Daniel Ricciardo involved in multi-car collision as rival team suffers Hungary DNFs

Thomas Maher 2023年7月23日2:21 PM

Alpine's Pierre Gasly at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Budapest, July 2023.

A misjudgment from Zhou Guanyu into the first turn of the Hungarian Grand Prix triggered a domino effect accident that resulted in a double DNF for a rival team.

Both Alpine drivers have been eliminated from the race in Budapest after just two racing laps, due to a multi-car accident brought on by a small error from Zhou Guanyu.

The Alfa Romeo driver made a terrible start from his fifth-place grid slot to fall down to near the back of the field on the run into the first corner, and hit the brakes too late to tag the back of Daniel Ricciardo’s AlphaTauri.

Zhou Guanyu & Daniel Ricciardo incident takes out both Alpines

With Zhou and the blameless Ricciardo making contact, the additional momentum added to the Australian’s trajectory resulted in him hitting the Alpine in front of him. Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon, right beside each other in the braking zone, couldn’t avoid each other and the impact resulted in race-ending damage for both cars.

It’s the second double retirement in a row for the Enstone-based squad, following their disastrous British Grand Prix a fortnight ago.

Zhou has been found guilty of causing a collision and has been given a five-second time penalty for triggering the incident.

With Ocon and Gasly both retiring after making it back to the pits, Ricciardo fell to the back of the field but recovered to finish in 13th place at the chequered flag on his first race back as an F1 driver.

The impact of Ocon’s car landing on the ground was hard enough to break his cockpit seat, meaning the French driver went to the medical centre for precautionary checks before being released.