What Drives Pierre Gasly

The 26-year-old F1 (and Netflix) star wants to build on his success—while raising awareness for cancer and the war in his girlfriend’s homeland.

Pierre Gasly remembers his first training camp with Red Bull in 2014.

The 17-year-old rising star was in Finland, and, during a one-hour session, the driver was handed a single piece of paper with three questions: Who are you, what are your goals and what are you going to do to achieve these goals?

Question 2 was simple. Gasly has always had two dreams in life: to be a Formula One driver and to be a Formula One world champion. As for what he would do to achieve those goals, the answer was made obvious a year earlier: anything it takes.

Gasly remembers seeing blood all over the car as his head pressed against the roof. Moments earlier, his coach swerved to miss a vehicle making an abrupt U-turn, sending the car with Gasly and his parents as passengers not only off the road but rolling “four or five times.” Things went in slow-motion for him, and he realized that if the car landed on a tree, it was likely he would break his neck.

As the car came to a stop, his mother was screaming due to multiple broken bones in her face, her ribs and her vertebrae, and Gasly remembers thinking, What’s going to happen? Like, she can’t die right in front of my eyes. Despite her heading to intensive care, Gasly’s father told his son to go to practice at Silverstone, and the teenage GP2 Series driver arrived at the track with blood all over his jacket. He was sent to the medical center to be checked, and, although he felt discomfort in his back, Gasly brushed it off, attributing it to adrenaline, stress and the impact of the crash.

“​​I jumped in the car, and I remember my legs were shaking because I didn't know how my mom was,” Gasly says. “I was so worried about her.”

He managed to clock the fastest time in practice, qualified second on Friday evening and went on to win the weekend’s race, marking his first victory of the season. But throughout the monumental moments and the subsequent days of testing for Red Bull, the discomfort in his back lingered, and he took painkillers to mitigate the feeling that continued to get worse. Gasly eventually got an MRI, only to find out that he broke one of his vertebrae in the wreck.

Despite doctor’s orders to stay sidelined for three weeks, he continued racing as he led the championship standings, recalling, “This is my chance to make it in Formula One. I got to win the championship.”

But who are you is a more complex question, one that has evolved over time as he rose to being a breakout star on Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive and went through a tumultuous roller coaster between Red Bull and its sister program AlphaTauri, eventually finding his groove as a rising star for a midrange team.

“I feel very, very grateful to be able to live this life I’ve always dreamed about and always wanted,” Gasly says. “It didn’t come for free. [It] came with some sacrifices, and it's been also the reason why I’m the way I am today. It doesn’t mean [it was] always so easy. I’ve had to fight pretty much for everything I wanted, especially in that sport.”

Gasly is focused on improving his 2021 season, in which he finished ninth in the championship standings :: Samo Vidic/Red Bull Content Pool

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Given his family history, it was almost a given that Gasly would fall in love with racing.

It began with both grandparents on his father’s side, Pierre’s grandmother even being a kart champion. His father, Jean-Jacques, raced in endurance, rally and kart, and he kept his career going even after Pierre was born. That is, until it all came to a screeching halt.

Pierre recalls how during a stage in the mountains of a rally race, his father’s copilot made a mistake in the notes. He “basically fell off the mountain,” Pierre says, hitting “like five or six trees on the way down.

“It was pretty scary moment, and he realized, ‘O.K., probably it’s a wakeup call and probably my time to stop.’”

However, the racing within the family did not stop there. Pierre has four stepbrothers. (Each of his parents had two children from their first marriages.) Three of them raced, and, by the time he was 3, Pierre started asking to race, too. He finally got his chance when he was 6.

At that point, Gasly had been playing soccer for a year, and he would juggle both sports throughout his childhood. But he gradually started to gravitate more toward karting.

Gasly started missing a few soccer practices to practice his racing skills, and things came to a head when he was 11 years old. He vividly remembers his soccer manager showing up for a Sunday game and telling him that since Gasly had missed so many practices, he would be on the second team for that game.

