For Pierre Gasly, there is one contest involving the Formula One drivers that he expects to win in 2025.
Away from the grid, the padel rivalries are heating up with the likes of Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc all regulars. And Gasly tells Mail Sport that he would fancy himself to come out victorious in a tournament.
‘We all agree that we should organise a padel tournament between us (drivers). It could happen this year,’ he says.
‘We love playing. We play together often and it gets quite competitive, which is pretty funny. There’s no standout player though I’m told the Spaniards are pretty good but I’ve not played against Carlos (Sainz) and Fernando (Alonso) yet.’
When Mail Sport presses Gasly to deliver his verdict on who would win, he simply says ‘Myself’.
We are backstage at the Madrid Arena, six weeks away from the start of the F1 season in Melbourne and the 28-year-old Frenchman is rocking a fresh hairstyle in time for the new campaign. Gone is the brushed forward look and in is the buzz cut.
Pierre Gasly is a keen padel enthusiast and even co-owns the 10Padel franchise with Lorient owner Loic Fery
The Alpine driver sat down with Mail Sport to discuss his love of the sport at an event in Madrid
His fellow franchise owners Sergio Aguero (centre) and Eva Longoria (right) were also on court at the Hexagon Cup
A busy week that started with celebrating his girlfriend, Francisca’s birthday at home in Milan, followed by a few days in Enstone where Alpine are based and in London preparing for the season ahead, is now culminating in Spain.
The Alpine driver has spent the morning playing padel in a celebrities against owners competition at the Hexagon Cup against the likes of Sergio Aguero and Eva Longoria, who like Gasly, own franchises in what is essentially a World Cup-style tournament that pits the best male, female, and next-generation padel players against each other.
Come afternoon, Gasly is courtside supporting 10Padel, the franchise he co-owns alongside Loic Fery, owner of FC Lorient.
That was the result of an encounter with Fery on a padel court during the week of the Miami Grand Prix last year.
It’s not the first of his investments across sport either, with Gasly buying a stake in FC Versailles, a French third division club last year.
An avid PSG fan, often seen wearing retro football kits in the paddock, seeing Ryan Reynolds – who is a minority investor at Alpine – and his influence at Wrexham is part of the inspiration for what he wants to do with Versailles.
For a man who describes himself as ‘highly competitive’, it’s another avenue to unleash that drive within sport and ‘seize the moment.’ He reckons he would be a footballer if it wasn’t for F1.
‘Since a young age, I’ve been a sporting enthusiast playing football, ice hockey and tennis. I’ve always got to find a way to be competitive. Away from F1, football and padel are my top two sports,’ Gasly says.
10Padel is not his only investment across sport having bought a stake in FC Versailles last year
Seeing Ryan Reynolds – who is a minority investor at Alpine – and his influence at Wrexham is part of the inspiration for what he wants to do with the third-division outfit
‘And I’ve always wanted to be involved in football. I love the project at FC Versailles and what we’re trying to do there and I love what we’ve started with 10Padel.
‘It’s all fascinating to me. My entire life has been F1 but I’m a very curious person and I need to have those interests, besides the motorsport world’ he adds.
It’s a long way from the 21-year-old who made his debut for Toro Rosso in 2017. Just 26 races later, he was promoted to Red Bull and teaming up with Max Verstappen. But such were the struggles that after no podiums in his first 12 races, the dreaded call came for Gasly to drop back down to Toro Rosso.
On Drive to Survive, Christian Horner called him Red Bull’s ‘Achilles heel’ just months after hailing him as an ‘undoubted talent’ and ‘one of the most exciting young drivers in motorsport.’
The following year, Gasly memorably became the first French driver to win a Grand Prix since 1996 when he won at Monza but that was the peak and there was only one more podium finish across the next two seasons.
When BWT Alpine came calling in 2023, Gasly was allowed to leave and he took the chance to learn from his experiences with a fresh start – with the aim of balancing his world within F1 with his world outside. The work away from racing is testament to that.
‘It’s about achieving a mental balance’ Gasly says. ‘Since the age of six, I’ve given absolutely everything to the racing world. I can be extremely focused for these six months until the summer break but when you come back from a race on a Sunday, I can’t be reminiscing all day on Monday and Tuesday thinking about everything that happened over the weekend.
‘I need a break and these projects to allow me to re-focus when I get back to the track later that week. It’s about that balance – every driver is different but I know that’s the best way for me to extract the best out of myself on the track.’
Gasly broke through as a 21-year-old at Toro Rosso before partnering Max Verstappen at Red Bull (Pictured: both drivers at the 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix)
Through this conversation with him, you realise why Gasly’s Instagram biography simply says ‘Striving for excellence.’
It’s a mantra he has lived by from the time he made the decision to leave home in Rouen, aged 13 to pursue racing at the Team France school in Le Mans.
‘At the end of the day, I’m an athlete and part of the 20 best drivers in the world. But I always feel I’ve got things to learn from people in other industries and sports in order to be a better driver, a better athlete and a better person,’ Gasly says.
‘I’m the kind of guy who will pop my head in and try to understand how things work and connect with people,’ he adds.
But deep down, Gasly knows that at 28 he has so much more to give at the pinnacle of motorsport. Admittedly, nothing would please him more than adding to his Italian GP success in 2020.
‘F1 is still my obsession. Even though I have all these other things going on, it doesn’t take anything away from the fact that I still fall asleep and wake up thinking about Formula One.
‘I train every single day and since I was a kid, I’ve always had that curiosity and that will to wake up every day, find ways to improve myself and do better than I was the day before. We’re all very talented in Formula One but ultimately the difference is in the small details,’ he insists.
Alpine got off to a nightmare start last season but ended promisingly to come sixth in the constructors’ championship, with Gasly winning 34 points in the last six races to ultimately finish in 10th.
Alpine started the 2024 season in poor form but were vastly improved by the end of the year
Gasly wants his team to build on their late-season form to provide a strong foundation for 2026
‘Last year was a pretty big challenge, especially mentally at the start of the year which was very poor. But I’m so proud of the way the team managed to turn things around.
‘The end of the year was pretty impressive considering the way we started. There’s a great momentum now, lots of motivation, great team spirit and I see a lot of improvements which I hope we can display on track, he stresses.
So what would define a successful 2025 for Pierre Gasly, Mail Sport asks?
‘I hate this question. If you ask me, I want to win every single race but I know that won’t be possible this year,’ he says. Such lofty ambitions come as little surprise from the man who idolised Ayrton Senna in his youth.
‘But it’s important for us to build a strong foundation to make sure we get the best out of 2026, which I see as a massive opportunity for the team. That still means we need to be on top of our game this year and get 100 percent out of the car we have.
‘If we can build on how we finished last season and fight for points consistently, that will be a great step but I really want to build the foundations for 2026.’
By the time that season starts, Gasly will be 30 and in the last year of his contract with Alpine but there is an argument that through all the joys and struggles, in the here and now, he is flourishing both on and off the track. And with that, his time may still be yet to come.