Speaking to media after qualifying at Monza, Pierre Gasly spoke about the accident that befell Australian Formula 3 racer Alex Peroni on Saturday morning.
The Campos Racing driver ran over the sausage kerb at Parabolica towards the end of the F3 race and was launched into the air before landing almost 100 metres away on the tyre barriers. The initial impact showed that it was the halo that landed squarely on the tyre barriers, saving Peroni’s head from absorbing that impact. He was relatively unharmed and walked by himself to the medical car and has since been diagnosed with concussion and a fractured vertebra. He will miss the rest of this weekend’s F3 action. The sausage kerb was removed immediately, resulting in a slight delay to the start of the F1 FP3 session.
“I saw the big crash.” said Gasly. “It was really really shocking. I didn’t see the beginning of the action, I just saw it once he was in the air. Then the guys explained it to me how it happened. It was horrible to see and I am glad Peroni seems to be fine after that. It is clearly something they need to change because they can’t have these kind of accidents.”
Admitting that he has reconsidered his position on the halo, the Toro Rosso driver said: “I must say I have never been a fan of the halo. Looking at these images, it’s clearly a good reason to have it. We will never know what would have happened without it but we don’t want to imagine.”
We are all extremely relieved that Alex Peroni walked away from this crash during Race 1 in Monza.
He is currently under medical observation.#ItalianGP 🇮🇹 #F3 pic.twitter.com/UdlcFSIqBH
— Formula 3 (@FIAFormula3) September 7, 2019
“You will not expect this to happen even in F1 cars.” Gasly continued. “I still didn’t see the full crash and I would like to see exactly to understand. For me, it’s quite insane to take off that high with just the kerb. They need to make sure that won’t happen again.”
“I think there are couple of these kerbs on other track as well but, for some reason, we’ve never had these kind of accidents before. It was really strange and really scary at the same time.”
Additional reporting by Chinnye Chow.