Aston Martin’s F1 Team Boss Feels Stroll Saga Was Unfairly Judged in Qatar

Posted on October 9, 2023 | by Charley Williams It’s definitely been a weekend of highs and lows for Lance Stroll – mostly lows, we can’t lie. His Q1 exit on Friday of the Qatar GP really brought out his frustrations, resulting in an incident where he threw his steering wheel and pushed his Aston Martin trainer out of the way.  When asked by the media, including The Race on Saturday, Lance Stroll addressed the situation and assured everyone that he and Henry Howe, his trainer, were “good”, following with “He’s a bro. We go through the frustration together, and we ride together, so… we’re cool.” His fourth successive Q1 exit after Friday’s qualifying session became a huge talking point, but not for the actual Q1 exit. As he returned to the garage, he threw his steering wheel out of his car, got out, and shoved Howe out of the way. His behaviour was highly criticised online, but Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack actually thought the saga was judged way too quickly. In a media session, which included The Race, he said: “The thing is, it accumulates, obviously, you know, when you accumulate delivering below what your own expectations and then the theme of frustration comes out at one point. “I said this yesterday, you take a football player that is taken off the pitch, he throws the jersey, or he throws the water bottles, we have that quite a lot.” He continued: “I think, you know, emotion is what we want from sportsmen, and then if they react in a way, 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’ll have something to talk about. “But then I think it goes one step too far when people sit down on the sofa or in an air-conditioned room and said this is too much or you cannot do that. I think we need to have a bit more respect for the drivers.” When offered the counter-argument that pushing people is still not acceptable, he responded: “Yeah, but that is also one of these things where I think, you know, is it the right thing in order to throw the bottles when you’re taken off the pitch? “These are all discussions that it’s easy from outside, I think you know, we judge too quickly.” However, he confirmed that the situation would be discussed with Lance on how to react better to frustration in the future. Do you think the incident was judged too quickly?