Pierre Gasly said he was "shocked" with his drive to sixth place in the Hungarian Grand Prix for Toro Rosso, calling the resu꧒lt a "dream" after recent struggles for form.

After capitalis𓃲ing on wet conditions to quali💧fy sixth on Saturday at the Hungaroring, Gasly passed Carlos Sainz Jr. on the opening lap to run fifth in the opening stages of the race.

While he would be passed by the recovering Daniꦗel Ricciardo later on, Gasly finished a comfortable sཧixth at the chequered flag, and was the only midfield driver not to get lapped by race winner Lewis Hamilton.

"I knew that I had to overtake Carlos at the start just to have free air and to be able to push as hard as I could," Gasly explained. "My start wasn't fantastic, but then after into Turn 1 I stayed on the inside and fought a bit with Max [Verstappen]. I got Carlos o🌠n the exit, and after that I knew that I had my chanc༒e in my hands.

"I just had to push as hard as I could with the car, try to keep the tyres al🍒ive, and just went exactly as in a dream. It was great."

Gasly said he knew it was turning ou💛t to be a good race when he saw cars ahꦯead of him getting shown blue flags to let him pass.

"I think the first time that I saw blue flags for cars ahead of me, when I saw that, I was like: 'Fuck! It means I'm doing a good raꦬce!'

🐻"Usually the blue flag is for me for the Ferrari or the Mercedes, so that was a pre๊tty cool feeling."

The result marked Gasly's third points finish of the season following top-10 finishe𒅌s in Bahrain (P4) and Monaco (P7), with the latest success coming as a surprise to the Frenchman given Toro Rosso's recent struggles.

"Honestly since the begi♔nning of the year, Bahrain, Monaco and this weekend were the 🐠only [races] where we could have got this kind of result," Gasly said.

"Especially after the last thr𒐪ee, four races, honestly I'm quite shocked again to be able to get that P6. Last weekend in qualifying we got stuck in Q1, behind one Williams, and this weekend we lapped one of the Williams in the race.

"There are just tracks where the car works much better. It's quite surprising. But when it does work like this, we need to make sure we can take all the points we can.✤"