Franz Tost admits he knew 27-year-old driver wasn’t mature enough to drive for Red Bull

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AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost has admitted he knew that Pierre Gasly would never be able to succeed at Red Bull when he joined the team.

Tost was speaking on the Beyond The Grid Podcast about some of the young drivers that have developed at the team.

Back in 2005, traditional minnows Minardi were bought out by Red Bull and became Toro Rosso before the start of the 2006 season.

It gave Dietrich Mateschitz a platform to promote drivers from Red Bull’s fabled academy into Formula 1 without risking a seat in the works team.

The likes of Daniel Ricciardo, Carlos Sainz, Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen honed their talents with the team.

On some occasions, drivers would be promoted to the senior team when they proved themselves, but more often than not the cut-throat environment within the team meant that the best young driver had to be promoted at a moment’s notice.

Max Verstappen was one such example, joining the team in Barcelona before going on to win his first race with Red Bull and as they say the rest is history.

However, Tost has admitted that he never thought Pierre Gasly was ready to drive for Red Bull when he was first promoted in 2019.

He lasted just half a season before losing his seat to Alex Albon – who also struggled – and moving back to AlphaTauri.

Now, the 27-year-old is doing well outside of the Red Bull setup at Alpine and looking to prove those who doubted with capabilities wrong.

Tost admits Gasly wasn’t ready for Red Bull

Speaking about the Frenchman, Tost said: “Really good, I must say and unfortunately they [Red Bull] took him away after the first year from us.

“Too soon, I said immediately it will not work. He was not mature enough to go there.

“We are a team to educate young drivers, you can’t just say, yeah he drove now a year with Toro Rosso he must come up to us to be successful against Max [Verstappen] and to score points, to finish second or whatever.

“This is on a piece of paper or a computer, it sounds good, it looks good, it doesn’t work in practice.”

In Gasly’s 12 races for Red Bull, he failed to finish on the podium once and returned to work with Tost ahead of the Belgium Grand Prix.

A race win with AlphaTauri in Monza the following season proved that he was more than good enough to compete at the front of the grid.

Back-to-back podiums in the Sprint Race at Spa and Zandvoort have been the highlights of his first year at Alpine.

He’s four points ahead of teammate Esteban Ocon going into the final race of the season at Abu Dhabi.

Beating his rival during his maiden campaign with the team would be a great start to life outside of the Red Bull group.