Guarded Lance Stroll unwilling to give details about hand injury

Lance Stroll was not in a particularly talkative mood as he was quizzed about the hand and wrist injury which ruled him out of the F1 Spanish Grand Prix.

Stroll was forced to pull out of the last race in Barcelona after experiencing pain in his hands that was a legacy of an operation following a cycling accident ahead of the 2023 F1 season.

Few details of Stroll’s condition and recovery were provided by Aston Martin but the team confirmed he would compete in his home race at this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix on Wednesday.

Stroll, who completed some laps in an old F1 car at Paul Ricard earlier this week, was quiet when he faced questions about the injury.

“It was bothering me for a few races at Imola, Monaco and then Barcelona was just really brutal throughout the weekend,” he said on Thursday in Montreal.

“I got the procedure done and drove this week and I was feeling pretty good, so I’m confident."

Stroll said it hurt “a little, but it’s fine”, adding it was “just the old injury I had a couple of years ago just started to bug me again. So got it sorted.”

The Canadian downplayed his attempts to drive through the pain but was not keen to divulge too much information.

“As an athlete in any sport, I think you're always trying to push through pain, discomfort as much as you can to try and get a good result at the end of the weekend,” he said.

“In that situation, I was struggling and I was trying to push through it, but I didn't feel sensible to push anymore. It felt like the damage was getting worse.

“I needed to do something more serious about it. I don't really want to get into detail about what I had to do and how I had to do it because it's just my medical privacy and I like to keep that kind of confidential.

“All I can say for sure is I'm feeling a lot better and looking forward to the race weekend.”

What really happened in Spain?

The BBC reported that Stroll had lost his temper in the team’s garage after he was knocked out of qualifying in Q2.

Stroll failed to get weighed in the FIA garage and was given a warning by the stewards, before Aston Martin announced his withdrawal later that evening.

Aston Martin confirmed to Crash.net that Stroll’s injury was unrelated to the episode that is understood to have taken place in the team’s garage.

Asked if he was frustrated in the moment, Stroll admitted: “I was frustrated for sure. Frustrated about my wrists and the last three races from Imola and it was just inhibiting my driving.

"I knew that Sunday was going to be tricky, probably impossible. And at that point I was, yeah, pretty frustrated about it.”