Latifi blames Stroll as stewards investigate pair’s collision in qualifying

2022 Australian Grand Prix

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Lance Stroll and Nicholas Latifi are under investigation after the pair collided in the final minutes of the first qualifying session.

The collision occured with just over two minutes left in the session as the pair attempted to set their final laps. Stroll had just overtaken Latifi approaching turn five when the Williams driver attempted to repass him following the corner and the pair made contact.

The impact ripped the left-rear wheel off Latifi’s Williams and sent him spinning into the barriers. Stroll was told to stop his car as he headed back to the pits.

Latifi had been on a slow-down lap at the time of the collision. He had aborted his previous run shortly before the end of the lap. “I’m just backing off,” he explained on the radio, “I was going to kill the tyres, I wasn’t going to improve.”

As he passed through the turns three and four complex Latifi’s race engineer Gaetan Jego told him: “Watch out for Stroll within one [second].”

“He backed off,” Latifi reported as he slowed at the exit of turn four and the Aston Martin came by. “Okay you can pick up then if you want,” replied Jego.

But as Latifi tried to pass Stroll on the right the Aston Martin driver moved towards him, triggering the collision.

“I don’t understand what he was doing, he wasn’t looking in his mirrors,” Latifi exclaimed. “I’m fine, the fucking car’s destroyed,” he added.

Stroll was only on his second lap of the session having made a late start to qualifying. His mechanics were still completing repairs to his car following his crash in practice as the session began.

Before he began his first flying lap of the session his race engineer Ben Michell advised him he did have time to back off and start another lap if needed.

“You have time for an abort-push, you can abort-push, but we’re happy to push on first lap,” said Michell.

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As the lap began Michell realised Stroll was about to catch Latifi and others, and they would be better off waiting to run at the end.

“Okay Lance we’ve got big traffic if you want to abort and go again, we can do that,” he said. “Too much traffic, abort, cool and we’ll go again.”

As Stroll passed Latifi, he was told the other drivers around him were also not on flying laps. “You’re in phase with everybody,” said Michell. “So get ahead of Latifi, you’ve got Russell ahead of you now, eight seconds, so you’re in a good gap, hold this position on track.”

However as Michell was explaining this, Stroll and Latifi made contact. “Unbelievable, man, I don’t fucking understand what he was doing,” said Stroll.

Afterwards Latifi blamed his rival for the crash. “For me, it’s quite clear, I’ve just seen the video,” he said, “I was just trying to go back by to prepare my out-lap and it seems like he just turned into me once I was alongside him.”

Latifi confirmed he was trying to regain his position in the queue from Stroll when they collided. “I let him through because he was pushing to open the lap, so I was told,” he said. “Then I saw he aborted the lap, so I wanted to get carried on with my own preparation lap.

“So I went back by him, obviously there was a big gap. And once I kind of got past them for whatever reason, he decided to turn. So it’s clear for me on the video, there’s not much more to say.”

Stroll said he was surprised by Latifi’s sudden move to pass him on his right approaching turn six.

“He went all of a sudden, very suddenly,” said Stroll. “It falls to the right so the car kind of dips to the inside as the track falls away there. I think the timing was just terrible, as he was accelerating the track was falling to the right for me and that’s where we made contact.”

Image: F1 via Twitter

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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20 comments on “Latifi blames Stroll as stewards investigate pair’s collision in qualifying”

  1. Both these clowns need to go. They just don’t have that extra level of awareness required to handle this series.

    1. Driving so slowly is what needs to go.
      There’s even a sporting regulation about it, that is never used.

      1. The stewards are to blame as well: they failed to reprimand Stroll yesterday when on a slow lap he impeded Manussen. https://www.racefans.net/2022/04/08/sainz-reprimanded-stroll-cleared-but-under-investigation-again/

        It’s safety issue; which just proves to be so today.

