Kvyat 'distracted' ahead of big Silverstone shunt, as AlphaTauri suggest puncture may be to blame

Of all the places to a crash a car at Silverstone, no driver would pick the ultra-high-speed Maggots bend. But AlphaTauri's Daniel Kvyat suffered that misfortune just 13 laps into Sunday’s British Grand Prix, as his car snapped sideways through the left-handed swoop and speared into the barriers.

Dispute the heavy impact, Kvyat – who started P19, after a five-place gearbox penalty – walked away from the wreckage of his heavily damaged AT01. Before climbing out, the Russian apologised to his team over team radio, though it wasn’t immediately clear if driver error or a technical issue had caused the crash.

Afterwards, Kvyat said he'd been distracted by the need to make adjustments on his steering wheel just before the accident.

"I still don’t understand what happened, I was changing a lot of switches on the steering wheel and got distracted. The red kerb just spun the car around completely, I didn’t expect that.

"But I wasn’t looking really on the track at that moment, we were having some issues on the car and I had to change a lot of parameters on the screen and it was very, very distracting."

However, Team Principal Franz Tost wasn't so sure the Russian was to blame:

"[Daniil] had a good start and was immediately very competitive, catching up to Pierre [Gasly, his team mate] in P12. He was actually behind him when he had his accident at Maggotts, which we will need to investigate but it looks like it might be due to a rear puncture.

"However, the most important thing is that he got out of the car without injuries and he is completely fine. It’s a real shame as he was showing great pace and I think he might have also finished in the points."

The DNF means Kvyat has scored just one point from the opening four races, while team mate Gasly - after a fine seventh place at Silverstone - has 12.