How Red Bull's other 2020 star has made Marko "really happy"

A Red Bull driver struggling to match Max Verstappen, posting several disappointing results considering the potential of the team's package and with a heavy practice crash on their record in the first half of a Formula 1 season.

This story will be familiar to one particular driver on grid, who has been one of the outstanding performers early in the current campaign, often besting drivers in significantly faster machinery in both qualifying and the races.

And they're currently equal-second - with six-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, no less - in Autosport's driver ratings averages, which are currently topped by Verstappen.

That's quite a turnaround for Pierre Gasly. This time last year, he was about to discover that he was to be dropped from the senior Red Bull squad and swapped with Alex Albon, who has experienced the 2020 reality of the opening paragraph to this piece.

Gasly made an instant impact at the Red Bull Ring. Although his rise from 12th on the grid in the Austrian Grand Prix season opener went largely unseen, he finished seventh despite AlphaTauri at one stage fearing he would have to retire with a brake problem.

After qualifying seventh in the wet for the Styrian GP at the same track one week later, Gasly went in the opposite direction but was struggling with "the whole aero from the back of the car" being damaged in a small tap from Daniel Ricciardo at the first corner - an incident that Gasly said left him "surprised that it damaged the car the way did".

The Hungarian GP ended with his first, and so far only, DNF, when a gearbox problem ended his race after 15 laps. But he had qualified an impressive 10th considering he'd missed all of the dry Friday practice running with a power unit issue. Further power unit dramas scuppered his chances of starting higher as he could not run in Q3, and also meant he had to take a new engine ahead of the race at the Hungaroring.

In last weekend's British GP, Gasly only missed a third consecutive Q3 appearance because Lance Stroll had set an identical time first in Q2, and he was again seriously impressive in the race. He showed great pace to get into the points on the long second stint on the hard tyres, which was capped by his firm pass on Sebastian Vettel into Club after being squeezed off the track at Stowe.

That move, and what must have been satisfactory revenge passing Stroll, meant he was boosted to seventh by the late punctures for Valtteri Bottas and Carlos Sainz Jr. Considering that on pure pace the AlphaTauri is in the second half of the midfield - although in front of Haas, Alfa Romeo and Williams - that is quite a performance so far.

"It feels to me more like we finished last year [when the team was known as Toro Rosso] quite strongly, and I'm not just talking about Brazil [where he finished second behind Verstappen]," Gasly says when asked to pinpoint the reasons for his strong form by Autosport.

"Pretty much every weekend we manage to extract the full potential from the car - even if we start on Friday not really happy" Pierre Gasly

"But most of the races - Singapore, Suzuka, Mexico - I mean we had some really strong results and it was important to keep that momentum coming into 2020, and I just felt like that's what we did."

Gasly feels things are going smoothly off-track too - that he is gelling well with the team where he made his F1 debut back at the end of 2017, before his underwhelming half-season with Red Bull last year. This is another key difference year-on-year for Gasly, whose time at Red Bull was characterised by his own big gap to Verstappen and where he apparently was made to match the Dutchman's set-ups and not take his own direction. He also recently explained that he asked to work with a more experienced race engineer - a move that Red Bull made for Albon ahead of the British GP.

He also recently explained that he asked to work with a more experienced race engineer - a move that Red Bull made for Albon ahead of the British GP in replacing Mike Lugg with Simon Rennie. When discussing that decision last weekend, Gasly insisted he is now "focusing on making the best job possible with AlphaTauri now", which he feels is going well when it comes to setting up the AT01 for each race so far this season.

"Pretty much every weekend we manage to extract the full potential from the car - even if we start on Friday not really happy," he explains. "I'm really happy with the job we've done with the team and especially on their side because every session it feels like we're making a step forward, and things are improving all the time.

"I don't feel I've done massive changes [from 2019 into 2020]. But obviously the relationship with the team, working with my race engineer [is better]. We started in Spa last year [after Gasly's demotion back to Toro Rosso] and we have [had] more races together, so I feel like the understanding is really good. I'm really happy with how things are going."

There is trouble on the horizon for Gasly, but it isn't of his making. He is comfortably ahead of the rest of the field when it comes to new power unit parts taken in 2020 - as he is now onto his second of each allocation (apart from energy stores). That means he is closer to a grid penalty than all of his rivals when it comes to the limits on engine parts, and is already at the maximum permitted number (two) of control electronics.

But when it comes to impressing his Red Bull bosses - in particular junior programme chief Helmut Marko - Gasly says his performances have been noted. As ever for a Red Bull junior, the future is far from certain.

"I know Helmut is really happy about the results and the performances, whether in qualifying or the races," he says. "But at the end of the day it's not my call [about his future in the Red Bull fold].

"The only thing I can do for myself, which is the only thing I'm focused on, is just performing every weekend and try to grab every opportunity that comes at me, and that's the only target.

"I've always believed, as long as you put in strong performances, sooner or later opportunities will come. Only the future will tell, but at the moment I'm just focusing on my job and trying to deliver the best of myself."

Now is a good time to be impressive as a Red Bull driver - even if there is so far no sign of any sudden changes regarding Albon's position at the senior team (and it should of course be noted that the coronavirus-induced delay to the campaign means the season is currently much younger than it should be).

As Gasly notes, Red Bull will ultimately decide what happens with its F1 seats, but there can be no doubt that he has been one of the stars of F1 2020 so far.

Not every driver has taken a Red Bull/Toro Rosso exit well (as Daniil Kvyat, who has also been strong so far this season, demonstrated so visibly back in 2016), but Red Bull should be impressed with Gasly's resilience and form one year on from his abrupt demotion.