Opening lap damage put Gasly in 'rallycross' mode

Pierre Gasly felt like he was racing in a frantic rallycross on Sunday after his Toro Rosso sustained damage on the opening lap of the Austrian Grand Prix.

The Frenchman made contact with Stoffel Vandoorne's McLaren shortly after the start, and while the subsequent damage to his STR13 was far from terminal, Gasly was left to battle his car for the remainder of the afternoon.

"For me this was honestly one of the toughest races I’ve ever had," he said afterending his race just outside the points in 11th place.

"After the contact with Stoffel on lap one, the rear suspension was bent and he also took half of the floor away so from that point I was just sliding everywhere, fighting so much with the car, so we were quite lucky to go until the end.

"I almost went off 20 times in the race, just trying to keep it on the track.

"For sure it would have been nice to score points, but we tried everything but it was almost more driving a rallycross car than a Formula 1. It was pretty tough."

• Stroll follows orders but gets hit with blue flag time penalty

Looking back at the opening lap mishap, Gasly reckoned it was a simple racing incident.

"I had Lance [Stroll] on my left and he had Hulkenberg to his left. I think we were four wide and the track wasn’t wide enough," he said.

"I know Stoffel, he’s not careless, it was probably just misjudgement or something like this. I know he didn’t do it on purpose but it certainly affected the rest of my race."

Gasly lamented a lost opportunity to collect some good points given the retirements that occurred up the road.

"It was quite a big shame, because when you see Hamilton and Bottas out, Daniel [Ricciardo] out, there was a big opportunity and I think P8 was easily within our reach in normal conditions," he rued..

"After lap one I thought they were going to box me, because I was going to get a puncture or the suspension was going to break, but we managed to go until the end. It was really, really tough."

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter