Sorry Lance Stroll, but is it really that difficult to apologise for driving into Daniel Ricciardo?

Lance Stroll doubled down on pointing the finger at everyone but himself after driving into someone else under the Safety Car.

The Aston Martin driver collided with the back of Daniel Ricciardo’s RB while the field prepared to restart following a Safety Car during the Chinese Grand Prix but, according to Stroll, it was anyone else’s fault but his own.

Lance Stroll collides with Daniel Ricciardo under Safety Car

The field was bunched up just before the end of the Safety Car period, preparing to restart out of the hairpin as Max Verstappen commanded the pace to resume green flag conditions.

But a mistake by Stroll into the hairpin, accelerating at a point when everyone else was hitting the brakes, resulted in the Canadian driver piling into the back of Daniel Ricciardo’s RB – lifting the car fully off the ground and hitting him with such force that the Australian also hit the back of Oscar Piastri’s McLaren in front.

It was a mistake of astronomical proportions, coming at a time when the drivers are supposed to be cautious and merely ready to resume when the lead driver decides to gun it.

But it’s the reaction of the person at fault that determines how an incident can be brushed off – just look at how Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz defused the tension of their Sprint race battle when they spoke to the media afterward. It was a masterclass in diplomacy, and it calmed what could have been a problem down with immediate effect.

But Stroll didn’t take the diplomatic approach. The Canadian driver instead decided to point the finger of blame at Ricciardo and the cars in front, calling the Australian an “idiot” over team radio before he dived into the pits. The incident resulted in the stewards giving Stroll a 10-second penalty for causing a collision, and handed him two penalty points on his super licence.

Speaking to the media afterward, Stroll explained the incident from his perspective – blaming the concertina effect of the cars slowing, rather than any facet of his own driving or his own reactions.

“The concertina effect – someone braked at the front of the pack, I don’t know who, and then everyone stopped,” he said.

“The car in front of me stopped from 60 to zero, and boom. A really stupid incident.”

Having been heard on team radio also calling the penalty “stupid”, Stroll explained this was “just because of the fact that I hit the guy but someone hit the brakes and caused the concertina, I don’t know who, but I got the penalty because of the end result that I hit Ricciardo.

“But it’s not like everything was normal and I just slammed right into the back of him.

“There was a really odd concertina effect that I would have liked to see the stewards take into consideration maybe a little bit more. It is what it is.”

Daniel Ricciardo was not in the mood to play nicely about the incident when he spoke to the media in the pen following his retirement – his RB was too damaged by the collision to be able to finish the race in any way competitively.

“I’d slowly started to calm down, and then I was told what Lance thinks of the incident. And, apparently, I’m an idiot and it was my fault,” Ricciardo said.

“So that made my blood boil because it’s clear as day and it’s also behind a Safety Car. I mean, the only thing you’ve got to do is watch the car in front – we can’t predict what the leader is going to do, we can’t assume that we’re going to go in Turn 14. The race doesn’t start until the control line so… I’m doing my best not to say what I want to say but… f**k that guy.

“I’m being nice still but, if that’s what he thinks, I’m… *shrugs*

“Look, I won’t go harder because maybe, in an hour when he sees it, he might take some accountability.

“But, if he doesn’t, I can’t help him – nor can anyone here. It’s so, so frustrating.

“Obviously, racing incidents happen… things happen but, behind a Safety Car, that should never happen.”

Daniel Ricciardo: Lance Stroll wasn’t even watching me

Onboard replays of the incident showed Stroll was looking to the right just as the pack slowed coming into the hairpin, meaning he was caught completely unaware of the fact the RB was barely moving in front of him.

Ricciardo said the most simple of tasks – paying attention to the car in front of him – was not something Stroll had been doing.

“What makes my blood boil is I’ve watched his onboard to just, let’s say, see it from his perspective, again, try to maybe just have some type of understanding,” he said.

“As soon as we start braking, you can see his helmet turn right and he’s looking at the apex at Turn 14. He’s not even watching me and then, when he looks back, he’s in the back of me.

“So I don’t know what he’s doing, where his head is, but all you have to do is worry about me in that situation – and he clearly wasn’t.

“Let’s see what he says in the media but if he comes after me, then… yeah, I’ll say more.”

It’d be very interesting to see what Ricciardo meant by wanting to “say more”, as Stroll ultimately failed to hold his hands up over the incident and, instead, chose to point the finger of blame at the cars in front of him for having the audacity to slow when he wasn’t ready for it.

There are few drivers for whom choosing to take accountability for their own mistakes is an admirable quality. It wasn’t particularly charming when Michael Schumacher would fail to do so during his tenure of dominance, but Schumacher had the benefit of his unquestionable talent to hide behind when he failed to hold his hands up for causing an incident.

This is not something that does not apply to Stroll, who perhaps is a driver who would benefit from a more mature approach when it comes to culpability. After all, this is a man whose own team boss admitted the entire Aston Martin project has been built around him, meaning the usual team concerns such as a driver’s speed, reliability, maturity, and likeability simply don’t apply in the same way to Stroll as they would to a driver whose father can’t afford to buy a car manufacturer to place him in.

