Lance Stroll’s altercation with a team member will be reviewed internally, but not right away, according to Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack.
After being eliminated from the Q1 round for the fourth time in a row at the Qatar Grand Prix last weekend, Lance Stroll returned to the garage and looked to push his coach and team member Henry Howe.
The Aston Martin driver brushed down the predicament by adding that “he’s a bro” and “we go through the frustrations together.” However, Mike Krack stated on Sunday in Qatar that he will discuss the incident with his driver at an opportune moment.
“I think you have to speak about these things, but you have to put them in relation, and I think you cannot speak in the heat of the moment,” the Aston Martin team boss said.
“You need to wait, and maybe everybody sleeps one night, and then we have a look and we discuss and then the world is a different one.”
Many criticized Stroll’s outburst of rage following his early withdrawal from qualifying last Friday as being inappropriate. However, according to Krack, the driver wasn’t the most irate he had ever seen as he also noted that the frustration was more likely the result of a string of mishaps than Stroll’s response to one particular event.
Krack revealed that he attempts to push the post-session discussions as far as possible, in order to cut down on the adrenaline that drivers experience when they are on the track.
“I’m sure we run maybe 10 to 20 times less adrenaline on the pit wall than the drivers do,” he said. “But you put the microphone straight away in front of them, or you gauge every reaction that they do.
“I think emotion is what we want from sportsmen, and then if they react, we judge them quickly. You know, ‘is this right?’, ‘is this wrong?’. And I think we need to be careful with that.
“We want to see it, because then we have something to talk about. But then I think it goes one step too far. That then people sit down on the sofa or in an air conditioning room and say ‘this is too much’ or ‘you cannot do that’.
“I think we need to have a bit more respect for the drivers. And elite sportsman, I would say.”
On Saturday, Stroll once more fell short of advancing to the next round of qualifying. Due to a track limits penalty, he came in 15th in the sprint race and 11th in the grand prix, losing out on his first point since the Belgian Grand Prix in July.
Stroll’s performance on Sunday gave Krack some hope, despite the fact that the driver was in excruciating physical pain as a result of the demanding conditions, which, according to the driver, nearly caused him to pass out at one point.
“It was interesting that he was much more competitive,” said Krack. “He was actually quite happy with the car.
“I mean, from what I could hear now, happy being always relative, that is clear.”
According to Krack, the team is attempting to determine why Stroll is currently running so far behind Fernando Alonso.
“We have to wait to understand why he was much, much closer in the beginning of the season and he is a little bit further away now – if it is related to how the car has changed over the season, and how it will develop for the next races.”
The weekend in Qatar, according to Krack, had been a great learning experience in figuring out what influences Stroll’s competitiveness in relation to his teammate Fernando Alonso.
Alonso and Stroll are separated by 136 points and a total of six places in the standings after 17 races. Stroll has claimed that his current lack of confidence in the Aston Martin AMR23 has been influenced by the manner in which the car is being developed.
