Red Bull’s Pierre Gasly has confirmed that he will leave his junior team AlphaTauri at the end of the season, a year earlier than planned.
The destination is Alpine, where Fernando Alonso will take the seat. Alpine’s new hire will form an all-French line-up alongside current driver Esteban Ocon.
Gasly starts 2022 with two years left on his Red Bull contract, keeping him at the Alfa Romeo this season. That initially left open which of Red Bull’s Formula 1 teams he would drive for the year.
But Sergio Perez’s contract extension at Red Bull in May ended Gasly’s hopes of a return to the top team. Gasly drove with Max Verstappen in the first half of 2019 before returning to the current team.
Gasly’s future became uncertain in the summer after Alonso confirmed his move from Alpine to Aston Martin. That kicked off F1’s ‘silly season’ and Alpine was looking for a driver to partner Ocon.
Despite his contract with Red Bull, Gasly has emerged as the most likely candidate. Meanwhile, reports suggest that Alfatauri is in talks with Formula E champion and recent F1 debutant Nick de Vries about joining the team for 2023.
Gasly, now 26, was signed to the Red Bull junior team at the age of 17 after winning the 2013 Formula Renault Euro Championship. He spent two and a half years without a win in Formula Renault 3.5 and GP2 (now Formula 2). In the year It resulted in winning the GP2 title in 2016.
But instead of moving him to F1, Red Bull put Gastel in the Japanese Super Formula series, giving him his first foray into Formula E. The team eventually gave Gasly his F1 break at Toro Rosso (now Alfatauri) where he ended up with a five-race spell. 2017
Apart from a brief stint at Red Bull for the first 12 races of 2019, Gasly has been with the Faenza-based team ever since. He won his first F1 with the team at the 2020 Italian Grand Prix.
This article will be updated
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