        1. It’s always been a safety issue, and we keep talking about it every few events as it happens quite regularly.
          And several comments always say “there’s going to be a big crash one day…”

          The FIA doesn’t do anything about it because the teams won’t allow them too. They just complain about the tyres and the nature of the cars and say that they have all the telemetry to avoid incidents and such.

          All too often it takes a major incident to get them to do something sensible, which everyone suddenly agrees should have been done years before.

  2. Of course, no one else is to blame. In Spanish broadcast they were blaming Latifi the most and I was completely shocked. First of all, Lance passes Latifi unnecessarily close to the Williams, before T5, and then he decides to move across the track at low speed without checking his mirrors. It’s compeltely insane and I’m expecting a big penalty here for Lance.

    1. @diezcilindros I initially gave Latifi part of the blame, but on seeing replays it seems really clear that Stroll was fully at fault (and his interview we heard later suggests he also knows that, talking about unfortunate timing and clumsy and ‘track falls away’); Stroll really needs to start using his mirrors in moments when it counts, there have been way too many incidents with him involved where better use of them could have avoided collisions.

      1. @diezcilindros How can you say Stroll passes Latifi unnecessarily close? Latifi was basically on the brakes until Stroll was alongside, then accelerates. Latifi didn’t actually ‘let’ Stroll by like a normal pass, in the first place. In the second place, he floored it immediately after letting Lance by. I’d be confused as heck. if someone ‘let me pass’ then 2 seconds later was flooring it on the inside.

        That’s no excuse for Stroll having less than zero track awareness. He’s absolutely a buffoon. You put two people like this together and you get trouble.

    2. @diezcilindros How can you say Stroll passes Latifi unnecessarily close? Latifi was basically on the brakes until Stroll was alongside, then accelerates. Latifi didn’t actually ‘let’ Stroll by like a normal pass, in the first place. In the second place, he floored it immediately after letting Lance by. I’d be confused A.F. if someone ‘let me pass’ then 2 seconds later was flooring it on the inside.

      That’s no excuse for Stroll having less than zero track awareness. He’s absolutely a buffoon. You put an idiot and a buffoon together and you get trouble.

  3. This is all on Stroll as he had literally no reason to move across on Latifi like that.

  4. Latifi crashed too much these days… and Stroll tried to match his records in a day.

  5. 100% on Stroll. He had zero reason to suddenly start turning right.

    1. It was a corner after all.

  6. The blame game returns – but IMO they are both equally to blame, as are their respective teams and the FIA for not taking seriously the rules about driving unnecessarily slowly.

  7. Stroll has previous with not looking in his mirrors and turning in on people. I don’t think they put any glass in them for him, maybe to save weight?

    1. Indeed, He did the exact same move to Vettel on the in lap after the race ending of the 2017 Malaysian GP.

  8. Can these Canadians go play hockey instead?

  9. The way Jacques Villeneuve was trolling stroll on the Canal+ broadcast after he made a statement about the incident is absolutely hilarious !

  10. So it seems that they can drive fast, or is that “half-fast”, but they can’t keep it on the road driving slowly.?
    Regardless of who is to blame, this is an all too common occurrence.
    Latifi especially. It seems that you can bet on him stuffing it in the last few laps, cause a red flag and all manner of subsequent issues.
    The serious pain has got to be at Williams …. what is going on there.???
    They have a new-rules clean sheet opportunity, at least one seasoned driver and another not-a-rookie (in theory) so why is it that they keep messing up.? Not enough fuel for a test is a management issue, don’t blame the driver.
    I am sure that, to an individual, the team is filled with dedicated, competent and highly motivated “racers” . It is just painful to not see at least some indication of season over season improvement.
    Maybe, just maybe, what they need is a Freddo or two.

  11. Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
    9th April 2022, 16:59

    It’s always these two dopey clowns.

  12. A foolish move by Latifi and a dangerous move by Stroll. Pay drivers gonna pay.

Comments are closed.