Pierre Gasly, born February 7th 1996, is a French driver currently competing for the Alpine F1 team. He won the GP2 championship (now called Formula 2) in 2016 and the Japanese Super Formula Championship in 2017. He joined the Red Bull Junior Team in 2014 when he started competing in GP2, and he began testing for the Red Bull Formula One team in 2015, being named their reserve driver in September of that year. Gasly got his first Formula One race start at the Malaysian Grand Prix in 2017 when he replaced Daniil Kvyat on the grid for the Scuderia Toro Rosso team due to Kvyat’s lack of performance. Gasly drove for Toro Rosso for the remainder of the season, with the exception of the United States Grand Prix, as the date conflicted with the final race of the Super Formula Championship. In 2018, Gasly found himself with a full-time drivers seat at Torro Rosso before being promoted to the Red Bull team in 2019. Unfortunately, Pierre didn’t perform as expected and was replaced with Alexander Albon a little over halfway through the season. Gasly finished out 2019 with Toro Rosso and remained with the team (rebranded as Scuderia Alpha Tauri in 2020) through the 2022 season, continuously outpacing his teammates and even winning the Italian Grand Prix in 2020.
Pierre was born in Rouen, France to father Jean Jacques Gasly and mother Pascale. He has four older half-brothers, two from his mother’s previous marriage and two from his father’s. Several members of Gasly’s family have been involved with racing and motorsports, including his grandfather, who competed in karting, and his grandmother who was a kart champion in Normandy, France back in the 1960s. Gasly’s father competed in karting, endurance racing and rallying, but says he gave it up after his co-driver made a mistake and they “fell off a mountain”. Since the age of two, Gasly has been trackside, cheering on his older brothers as they competed in karting and finally getting his chance behind the wheel when he started competing at the age of six at the local track in Anneville-Ambourville. In 2009 when Gasly was thirteen, he left home to attend a boarding school in Le Mans where he could further his karting career and follow his dream of becoming a Formula One driver.
It was at boarding school that Pierre Gasly became best friends with his karting rival, compatriot and new roommate, the late Anthoine Hubert, who was also pursuing his dream of becoming an F1 driver. The two were fast friends on and off the track, but unfortunately, in 2019 at the age of twenty-two, Anthoine died in a tragic accident during a Formula 2 race at Spa. It was a devastating blow for the entire racing community and a defining moment for Pierre. A few weeks before the race at Spa, Gasly found out that the ruthlessly competitive Red Bull team was sending him back to Toro Rosso because he wasn’t able to keep pace with their lead driver, Max Verstappen. Most people might have thrown in the towel at that point, but Gasly decided that he needed to keep the dream alive for himself and Anthoine. Both of them had struggled to combat the doubters and naysayers throughout their lives. In fact, Anthoine’s last text to Gasly was, “Prove them wrong. Be strong, bro. You’re going to show them you deserve your seat in a top team and prove them wrong.” Now that Gasly is finally out of the Red Bull program, he has the opportunity to compete as a French driver for a French team, Alpine, and show the world his true potential.