In the opening lap of the Russian Grand Prix, Pierre Gasly was worried that a piece of debris could go through his visor and hurt his eye.
The debris came from Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull during the opening lap, hit his helmet and landed in his cockpit later.
Speaking to reporters after the race, Gasly said: “I think Daniel lost a piece of carbon, which went straight into my visor, so this was really really scary,”
“I thought it was going through and straight into my eye, and finally it touched the visor and then came into the cockpit.
“In Turn 4 I had to take the carbon piece and throw it from the cockpit.
“At the time I had like five-tenths of a second to see it flying and just hitting the visor – maybe a winglet that came from somewhere, I think contact with Daniel.
“But it came my way, pointing towards me and straight in my right eye.
“When I saw it coming first I was like, ‘it’s going through the visor’. Finally, the visor is really strong, it hit it and fell into the cockpit.”
Explaining how it got past the Halo, Gasly added: “It came under. I will have a look. It was pretty scary.”
The fact that it hit his car in a low-speed corner and the F1 visors being strong, helped Gasly avoid any damage, the Frenchman suggested.
“The visor seems to be pretty strong, but maybe we need to keep improving and try to make it as strong as possible,” he said.
“The speed as well had an effect on the impact. At that time, I was coming out of Turn 2, so I wasn’t so fast.
“Maybe the impact with it luckily wasn’t as big as it would have been if I would have been at 300km/h.”
Both the Toro Rosso cars retired early in the race due to a brake issue.
