Hartley: ‘Biggest impact I’ve ever had’

Brendon Hartley has re-lived his high-speed crash in FP3 which ruled him out of qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Hartley kicked up the turf when lining himself up to take on the high-speed Turn 9, forcing his Toro Rosso to spin out of control and slam into the wall.

The New Zealander was given the all-clear by the medics, but the entire rear end of his STR13 was missing from the car after a high impact.

The damage was so severe that the Toro Rosso garage had an impossible task of repairing the car in time for qualifying.

Back with the press, Hartley was struggling to remember a bigger crash than the one he experienced on Saturday in Spain.

“Such a big impact like that, it’s potentially the biggest impact I’ve had,” Hartley said via Motorsport.com.

“I actually don’t remember, and that’s not because I just had an impact.

“I had a reasonably big crash in the first round of WEC in 2016 [at Silverstone], but it wasn’t such a big impact in the end.

“[This crash] was definitely the biggest accident I’ve had in a long time. It happens in slow motion.

“I was going backwards towards the wall, so you don’t really know when the impact is going to come.

“I’m looking in my mirror to know exactly when it was going to come. You brace yourself a bit, but it’s never a lot of fun.”

Hartley has officially been granted permission to start Sunday’s race by the stewards and is due to start from the pit lane at the Circuit de Catalunya.