Marko points finger at Gasly over Verstappen wall hit

Dr Helmut Marko disputed Pierre Gasly's suggestion that he was not adequately informed of Max Verstappen's position on-track ahead of an incident which saw the Dutchman clip the wall during the second practice session ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix.

Verstappen was lucky to escape without significant damage after clouting the 'Wall of Champions' at the end of a qualifying simulation, which was compromised by Gasly moving slowly into the final chicane ahead of him.

The dirty air thrown out by Gasly's car impacted Verstappen, whose front-right tyre made solid contact with the wall.

Explaining his side of the story, Gasly said: "They told me quite late when I was preparing my lap behind Romain [Grosjean]. When they told me I started to push and then he was five seconds behind."

The Wall of Champions is calling...

And Max *almost* answers it, with a solid skim halfway through FP2 ?#CanadianGP ?? #F1 pic.twitter.com/nCrV2XQHD8

— Formula 1 (@F1) June 7, 2019

However, Marko says Gasly was informed precisely how far away Verstappen was, which ought to have given him ample time to make a move to prevent impeding his team-mate.

"He was indirectly responsible for kissing the wall by Verstappen," Marko said. "Either he has to accelerate and disappear, or he has to let Max pass by the chicane. We told him the exact distance with the other car."

Both Red Bulls finished FP2 outside of the top 10 on the timesheets, Verstappen losing his soft-tyre run in this incident. Gasly, however, did manage a run on softs, although he was only able to roughly match a time that Verstappen had done on the hard compound.

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