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Following the announcement that Daniel Ricciardo would be leaving Red Bull Racing at season’s end, there was only really one driver destined to fill his vacancy.
With Carlos Sainz having, in a way, severed his ties to the energy drinks giant upon joining Renault late in 2017, Red Bull were always set to look to the future and promote Pierre Gasly.
The 22-year-old will join the soon-to-be 21-year-old Max Verstappen in 2019, completing one of the youngest driver line-ups on the grid – and with a championship-winning outfit.
2019 is set to be a transitional season for Red Bull, with their switch to Honda power from the incumbent Renaults and the unknown of where the performance of the RB15 will lie.
In Gasly, Red Bull have a driver who’s spent his rookie season in a Honda-powered Toro Rosso, as the junior Red Bull team have taken the season to accommodate the Japanese manufacturer to develop what was previously a maligned power-unit.
On-track, the French rookie has already demonstrated his ability to outperform his machinery, having finished an emphatic fourth at the top end of the season in Bahrain, as well as additional points scoring results of seventh and sixth in Monaco and Hungary respectively.
The combination of youth at the team in 2019 will definitely be one to provide fireworks and Gasly, with his credentialled past in GP2 and the Japanese Super Formula, will be no slouch.
However, given the immediate promotion to Red Bull in what’ll be his second full season of Formula One, it is difficult not to think back to the fate of a discarded Red Bull junior.
Daniil Kvyat (AFP PHOTO/Toru YAMANAKA)
Daniil Kvyat burst onto the scene in 2014 for what was an underwhelming Renault-powered Toro Rosso outfit, immediately claiming the record of the youngest driver to score points in Formula One, in just his first race, at the age of 19.
When Sebastian Vettel made the shock decision to go to Ferrari for 2015, Red Bull promoted the Russian from the feeder squad, which was a logical step, given the purpose of the organisation’s young driver program.
Despite finishing higher in the championship than his race-winning teammate, Ricciardo, in 2015 – in what was a difficult season for Red Bull in terms of reliability – Kvyat was quickly demoted in 2016 after four races, back to Toro Rosso, in favour of Verstappen.
Kvyat then found himself out of Formula One altogether in the latter part of 2017, with Gasly brought in to replace the Russian from the Malaysia Grand Prix onwards. Now 24, it seems unlikely Kvyat will get another gig in the sport.
Even though Gasly’s pedigree speaks to a higher calibre than Kvyat, it is somewhat fathomable to consider the fate he would suffer if the Frenchman fails to live up to the expectations of taskmaster Helmut Marko.
The pressure will be on Gasly to deliver alongside Verstappen and that could be regardless of what state the team are in, given that it’ll be their first year with Honda onboard.
But for the sake of another young driver not having his career cut short, it would be of great satisfaction to see Gasly’s appointment at Red Bull as a long-term one.
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