Hartley Apologises for ‘Scary’ Incident with Gasly

Toro Rosso Honda driver Brendon Hartley was nearly involved in a high-speed shunt with teammate Pierre Gasly in qualifying. Since then, the Kiwi has apologised for the near miss. Gasly termed it as the “scariest moment of my career”. Plus, we’re pretty sure that the entire Toro Rosso team almost soiled themselves.

The incident occurred close to the end of Q1 in Azerbaijan. Gasly was on a fairly quick lap when a slow-moving Hartley caught the Frenchman by surprise.

Hartley was struggling as he, as he had a close encounter with the wall and punctured his front-left tyre. Gasly barely managed to take evasive action and avoided a massive accident. The #10 driver ending up careening down the escape road.

Hartley took the blame for the incident, but was unaware that Gasly was approaching him so quickly.

“It was a disaster, pretty upset about that,” said Hartley. “I hadn’t put a lap on the board before then both times yellow flags on my lap.

“Then I clipped the wall and through the left hander I knew I had an issue and slowed down, I was unaware Pierre was so close behind me.

“Obviously I was going half speed, trying to figure how bad the problem was and I completely messed it up.

“The problem is, with the walls, you don’t see them coming.

“I made a big mistake, I’m sorry for him. I owe him a big apology for getting in the way and nearly causing a huge accident.

“I’m disappointed how that went down. Not a good day.”

Gasly admitted that it was the scariest moment of his career. The youngster couldn’t tell if his teammate was going left or going right.

“I don’t know what happened to Brendon, he slowed down massively. I was at 320kph and, honestly… he almost stopped, I tried to avoid him and I was sure I was going to crash.

“I could already see myself in the air, I don’t know how I avoided it, but it was a pretty scary moment.

“Maybe if he has a puncture it doesn’t help him. I am sure he didn’t do it on purpose, but he was on the line, I wasn’t sure if he was going to go on line or not.

“Maybe next time we need a bigger gap between [our] two cars.”