“I told him, ‘I’m not here to play for any second team. I either play in the first team or I don't do it,’” Gasly says. His coach told him he had to make a choice, and Gasly decided he was done, walking away from his second-favorite sport to pour all that he could into karting. “As much as I love both, sometimes you’ve got to make sacrifices to really excel in one thing,” he says. “And it’s important to understand what matters the most for you and really commit and dedicate yourself to the fullest.”

But he wasn’t the only one making the sacrifices. Racing is expensive—the kart, gear, entry fees, fuel, repairs and travel can add up quickly. Gasly’s parents were pouring their savings into his career.

He remembers coming home from school one day, and his parents were not home. That was not unusual, as they were both at work. But what was unusual was that his door was open.

The then-11-year-old saw three people standing in his house, taking paintings off of walls and writing notes of the family’s furniture. When Gasly asked what was happening, the group answered in a simple manner—his parents hadn’t “paid taxes in a while,” and they were there to see what the family owned.

Gasly immediately called his mother. He remembers her telling him that they were “in a bit of a difficult situation right now, but things will get better.… We promise.’”

At the time, Gasly says his family and team were “kind of trying to put pieces together for me to race.” He couldn’t afford certain items that came with the competitive territory, like new tires. Still, Gasly was able to show his potential.

He flourished on the track, and national media attention followed. After he won a national competition in France one year, Gasly—who was not the type of kid to flaunt his achievements—gave a short interview on national television and then returned to school Monday morning. What he was not expecting, though, was to see his face plastered all over the walls.

Without Gasly’s knowledge, the director of the school created a poster celebrating the driver’s victory. When Gasly came out of class a few hours later, more than half of the posters were destroyed. Some were scratched, while others had been stomped on and thrown on the ground.

“I didn’t understand,” says Gasly. “It was very hard to process and understand why. Why would people react like that? First of all, I haven’t asked anything from anyone. I haven't asked anyone to put my face on the wall there. Second of all, why will people take you down, you know? I couldn’t process why they would do that. … From that moment, I was like O.K., people struggle to appreciate someone else’s success. It’s just not something that is easy to accept for everyone.

“Then, it just gave me even more energy and even a stronger will to succeed because I was like, you f------ don’t appreciate it, then I’m gonna win even more races to make you even more mad.”

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Gasly was 13 years old when he decided to leave Rouen to chase racing.

The French racing federation launched a program in 2009 for students who were missing classes due to the time commitment of competitive racing. It required students to live on campus, so Gasly headed to Le Mans.

There, he caught the eye of Red Bull talent scouts. Fresh off of the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup, Gasly signed with Red Bull as a part of its Junior Programme, and, in that moment, the then-17-year-old realized he could actually make it in Formula One. However, the team wanted him to complete his studies first.

Just over a year later, Gasly passed his final exam and headed to England to practice in the simulator. He progressed all the way to the Formula One feeder championship, GP2. He showed a mixed bag of results in 2015, but the following year—the season marked by his off-the-track wreck and a broken vertebrae—he finished with the Champion’s trophy in hand.

At the time, he was working as a reserve driver for Red Bull, which owned two different teams within Formula One—Red Bull Racing (the top one) and Toro Rosso (the junior/”sister” program). Since there weren’t any F1 seats available at the end of 2016, Gasly decided to broaden his racing experience, heading out to the Japanese Super Formula Championship.

With one race left in the campaign, Gasly got the call he had been waiting for his entire life.

“Right there on Monday afternoon I received a text from the Red Bull boss, saying, ‘O.K., Pierre, get ready. This weekend you’re going to be officially racing in Formula One with Toro Rosso.’”

Gasly replaced Daniil Kvyat for the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix and the remainder of the season. Franz Tost, the team principal of AlphaTauri (formerly known as Toro Rosso), spotted Gasly’s uniqueness early on.

