Gasly hails “best Friday” despite Imola crash with rabbit damaging floor

Alpine Formula 1 driver Pierre Gasly heralded 2025 Imola Grand Prix practice as “the best Friday so far this year”, despite admitting a crash with a rabbit hampered his running.

After a turbulent few weeks for the French side, which has featured the resignation of team boss Oliver Oakes and the announcement a mid-season driver swap, Gasly was on fine form in the first day of practice at the Imola GP.

The French driver’s time of 1m15.569s was the third quickest lap of the second session, and put him a little under three tenths off the pace of the leading McLaren pair.

“It’s been a very, very good Friday,” Gasly told Sky TV after the second practice session in Italy.

“From the first lap, I could tell the car was in a much better place than in Miami. I’m glad we managed to answer some of the question marks we had after the last race.

“Obviously, we know from Friday to Saturday, others usually keep a bit more in their pocket, but I think it’s quite fair to say it’s probably been the best Friday so far this year.”

Gasly added that he now felt more comfortable finding the limit of his A525, and said he felt he could “push it to the maximum” despite the narrow, unforgiving nature of the Italian circuit.

However, it wasn’t all plane sailing for the French racer on the first day of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. In the day’s earlier session, Gasly was caught out by an animal on track.

Gasly said he “very sadly” collided with a rabbit that ran out onto the track during FP1, a clash that reportedly damaged his A525 and impacted his running for the session.

“I couldn’t tell if it was a small cat or a big rabbit,” the Frenchman added.

“It turned out that it was a big rabbit just jumping across the track. I could not avoid it, so I had quite a big impact on the front wing.

“Unfortunately, that was it for the rabbit and [it] also broke the front wing. It was not ideal, but not the end of the session we wanted.”

The collision reportedly caused “quite a bit of damage” to the floor and front wing of Gasly’s car.

Despite his crash with the wildlife, Gasly still managed to log 21 laps over the course of first practice and recorded a best time of 1m16.696s – good enough for sixth place.