Barely a week after the death of Anthoine Hubert at Spa, motorsport held its breath again following a scary crash for Formula 3 race Alex Peroni at Monza.
During Race 1 on Saturday, his car took off after hitting the kerb placed on the outside of Parabolica to enforce track limits, before landing in catch-fencing dangerously close to a marshals post.
Thankfully Peroni was OK but for a broken vertebra and concussion, however, Daniel Ricciardo admits it was another warning of the unexpected dangers that motorsport provide.
“He’s an Australian, I know Alex a little bit,” he revealed to Crash.net. “I was actually quite excited to message him, I was watching the race and he got up to sixth or something, having a really good race.
“I was close to messaging him, like yep, awesome race, good on ya, and then I saw that. I was in touch with him a little bit. He’s OK.
“It’s another lesson for us. It’s weird, you would never think that little kerb there could have such an impact,” Ricciardo added.
“I think at those speeds as well, if you get a little bit of turbulence under the car, it can take off.
“It’s the famous [Mark] Webber crash in the sports car back in the day. Fortunately, he’s OK. Now we just know we can’t have those on any high-speed corners.”
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Ricciardo was one of those hit hard by the events of Spa, but few were hit worse than Pierre Gasly, who was a very close friend of Hubert.
The Toro Rosso driver commented on the incident at Monza and began by offering relief that the result was not too serious.
“I saw the big crash, it was really really shocking,” he said. “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.”
Gasly also admitted the accident vindicates the decision to introduce cockpit protection.
“I must say I have never been a fan of the halo,” he said.
“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.”
