Pierre Gasly doesn’t forget. That’s the message he sent to Racing Bulls after Zandvoort, where he watched a midfield scrap slip away from him because two drivers in identical cars decided to help each other rather than race him straight. He got one point. He wanted more. And he’s promising the rest of the season will remember it.
The Dutch Grand Prix produced one of the more entertaining scraps outside the top six, with Pierre Gasly, Arvid Lindblad, Nico Hulkenberg and stand-in Racing Bulls driver Yuki Tsunoda running nose to tail for several laps behind Oscar Piastri. Gasly spent most of it stuck behind Lindblad, unable to find a gap, until he finally lunged at Turn 11 and locked his brakes. That mistake let Hulkenberg through, and on the following lap Tsunoda picked him off too, dropping him from the fight for a decent points haul to a lone point in tenth.
A Door Opened, and Not for Gasly
What actually irritated Gasly wasn’t the overtakes themselves, it was who let them happen. Lindblad defended hard against the Alpine car but, according to Gasly, eased off when his own teammate Tsunoda arrived, waving him through rather than fighting him the way he’d fought Gasly moments earlier. That’s not against the rules. Teams are allowed to help each other; that’s the whole point of running two cars. But it stings a lot more when you’re the one left outside the party.
Team radio caught Gasly’s mood perfectly, with the Frenchman heard growling that he was “gonna pass this b**ch” as he tried to get past Lindblad. Subtle it was not. Speaking to the media afterwards, including PlanetF1.com, he didn’t hide his frustration once the visor came off.
“VCARB ruined our race in the middle part of the race, played a team game for the championship and did it well. It just made me lose a position to Nico and Tsunoda, and I don’t know how many seconds of race time. Congrats to them, and I can’t wait to race them.” – Pierre Gasly
There’s a compliment buried in there somewhere, but it’s wrapped in enough sarcasm to sting. Gasly isn’t accusing Racing Bulls of cheating, he’s accusing them of doing their job well at his expense, which is somehow more annoying. He knows it. He said as much.
The Grudge, Officially Confirmed
Gasly then went and put a number on how long he intends to hold this against them, which is: the rest of the year.
“It’s just annoying, but it’s Zandvoort. Can’t really overtake, and this is going to change in the coming tracks. And good thing is I have a good memory, so I’m going to make sure we smile at the end of the year.” – Pierre Gasly
Translation, for anyone who missed the subtext: Zandvoort is one of the hardest circuits on the calendar to pass on, so Gasly is chalking that result up to bad luck of the draw as much as bad tactics. Monza, a power track with long straights and heavy braking zones, is precisely the kind of venue where being boxed in by a well-drilled teammate pairing is much harder to pull off. Gasly clearly thinks so too, and he sounds like he’s circling the date.
Lindblad Isn’t Losing Sleep Over It
If Gasly expected contrition from the other side of the garage, he didn’t get any. Lindblad’s response was about as unbothered as it gets, framing his own race as already lost and his help for Tsunoda as simply making the best of a bad situation rather than some grand conspiracy against the Alpine driver.
“Yeah, that’s a nice story. I played the team game. If he has a good memory, then fine. In the end, we’ll fight as hard as we can every weekend. I tried to help the team where I could. Reality, it wasn’t my race. I wasn’t really in it anymore, so did what I could to help the team.” – Arvid Lindblad
That’s a polite way of saying “so what”. Lindblad isn’t wrong that his own race had gone nowhere by that point, which does rather undercut any suggestion he sacrificed a big result of his own to help Tsunoda. But it’s also a tidy way of admitting exactly what Gasly accused him of, dressed up as pragmatism rather than politics.
Why This Actually Matters in the Championship
Strip away the radio insults and the mutual sarcasm, and there’s a genuinely tight fight underneath all this. Racing Bulls currently lead Alpine by three points for fifth place in the constructors’ standings, 66 to 63, and every position swapped in the midfield now carries real financial and prestige weight further down the season. That’s precisely why Gasly’s complaint isn’t just wounded pride: a driver losing two places to a coordinated teammate pairing costs Alpine actual championship points in a battle they can genuinely still win or lose by single digits.
It also explains why Racing Bulls have no interest in apologising. When the gap between fifth and sixth is that small, playing the team game at a circuit where overtaking is nearly impossible is not just permissible, it’s obvious strategy. Gasly knows this too, which is presumably why his anger is aimed less at the tactic itself and more at making sure everyone knows he clocked it. The lineup at Racing Bulls has been anything but stable this season, with Tsunoda stepping in as a substitute at Zandvoort, yet the team still executed the kind of coordinated defence you’d expect from a settled pairing.
Monza Sets Up the Rematch
The Italian Grand Prix weekend, starting on Friday 4 September with practice at 10:30 UTC, offers the perfect stage for round two, and check the calendar for your local time if you want to catch every session. Monza’s long straights should, in theory, make Gasly’s life easier and Lindblad’s harder if the pattern repeats. Whether Gasly actually gets his revenge or simply spends the weekend grumbling about it again is another matter entirely. Grudges are easy to declare in a paddock scrum three days before a race. Turning them into actual positions on Sunday is a different sport altogether, and Racing Bulls have already shown they know how to play it better than most.
One thing is certain: Racing Bulls won’t be losing any sleep over a Frenchman’s long memory, not while they’re three points clear in a fight that matters far more to both squads than who finished eighth or tenth at a track nobody can overtake on anyway.
