Gasly didn’t know extent of damage before crash in F1’s sprint at Monza

Gasly once again impressed in qualifying but his hard work was undone immediately.

The Frenchman tapped the back of Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren into Turn 2 on the opening lap, damaging his front wing in the process.

As Gasly turned right at Curva Grande, the front wing detached itself and got stuck under his car, meaning he couldn’t turn and was sent into the barriers.

“Disappointed but physically OK, he said. “Obviously, very, very disappointed because the start was great with the mediums. I managed to go alongside Lando and also Lewis and in the first corner, I got surprised a bit with Daniel. I didn’t anticipate enough, I touched him a little bit and then the front wing just broke.

“I didn’t see how bad it was… after that, it just went under the car in Turn 3 and I went straight into the wall and I couldn’t turn anymore and went straight into the wall.”

Even though Gasly expects to start the race from the pit lane, he believes a top 10 finish is still possible, although he’s concerned about the lack of overtaking opportunities at Monza.

“That’s the target,” Gasly added. “P14, P11, P12, P18 is the same thing, you go back home with zero points. We will do everything we can to at least score a point tomorrow. Obviously watching the race from the outside, which is not nice but it can give you some ideas.

“Unfortunately, I haven’t seen one single overtake so I don’t know. I will probably watch the race again tonight and see what happened. It seemed really difficult to overtake so we need to understand why and what we need to do to improve that. Probably start from the pit lane tomorrow.

“It’s a much longer race, start next to the winner of the day so it’s not all that bad. We will try everything to come back.”