Formula 1: Is Pierre Gasly at risk of being replaced at Red Bull Racing in 2019?

By Asher Fair | Apr 10, 2019

BAHRAIN, BAHRAIN - MARCH 30: Pierre Gasly of France driving the (10) Aston Martin Red Bull Racing RB15 on track during final practice for the F1 Grand Prix of Bahrain at Bahrain International Circuit on March 30, 2019 in Bahrain, Bahrain. (Photo by Charles Coates/Getty Images) /

With two races complete in the 2019 Formula 1 season, is Red Bull Racing’s Pierre Gasly at risk of being replaced before the season ends?

A few weeks after Daniel Ricciardo made the shocking decision to leave Aston Martin Red Bull Racing and sign with Renault for the 2019 Formula 1 season, Red Bull Racing signed Pierre Gasly to be the teammate to Max Verstappen starting this year.

Gasly, who made the first five starts of his Formula 1 career as Daniil Kvyat’s replacement at Scuderia Toro Rosso, the Red Bull Racing junior team, toward the end of the 2017 season, drove full-time for Toro Rosso in the 2018 season.

The 23-year-old Frenchman finished in 15th place in the driver standings with 29 points on five top 10 finishes, including a career-high fourth place finish in the Bahrain Grand Prix.

But Gasly has struggled through the first two races of his first season driving for the Milton Keynes-based team. After the season opener, the Australia Grand Prix, he was faced with rumors of Red Bull Racing potentially replacing him even before the season ends, and these rumors heated up following the season’s second race, the Bahrain Grand Prix.

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Gasly qualified in a disappointing 17th place for the Australian Grand Prix while the other five Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Scuderia Ferrari and Red Bull Racing drivers qualified in the top five. In the race itself, these five drivers also finished in the top five while Gasly finished in 11th, and he was nowhere near finishing in the expected top six.

After Gasly finished in fourth place in last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix driving for an inferior team, many people had high hopes for him in this year’s 57-lap race around the 15-turn, 3.363-mile (5.412-kilometer) Bahrain International Circuit road course in Sakhir, Bahrain.

But while the other five Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing drivers qualified and finished in the top five once again, Gasly once again qualified well outside of the expected top six by qualifying in 13th place. He finished the race in eighth, but he only finished that high as a result of the double retirement by Renault teammates Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg at the end of the race.

Now there is one question on the mind of seemingly every Formula 1 fan: is Gasly at risk of being replaced by Red Bull Racing during the 2019 season?

If Gasly continues to fail to perform at a high level, specifically if he continues to qualify and finish nowhere near the top six, don’t expect Red Bull Racing to hesitate to replace him, not even in the near future.

After the fourth race of the 2016 season, the team replaced Daniil Kvyat with Verstappen, who ended up winning his first race driving for the team after Kvyat failed to earn a victory in 22 career starts driving for them.

If Red Bull Racing do decide to replace Gasly during the 2019 season, it would likely be with Kvyat, who is currently in his third stint driving for Toro Rosso, which is an interesting storyline in itself. Toro Rosso’s other driver, Alexander Albon, is a rookie, so Kvyat’s experience would likely be preferred by Red Bull Racing in this case.

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How much patience will Red Bull Racing display when it comes to Pierre Gasly? Is he at risk of being replaced by the team before the 2019 Formula 1 season ends even with only two of the season’s 21 races having been contested, and if so, will he end up being replaced? If so, who will replace him? Does he have what it takes to improve to the point where the rumors about him potentially being replaced will die down?

Formula 1 action is scheduled to resume on Sunday, April 14 with the Chinese Grand Prix, which is set to be broadcast live on ESPN2 from Shanghai International Circuit in Jiading, Shanghai, China beginning at 2:05 a.m. ET.

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