Aston Martin Chief Trackside Officer Mike Krack shed light on the frustrations that left Lance Stroll almost mute in his post-race media session after Formula 1‘s Italian Grand Prix.
The Canadian was a man of few words after the race at Monza on Sunday, creating an awkward atmosphere with journalists floundering as they struggled to find further questions.
Stroll had endured a miserable afternoon, finishing 18th – the last classified driver still running – having started 17th, after a risky strategy in which he pitted once towards the end.
An incident with Esteban Ocon saw Stroll forced off the track which did little to lift his mood, causing the Haas driver to pick up a five-second penalty.
When asked about the incident, Stroll said: “I don’t have anything to say about it,” having previously given two short answers to other questions, followed by leaving the session, having also ignored other questions.
When told by other media about Stroll’s near-silent appearance, Krack tried to explain what lay beneath his driver’s frustrations.
“We have an issue on the pit gantry that we need to understand,” he said.
“We have downloaded now the log data, and this is another thing that we will have to deal with.”
Krack added that the team’s decision to leave Stroll out for so long was down to a game of risk, saying that the team was banking on a late Safety Car to enable to have a chance of moving up the field.
“I think with these situations, when you have a race with almost no degradation, and you start from the back, you have to hope for opportunities,” he explained.
“And you know, we get always Safety Cars when we have done our pit stop, so we said, ‘Let’s wait until the Safety Car comes this time’, and then it doesn’t come.
“So, you know, it is normal that then you are frustrated because you are fighting for nothing, although you’re pushing to the limit. So I can understand a certain level of frustration.”
It was a miserable afternoon for Aston Martin, with Fernando Alonso’s realistic shot at points ended early after a rear suspension failure.
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