Pierre Gasly has described his near-miss with his Toro Rosso team-mate Brendon Hartley the "scariest" moment of his racing career after the two came close to colliding in the opening Q1 session for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Hartley, ahead of Gasly on-track, suffered a puncture after hitting the wall on his quick lap and was running slow when the Frenchman came up behind him at full speed to find his team-mate in the middle of the circuit.
With almost nowhere to go, Gasly quickly turned right just as Hartley chose to move right, forcing Gasly to run wide, narrowly avoiding the New Zealander on his left and the wall to his right.
Gasly, clearly angry, exclaimed over team radio "what the f**k". Speaking after the session, in which he qualified 17th, he described the moment as the scariest of his career and admitted he feared he would go airborne.
"It was really scary, the scariest moment of my career," Gasly said. "I didn't know if he was going left or going right.
"I don't know what happened to Brendon, he slowed down massively. I was at 320kph and, honestly, he almost stopped, I tried to avoid him and I was sure I was going to crash.
"I could already see myself in the air, I don't know how I avoided it, but it was a pretty scary moment.
"I am sure it wasn't on purpose, maybe next time we need a bigger gap between [the] two cars."
Hartley immediately radioed his team to apologise, insisting he didn't know where to go as he couldn't see his team-mate and said after qualifying that he owed Gasly a "big apology".
"It was a disaster, pretty upset about that," he said. "I clipped the inside wall and through the left hander I knew I had an issue and slowed down, I was unaware Pierre was so close behind me.
"Obviously I was going half speed, trying to figure how bad the problem was and I completely messed it up. The problem is, with the walls, you don't see them coming.
"I made a big mistake, I'm sorry for him. I owe him a big apology for getting in the way and nearly causing a huge accident. I'm disappointed how that went down. Not a good day."
