'Many changes' key to breakthrough result – Gasly

Red Bull driver Pierre Gasly says “many changes” were key to securing his best result of the 2019 Formula 1 season at the British Grand Prix.

While his teammate Max Verstappen had been one of the star performers of the campaign, Gasly had struggled to match the Dutchman throughout the opening nine races following his promotion from Toro Rosso.

But at Silverstone, Gasly converted fifth place in qualifying into fourth in the race, matching his career-best result to round off his strongest weekend of the season so far.

“There were many changes,” Gasly said when asked what had changed at Silverstone. “There were so many little things that we decided to change and all these things add together which made a bigger difference.

“I don’t want to go into too much detail into all the things but it is working and things are starting to work better together.

“I think it is a lot down to how it worked at the beginning of the season trying to really extract the maximum from myself and the team and trying to understand how to make all these things work.

“It is continuous work which is starting to pay off.”

Gasly’s performance led Red Bull team principal Christian Horner to say the Frenchman was a “different driver” at the British Grand Prix, though Gasly insists he has not changed his approach to driving.

“I think I have been doing the same thing and same approach every weekend and trying to be as fast as I can and working on what we can improve together,” he explained.

“I haven’t changed my driving and I always try to adapt to what I get all of the time but I feel it is more like continuous work which starts to pay off.

“I’ve always been competitive and I know I can be fast it is just a matter of making everything work together and we just need to find what we need to put together to make it work. I think we have a good idea but we have to keep improving things.”

Horner had previously stated Gasly required a mental “Ctrl+Alt-Del” reset and Gasly believes his mental approach is an area he has been able to improve on.

“It is not like it is the final result or the end result as I always want more but my mentality is always thinking about what we can do better together to have these kind of results more often and even better results than we had in Silverstone.

“Even if it was better it was not perfect and I am always thinking on how to improve things.

“After it was nice at Silverstone and I enjoyed fighting at the front as I had the feeling I could drive as I wanted and things worked out so it is always more enjoyable.”