Marcus Ericsson says he did not initially realise that a fire had broken out on his Sauber C37 in the wake of his crash during the opening practice session for the French Grand Prix.
Ericsson spun on the entry to the double right-hander at Beausset and hit the wall, with a fire igniting shortly after, though the Swede remained in the car as usual.
Ericsson eventually left the wreckage as marshals, after a short delay, tended to the fire, which left the right-rear of his C37 with substantial damage.
Ericsson was unable to participate in the second practice session, leaving him on the back foot heading into Saturday’s running at a venue new to the paddock.
“My right mirror was broken in the crash so I only had the left mirror and on the left side was no fire,” he said.
“So basically I was doing my switch off procedure and waiting a few seconds for every switch to switch off.
“And then I had the radio pulled out as well so I couldn’t hear my engineer calling.
“When I was climbing out I sort of realised that maybe I should hurry up.”
Ericsson expressed frustration at the unravelling of his day, having held 14th position at the time of his accident.
“The annoying thing is that I have been … up until the accident I had a really good FP1,” he said.
“We had done some quite big changes on the set-up side and settings, gone back a bit more to where we were in the beginning of the year. It seemed to make a difference.
“I felt really comfortable so it was just extremely disappointing to end the session like that.”