Mike Krack: I would have liked if the stewards had looked in a more detailed way

With Aston Martin signing Fernando Alonso on a new long-term deal last week, Stroll’s own future – being on a rolling contract racing for the team owned by his billionaire father – isn’t yet confirmed, but Mike Krack said there’s no doubt where the Canadian driver will be if he wants to be there.

“We know that Aston Martin is Lance’s home,” Krack said, coming into the Chinese Grand Prix.

“We know that and the whole project has always been around him.

“So we look for continuity. I’ve always that that is very important. So we will see in the next weeks.”

Krack, too, opted against saying anything that could be seen as blaming Stroll for failing to not run into other cars behind the Safety Car and, instead, also chose to point to the fact cars slowing down caused his driver to crash into them.

“I think it was a chain reaction, at the end of the day,” he said.

“I think everybody was a little bit caught out. I think it started further to the front, and I would have liked if it would have been looked at [by the stewards] in a little bit more detailed way.

“We tried to discuss it but the verdict was very quick that Lance was to blame.

“It is frustrating. On the other hand, everybody’s human, I think everybody tries to do his best. And it is frustrating. But the best recipe is if you have a fast car and you drive away, Max has no such penalties…”

It’s understandable that Krack would take a defensive stance towards his driver – after all, that’s his job – but there’s only so much bad luck or circumstantial incidents that one driver can weather before it becomes apparent loyal defence has become propaganda. It’s safe to assume Krack, an incredibly well-attuned and seasoned racer, wouldn’t believe these words if Stroll wasn’t the boss’s son.

Lance Stroll: Everyone just slammed on the brakes

With such job security, and a team boss who knows what side his bread is buttered on, what impetus is there for Stroll to make the effort to improve? There’s no-one holding him to account, so why should he? It’s perhaps this that Ricciardo is referring to when he hints he’d like to “say more” – after all, Stroll becomes much more of a concern for the other drivers if he is crashing into them under such circumstances.

In fairness to Stroll, he rowed back on his criticism of Ricciardo in the media pen afterward, instead gesturing to ‘the field’ in general as being to blame for the collision.

“If someone didn’t hit the brakes in front, [there would have been] no concertina effect and wouldn’t have been any issues. I really think it was one of those stupid incidents,” he said.

“It was just like we’re going 60 and then started to slow a little bit for it, and then like zero all of a sudden and a little bit of the wrong place too, I was in his gearbox kind of thing, and ready for the restart. Just very unlucky, we were having a good race until then.

“I don’t think it’s [Ricciardo], it is everyone. Everyone just slammed on the brakes and he was the guy in front of me. I don’t think he slammed on the brakes, it was the concertina effect.”

But Ricciardo was eager to point out the enormity of what had happened under the Safety Car, given that Stroll had hit him so hard he’d lifted the RB off the ground.

“I could see it was bunching up in Turn 14, and we can’t know for a fact when [the leader is] going to go,” he said.

“Even if he bunches up in 14, it doesn’t mean he’s going to go out of 14. Maybe he bunches up again in Turn 15 or 16. So you just have to obviously try and stay close to the car in front. But not hit the car in front, right?

“Yeah, we all bunched up, fair enough, it’s a hairpin. But it’s not like [Stroll] just tapped me and gave me a puncture or something. He went underneath my car.

“He hit me so fast, you can’t deny that. It’s not an unlucky thing where he’s just tapped me. He was underneath me.

“He probably affected two of our races. Hopefully, when he comes here [to the media pen], he takes some accountability.

“But, if he goes hard on me, then… I don’t need to go to that level but, yeah…

“Once the dust settles, if he’s still hot-headed today, he needs to learn from this.

“We’ve all made mistakes. I’ve done it, we all have but, as long as he understands that he was the one that ruined not only his race but mine, that’s the biggest thing we can take away.”

It’s time for some introspection, Lance Stroll…

Given the extremely odd dynamic at Aston Martin which is willingly continuing to hamstring itself with one of its drivers – as evidenced by Alonso always having the upper hand – the one area Stroll could bring some respectability and dignity to his position as a nepotistic hiring is to showcase himself as a thoughtful, intelligent, and mature racing driver.

His steely determination to return to the cockpit following his wrist injuries last season went a long way towards casting himself in that light, and one has to feel sympathetic towards the young man for how difficult it undoubtedly is to come to terms with the talents Alonso shows week in, week out, in the same car.

But Stroll doubling down on an untenable position of protesting his innocence, and instead blaming an intangible ‘they’ in front of him, is hardly a shining example of maturity and instead shows petulant childishness – an attitude a lot of people will be familiar with when it comes to family members working for the family business.

Everyone makes mistakes, so it’s not like Stroll’s reputation will take a hit if he owns up to this one – quite the opposite. After all, having been penalised already, there’s nothing to gain for Stroll by adopting the position he’s doubled down on – certainly, there are no signs of him “learning from this” as Ricciardo hoped.

When your driving has incensed the very laidback and reasonable Ricciardo to a position of fury, when Oscar Piastri wryly smiles that “everyone else didn’t crash into each other” about your mistake, and the stewards so quickly reach a verdict that your driving warrants punishment, it’s time for some introspection.

The damage is done, the penalty is served, and there’s no no-claims bonus to be preserved here. Turn the tide of negativity into a positive – hold your hands up, admit the mistake, and say sorry. Why is that so difficult to do?

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