Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll could be seen stumbling toward an ambulance after making multiple attempts to get out of his AMR23 machinery at the end of the Qatar Grand Prix on Sunday.
The 24-year-old was one of many drivers who reported feeling ill inside of the cockpit during the race with footage from his onboard cameras making for worrying viewing. Stroll was seen clambering out of his car, first stopping to rest his arms on the halo to support his weight.
After digging deep to hop out of the car, Stroll was forced to stop again soon after, hunching over the front left tyre of his Aston Martin before staggering towards the ambulance parked on the side of the pit lane where he rested his helmet on the passenger side window.
Stroll elaborated on his struggles in his interview with Sky Sports F1, explaining: “Yeah frustrated. We finished ninth but then two track limit penalties put us eleventh. It’s annoying that such a hard race physically and just grinding out there [and] we didn’t come away with points.”
Click here to join our WhatsApp community to be the first to receive breaking and exclusive F1 news.
Addressing his track limit violations, he said: “It’s ridiculous. I mean these temperatures everything goes blurry. The last 25, 30 laps it was just blurry in the high-speed corners, blood pressure dropping and just passing out basically in the car in the high-speed corners with high G-forces.
“And then the kerbs now are painted because they were worried about punctures with these high-loaded G-force corners in the tyres. They painted the kerbs to make the track even narrower, so you’re relying just on your visual reference to the outside of the track and what that is.
“But the last 20, 25 laps [I] can’t really see anything cos you’re just fading as you’re going through those corners. It’s really a shame that with such a hard-fought race we only got eleventh.”
While Stroll was clearly struggling in the cockpit, his on-track performance was a welcome boost after he landed himself in the headlines for all the wrong reasons on Friday in the aftermath of his latest Q1 exit in qualifying.
The Canadian racer shoved his personal trainer after exiting his car in the garage off the back of his fourth successive Q1 elimination, sparking criticism of his behaviour.