“He has a fantastic technical understanding, and he knows exactly how to set up the car in which direction to go,” Tost says. “He has a very good understanding in the races from the race strategy, and also, he has a good feeling [for] what the other drivers are doing.”

Combine that with strong tire management and a good relationship with his engineers, Tost describes Gasly as a “successful driver.” He continued, saying that the now 26-year-old’s natural speed and work ethic makes Gasly stand out from the other drivers.

The Frenchman admits, though, that he did make mistakes as he found his rhythm, asking questions like, “How do I manage the risk? How do I take my opportunities when I can overtake? How far am I willing to go to [pass or defend]?

“It was just getting a bit more maturity in the way that you race and you fight. But this comes with experience.”

Toro Rosso announced that Gasly would be one of its two drivers for the 2018 campaign, and, after securing 29 points, good enough for a 15th-place finish in the drivers standings, he was promoted to Red Bull Racing. But it was rocky, as fans saw the brutal fallout play across their screens in Season 2 of Formula 1: Drive to Survive. (The fourth season of the show will be released on March 11.)

Gasly crashed twice during preseason testing, and it became evident that he was not matching the skill level of teammate Max Verstappen. In the span of 12 races, Gasly had totaled 63 points to the Dutchman’s 181, and somehow, things were going to get worse for him.

On Aug. 12, 2019, Red Bull pulled the plug on the Frenchman, sending him back down to Toro Rosso and replacing him with Alex Albon. Ilies Nadri, one of Gasly’s close friends, remembers how Gasly stayed around his friends, trying “to understand what happened, trying to also to accept what happened, and then starting to do a plan to improve his level, and also to prove to other people that he is better than this.” But then, another tragedy happened before the next race even began.

Less than three weeks later, Anthoine Hubert, a longtime friend of Gasly’s, died in a multi-car accident during the Formula 2 race at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. The massive wreck occurred at the top of Eau Rouge during the second lap.

“When you lose one of your brother [sic], you feel the need to enjoy life and enjoy racing and Formula 1 as much as he would’ve liked,” Gasly said on an episode of Drive to Survive. The next day Gasly drove his first race on the same track in his first race back with Toro Rosso, finishing ninth.

Gasly’s friends made sure to “talk about other things, make him feel like just a normal guy,” Nadri says. “Don't talk about Formula One about performances, about data and everything, just make him remember that he is a human.… He can cry, and it’s not a shame.”

Gasly didn’t have to travel far to pick up his first F1 win, at Monza in 2020 :: IMAGO/HochZwei

Gasly kept pushing, and, a year later, the sport was back in Spa. He was still with the junior team, which had been renamed AlphaTauri. In a risky move, Gasly, who started 12th, was the only driver to start on hard tires and decided to remain out when the safety car appeared early on. He finally stopped halfway through the race, and when he emerged from the pits he was in 16th place. He worked his way all the way up to eighth, a finish that saw him take home the Driver of the Day honors.

“In the race in Spa, he proved he’s a very good driver,” Nadri says. “As Anthoine Hubert said in his last message to Pierre, he said, ‘Prove them wrong.’ And that’s what he’s trying to do.”

A week later, Gasly got to do something he’d never done before a Grand Prix: He woke up in his own home and had coffee on his own couch. It is one of the perks of AlphaTauri being based in Faenza, Italy. Three hours later, he was racing on the grid for the Italian Grand Prix.

It began as a routine showing, drivers battling each other to maintain positions or overtake competitors. Lewis Hamilton built a 13-second lead over second-place Sainz, but it disappeared quickly as Haas F1’s Kevin Magnussen’s car died, bringing out the safety car.

Hamilton darted down the pits for a change of tires, not seeing that it had been closed as Magnussen’s car was recovered. This grave error resulted in a 10-second stop-go penalty, which was handed to Hamilton when the race was red flagged for a different wreck. Twenty-five minutes later, the drivers climbed back in their cars with Hamilton, Lance Stroll and Gasly, who had been able to stop just before pit road was closed, constituting the top three.

