10 January 2024 , 21:10
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Pierre Gasly hastily deleted a social media post featuring a former team-mate, worried it might get fans over-excited for no reason.
The Frenchman has been spending some of his time in the off-season with Yuki Tsunoda. The Formula 1 stars know each other very well from their time together driving for AlphaTauri.
Naturally, racers are never too far away from a fast machine and so it was no surprise to see them enjoy a day of karting together. Gasly posted an image of them in a warm embrace wearing racing overalls.
He playfully captioned the image: "Team-mates again." But it was swiftly deleted before too many fans could get themselves excited by the prospect of a reunion on the F1 track.
After all, despite their friendship, they have gone their separate way professionally. Tsunoda still races for AlphaTauri, where he will race for a fourth season this year as he looks to audition for a promotion to the top Red Bull team.
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Gasly, meanwhile, chose last year to step out of the Red Bull shadow and forge a career elsewhere. He joined Alpine to form an all-French driver line-up with Esteban Ocon - his old childhood friend, but there were suggestions things could get messy between them after a falling-out years ago.
Despite warnings of fireworks, both were generally on their best behaviour in an underwhelming season for the team as a whole. Alpine had to settle for sixth in the constructors' championship, while the drivers produced similar records - Gasly out-scored his new team-mate by just four points.
Ocon, though, could point to a lot of bad luck including seven DNFs as the reason why he didn't finish the year as top dog at Alpine. And the 27-year-old has already promised he will be taking no prisoners next year.
He said at the end of last season: "From January 2 until the first test I will be back fully into training camp. I'm going to be more doing the way I was doing it in 2022, which is no life, flat out, only racing. We've been doing a lot of different things and activations outside the track this year. That's going to change next year. It's back to war mode and fully focused on the racing side.
"Before that there's going be theChristmasparty of the team, there's going be some simulator work. I'm going be able to have a couple of days seeing my family that I haven't seen for a while. We're going to have some good times with friends, with Mick [Schumacher], with all my friends in December as well, and then it's fully focused on next year."