Esteban Ocon has revealed that the impact at the Hungarian Grand Prix’s opening corner was enough to break his seat.
Ocon was eliminated from the race at Turn 1 after becoming an innocent victim in an incident triggered by Guanyu Zhou.
The Alfa Romeo Sauber driver had a slower getaway before a mistake under braking saw him nose into the rear of Daniel Ricciardo’s Scuderia AlphaTauri.
That in turn pushed the Australian into Ocon, who collided with his Alpine team-mate, Pierre Gasly in an impact that launched Ocon’s car into the air.
Both Alpine drivers were eliminated from the race as a result of the impact, for which Zhou was handed a five-second penalty.
“This I think are the consequences of starting in the back,” Ocon reasoned.
“People usually tend to take more risk, starting from the back. I think we suffered from that today, unfortunately.”
Ocon’s car was lifted as it made contact with Gasly, landing heavily as he spun into the run-off outside the corner.
“So far it’s okay; I can let you know in couple hours,” he said when asked how his back was following the impact.
But the seat broke in two pieces. That’s how, you know how the impact was and how violent it was.
“I just literally just completely dropped in the car,” he added.
“I thought that was the rear suspension that we had broken, because the car was handling terribly, obviously, after that much damage.
“But no, it was actually the seat that broke, which changed my [sitting] position.”
Ocon returned to the pits but the damage proved terminal and he was retired.
Gasly was also forced out as Alpine suffered a double retirement on the opening corner of the opening lap.
“It’s first of all extremely frustrating for the team to lose both cars straight into Turn 1,” said Gasly.
“Just don’t seem to catch a break at the moment. Every weekend we seem to have some unfortunate scenarios like that.
“I hope we can get away from that sort of spiral quite quickly.”
Discussion about this post