It could have been a disaster for the Scuderia Toro Rosso F1 Team at the end of the first qualifying session in Azerbaijan this morning. Pierre Gasly just missed colliding with team mate Brendon Hartley when the latter had slowed after hitting the wall and puncturing. Gasly came across Hartley, at speed, and had to take evasive action to avoid a huge accident and ended up down the escape road, ruining his qualifying lap.
“It was a disaster of a day,” commented Hartley. I hadn’t done a lap until the point of the incident because the previous ones were interrupted by yellow flags. This lap was coming along really well and I was happy with the car, but I clipped the inside of the wall very lightly.
“At the beginning I didn’t think there was any damage so I was still pushing, then I realised going through the fast left-hander that there was a puncture. I had to slow down immediately trying to avoid hitting the wall, but Pierre was coming very quickly behind and I completely misjudged it.
“When I looked in the mirrors I moved to the left and that’s the same way he wanted to go. I made a complete mess of it. I’m really disappointed and I owe him a big apology because that was really average.”
Gasly reactered, “It was probably the scariest moment of my career! I was sure I was going to crash into Brendon because it’s the part of the track where we’re going at 320kph. Brendon had slowed down massively and I had to change direction when I saw he was slow, but I didn’t know if he was going left or right but I managed to avoid him.
“I’m really disappointed that I couldn’t make it to Q2. I was improving by sixth/seven tenths which means Q2 was on the cards, this would have been a good result after the tough weekend in China. It’s a big shame for the team but it’s good that in the end we avoided a crash.
“It’s clear that no one wanted anything like this to happen, but it’s the second time we’ve had a coming together so we need to make sure that we avoid situations like these.”
James Key (Technical Director) was philosophical after the incident. “It was an eventful qualifying session for us, unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. Brendon didn’t get a clean lap together during the first outing due to the yellow flags, so he had to abort his opening run.
“Pierre on the other hand did and his lap was reasonable at the time, but there was clearly quite a significant track improvement as Q1 progressed, something we’ve seen throughout the weekend’s sessions. For the second runs – Pierre was improving and he was well up on his initial lap time, so if he had finished the lap he would have been safely through to Q2.
“Unfortunately, Brendon had a puncture just ahead of Pierre and they came across each other with a high speed differential, leading to a near miss – this situation was very well managed by Pierre to avoid a collision. Sadly, that meant that his tyres, battery, time available and so on were not set for another lap, so he effectively had to abandon his qualifying after the incident.
“It’s a great shame because I think his pace was looking quite reasonable. Maybe Q3 wasn’t on the cards today but close to it was possible, which would have been a good place to be given the uncertainty of how the tyres will perform tomorrow.
“Now we’ll never know and we are not going to be starting the race where we want to be, but equally as we’ve seen in the past here, it can often be a very busy and eventful Sunday afternoon where anything can happen. We’ll make our plans this evening and hope to recover tomorrow.”
Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel claimed his third consecutive Formula 1 pole positino, out-qualifying both Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas. Red Bull’s Daniel Riccardo starts fourth ahead of team mate Max Verstappen and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen in sixth.
Qualifying (top 10)
1 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1m41.498s –
2 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1m41.677s 0.179s
3 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 1m41.837s 0.339s
4 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull/Renault 1m41.911s 0.413s
5 Max Verstappen Red Bull/Renault 1m41.994s 0.496s
6 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 1m42.490s 0.992s
7 Esteban Ocon Force India/Mercedes 1m42.523s 1.025s
8 Sergio Perez Force India/Mercedes 1m42.547s 1.049s
9 Carlos Sainz Renault 1m43.351s 1.853s
10 Lance Stroll Williams/Mercedes 1m43.585s –
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