Lance Stroll hit with an F1 grid penalty that he won’t serve in Monaco GP
Double penalty for Lance Stroll in Monaco, but without any consequences on his starting position.
Lance Stroll has been hit with a three-place grid penalty for the Monaco Grand Prix for impeding Pierre Gasly in qualifying on Saturday, but he will still start the race from the same position he qualified in.
This is the second sanction for the Aston Martin driver in Monaco this weekend, having previously been handed a one-place grid drop for the same offence in Friday practice. In that case, he had blocked the path of Charles Leclerc at the hairpin, causing the Ferrari driver to lose his front wing.
On this occasion in Q1, Stroll was informed by Aston Martin that another car (Gasly’s Alpine) was approaching him heading into Turn 10.
However, in reality, there were two cars in the picture, with Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari also in the queue.
While Stroll let Hamilton through, he returned to the racing line shortly after, causing Gasly to check up and slam on the brakes to avoid a collision. The Frenchman was on a flying lap when he encountered Stroll on the racing line.
Although Stroll defended himself by claiming he wasn’t sure which car had passed him due to the position of the sun, the stewards nevertheless imposed a three-place grid penalty for Sunday’s race.
However, since the Canadian driver only qualified 19th for the race, he won’t actually be serving the full four-place penalty.
In fact, the two penalties will have no impact on his starting position, with Haas driver Oliver Bearman - who qualified slightly higher in 17th place - picking up an even bigger 10-place grid drop for overtaking Williams’ Carlos Sainz during a red flag in practice.
Full stewards verdict
The Stewards heard from the driver of Car 18 (Lance Stroll), the driver of Car 10 (Pierre Gasly), team representatives and reviewed positioning/marshalling system data, video, timing, telemetry, team radio and in-car video evidence.
Car 18 was informed that Car 10 was arriving on a fast lap at Turn 10. From the radio communications it appears that Car 18 was not informed/reminded that Car 44 (whom Car 18 had overtaken earlier in that lap) was also coming and that Car 44 was going to overtake Car 18.
The driver of Car 18 assumed wrongly that there was only one car to be let by and when Car 44 (which was not on a fast lap) went by him, he moved back to the racing line thereby impeding Car 10 which was on a fast lap.
During the hearing, the driver of Car 18 stated that he could not tell the colour of the car that had overtaken him because of the position of the sun, which we accepted. He therefore wrongly assumed that there was no other car to be let by.
In the circumstances, we imposed the usual penalty of a drop of 3 grid positions.