The Frenchman blew past Stroll to snag P2 and as Hamilton served his 10-second penalty at the end of lap 28, Gasly became the race leader. He never looked back.

“I knew this was my race,” Gasly says. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt such strong emotion to achieve something that I’ve always dreamed about.”

With it being during the COVID-19 pandemic, the grand stands were empty as the green, red and white confetti floated down and he lifted the star-shaped trophy. He sat down after the podium ceremony, soaking in the moment.

“Once you experience this, [you] just look at the sport in a different way and also approach it in a different way,” Gasly says, “because once you know what it feels like, the only thing you want is to repeat every single time.”

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Who is Pierre Gasly?

He’s a fighter, and not just on the track. Nadri describes how Gasly has a competitive nature about him, whether that’s in running, cycling—“I beat him, but he wants to beat me,” Nadri says—or soccer.

He’s a jokester. During one trip with his friends to Ibiza, the group decided to take the bed of a friend who slept all the time and place it in the pool—while he was still sleeping in it. Who thought of it? “It was Pierre,” Nadri says.

He’s a 26-year-old son, brother, friend and boyfriend who hails from the city of Rouen, the capital of the northern region of Normandy, France. He prioritizes those in his circle, making sure his parents “never feel unsafe financially” anymore.

Gasly, who speaks three languages, wants to use his voice to raise awareness for cancer and the war in Ukraine :: Samo Vidic/Red Bull Content Pool

​​He’s becoming someone who realizes the significance of his platform, using it to speak to personal and sensitive matters like cancer and the Russia-Ukraine war. Gasly says, “I feel as a sport man, as a public figure, it’s also my job and my role to share the values that are important to me, and the messages that are important to myself to the people that follow.”

This season, the Frenchman is partnering with Integra Connect, a company that develops data analytics technologies to help treat different forms of cancer. Gasly says the first wife of his father died several years ago from cancer, and they’re a very close family.

“I took it very personally because at the time obviously, that person that I lost probably didn't have as much support as we could have had,” Gasly says. He went on to describe the “draining” process of discovery, fighting, hoping things get better and seeing things take a dip for the worse.

“The chances to cure cancer are always increasing already. Now we can cure certain cancers,” Gasly says. “And I really believe that it’s just going to get better and better and I'm very hopeful and optimistic about that.”

But that is not the only cause he’s personally affected by or shedding light on. Gasly’s girlfriend is Ukrainian, and although she and her parents live in Spain, her extended family is still back home. “We’re always fighting in our sports [and] with our exposure to kind of teach or share with people our values. We all got to live together as a community, as a society—doesn't matter your race, doesn’t matter your religion, where you come from, your backgrounds. Just got to learn how to accept each other, all of us, all of us as a group, and it’s really sad to see this happening right now because it just divides people. And this is basically the complete opposite of what we are, of what we need right now in our world.”

Gasly has been trying to share information and resources about the Russia-Ukraine war and encourage people to support different organizations and charities.

“It might sometimes just be a small gesture, but the impact it has there if one plus one plus one people, all together, if we all do like a small gesture, at some point it has big impact.”

Who Gasly is continues to evolve as he overcomes obstacles many couldn’t imagine given the luxury tied to Formula One’s name. Ever since that day during his first training camp at Red Bull, Gasly has kept that piece of paper in his bag because it’s “actually not that simple to answer because who Pierre is today is very different to who Pierre was five years ago.”

“It's very easy, especially in these environments, to kind of get overwhelmed, and my life has changed, obviously, quite dramatically over the last few years because just with the way the sport is making you grow publicly and mentacity,” Gasly says. “But it’s important for me to stick to these core values and remember who I am because doesn't matter whether I’m a Formula One driver, race winner or world champion.

“I’m still Pierre Gasly, and this won’t change it.”

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