Aston Martin reveal ‘suspicions and indications’ regarding Lance Stroll

Lance Stroll had another quali performance to forget.
Aston Martin’s Mike Krack says the team has some “suspicions” about the cause of Lance Stroll’s slump, the team boss blaming the upgrades to the AMR23.
Although Stroll started the season being billed a “hero” by his team-mate Fernando Alonso as he raced to sixth place at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix despite breaking his wrists less than two weeks before, those hero days are over.
Instead, the Canadian has been dogged by rumours of his pending exit as he has fallen further and further behind his team-mate.
Has Lance Stroll been hurt by Aston Martin’s upgrades?
While Alonso has secured seven podiums in his first campaign with Aston Martin, Stroll has yet to stand on the podium. With 47 points to Alonso’s 183, Stroll has one of the biggest deficits to a team-mate on this year’s grid.
And it’s one that is showing no sign of shrinking, instead growing race after race leading to a meltdown by the driver after his most recent Q1 exit in Qatar.
But while it has been suggested Stroll’s time in Formula 1 is over, the driver linked to Aston Martin’s Le Mans project, Krack believes they can turn his form around as his issues relate to the car.
“I think we need to prove it first,” the team boss told Motorsport.com when asked about the specifics.
“The fact is that he has lost a bit of competitivity, and this is something we need to understand.
“We have suspicions and indications, and this is I think what Lance is referring to. But then we need to make the according changes and see if this is confirmed, that if you improve that, he improves as well.”
Krack refuted a suggestion that Alonso being happy with the car and its loose rear-end made it more difficult for Aston Martin to help Stroll.
“No, I think at the end of the day you normally do not go completely into such small detail in terms of understanding,” he said.
“In our case, when you have difficulties, you normally learn more, and you go into much more detail than you would do if you were just fine. It’s the normal thing. And I think that we will go through a great learning exercise in that regard.”
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Aston Martin’s ‘directions with philosophy’ hurting Stroll
As for Stroll, he explained that as the team upgraded the car during the course of the season their “directions with philosophy” haven’t suited his driving style.
He says the changes have made the car more unpredictable and difficult to drive.
“Yeah, there’s things for sure,” he said. “There’s always things in every car, I mean, but I think when the car has been really good this year, I’ve been really happy with it. And it’s just recently it’s been a bit more challenging.
“I think we took some directions with philosophy, of bringing upgrades aerodynamically, that I don’t think made us go the step forward that we were hoping for.
“So, we’re trying to understand that and bring some stuff to the car in the season now to fix that and help the characteristic that we had earlier in the season, where the car was more predictable, and easier to drive, and more forgiving. I think we’ve lost some of that.
“It’s just about understanding why. In theory, you want to make the car go faster, but I think we might have added overall downforce but made the car trickier to drive.”
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