Helmut Marko says Pierre Gasly will likely remain at AlphaTauri until the end of 2023, after which Red Bull will decide whether to release the Frenchman or perhaps hand him a second chance with Red Bull Racing.
Gasly’s strong performance since last season with AlphaTauri has led to the prospect of the 25-year-old receiving a return ticket to Milton Keynes where he resided for half a season in 2019.
Former F1 driver and commentator Nico Rosberg has been impressed by Gasly’s performances since his move back to Faenza and believes the 2020 Italian Grand Prix winner deserves another shot at a plum drive alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull.
“The way he is performing at the moment, they should put him in the Red Bull next year,” Rosberg told Sky F1 in Hungary last weekend.
“The problem is that they have this worry that he is maybe not able to deal with those pressure situations.
“In AlphaTauri at the moment there is no pressure, his team-mate is away from him, he can be a team leader in an easy way.
“If you go as a team-mate to Max Verstappen, that’s like the toughest situation to be in in the whole of Formula 1.
“That’s why Red Bull have such difficulty in answering and that’s the problem with choosing him and making it so difficult.”
For now, Marko sees no reason to disrupt Gasly’s momentum with AlphaTauri which also serves a commercial purpose for Red Bull’s fashion brand.
“We have two Formula 1 teams as everyone knows and we are putting quite a lot of effort in our brand, AlphaTauri, fashion brand, and we need a strong leader there,” Marko told NewstalkZB.
“He is driving at his best but being number one in a very good B-team is a very different story to being number two to Max Verstappen at a top team.
“Mentally that makes a big difference.”
Marko is nevertheless keeping an attentive eye on Gasly and isn’t dismissing a move back to Red Bull at tome point in the future.
“We are looking at his progress, and in the next two years we will make a decision whether he’ll be on the free market or whether we’ll take him into Red Bull,” said the Austrian.
“Perez is 31-years-old now, so he won’t be for too long at Red Bull Racing.”
