Gasly: "I feel sorry for Kvyat"

Pierre Gasly has said he feels sorry for Kvyat after taking his seat for the next two races at the very least. Kvyat has been in the Red Bull F1 system since 2014 and has been the victim of some of the more questionable decisions from their notoriously harsh driver system, arguably promoted too early to the senior Red Bull team and then harshly demoted after only a few races of the 2016 season, a decision the Russian has seemingly never recovered from.

The decision to replace Kvyat with Gasly at this point in the season has come under less criticism, as he has generally been outperformed by teammate Carlos Sainz, who is leaving for Renault at the end of the year, and has also had more than his fair share of incidents, leading to his nickname of 'the torpedo,' with the latest crash in Singapore perhaps being the straw that broke the camel's back.

Gasly has impressed recently in the junior F1 formulas, having won the GP2 championship last year and impressing in the Japanese Super Formula series this year. It is widely expected that Gasly will keep his Toro Rosso drive until the end of the season, even though he is currently only scheduled to take part in Malaysia and Japan at this point, and then go on to drive for the team next year.

Gasly said this on the situation with Kvyat: "Unfortunately, that's how it works in this sport, he's been in my position, before he came to F1, waiting for his chance, and then he had to take the seat of someone else. Of course, I feel sorry for him. I think he's a really good driver, talented. Unfortunately, it's happening that I'm going to take his seat, but I'm pretty sure we'll see him back on the grid at some point."

Sam Gale