Visibly emotional Gasly: 'The outcome could have been much more tragic'

After Carlos Sainz's crash on the first lap, a tractor had to come in to tow the Ferrari off the track. When this happened, however, there was no red flag yet. Gasly, who had just made a pit stop due to picking up a billboard, drove around the track at a tremendous speed to reach the back of the safety car queue. Just before the AlphaTauri driver encountered the tractor on the track, a red flag was only waved.

Gasly sounded very angry over the team radio. Meanwhile, the Frenchman received a hefty penalty from race control for speeding when he encountered the tractor. However, the vehicle was not in the gravel, but on the drivers' racing line. Gasly finds it unacceptable that this situation occurred at all. In 2014, his good friend Jules Bianchi died when he crashed into a crane at full speed at the Suzuka circuit.

"We’ve all lost a very good friend of us eight years ago. I think we all loved Jules. We all suffered a lot with the accident that happened. I just don’t understand why eight years later we need to see a tractor on this track in these conditions. We are risking our life out there, we give our best. I just don’t understand why we didn’t wait one more minute to put the tractors out there," Gasly told F1 TV.

Gasly: 'Disrespectful to Bianchi family'

The AlphaTauri driver continued: "I obviously got very scared. Carlos lost the car in the previous lap in that exact same place. There wasn’t any information that it was on the track, it wasn’t in the gravel, it was on the racing line. I passed it at 200kph. Obviously, if I lose the car at that time once I realized I would not be standing here."

Gasly, therefore, hopes that in future the FIA will ensure that such dangerous situations do not happen again. "Today, I’m just extremely grateful I'll be able to go home to my family and loves ones, because the outcome could have been way more tragic. I don’t think it’s respectful towards Jules and all his family, and all of us that suffered from his loss. I think it was unnecessary to put this tractor out there. Obviously, I got extremely scared. I think we could have dealt with this situation in a slightly different way. We’ve been asking since the crash not to see any tractors on the racetrack. Just wait for us to get back to the pit lane in these situations."