Pierre Gasly suffered a near-miss when debris struck his helmet visor near his eye on the first lap of the Russian Grand Prix.
The Toro Rosso driver described how a piece of Daniel Ricciardo’s car struck him at the start.
“At turn one Daniel lost a piece of carbon which went straight into my visor,” he said. “This was really scary because I thought it was going right through and it was straight in my eye.“It touched the visor and then came in the cockpit, so in turn four I had to take the carbon piece and throw it from the cockpit and then after that the brake just got really bad.”
“At the time I had like five tenths of a second just to see it flying and hitting the visor. It was a piece, maybe a winglet it came from contact with Daniel and someone and it came pointing towards me and straight in my right eye.
“When I saw it coming I thought ‘fuck, it’s going through the visor’ and fortunately the visor is really strong because it hit it and fell down in the cockpit.”
Gasly said the incident could have been worse if he had been at a quicker point on the circuit. “I don’t know for sure [but] the speed has an effect on the impact.
“At the time I was coming out of turn two so I wasn’t going that fast so I don’t know if maybe the speed is a problem with it. Luckily it wasn’t as big as I felt it would have been at 300[kph].”
The FIA announced earlier this year it will mandate a new, stronger helmet specification from the 2019 F1 season. “The visor seems to be pretty strong but maybe we need to keep trying to improve the thickness of the visor,” said Gasly.
@HazelSouthwell contributed to this article.
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Tim
1st October 2018, 0:22
So, the Halo doesn’t work???
Lancer033 (@lancer033)
1st October 2018, 1:03
no one ever claimed that the Halo was perfect, probably wouldn’t have helped Massa and wouldn’t have done anything for Bianchi either.
BasCB (@bascb)
1st October 2018, 7:55
No, it does not work for smaller pieces of debris Tim. As is pretty obvious from it’s design, it was never even intended to.
Remember they reinforced the visor area of the helmets with the zylon strip to avoid things hitting the driver. I’d say here the helmet did it’s job as intended.
Don Dahler
1st October 2018, 1:41
The reason why IndyCar is working on the aeroscreen.
Adrian Hanif
1st October 2018, 3:09
I think the main reason for IndyCar to work on the aeroscreen is visibility, whereas Halo is blocking driver’s view in oval tracks.
greg-c (@greg-c)
1st October 2018, 1:52
The Halo doesn’t stop debris
The aero screen wont deflect a flying McLaren eg, spa,
maybe a combo of both ?
s
1st October 2018, 4:24
And a roof and windows and closed wheels – oh look a GT car
Pat Ruadh (@fullcoursecaution)
1st October 2018, 17:54
Red Bull Aeroscreen seemed like a good compromise of both
Clay_T
1st October 2018, 5:40
Yeah, no.
A small piece of carbon doesn’t have enough mass to penetrate a polycarbonate face shield.
Not even at 300 kph.
Standard street face shields will withstand a pointed lead pellet at 500 kph.
AdanFinnell
2nd October 2018, 9:00
Very interesting point. Thanks for sharing.
Anon
2nd October 2018, 16:25
Agree – you could fire a shutgun at it without penetrating – its like shooting glasses for hunters – just 5 times stronger and thicker…..
GAS is just trying to make us forget his bad result…
lunaslide (@lunaslide)
2nd October 2018, 20:39
Perhaps, but that is no more comforting when you see something flying directly at your face.
Anon, what the hell are you on about? Both Gasly and Hartley very clearly had brake failure through no fault of your own. When your front brakes don’t work and the rears do, you spin around exactly the way they both did at the same point.
bull mello (@bullmello)
1st October 2018, 20:17
Glad Gasly’s visor did the job, this time. Thank goodness.
Maybe I missed it, but still curious to hear more about what caused the double dnf for STR. Identical brake failures? Or…?