Pierre Gasly explains the cause of his heavy Spa F1 shunt

Pierre Gasly has explained the cause of his session-ending shunt in second practice at the Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix.

The Frenchman lost the rear of his Alpine through the second part of the Fagnes chicane, causing him to run out onto the gravel on the exit. Despite attempting to wrestle back control, Gasly was unable to prevent the rear of the car from slamming into the barrier, causing significant damage, with the rear wing and right-rear tyre ripped from the chassis. 

"I just need to work on understanding what happened in P2, just had a big snap, lost the car," he said. 

"But yeah, it was a huge snap and by the time I just took a lot longer to recover and by the time it recovered, I was already off the track and I could not get back on track. Not the end of the day we wanted, but I'm sure the guys are going to get it back together for tomorrow, and then we'll focus on trying to get to the top 10."

Gasly ended the day in 18th, 11 places behind team-mate Franco Colapinto. 

Adding his thoughts on the incident, Alpine F1 managing director Steve Nielsen said: "I think he had a small snap. I think it was Turn 14, which unfortunately put him on the kerb, which then put him into the barrier.

"It was a small mistake, which on a lot of other tracks would have been fine, but on this track, you get punished for it in certain places, and that's what happened. But it happens."

Despite trailing Colapinto in the second session, Gasly remained upbeat about his chances for the remainder of the weekend. 

"Overall, it's been a good deal of testing [across] P1 and P2, [with] a lot of different paths tried across both cars," he said. 

"Now, we just need to weigh what's good, what's the best of all these settings, and try to put it all together for tomorrow. But overall, productive."