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This article first appeared in GP Racing magazine.
Keen and bright-eyed as a Labrador pup, Pierre Gasly bounds up the stairs of the Red Bull Energy Station. He's eager not to be late for his appointment with the readers of F1 Racing, whose questions await.
It's a promising sign. Plenty of young drivers enter Formula 1 ready to play the big 'I am' before achieving anything. Not this one, who presents himself as smart, quick-witted and composed. All are attributes that will serve him well as a Red Bull junior, for this team's racing overlord, Dr Helmut Marko, brooks no compromise in his search for talents that fit his template. Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo were best exemplars of his ideal: as quick with their wits as they are on track, self-possessed and capable of elbows-out circuit-smarts in pursuit of a big result.
Those who don't quite cut it are quickly found out: Jean-Eric Vergne, a terrific racer, was a little too surly for his own good and never quite right there in qualifying; Daniil Kvyat - bright, fast and promising - lost the plot when measured against wunderkind team-mate Max Verstappen. Then he started hitting walls. Game over.
