Gasly wants to be a "pain" for Norris, Verstappen from fourth on Bahrain GP grid

Pierre Gasly was surprised by his strong qualifying performance in Bahrain, which will see him start tomorrow’s race on the third row of the grid.

The Alpine driver was just 0.3s off the pole position pace, finishing fifth ahead of Lando Norris and Max Verstappen respectively - promoted to fourth on the grid after Andrea Kimi Antonelli's one-place grid drop penalty.

“If we can be a pain for these top teams once in a while that’d be great,” Gasly joked when speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the session.

“The conditions played well for us and it just shows we've got some good potential. I think the window is very narrow and we’ve got some fast guys behind us. Lando and Max can have a little go at each other in the first few laps and leave me out of it – I’m not going to be against that.”

The Frenchman revealed that the team wasn’t expecting to be fighting so far up the grid until his “mental” Q3 lap: “Before qualifying we thought we’d be in the fight for P10 or P9 at best, but you always give it your best shot and I really managed to improve from Q1 to Q3.

“Three tenths off pole is quite mental, it was a very good day for us as a team… now we need those first points.”

Pierre Gasly, Alpine

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Gasly reflected on the Enstone-based outfit’s struggles this time last year, noting he’s “very happy” with how the car is feeling.

“12 months ago, we were absolutely nowhere, we were P20 and struggling, so when I see what I could do today with the car, it just makes me very happy and very proud of what the guys have done so far,” he said.

“The car was really impressive, the front grip was very strong... those last few runs we really managed to nail it and it was so special.”

Looking ahead to the race, Gasly said he’ll “fight with what [he] has.” He added, speaking before Antonelli's penalty had been announced: “Today’s package was good enough to get us to P5 and we'll try to hold on to it as much as we can.”