Sauber's Marcus Ericsson has paid tribute to the current level of safety in F1 after he walked away from a massive crash at Silverstone and was able to race through the pain the following day.
In FP3, Ericsson lost control coming out of Stowe and was sent violently into the wall. The Swede went for routine checks at the hospital afterwards and was cleared to race for the British Grand Prix, though his car suffered an electrical failure after 11 laps.
Speaking after the race, Ericsson said: "Yeah I'm quite sore, it was quite a big impact and I can feel it in my body today but I did a lot of scans and checks yesterday in hospital and nothing was broken, that was why I got the clearance to drive today. In the car it felt good so there is no problem there but obviously it did feel a bit sore."
When asked if it was the biggest crash of his career, he said: "Yeah I would say for sure. It's quite incredible doing 230km/h when I lost control and I don't think it went down much before I hit the barrier and to be able to walk out without any injuries I think is pretty impressive and it says a lot about the safety in F1these days that you can do a crash like that and OK, you feel sore and in some pain but you are still fine.
"I remember everything. It was obviously getting drier out there and I just went a bit wide at Stowe and I brushed my left rear on the Astroturf, which was a bit damp or wet, and that corner you have a lot of load on the left side, especially the rear, so I didn't think I was going to touch it much so I kept my foot down.
"I just brushed it a bit and it was enough to lose the grip and the angle towards the inside barrier is pretty poor so the speed didn't go down much before the impact, so it was quite a big one."