Gasly rues 'messy' Spanish GP start which cost him potential top six

Pierre Gasly was left disappointed with his Spanish Grand Prix performance, after finishing P10 despite qualifying in the top five.

The Alpine driver had a poor start and then found himself battling with Sergio Perez into the first corner, which forced him to take avoiding action and drop down to P14 after the opening lap.

He was then on a recovery drive back to the points and had to overtake a slower Oscar Piastri, who was struggling with tyre wear in his McLaren. A time penalty for Yuki Tsunoda enabled Gasly to finish in the points, but he branded his performance "messy."

"I'm disappointed, qualifying fourth and finishing P10 is not what we would have liked. We lost six positions before the race even started, it always going to be more messy [starting] from the middle of the pack," he told media, including RacingNews365.com.

"In Turn 2 we were three-wide with Checo, and I was hoping to avoid contact but ended up in the gravel and losing another four positions, so by the end of Lap 1 I'm 14th and 10 positions from where we qualified, which changes your entire race."

Gasly: We had the pace to catch Aston Martin

After their podium in Monaco, Alpine was confident about their pace relative to Mercedes and Ferrari going into Barcelona.

Gasly believes that Alpine had to the pace to finish ahead of both Aston Martins, who struggled with problems, but conceded that Carlos Sainz would have been out of reach for the team.

"I managed to come back P10 but feels like an underachieved result compared to the pace we had," he added.

"On a positive we had a great qualifying, but I do believe we had the pace for the Aston Martin today, I don't think we had the pace [to catch] Carlos."