Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack received an apology from Sky Sports reporter Natalie Pinkham during Friday’s broadcast from Suzuka after showing him a clip of Lance Stroll’s Singapore Grand Prix shunt.
The pair were discussing the team’s performance throughout the opening two practice sessions of the weekend when the topic of Stroll’s crash came up. The young Canadian was on a push lap during qualifying in Singapore when he lost the car while rounding the final corner.
The result was a terrifying crash in which Stroll collided with the outside wall at speed, sending his car spinning across the track and totally writing off his AMR23 machinery. The 24-year-old then missed out on the Grand Prix on Sunday as a precaution.
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When asked about Stroll’s fitness and showed another video of the crash, Krack told Sky Sports F1: “Yeah, I don’t think you can do these kinds of lap times or this kind of long runs if you are not 100 per cent. So yeah, I’ve seen it (the crash) many times. Let’s put this behind us. I’m looking forward, not back.”
This prompted an apology from Pinkham at the end of the interview with the British presenter stating: “Sorry to bring up Singapore again. That’s it, I promise that’s the last time.” Krack replied jokingly: “It’s no problem. I knew that you were going to ask it.”
Krack has good reason to be sore about the events that unfolded in Singapore. Not only did Stroll fail to start the race, Fernando Alonso struggled to keep his car on the track throughout after picking up suspension damage early on.
The two-time world champion finished the race way out of the points to compound a miserable weekend for the Silverstone-based team. Fortunately for Krack, Aston Martin have a much more straightforward weekend to look forward to in Japan.
Both drivers laid some solid groundwork for their weekends in FP1 and FP2 with Alonso and Stroll ending the first session of the day in P6 and P10, without any major incidents or points of concern.
Alonso went on to replicate this finish during the second practice session, finishing eight-tenths down on Max Verstappen in P1, while Stroll was able to stay within a single place of his FP1 finish after punching in the 11th-fastest time of the hour.
