French GP: Pierre Gasly excited for home race at Paul Ricard

Pierre Gasly says he is hoping to bounce back from the disappointing weekend he had in Austria and go well at his home Grand Prix in France.

The Frenchman had a weekend to forget in Spielberg last time out as he was involved in an incident in the first corner of the Grand Prix with Lewis Hamilton and then could not get as much performance out of his car as he would have liked, whilst he was also slapped with a couple of penalties.

A tough weekend, then, but he is looking forward as we enter the second half of the campaign and, indeed, he’s excited to be racing back at home – especially when it could be the last French GP for a while:

“Austria turned out to be a weekend to forget, so I am particularly keen to go racing again at Ricard. Qualifying at the Red Bull Ring was okay, we were just outside the top ten on a track we knew would be complicated for us. But after that, the Sprint Races have unfortunately never gone well for us. On Sunday, I had an incident and we didn’t have the performance level we needed to fight, while getting two penalties didn’t help of course. 

“But I always prefer to look ahead and I’m hoping things will get much better with the updates we will have on the car this weekend. They are mainly on the aero-side and they should deliver a real step up in performance, so I’m keen to try them out at Ricard, in the hope that they can put us back in the fight for points. 

“It’s a special weekend as it’s my home race, particularly this year as there is some uncertainty over the future of the French Grand Prix. We are not sure if it stays on the calendar or not for next year, so I want to enjoy the moment and share it with all my fans, supporters and French F1 racing enthusiasts. In fact, we’ve organised a