Revealed: The simple change to prompt Pierre Gasly performance surge

Alpine driver Pierre Gasly revealed he found “a lot more consistency” from his car by swapping to team-mate Esteban Ocon’s differential settings behind the wheel.

Alpine arguably started the season as the outright slowest car on the grid, but have made steady progress to make it back into the midfield by mid-season – and Gasly said he found his own breakthrough by confirming a switch in differential software settings.

Alpine software switch plays ‘quite a big part’ in Pierre Gasly improvement

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher and Sam Cooper

Gasly acknowledged that the feeling within his A524 is still “not ideal everywhere”, but that moving to Ocon’s differential map after the Miami Grand Prix helped him feel much more balanced within the car.

Alpine brought a new floor in May that brought them closer to the minimum weight limit required by the FIA, while new executive technical director David Sanchez confirmed the team are looking to bring a “fair amount” of upgrades for the remainder of the season.

In the meantime, however, Gasly explained there has been improvement on his side with this one change.

“I think there’s definitely been a step,” Gasly told media including PlanetF1.com at Silverstone.

“We realised at the start of the year, until Miami, we found out that there was a couple of things which weren’t right on my differential, and I kind of used the other side’s map and then the car felt a lot more together.

How do Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon match up in their head-to-head records this season?

👉 F1 2024: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2024: Head-to-head qualifying records between team-mates

“So this played quite a big part in terms of consistency on the following races in not having the ideal balance, but having it a lot more consistent and able to have a lot more consistency from the car.

“I think at the minute what we’re missing is the balance is not ideal everywhere. On some tracks like Barcelona, I was reasonably happy, we’re just lacking load in the high speed, which you know, triggers a bit too much sliding and then obviously in the race, overheating the tyres and pay the price on traction.

“I think the stability is not ideal, but it’s fine. It’s just the understeer in some places, which we’re trying to cure, and then our traction is not ideal.

“When you put it that way, it’s not great, but obviously, you’re looking at fine details.

“What I like is we’ve got very clear ideas of what we’re missing. We have also good ideas on how to fix them.

“So I don’t think we’ll see everything this season but we’ll see some evolution this season, and I’m quite confident that also for next year we’ve got a good plan and processes to basically improve what we’ve got.”

Read next: Exclusive: The inside story of Williams’ incredible start to the F1 turbo hybrid era