Although his Russian Grand Prix only lasted four laps before he retired with a brake issue on his Toro Rosso, Pierre Gasly said he experienced a « really scary » moment when his visor was struck by a piece of debris on the opening lap.
Gasly was following Daniel Ricciardo, who sustained front wing damage at Turn 2, and found himself in a terrifying situation.
« I think Daniel lost a piece of carbon that went straight into my visor, » he said. « This was really, really scary because I thought it was going through and straight in my eye, but it hit my visor and fell in the cockpit, so in Turn 4 I had to take the carbon piece and throw it from the cockpit. »
The debris entered Gasly’s cockpit under the Halo head protection device and the Frenchman thought he was going to be seriously injured.
« I had about 0.5s to see it flying and hitting the visor, » he said. « It was like a winglet that maybe came from somewhere from contact with Daniel, but it came like pointing towards me and straight at my right eye.
« When I saw it coming I thought ‘F— it’s going through the visor’ but the visor is really strong because it just hit it and fell into the cockpit. »
If that wasn’t bad enough, Gasly then spun at Turn 4 when his front brakes failed just as the same problem struck teammate Brendon Hartley at Turn 2.
« I don’t want to go too much into details because they are still analysing to understand exactly what happened, if it’s related to temperatures or calipers or brake-by-wire, » he explained. « But we just lost the front brakes completely.
« They lost the sensor as well after Turn 3 and straight away for me the pedal was really long and really poor efficiency. It’s a strange thing that both cars had the same thing at exactly the same time of the race. It’s a bit strange. »
http://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/24848630/toro-rosso-driver-pierre-gasly-escapes-really-scary-debris-hit
