I’m new to F1 and I need to hear from an Esteban expert: what the fuck happened between him and Pierre?
i honestly think that it was multiple factors, but it is harder to say because esteban has mostly kept it private.
gasly claims it was because he was beating este in karting and that is when they fell apart, but that whole story seems iffy since:
they were on vacations together with friends back in like 2015
they were hanging out on the f1 grid as reserve drivers (este for renault, gasly for rbr)
they were also fine in 2017
gasly's narrative about the karting tension only started in 2018 and was never mentioned before that
something happened between the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018 that made them cold toward one another.
this is one of the last pics of them in 2017
one prominent rumour is that it involves a girl - and timeline wise it is fairly possible it was este's ex, alice, who apparently bragged before about breaking two f1 drivers apart.
but we don't know how true that is.
in the end, i think it was multiple factors: competing not only on track, but also for sponsors; ffsa only choosing gasly and not este (which is a whole other topic of french racism); clashes on track translating to their off-track relationship; and lastly: growing up.
i think people always tend to forget how much people change while growing up, especially in puberty. it is super common for friends to drift apart around that age, develop different views and different interests.
sure, f1 will always connect them, and i am glad they seem to be on quite neutral terms now, but there is no obligation to be friends forever.
which is why i didn't like how gasly spun the pr around them, making este a villain in his story who was a sore loser and couldn't take it, then turning around and complaining how the media constantly thinks they hate one another (which is like 90% due to gasly talking about este like that lol), then saying he wants to be friends again and making it seem like este "refuses" to rekindle their friendship (villainizing him again), and then claiming alpine was coddling este while neither the team nor gasly himself ever defended este from the vitriol and hatred he received, especially post-monaco 24, when este even saved gasly's ass from a race ban after their crash in australia 23.
tl;dr: imo they grew apart, which was only sped up further by gasly's interviews about este where he painted him in a bad light again and again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
