A particularly stunning stat has emerged in the aftermath of the F1 2024 season: Alpine’s Pierre Gasly is said to have cost the team absolutely nothing in terms of crash damage! 

Gasly himself has taken pride in this statistic, but there’s just one problem: It may not be true.

Pierre Gasly’s much-contested crash damage

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Pierre Gasly has had an impressive 2024 race season. He secured a truly impressive podium finish at the Brazilian Grand Prix and secured 10th in the World Drivers’ Championship by just a single point. But did he really avoid costing his Alpine team any money in crash damage?

Gasly certainly seems to think so.

Speaking to media, including PlanetF1.com, after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Gasly shared that he ticked off three big goals this season.

“Coming in, there were three targets,” he said. “To get sixth in the Constructors, 10th in the drivers’,  and keep my nose clean. So we still on $0 damage.

“We all completed the targets.”

It was a long time coming for the Alpine team, which started off the 2024 season on a low.

“The first part of the season [was] very tough for all of us in the team, with an underperforming car,” Gasly said, “but very proud of the reaction of the guys and the way they’ve managed to bring that much performance to give me a car in the last few races which really allowed me to perform really, really strongly.

“It just shows that we’re heading in the right direction, that the mentality and the spirit inside the team is the right one. And I was seeing all these positive changes already back in April, in May, that there was a lot of inside the factory.

“Obviously it doesn’t translate straight away onto the track. A couple months later, we got all these rewards.”

Clearly, it was a promising year for Gasly. But is it true that he didn’t cost his team a single cent in damage?

Key takeaways from the 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix:

👉 Abu Dhabi GP conclusions: McLaren’s people power and the Lewis Hamilton F1 crime scene

👉 Max Verstappen incident opens up major penalty debate for F1 2025 season

Debunking the $0 statistic claim

As the statistic gained traction in the aftermath of Abu Dhabi, though, many fans have taken time to disprove the stat, noting a handful of incidents that took place in 2024.

For example, in the fourth race of the season — the Japanese Grand Prix — Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon made contact after a post-red flag standing start.

“I managed to pass Esteban and get alongside Yuki and then unfortunately, I got sandwiched – Yuki turning left, Esteban right, and [he] ultimately touched me on the left side of my floor,” Gasly explained to media at the time.

“After that, I was down something like 40 points of downforce, that it was pretty much game over. I was trying to stay out there, hoping for another red flag to make changes.

“It was just a racing incident, but it cost us a lot. It was a very long, very difficult afternoon.”

It isn’t clear what Gasly meant, exactly, by “cost” in this case. Did it cost the team financially? Or did it cost them performance? In either case, a damaged floor almost certainly required a repair.

Then, after Lap 1 contact with Ocon in Monaco, Gasly took a precautionary wing change — though admittedly, it was difficult to tell if there was any actual damage.

In Las Vegas, an unexpected engine failure blew a hole in the side of Gasly’s car, forcing him to retire.

Further, there are thousands upon thousands of components that compose a Formula 1 car. While we may be aware of big-ticket items like floors and wings, there’s always the possibility that Gasly damaged some other part somewhere along the way — a cheap one, but a part nonetheless.

Where the $0 statistic came from

As I brainstormed questions for drivers in the build-up to the 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix, I came across a fascinating social media post that claimed Gasly was on track to become “the first full-time driver in F1 history to not cost his team a single dollar in damages over an entire season.”

This poster stated that Gasly had not damaged a chassis, a wing, or sustained a puncture at any point during the year. A fellow journalist asked about it in the media pen.

“There’s a lot of chatter on social media about the fact that you haven’t done any damage this year,” they said. “Is that true? There’s nothing we’ve missed?”

Gasly responded with humor.

“I mean, it makes it easier to insure my cars back home,” he joked.

“It’s a great start. At the end of the day, it’s a very very important for the team because this money is also something which goes into the budget cap, so it does play a factor in the development throughout the year, and what it offers the team in terms of parts and money available.

“I will try to keep it that way until the end of the year.”

Gasly neither confirmed nor denied the statistic, though he did sound somewhat familiar with it. He did go on to note that there are some differences between driver error and racing incidents — and that is perhaps where the discrepancy lies.

Many of the incidents being cited to debunk the $0 claim involved other drivers and could be considered racing incidents — or, at the very least, incidents for which Gasly was not at fault.

Still, making any massively sweeping generalizations about what Gasly did or didn’t cost his team seems particularly inappropriate considering how expensive an F1 car is, and how many small parts can be damaged in even the most unlikely circumstances.

With all that being said, though, let’s take a moment to appreciate Pierre Gasly’s exceptional season — whether he cost his team nothing or not.

All three of Gasly’s retirements this season were due to mechanical faults not caused by the driver. He managed to turn a dismal start to the season around in Monaco, securing nine points-paying finishes — and one podium in Sao Paulo. He came home 10th in the World Drivers’ Championship, eclipsing Nico Hulkenberg by just one point, and he secured 18 more points than Ocon, his teammate.

As a result, Alpine finished the 2024 season in sixth in the World Constructors’ Championship — meaning the team will be bringing home a decent prize purse this year.

Squabbles over dollar amounts shouldn’t take away from the fact that Pierre Gasly had a 2024 season to be proud of.

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