MONTREAL – Lance Stroll stayed cagey on the details surrounding his quick recovery from the injury which ruled him out of the Spanish Grand Prix two weeks ago.
Stroll has been cleared to take part in his home race in Montreal this weekend after missing the Barcelona event.
The Aston Martin driver had abruptly pulled out of the event after qualifying, complaining of pain in his right hand related to surgery he had after in injury in 2023.
Stroll appeared dour and uniterested in the press conference for his home race as he was quizzed on the situation.
“It’s just the old injury that I had with it a couple years ago,” Stroll told reporters on Thursday. “Just started to bug me again and… yeah… so… just got it sorted.”
When asked if he was confident there would not be a reoccurrence, he replied simply: “Pretty confident. Should be good.”
He sat for much of the press conference slumped in the chair with his hands in his pocket — he kept his right hand concealed when answering, holding the microphone in his left hand to answer questions.
Pressed on more details of the procedure he had to fix the latest issue, Stroll was cagey.
“It was bothering me for a few weeks over Imola, Monaco and then Barcelona was just really brutal throughout the weekend. I got the procedure done and drove this week [at a test in France] and I was feeling pretty good, so I’m confident.”
He later replied to another question: “Like I said earlier but I’ll say it again — I was in pain for a couple races. Barcelona [I] was in a lot of pain, so I got a procedure done, and now I’m not in pain.”
However, Stroll did admit while answering another question his right hand was still “a little sore” following the procedure.
He added: “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.”
Stroll’s withdrawal from the Barcelona race — announced after he had been eliminated in the second qualifying session — had genuinely caught Aston Martin off guard at the time, coming so late in the weekend that they were unable to replace him.
It meant the team raced with just one car.
Although Stroll’s teammate Fernando Alonso scored a point by finishing 10th, Aston Martin stayed ninth in the championship as Sauber vaulted up the order thanks to Nico Hulkenberg’s fifth position.
Stroll appeared to shrug off another question about whether he had left his team in the dark.
“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. In that situation I was struggling and I was trying to push through it but I just didn’t feel sensible to push anymore, it felt like the damage was getting worse and I needed to do something more serious about it.”
There had been a sense of confusion in the Formula 1 paddock following Stroll’s withdrawal, with plenty of unanswered questions about the timeline of Stroll’s pain, the late decision to pull out and the face Aston Martin had been left with just one car to compete.
There were other curious factors too.
Multiple sources told ESPN on Sunday that Stroll had caused a scene after his elimination from Q2, with a suggestion that he threw objects around the Aston Martin garage and swore at team members.
Stroll did not deny that version of events when quizzed about it on Thursday.
Asked to clarify what had happened, Stroll said: “Yeah I was frustrated for sure. Frustrated about my wrist and the last three races from Imola, and it was just inhibiting my driving.
“So I knew that Sunday was going to be tricky, probably impossible, and at that point I was pretty frustrated about it.”
Source: espn.com