Who slept the worst last night: Lance Stroll

(Motorsport-Total.com) – Dear readers,

It takes a lot to anger Daniel Ricciardo, a boy from the west coast of Australia. But when Lance Stroll crashed into his rear while braking at Turn 14 in Shanghai on Sunday, mind you, under the safety car, his sunshine was over.

“What an idiot,” were the first words out of his mouth over the pit radio.

Overall, the pit radio says a lot about the Ricciardo-Stroll incident at the Chinese Grand Prix, and about how the Aston Martin people are trying to get the “little boss” to agree to it, as they do in my book. at home in Austria’s Mühlviertel in the form of a drifting son who is laughed at by a powerful company owner he says to protect.

Pit radio: You’re the best, Lance, it’s everyone else’s fault!

When Stroll crossed the finish line in 15th place, given a ten-second penalty for the incident when the safety car came back on at the end of lap 26, he was 1:23 behind winner Max Verstappen and 11.1 seconds behind Guanyu Zhou, who he crossed the finish line ahead of him in 14th place.

Big win for his race engineer Andrew Vizard: “That was bad luck, my dear. Things went well at the start. Things went well for the first two laps, until the safety car. Just for your information: That was a big deal. accordion. I got a few straight away and I think maybe Sainz started it further.”

Stroll was only on the second lap when he again criticized the ten-second penalty as “ridiculous” because: “The whole train in front of me stopped. Twice! Even on the long straight. Someone braked there. And then again in the handle of hair.”

That struck me as a bit like a message from someone who has to justify something. Knowing that he lied to himself.

Vizard then expressed his understanding to Canada, who, in his eyes, had suffered a great injustice: “Yes, we saw. Certainly not you. It was just chaos, wasn’t it? The others didn’t. You deserve more than that.”

Fact check: Did Sainz invent the accordion?

But that’s not all: If you investigate the hypothesis shown on pit radio that Sainz is said to have introduced the accordion effect, you will find something completely different: It is true that Sainz first accelerated before he turned 14 and then braked. But that was within the scope of what could be described as normal before the restart.

The man lying behind Sainz, pulled to the left at the very last second and slipped past the Ferrari with smoking tires just centimeters away from the Ferrari and was luckier than mind was another Aston Martin driver: Fernando Alonso. An accordion effect appeared behind Alonso, which Stroll was not paying enough attention to.

This is a part of the story that Aston Martin doesn’t like to talk about.

Aston Martin: Race stewards judge us particularly harshly

Team boss Mike Krack appeared before the press after the race and did everything he could to correct the “little boss”: “I would like,” he criticized the race management, “that they would look at it more. We tried to discuss it. But the decision was quickly made that Lance was the cause. “

In my personal opinion, there was not much to discuss. In fact, Aston Martin’s approach seems to be quite unique. Also The skyIn a direct commentary, expert Ralf Schumacher rejected the argument that poor Stroll could not do anything about it because of the accordion effect: “That’s a hair curl. It’s a mind thing that they all go slowly there. Man, man, Man, man, man.” And: “I don’t know where he was looking.”

At least not to the front, which is also confirmed by the board records, but to the right, towards the curve. For whatever reason.

When Ricciardo had to give up, he had calmed down on the pit radio: “I could leave now, but I’ll save myself. Yes, he got a penalty. But that doesn’t help us.” Then he parked his car angrily.

Not only overloaded, but also very slow…

Now I find it almost embarrassing how Aston Martin is trying to get the Stroll Jr. to protect While he was two tenths behind Alonso in Q2 (who finished third in Q3, compared to Stroll’s P11), Krack was happy about the time gap between the two. And now, after the hair-raising move, the race officials are supposed to be the bad guys?

Sorry, but that is denying the truth.

Stroll is not a complete beginner, but he is a veteran in his eighth season of Formula 1. In Imola he will participate in his 150th Grand Prix. Even without sprints, he has completed more races than athletes like Emerson Fittipaldi, Mario Andretti, Jacky Ickx or Keke Rosberg in their careers all of them. His apprenticeship is long over.

Whatever Aston Martin could say

Please don’t misunderstand: No one expects team management to stab their own driver in the back. But constantly pass the money to others, and poor Lance is never to blame, it is not honest or very good form.

After Shanghai you could say: “Yes, Lance made a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. It happened to others too. He apologized, and he meant it. But now we’ll leave it alone. behind us and look toward Miami.”

Only: That didn’t work. Stroll did not apologize. It’s always someone else’s fault.

Or, more clearly: If Aston Martin had two Alonsos in 2023, they would be second in the world championship with 412 points – of course, the milkman’s calculations. A double Stroll points account would result in only 148 points. And 5th place.

As a reluctant figure skating princess

It breaks your heart to see how the angry Canadian has repeatedly blocked one of the 20 Formula 1 cockpits from other drivers over the years. To me, Stroll looks a bit like a ski princess being forced to train by her doting mother to one day be an Olympic champion.

Maybe it would have been neater if Lance had been a skiing or tennis instructor. Either way, he doesn’t enjoy Formula 1. And if he does, he does a pretty good job of keeping it as secret as he can.

In press conferences he usually looks more at his cell phone than at the reporters, and in our editorial team his press rounds are usually not reprinted because he gives painful answers and rarely says anything interesting. Emails from colleagues who listened to his audio recordings contain comments such as: “Typical Lance. He doesn’t say anything. It’s not worth it.”

Does no one dare to say anything against the boss’s son?

Mike Krack and other Aston Martin executives find themselves in a difficult time. You must defend the indefensible. If you don’t, you may incur the wrath of your boss. “The big boss”, in this case. And I’d rather not incur his wrath either! Perhaps this is what prevents trust and self-reflection in the team.

Don’t get me wrong: Lawrence Stroll wants the best for his son. He bought him a Formula 3 team, now he also bought a Formula 1 team. Maybe a lot of people would do that if they had the money. This is not illegal for everyone. The only question is: isn’t eight years enough to realize that Lance doesn’t have what it takes to be a world champion?

Maybe Lance will quit and become a ski instructor, and maybe Lawrence will sell his expensive toy again. So that finally, finally someone else can play with it.

The person who slept better than Lance Stroll last night was Lando Norris. My colleague Frederik Hackbarth wrote why in a sister column of the Chinese Grand Prix, which you can now read here.

Your Christian in Nimmervoll

Notice: It is in the nature of things that this column reflects my personal view. Anyone who has a different opinion is welcome to discuss it with me on my Facebook page “Formula 1 inside with Christian Nimmervoll”. There is basically no “news” from the Grand Prix circus, but rather a low-level and sometimes downright poor classification of the most important behind-the-scenes developments in Formula 1.