A huge accident at the beginning of the F2 sprint race ahead of the F1 Russian Grand Prix Sunday resulted in two drivers being taken to a hospital for ‘precautionary checks’ after a chaotic opening few corners.
Across F3, F2 and Formula 1, the FIA has struggled to find a solution to drivers running wide at turn two in Sochi. The first heavy braking zone on the circuit, drivers go relatively unpunished for missing the corner with a huge tarmac runoff encouraging them to be braver than usual.
Bollards were put on the edge of the runoff which drivers are instructed to drive around before rejoining but as F2 demonstrated Sunday this is still not working.
Racing for the lead, Jack Aitkin ran wide and followed the correct procedure. It could be argued that he didn’t slow down appropriately before joining the track again, but Nikita Mazepin, who also ran wide, failed to round the bollards and this resulted in contact between the two.
The contact fired Mazepin across the track and into Nobuharu Matsushita who at that point was a completely innocent bystander.
Both Nobuharu Matsushita and Nikita Mazepin are being transferred to hospital. Neither driver suffered fractures as a result of the Lap 1 incident pic.twitter.com/H7ZXfW3JeE
The red flags went out immediately and Mazepin was quickly out of the car, but for a long while there was concern for Matsushita who remained in his car for around half an hour as marshals and doctors treated his recovery with caution.
In a short tweet, the championship confirmed that both Matsushita and Mazepin had been taken to hospital for precautionary checks but that neither of them had suffered any fractured bones.
Given the recent accident at Spa Francorchamps which cost Anthoine Hubert his life and left Juan Manuel Correa in hospital, the levels of concern for the conditions of the drivers raised more quickly than usual.
Following the accident at Spa in August, Correa is due to undergo extensive surgery which is expected to last for over ten-hours as doctors fight to save his right leg.
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