Pierre Gasly believes his added influence as a team leader at AlphaTauri can see the squad consistently running at the front next season.

AlphaTauri won last year’s Italian Grand Prix with the Frenchman, and added a podium in Azerbaijan this season alongside a number of impressive results. Paired with rookie Yuki Tsunoda, Gasly has taken confidence from his position as the more experienced driver and has been trying to work out how to drive the team forward to compete with bigger names on a regular basis.

“I’ve enjoyed the responsibility and the faith the team put into me in terms of feedback, in terms of direction for development, being more involved in all that development and talking with the team to find areas to make ourselves better,” Gasly told RACER. “I really enjoy that because there’s a big trust from them towards me and the same the other way around.

“So I really feel the key to our relationship is that trust we have between ourselves. It’s not only about driving the car, it’s the whole thinking process behind it; how to find more performance and try to improve our package to defend ourselves against big teams like Ferrari and McLaren and try to be more consistently at the top.”

Gasly also believes AlphaTauri’s performance are often overlooked when it beats some teams with much bigger resources, but is confident that leaves it in a good place for 2022’s regulations.

“I feel like sometimes they don’t really get the credit they deserve,” he said. “In Budapest we outqualified the two Ferraris and two McLarens. On pure pace we know that they should be ahead of us. They have more resources and more knowledge from the past, they have better facilities and nonetheless we still manage to be right there and make their lives difficult on a couple of occasions.

“So, I’m really happy with the way we are performing and the way we are maximizing the package we have. That’s why I believe that moving forward in the future we are already used to this sort of budget and I don’t think we’re really going to be affected by that compared to other teams and bigger teams who will have to restructure and the way they allocate money.”