physically refreshed going into the 2020 campaign, where he produced pretty consistent performances. His confidence was clear, and this impressed AlphaTauri - particularly when it came to qualifying. Gasly often just knew he was going to pull off a good result.

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AlphaTauri has also made deliberate strides to produce a car with a wide operating window. This means the drivers have an easier time chasing positive set-ups and that these work in a greater range of conditions. Essentially, the AlphaTauri package is more forgiving. The same cannot be said of last year's Red Bull, where only Verstappen was able to live with the lively rear-end and altogether aerodynamically difficult RB16.

"Pierre is a very high skilled driver and he now also has the necessary experience to be a leader in the team and for Yuki [Tsunoda]" Franz Tost

Another reason why another year, at least, of racing with AlphaTauri is good for Gasly is that his team clearly likes him. The former Minardi squad had witnessed just how hard Kvyat had taken his demotion from Red Bull in 2016, but was impressed that Gasly didn't seem to be going through a similar process (although that would've been understandable).

This helped them form a bond in preparation for 2020, which was further solidified as the year progressed. Gasly felt AlphaTauri gave him exactly the support he needed, and team boss Franz Tost has previously explained the importance of getting a driver and his engineers to excel together. Other than a few times - such as the Turkish GP slump in those tricky conditions - AlphaTauri and Gasly combined to succeed.

The Monza win may have been the only podium visit, but the rest of Gasly's headline results in 2020 were rather remarkable considering the compacted midfield.

AlphaTauri has a strong reputation for developing drivers - which is its primary purpose, no matter how the PR messaging regarding its status in relation to Red Bull is spun. So, there is every reason to think that by continuing to race for the same team, Gasly will continue to progress. One area where the team feels he can improve is adapting faster to changing conditions.

The next step on his road of rebuilding his F1 reputation - one he has progressed along considerably in the last 12 months - is leading AlphaTauri alongside Tsunoda during the Japanese driver's rookie campaign. AlphaTauri has openly stated this is a key goal for Gasly in 2021.

"Pierre is a very high skilled driver and he now also has the necessary experience to be a leader in the team and for Yuki," said Tost. "Every driver compares themselves with their team-mate so the better the latter is, the more you are pushed to improve yourself.

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"Yuki can learn a lot from Pierre in all aspects, for example comparing the lap times, the set-up of the car, the driving lines - this is all very important, especially on those tracks that are new to Yuki. If you have a strong and experienced teammate you can compare many different parameters, which help to improve your own performance."

If AlphaTauri's two drivers can combine well and help the team push forwards, then everybody at the squad benefits. Where once there were many, there are now few Red Bull juniors with a clear path to F1, so if Gasly and Tsunoda form a productive line-up then they will protect their own futures at the team together. That said, Tsunoda is proof that Red Bull is still capable of rapidly promoting drivers through the ranks if it deems them worthy of being tested at the highest level.

As with essentially all the teams in F1's crowded midfield, AlphaTauri will be eyeing the upcoming 2022 rules reset as a chance to move up the competitive order. If it becomes a regular race winner or at least a regular threat at the front of the grid, then it stands closer to Red Bull overall.

This is far from guaranteed - and there's more than enough historical examples to suggest the rule changes could help one team make a big gain over the rest next year - but if the regulation reset mean the field is at least close up, Gasly's AlphaTauri home isn't a hinderance. In fact, judging by his excellence in action-packed 2020 races such as the Italian GP, or when he put in a series of finely judged overtakes to climb the order late on at Portimao in what were far from easy track conditions, Gasly has shown that he has the skills to make a critical difference in the battle for glittering results.

But there is a flipside to the positive situation Gasly has at AlphaTauri. Red Bull controls his F1 destiny right now and it chose not to bring him back to its leading squad. In fact, for the first time since 2007, it has signed a driver from outside its junior programme to take one of the seats in its eponymous team.

If Perez delivers alongside Verstappen this year - something he will achieve by running him close on pace and getting amongst the Mercedes drivers where possible, which Gasly and Albon could not do during their brief tenures at Red Bull - then it's hard to see that line-up changing. It might if Mercedes is able to lure Verstappen away as a replacement for Lewis Hamilton one day, but right now that is in speculation's realm.

In any case, Red Bull's driver line-up across its two teams could remain relatively stable in the coming years, despite recent history suggesting the opposite. Therefore, there may well come a time when Gasly wants to seek his fortunes elsewhere. And that's where the danger lies now that Red Bull has witnessed him bounce back and yet opted not to bring him back.

In the same way that Hulkenberg became known as a journeyman driver, who didn't quite make it to the top, a similar danger is present for Gasly

Other teams will have seen this, and it creates an asterisk against Gasly's reputation when it comes to considering his future services alongside the potential of other up-and-coming drivers.

A case in point is Nico Hulkenberg - a massively talented driver, who narrowly missed out on his chance to join F1's top team bracket when Ferrari opted to re-sign Kimi Raikkonen for 2014. The chance never came again as other talents rose around him and that decision was followed by an overall plateau in Hulkenberg's own F1 rise, which then reversed to his current place on the sidelines.

In the same way that Hulkenberg became known as a journeyman driver, who didn't quite make it to the top, a similar danger is present for Gasly - other teams will want to know why Red Bull didn't want him back and could well arrive at similar conclusions.

It could also be the case, however, that Red Bull simply needs to see more from Gasly before it is prepared to give him a second chance at its top team. A sportsperson can only nail the circumstances set out before them and once again these are clear for one of 2020's stars: deliver the goods for AlphaTauri.

And that, absolutely, is what Gasly did last year.