Lance Stroll says he suffered an impact of nearly 50G in qualifying in Singapore and racing the following day would have delayed his recovery for this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix.
Aston Martin and Stroll took the joint decision to withdraw Stroll from last weekend’s race after his heavy crash on Saturday, despite the Canadian passing the required tests. With the team struggling as Fernando Alonso finished outside the points, Stroll doesn’t view it as a justifiable absence on performance terms but says it was the right decision to be fully fit for Suzuka.
“I’m much better than I was on Sunday!” Stroll said Thursday at Suzuka. “I’m feeling OK now.
“I was fine (in that) I was healthy to race but I wasn’t physically feeling good enough to do Singapore, which is the hardest race of the year. I felt it creeping up on me on Saturday night and I knew it wasn’t going to be fun waking up on Sunday morning.
“For me it’s always an opportunity to race on Sunday and try to score some points. We saw drivers start pretty far back on Sunday and manage to climb through the field and score points. You never know what happens. If I had felt fine and really good I would have raced but I really didn’t feel like it was the right thing to do. I really think it would have delayed my recovery to come here and feel 100%.”
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Stroll also says he has no complaints over the curbs at the final corner where he crashed, saying street tracks should punish mistakes rather than be made easier for drivers.
“I mean, if it was maybe a bit flatter it could prevent something like that happening, but I think that’s also the nature of street circuits,” he said. “Singapore, Monaco, Baku, those kind of places, if there wasn’t a wall there then it would be like all the other tracks and I think that’s kind of the nice challenge about street circuits — when you do push a little bit too hard the track bites back.
“For every experience you learn from it and then put it behind you and full focus on the next weekend. That’s how I’m looking at the whole thing. It was definitely frustrating to finish the weekend like that, there was a lot more potential in the car and the weekend, but that was how it ended and now I’m fully focused and looking forward to Suzuka.”
Despite feeling fit to race in Japan, Stroll is also wary that Suzuka might not suit Aston Martin as it becomes increasingly difficult to identify a pecking order before each race weekend.
“It’s always tricky to answer this question — it’s such a tight field now and I think we’re a bit on the draggy side,” noted the Canadian. “Here, there’s still a lot of straights so it is important to be efficient. I’m not sure how our pace will be in Sector 1 in the high-speed corners, but I think if we manage to get the car well balanced, set up properly and we’re not too draggy, then we’ll have a good weekend.
“But like I said, it’s really tough to answer those questions because I don’t think it’s as clear about where you would be on certain tracks as it was in previous years, because it feels just so tight now. We see a lot of teams bounce back and forward (from) where they might have been last weekend and then on a different kind of track, the situation changes a lot, so I hope we can be very competitive.”