Aston Martin is clueless about the penalty points its drivers got for their respective incidents, as he backs Lance Stroll for F1 Chinese GP scene.
The last couple of grands prix has been heavy on the Aston Martin drivers with penalties for both Fernando Alonso and Stroll adding up to their superlicense. The former has six points against his name, while the latter has seven in the last 12 months.
For Alonso, the penalty situation has carried on from Australia when he was displeased about the penalty he got for the George Russell incident. It was all fine in Japan, but in China, the Spaniard had another penalty in the sprint event against Carlos Sainz.
Both Alonso and Aston Martin were not too happy with the outcome. To add to it, Stroll was penalised for his collision with Daniel Ricciardo in the main race. The point of contention was the different penalty points handed for the two incidents.
Alonso was given three penalty points for relatively less of a collision with Sainz, while Stroll was given two penalty points for a rather larger collision with Ricciardo. This certainly confused Aston Martin and they were left for answers from the FIA stewards.
Team boss Mike Krack also defended Stroll, terming it is as a chain event at the safety car re-start, while also defended Alonso for the sprint collision where F1 wants racing but the moment they go hard, it ends up in a penalty and spending time with stewards.
Stroll, Ricciardo incident –
Krack: “I think it was a chain reaction in the end of the day. You saw Fernando locking, and another car behind, and I think everybody was a little bit caught out there. And, I think at that stage we were happy that we did not lose both cars, because I think it started further to the front and I would have liked that this would have been looked at in a little bit more detailed way. We tried to discuss it, but the verdict was very quickly that Lance was was to blame and he got he got a 10 second penalty additionally to the front wheel damage.
“I mean you can see it as you want, last time it was the car in front that got the penalty. In Melbourne, if you remember even without touching. This time it was the car behind. So, I come back to your statement, yeah. I mean, you see, for example, you know, like Lance can spin around in Bahrain on lap one, and has to come back through the field. There’s no penalty for the for one that was caused the collision. So, again we’re not super consistent that’s the feeling.”
Frustrating –
Krack: “It is frustrating on the other hand, you know, everybody’s human. I think everybody tries to do his best, and it is frustrating but the best recipe is if you have a fast car and you drive away. Max has no such penalties, so it’s up to us to make it happen.”
Drivers treated differently –
Krack: “I think on a general basis, I think there has been this discussion about driving standards and harsher penalties at the beginning of the year, where everybody agreed to that. It is that a fact, but then you want action in a Sprint. We had action, and at the end of the day, we had we had a quite hard fight and we had we had the worst end of it. And then you get another penalty where you say ‘okay if we have a sprint of 19 laps we want to see what we saw’, I thought it was great racing and even if we have the worst end of it, it was still a great race in the sprint.
“Then spending hours with the stewards again, that was a bit you feel at that point that it is not fair, maybe we sleep too nice and have a look at it again we see it differently, but again you have sprint’s incident. Then you have an incident where people are pushing another car off in Turn 6, and then there is no action. We had the two Ferraris pushing one another off not leaving the gap there was no action. Fernando straight away 10 seconds.”
Inconsistent penalty points too –
Krack: “Yeah, at this rate it would be tough to finish the season. I tried to do it [understand why], and no one told me anything, no like nothing. Also, Lance also received two penalty points. So, at the moment there is a high penalty point accumulation. It is the case [of open door policy to meet on Thursday]. And, if it works or not that is always, who you ask.”
What answers you looking at –
Krack: “I think these are situations that are created. These situations are created at the front, now you can always say that you need to be more careful, but on the other hand. If you are to careful and you have the restart, and you lose more than one car length every decision. So, things like happen at different tracks. If you remember the incident we had in Mugello, where there was a lot of cars involved. So this is always the erratic movement that happens on a safety car restart, and we have some of these every year and it will continue to happen.”
Here’s Fernando Alonso explaining Chinese GP tyre strategy
Here’s Daniel Ricciardo with some harsh words for Lance Stroll
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