Pierre Gasly’s Las Vegas poker face didn’t last long. Ten places up on the grid after a sharp Saturday, the Alpine driver barely made it to the apex of Turn 1 before his night unraveled — tagged in a chain reaction that started with rookie Gabriel Bortoleto barreling in too hot and collecting Lance Stroll, who ricocheted into Gasly.
Stroll’s race was over on the spot. Gasly kept going, but seven places down and with a wounded diffuser. For the third year running in Vegas, he left with more frustration than points.
“Just got spun around and my diffuser got smashed at the back,” he said, voice flat and spiky all at once. “So a long f**king flight to end up spun around. Another unlucky race in Vegas. Three years in a row where I have very strong quali and it doesn’t really translate into the race. It’s a pretty s**t day.”
That opening corner has history. It pinches and it punishes, and if you misjudge your braking by a whisker, you end up a passenger. Bortoleto wasn’t the only newcomer caught out: Liam Lawson also arrived steaming and clipped Oscar Piastri. In Gasly’s view, it was a rough display of rookie exuberance at exactly the wrong place.
“I don’t know exactly what happened with Lawson, but obviously Bortoleto made a pretty big misjudgment there,” he said. “Liam also hit Piastri, so two guys with not much experience. We know from the past few years Turn 1 is very tricky — you need to consider that. Yesterday was a good display of driving skills. Turn 1, not really today.”
It’s the helplessness that stings most. Las Vegas is brutal on anyone starting midfield: you do the hard work on Saturday, then you’re at the mercy of the concertina. Gasly had done the job — P10, into Q3 yet again — and was eyeing a tidy points haul in a car that’s been finicky all season.
Still, beneath the irritation, he found slivers of encouragement. “Another Q3 and it’s my ninth Q3 of the year,” he noted. “We’ve had a bit of a dip mid-season and found out some of the reasons why it wasn’t going too well. I’m pretty pleased. We’re still trying every weekend. It’s just a shame for all the guys not to really benefit from it.”
That’s the paradox of Gasly’s 2025: Saturdays that suggest Alpine has found something, Sundays that too often don’t let him show it. Vegas amplified it. In clean air, the Alpine’s balance looked good; in traffic with diffuser damage, there’s not much you can mask on those long drags and late-braking zones.
The broader question hangs over racecraft in the pack. Rookies will make mistakes — that’s baked into the calendar — but Las Vegas Turn 1 isn’t forgiving. It’s a blind funnel with cold tyres, cold brakes and a grid full of ambition. If you’re tenth on the grid, you’re right in the blast radius.
Gasly’s tone said he knows it as well as anyone. The flight home will feel longer than the lap times suggest. He’ll add this to a Vegas file that doesn’t make happy reading: good grid spots, little to show. But the form book still matters. If the Alpine keeps qualifying where he’s putting it, the points will follow somewhere less chaotic.
In the short term, it’s damage assessment and a reset. And maybe a quiet wish that next year’s Vegas opener comes with less adrenaline and more margin. For now, it’s the sound of carbon meeting concrete and a very expensive reminder that, sometimes, you don’t even make it past the first corner.
