Aston Martin is undecided on who will replace Lance Stroll in F1 Bahrain P if he is unable to regain fitness with their reserves on standby.
In the lead-up to the 2023 F1 season, Stroll met wit an incident during cycling in Barcelona were e damaged his hand and wrist in the process. It forced him out of the lone pre-season test in Bahrain and keeps him in doubt for the first race next weekend.
Aston Martin brought in Felipe Drugovich for the morning session on Thursday but they haven’t yet confirmed the line-up for Friday and Saturday. The Brazilian had a decent run but it did not start well after electronics issues forced him to stop on track.
Post that he managed to get trough the plan without any issues. Looking beyond the testing, Drugovich will be a standby for the first race in Bahrain alongside Stoffel Vandoorne, who is in Cape Town this week for is Formula E commitment.
“They’re evaluating every day,” said Drugovich in the press conference. “I can’t say much more than that because I really don’t know much more than that. I think me and Stoffel, we’re both assigned to come to this race, to Bahrain, so we will both be here if Lance won’t be able to recover.
“But it will be just a choice of the team just before the weekend. It’ll probably be a quick one because Lance is recovering, probably until next week, and we’ll make a decision,” summed up Drugovich. Aston Martin team boss Mike Krack was not too keen to go into the details either. He didn’t dwell into Stroll’s injury and or the standbys.
“This is his personal thing,” said Krack. “So he is injured on the hand and wrist. I don’t want to go into detail because this is also privacy. He was training, trying to improve or to work on his fitness last week. So he was cycling and he had a small incident and hurt himself. For precautionary reasons, we decided it’s better to wait a little bit and be ready next week.”
Here’s the Bahrain F1 test line-up: https://formularapida.net/f1-2023-bahrain-test-driver-line-up-running-schedule-and-more/
Here’s news on Lance Stroll
Here’s news on Aston Martin reserve on loan to McLaren
Here’s Fernando Alonso on hunger within Aston Martin
Here’s Aston Martin on track
Here’s Eric Blandin on immediate feedback from Fernando Alonso