Pierre Gasly horrified at Suzuka recovery vehicle near miss

Carlos Sainz’s nasty aquaplaning exit on the opening lap of the Japanese Grand Prix put in place a sequence of events which were scarily reminiscent of those which caused the tragic death of Jules Bianchi at the same Suzuka circuit in 2014.

The Sainz incident brought out the safety car, after which the Clerk of Course then approved a recovery vehicle to enter the track to remove the stricken Ferrari.

As recounted in the main report, Pierre Gasly, inset, had pitted under the safety car to have an advertising hoarding removed from his AlphaTauri. So although the safety car guided the queued pack past the rescue scene at a snail’s pace, Gasly – running several seconds behind after his stop – was in free air and pushing to catch the tail of the pack. The race was red-flagged just as Gasly was approaching the scene, going much faster than the others. He was appalled to see a rescue vehicle on track emerge out of the spray.

Gasly was understandably angry about the incident: “I’m just extremely grateful that I am here,” he said afterwards. “How can there be a crane, not even in the gravel, on the race track, while we are still on the track? I don’t understand it at all. We lost Jules already. We all lost an amazing guy, eight years ago, at the same track, in the same conditions with the crane. It was disrespectful to Jules, it’s disrespectful to his family and to all of us. We are risking our lives out there. We are doing the best job in the world, but what we are asking is to at least keep us safe.

“I got scared. If I had lost the car in a similar way to Carlos… it doesn’t matter the speed, I would have just died. Simple as that. It’s already dangerous enough and today I just feel it was unnecessary. We could’ve waited one more minute to get back in the pit lane and then put the tractors on track.”

The FIA has launched an investigation into the incident.