Why Gasly still has it in him to save his Red Bull drive

Nine races in and Pierre Gasly's dream move to Red Bull has turned into a nightmare. On the current trajectory, it's impossible to see Gasly remaining at the team beyond the end of this season. But there is still a realistic chance that he can turn things around after this bad start.

Gasly is not a no-hoper, he would never have earned the promotion from Toro Rosso to Red Bull if that was the case. Everything he's done in his career up to this point proves he's eminently capable of being a fast racing driver and achieving the results required, but the question is whether he can find that form up against Verstappen and in the pressure-cooker environment at the front of Formula 1.

The key to doing so appears to lie with his capacity to adapt to the demands of the car and get into the right mindset to deliver his best.

The season hasn't been an unmitigated disaster. Gasly has scored points seven times and delivered a quarter of Red Bull's total

But how badly is Gasly really doing? In terms of relative performance, he is comfortably the weakest team-mate Max Verstappen has had in Formula 1. So far he has been 0.692% down based on an average of the fastest individual lap of every weekend - so about six tenths over a hypothetical 90-second lap.

Comparing that to the performance deficit of team-mates to world championship-winning drivers at least puts Gasly on more favourable footing. Looking only at the world champions from 1980 (Alan Jones) onwards, and adding Verstappen versus his team-mates into the mix, Gasly is only the 29th worst-off.

There are many caveats to this, notably the fact that gaps have tended to get smaller as time goes on - hence not looking earlier than Jones - but at least it shows Gasly isn't doing quite as badly as some of his fiercest critics suggest.

But Gasly also has the largest average gap to a team-mate in qualifying this season at 0.527 seconds (adjusted figure calculated at the point of exit in qualifying with anomalous data disregarded). Most concerning of all is that the deficit has been at its largest over the past two races in France and Austria.

Finishing a lap down to Verstappen in the Austrian Grand Prix, having briefly been ahead of him on the first lap, is clearly not good enough. But there are mitigating factors.

Gasly started at the Red Bull Ring on soft tyres, which put him on a less effective strategy. That was a consequence of his lack of pace as he couldn't use mediums to get through Q2, but it is a weakness multiplied. He was also running a slightly different, higher-downforce aero specification that made it harder to overtake.

He spent large amounts of the race stuck behind midfielders, which also cost him time. All of this was a consequence of his lack of qualifying pace, which was itself down to losing 0.3s to the rear stepping out at Turn 1. Without that, he would have started ahead of the midfield and probably had a more straightforward race.

By the end of the Austrian GP, Gasly was 73 seconds behind his team-mate - the fourth time this season he's been more than a minute behind Verstappen. And only once in that number did he sacrifice race time to take fastest lap with an extra pitstop. This must not go on.

The season hasn't been an unmitigated disaster. Gasly has scored points seven times and delivered a quarter of Red Bull's total. That's well below what's required, as usually you'd want your second driver to be returning at least two-thirds of the points of the team leader, but at least he's contributing something. He's delivered fastest lap twice, albeit on both occasions thanks to being at the back of the 'big three' pack - although even more damning is that there have been times when he's been unable to take the free pitstop because he's too close to the midfielders.

He's not chucked the car at the scenery or rivals either. Since he crashed twice during pre-season testing, putting undue stress on Red Bull's sparse parts bin and seriously damaging his own confidence, he's been clean.

These positives are hardly rich pickings, but he has not been a catastrophe and means he's not building entirely on sand as he bids to recover.

Small weaknesses are compounded in F1, but the positive thing about that is that if you eliminate them, then you make compound gains.

Red Bull would be foolish to replace Gasly mid-season. Yes, it has Daniil Kvyat on its books and he's performing well at Toro Rosso, proving he is a much more rounded and together character than before. But a mid-season promotion would threaten to destabilise that and, given Red Bull has been there and done that with him, Kvyat would not be much more than a stopgap. That gives Gasly a key resource - time.

As of the Austrian GP, the team has made him match Verstappen's set-ups rather than going in his own direction. There have been problems with finding a correct compromise, sometimes solving a problem in one part of the circuit and then developing one elsewhere. This has been caused by failing to adapt to changing conditions, but there have also been too many set-up experiments. With a stable, proven car under him, this should allow Gasly to focus on his own driving.

Team principal Christian Horner has talked about the need for Gasly to reset himself, which is not easy. Trying to match Verstappen at this stage is destructive and he needs to find a way to cut that out and just work through his own process. Gasly had a reputation at Toro Rosso for spending huge amounts of time studying data, often on his own laptop away from the track. That can be a strength, but there's a feeling that he's become too wedded to that and that he is driving to the data rather than his own feel. If he can strike that balance, he can do better.

And Red Bull must do everything it can to create an environment in which he can deliver his best, which is significantly better than the poor campaign he has produced so far

It's the great irony of elite sport that those who thrive are the ones who can perform as if things don't matter when the stakes are highest. Gasly needs to find a way to achieve that and also to cut out the external criticism via the media and social media that has also proved distracting. Being worried about losing his drive appears to have further deepened his malaise. But, as it happens, Gasly excelled when things didn't matter, thanks to the stakes being low in qualifying for the Azerbaijan GP.

There, he was already condemned to starting at the back because of myriad grid penalties, which began with missing the weighbridge, but in Q1 he put in a storming lap to top the session. It was a lap that would have been good enough for fifth in Q3. He also performed well in the race before a driveshaft failure put him out.

But such performances have been few and far between and he needs to find a way to recreate that Baku mindset when things do matter. That he has performed better at times in practice supports the idea that it's the pressure situations that are bringing out the worst in him.

Gasly needs to simplify everything. Being pushed onto Verstappen's set-up approach can only help that and, given he's only had one weekend with that strategy, the next few races will tell us if that's working. He must also dial back the overdriving. All season he has had a tendency to work the car harder than Verstappen, braking later and often using more steering angle.

At its worst, he brakes late, carries too much speed in, induces understeer, winds on more lock, then struggles to get the power down as the car is less stable. Again, he needs to simplify, brake fractionally earlier, work with the car and not against it - not easy given his naturally aggressive style. And Red Bull must do everything it can to create an environment in which he can deliver his best, which is significantly better than the poor campaign he has produced so far.

It may be that Gasly's potential remains locked away and he continues on the path that would inevitably lead to him being dropped for 2020. But if he can use the time he has left to get back to the fundamentals that have served him well in the past, get into that bubble where he's doing his job well without all the distractions that come with F1, and find the right mindset to deliver his best, then there really is still a chance.

Whether he can take it or not is another question.