Toro Rosso celebrates in Monza again: 9th place for Pierre Gasly, who speaks of one of the best qualifying laps of his F1 career. Q3 came as a surprise.

Pierre Gasly shows himself big again in Monza with his Toro Rosso. Ninth place in qualifying on Saturday, and under exceptional circumstances this time. The much scolded Honda engine, always the scapegoat for missing top speed at McLaren, delivers in Monza. Gasly and his team mate Brendon Hartley agree on that.

Sure, they're not up to Mercedes and Ferrari yet. But the Honda engine is by no means a disadvantage either. In speed measurement, Gasly was in 8th place with 340.1 km/h, only 1.4 km/h slower than Sebastian Vettel's fastest passage, for example. This is far from a disadvantage.

Gasly praises Honda, nevertheless: Q3 in Monza surprising

Gasly hadn't particularly fared well this weekend before qualifying. On Friday he had problems with the grip at the rear of his Toro Rosso: "I couldn't trust the car, and you can't get everything out of it on such a high-speed track." Combined with the expected top-speed weakness, a Q3 intake was therefore not on schedule. "This shows her progress," Gasly says about Honda. "You can be happy. Hopefully this will motivate them, it is also quite clear that they will continue to improve."

"Before qualifying we expected Q2 at the most and that would be difficult," he told. "We thought we'd get 15th, 16th. Ninth place at the end is a big surprise." For Gasly this was one of his best qualifying laps ever, he puts his Q3 lap on a level with that of Bahrain.

Gasly needs Slipstream: Without doesn't work's in Monza

Gasly points out, however, after Monza qualifying, that slipstreams have played a particularly important role today. "In my only slow attempt, I didn't have one," Gasly explains. "For us, the profit was massive. Massive! I fought with the team the whole qualifying because they didn't send me out at the right time, especially in Q1".

First Gasly fought with the team, then with the competition. On his last Q1 attempt he was the first rider on the slipstream in the warm-up lap. "I slowed down, but nobody wanted to drive by and be first," Gasly said. There was a brief confrontation with Romain Grosjean: Gasly got on the brakes, Grosjean felt handicapped and then gave angry signals.

"A bit of a mess," Gasly admits. "But in the end, the slipstream is so important... I just wanted him to drive by, but he didn't." Gasly estimates that the slipstream here in Toro Rosso's qualifying was one second

Q1 Showdown in Monza: Gasly in, Hartley failed

It was very close for Toro Rosso in the first part of qualifying. Gasly could finally just find a slipstream and progressed. Team-mate Hartley did not make it into the next segment. However, it was conceivably close. "A little mistake in curve one," Hartley explains afterwards. "I made up the rest of the round on my teammate."

The plans of Gasly and Hartley for the race in Monza are correspondingly different. Hartley wants to be as aggressive as possible in turn one, and then keep looking. From ninth place Gasly can prepare a better strategy: "I know the cars around us have better top speed. We need a good start, then we have to hang close to the cars in front of us and stay in the slipstream."

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