Doohan and Lawson came together as the pack rounded the opening right-hander, pulling the tyre off the rim of the Alpine while the Racing Bulls was fired skywards in the impact.

The clash ultimately forced both drivers out of the race, Doohan half a lap later as Lawson soldiered on without pace for more than 30 laps before calling time.

“I haven’t seen the replay so I don’t want to come in too much, but it seemed that I was squeezed into Turn 1,” Doohan said.

“Nowhere really to go and unavoidable contact and damage.

“Disappointing, but not much I could do.”

Doohan was on the inside as he reached the apex of the right-hander with Lawson to his left.

They made left-front to sidepod contact, spinning the Racing Bulls to the back of the pack as the Alpine limped on briefly.

Doohan was eventually forced to pull off the road when the damage proved too great to drag the car back to the pits safely.

“The damage by the puncture was quite a lot,” he said.

“I was also digging into, I don’t even know what to call it, the front-left Gurney or whatever…

“Damage was too much. We don’t want to put damage onto the track or debris.

“It was quite the journey to get back here, so don’t want to be repeating this moment.”

While the clash ultimately saw two cars retire from the race, the decision from the stewards was that it was a racing incident, and no punishments were handed out.

“Obviously in the moment you’re disappointed and you’re mad, but you never know, he could have had a car on his outside squeezing him,” Doohan said.

“I don’t want to put any blame in any direction.

“Obviously it didn’t end well for me, which is disappointing.

“I’ll have to also reflect to see if there’s anything that I could do differently, but in this current point, I don’t think there was much [I could have done].”

To that point, the weekend had again held positives for Doohan, who out-qualified teammate Pierre Gasly for the first time as he progressed to Qualifying 2 on Saturday.

“It was obviously good yesterday to get my first qualifying in front of my teammate,” Doohan said.

“So these are the small little wins that we have, let’s say.

“Unfortunate that we have to take from this weekend, but we’ll be carrying that into Imola.”