Lance Stroll has Aston Martin place questioned after pushing colleague in Qatar

06 October 2023 , 19:31

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Lance Stroll was criticised for pushing an Aston Martin colleague (Image: HOCH ZWEI/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)

Lance Stroll was slammed for his "inappropriate" angry response to a poor result in Qatar Grand Prix qualifying.

The Canadian could only go 17th fastest in qualifying. It meant a fourth consecutive Q1 exit in a row for a man who is still yet to score a single point since the summer break and who is under pressure as a result.

But, on this occasion, he took out his frustration in the wrong way. After climbing out of his car in the Aston Martin team garage, TV cameras showed him shoving a colleague in anger.

Naturally, the incident was discussed on Sky Sports after the session. Pundit Naomi Schiff was sympathetic of Stroll's situation, but was critical of the way he had channelled his frustration.

"It's such a tough one," she said. "Look at this in slow-motion – he really puts a lot of energy into that shove and that's totally inappropriate. You cannot be behaving that way no matter how disappointing your day has been.

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"Those are the people who work to get you on track, to make it happen for you. You can't be treating your team like that. It's one thing to have a bad day, come out of the car and apologise. But to come out of the car and act that way is just not good enough.

"He's clearly distressed and we've got to empathise because he's a human being who has emotions and you can see him picking at his hair when giving one-word answers. He's obviously going though something, but that doesn't make it okay. You've got to act better. There's [reserve driver] Felipe Drugovich here waiting in the wings who would be more than grateful to be in that car."

Presenter Simon Lazenby followed on by stating: "If this was any other driver, we'd be talking about his position and wondering how precarious it is right now. There's 127 points between himself and his team-mate and there was a 1.2-second difference between him and Fernando [Alonso] out there. How big of a problem is this for the team?"

Karun Chandhok answered that question by pointing to the fact Aston Martin are being caught quickly by McLaren. He said: "It's cost them in the constructors' championship, hasn't it? Earlier on in the year, we were looking at them second in the constructors' and now they're likely to end up fifth with the way McLaren have caught up with them.

"The reality is, he's scored less than a third of Alonso's points, so there's the delta. McLaren have benefitted from the fact they have two drivers racking up the points and that's allowed them to catch up. There's your answer."

The Aston Martin F1 team declined to comment on the incident.

Daniel Moxon