Lance Stroll has been given his eighth penalty point after the stewards determined he broke the rules while defending his position from Valtteri Bottas during the Australian Grand Prix.
They found the Aston Martin driver repeatedly changed his line while trying to keep the Alfa Romeo driver behind him.“On the main straight, car 18 (Lance Stroll) was ahead of car 77 (Valtteri Bottas),” the stewards explained. “Stroll moved right to defend against a potential overtake from Bottas. Stroll returned to the racing line and then moved to the right for a second time to defend from another move by Bottas.
“The second move breaches the regulation which prohibits more than one change of direction to defend a position.”
The stewards issued a five-second time penalty to Stroll during the race. They also gave him a penalty point, which is his eighth of the current 12-month period, and leaves him four away from a one-race ban.
As with his penalty after qualifying, it had no effect on his ultimate finishing position, as Stroll pointed out.
“I don’t think the penalty made a difference,” he said. “We had like 20 seconds to the car behind or something. I don’t know exactly how much, but it cleared the car behind, so didn’t make a difference, the penalty.
“We tried to pick up a point. We just didn’t really have the pace. The balance was not great, we were eating up the front tyres and got swallowed up at the end.”
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2022 Australian Grand Prix
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Kribana (@krichelle)
10th April 2022, 8:10
Is this the first time in some time a penalty for this specific incident has been given? I like this.
Staffan
10th April 2022, 8:20
This could be the year that a race ban is given due to points
Roger Ayles (@roger-ayles)
10th April 2022, 8:22
I was sort of surprised he got a penalty for that as he didn’t seem to really be moving around that much, I’ve certainly seen cars moving around far more & more aggressively with the car they were racing left far less room.
I can’t imagine how many penalties would have been handed out in decades past with these regulations now as things were far more aggressive back in the 80s/90s when the racing was actually artificial gimmick free & drivers actually had to fight to pull off real genuine exciting & thrilling overtakes rather than waiting for zones and pressing buttons.
But I digress.
bosyber (@bosyber)
10th April 2022, 8:30
I did move quite a bit though @roger-ayles ; I personally was more surprised that he then, after already showing bad racing in that, wasn’t investigated/penalised in his subsequent pushing another car off track, it almost seemed like having given one penalty (which was perhaps a bit on the harsh side), they were reluctant to conclude he needed another. In my view following up one bad thing with another should be penalised more, not less and so he should now be 3-2 points away from a race-ban.
Well, at least, just like yesterday, the penalty point he got will have some penalising effect, unlike the actual penalty he got that both times was of no consequence for him.
hunocsi (@hunocsi)
10th April 2022, 11:27
I think the incident when he pushed Bottas off track was said to be investigated after the race, at least that’s what I remember reading on screen during the race. @bosyber
DaveW (@dmw)
11th April 2022, 2:34
I saw a “no action” on that one. I thought that was unnecessary and dirty or at least really clumsy. But in f1 today we have the rule that the car on the inside can drive the car on the outside straight off the track. So there was no actual delict to punish. We need to change this rule.
bosyber (@bosyber)
11th April 2022, 7:47
I indeed also saw ‘no further investigation needed’ or the like @dmw, @hunocsi; yeah, I do think it is high time that a car on the outside also isn’t allowed to do that either.
hunocsi (@hunocsi)
11th April 2022, 9:27
@bosyber Ah, I was sitting a bit further away from my screen and must have misread, sorry about that. I agree @dmw.
grat
10th April 2022, 23:59
Yeah, but Stroll is in the dog-house as far as the FIA is concerned. His stunt with Latifi was just amateurish.
Pinak Ghosh (@pinakghosh)
10th April 2022, 8:54
Will all the talk on investment and high profile hiring, Aston Martin is the only team yet to score this season.
ryanoceros (@ryanoceros)
10th April 2022, 13:48
I’ve also found this remarkable and slightly amusing
petebaldwin (@)
10th April 2022, 14:45
I don’t think it’s too surprising. Because of a. If reg change, they were forced to design their own car so their car was always going to be poor compared to using a year-ild Championship winning one.
On top of that, you have a useless driver as one of your two so the data and feedback you get is essentially halved. They were always going to struggle this year.
Trouble is, they won’t have a Championship winning car to use next year either….
S
10th April 2022, 15:16
Unless they were telling the truth, and they really did design their Pink Mercedes from photography and not from borrowed CAD files….
If they’ve done it once they could do it again, right @petebaldwin?
Green Ferrari next year, perhaps?
petebaldwin (@)
10th April 2022, 17:33
It would certainly be a strange decision to copy a car that is off the pace…. I have no doubt that’s what we’ll see though.
“No – we just looked at pictures and came up with a sidepod-less design for ourselves.”
grat
11th April 2022, 0:01
Actually, they can’t. The FIA has banned photocopying cars. They can copy concepts, but not geometry.
I think they need to redo their sidepod design, however. I think they’ve just got too much surface area and too much drag.
Having a driver who’s 3 races behind the curve, and a racer who’s 3 marbles short of a full deck isn’t working out well either.
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
10th April 2022, 15:46
What they really need to do is replace Lance Stroll, which, unfortunately for the team, will never happen.
grat
11th April 2022, 0:02
I think they’re going to have to replace him for Barcelona, as he seems intent on hitting 12 as soon as possible.
Alesici
10th April 2022, 11:30
Well the FIA haven’t presented this year’s new overtaking regulations to the public, so who knows whether this should or shouldn’t have been a penalty? I guess they think that by not making the rules public, this prevents the fans from “misunderstanding” the stewards actions. It does give the fans an interesting game of guessing/reverse engineering what the regulations might actually be.
Palindnilap (@palindnilap)
10th April 2022, 12:24
+1 and LOL at the “misunderstanding” dab !
Also I learned in the F1TV commentary that one is now not allowed any more to push someone off the track. I would be very interested to know what that actually means.
Davethechicken
10th April 2022, 13:43
Weaving and pushing off the track have always been against the rules. As has overtaking under the safety car.
Except for last year.
Now Mercedes dominance is over we can get back to the rules we all understood for decades.
grat
11th April 2022, 0:05
The regulations didn’t change. They issued clarification to what “erratic and dangerous” means.
Whether that clarification is public, or hidden in a Technical Directive that’s not public, I don’t know.
Adam (@rocketpanda)
10th April 2022, 14:13
Stroll’s quality of driving has been poor since he’s been in the sport he just seems to never get directly punished for it. The guy doesn’t look in his mirrors and drives about like he’s the only one there. For his now several years in the sport he’s certainly not a rookie, he should be better than this.
petebaldwin (@)
10th April 2022, 14:49
If anything, he seems to be getting worse. There was some improvement between his rookie season and last year but he seems as bad as ever this season.
He’s started over 100 F1 races now so the fact that it even has to be said that “he’s not a rookie” says it all!
The Dolphins
11th April 2022, 1:31
I really wish F1 & the FIA would make this clear and consistent because as a fan of multiple decades I feel like we’ve gone from okay to weave, not okay, okay, and back to not okay. I understand the danger of moving under braking and it didn’t look like Lance was in the braking zone from the angle I saw. I’m not here to defend his driving/weaving I’m just frustrated after “warnings” sometimes issued to Max last year that all of a sudden it’s now an immediate penalty without even a warning.