'Shaken' Gasly confirms mistake caused big Barcelona testing shunt

“One of the biggest crashes I’ve had.” That was Pierre Gasly’s assessment after he lost control of his Red Bull RB15 and ended up in the barriers during the penultimate day of pre-season testing…

Gasly lost the rear at the fast Turn 9, pitching him into a spin that sent him rear-first into the barriers and caused significant damage to the rear and front-left corner of the car.

“I’m fine, a bit shaken,” he said. “I made a mistake in Turn 9 and basically lost the car. It was a pretty big crash, one of the biggest crashes I have had so far.

“It will be a long night for the mechanics, I’m sorry for them. But what is important is that Max [Verstappen] is back in the car and we focus on the positives.”

It was Gasly’s second crash of pre-season testing, the Frenchman hitting the barriers at Turn 13 on his first day of running last week, and meant he lost most of what was his final afternoon’s running.

But he was pleased overall with how his first pre-season test with Red Bull had gone, having joined from Toro Rosso.

“We managed to get a lot of laps in my days of testing,” he said. “We tested a lot of things and were looking a bit more at performance today.

“We learned a lot, now we need to go through all the data. There’s a lot of work to do before Melbourne but overall we are pretty pleased.”

He ended the day over eight tenths off the pace set by Charles Leclerc. Does he think he was capable of matching the Ferrari driver?

“Honestly no,” he said. “To be fair I think they are really fast, they showed some good pace. But we try to focus on ourselves and not focus too much on the others.

“We have some potential, we tested a lot of things, we have good performance, but we have to work hard as well as they seem really fast.”