Lance Stroll gets F1 United States GP grid drop for sprint clash

Lance Stroll has been hit with a five-place grid penalty for the United States Grand Prix.

The Aston Martin driver has been punished for wiping out Esteban Ocon’s Haas while battling over 12th place in the Austin sprint on Saturday.

Stroll made a late lunge on Ocon in an attempt to get past the Frenchman, but locked up and collided with his Haas.

The contact took Ocon out of the race and caused terminal damage to Stroll’s AMR25, though the Canadian initially tried to continue on before pulling off the track.

As well as copping a five-place grid drop, Stroll has also received two penalty points on his licence, bringing his total over the last 12 months to seven points.

Drivers trigger an automatic one-race ban for accumulating 12 penalty points across a 12-month period.

The crash was investigated by the stewards following the sprint race.

“Car 18 attempted an inside overtake on Car 31 into Turn 1 but misjudged the braking point and collided with Car 31,” they said in a statement.

“The stewards determine that the driver of Car 18 is wholly at fault and apply a penalty accordingly.

“As the driver to be penalised did not finish the race a grid penalty equalling a 10 seconds time penalty is imposed.”

Ocon downplayed the incident after the race.

“We are all taking a lot of risks in those sprint races because the reward to move forward is still quite big, and you need to try and make the overtakes done,” he said.

“But unfortunately, wrong place, wrong time. It’s racing, some of these things happen but we need to aim and try and qualify better.”