Lance Stroll says he doesn’t understand his penalty for colliding with Daniel Ricciardo during a Safety Car period, claiming it was instigated by another driver.
The stewards ruled the Aston Martin driver was “predominantly” to blame for the collision and gave him a 10-second time penalty plus two penalty points on his licence.
But Stroll said he was unable to avoid the RB driver ahead of him due to the “concertina effect” created as the cars slowed for the hairpin.
“Someone braked and in front and then I think everyone kind of braked and the car in front of me just stopped right in front of me,” he told the official F1 channel. “I had nowhere to go. It was just one of those really weird racing incidents.”
Stroll said he didn’t understand why he was singled out as he believes another driver caused the queue to slow down.
“I don’t understand it, it was really just one of those concertina effect racing incidents,” he said. “I guess because I was the one that hit the guy in front of me, I got the front of me. But someone caused that in front of him, someone hit the brakes. It was a weird one.”
However Ricciardo remained firm in his view that Stroll was to blame.
“The truth is at restarts we can’t predict what the leader is going to do so you have to be on edge and as aware as possible,” he told Viaplay. “Maybe he goes in turn 14, maybe he goes in turn 15, but you can’t just assume that it’s going to restart at turn 14 or whatever.
“So I could see everyone started to brake for 14 for the hairpin, it was starting to bunch up, so I got on the brakes. And then as I started slowing more and closing in on Oscar [Piastri], I felt Lance underneath me, basically.
“I was just told now that apparently he was blaming me for it and if that’s true – I was starting to calm down, but that really pisses me off because I watched his onboard and as soon as we start to brake he starts looking at the corner, and then as he starts getting closer, you can see he’s not even focussed on me and on a restart you have to focus on the car in front of you. That’s the only car. You can’t overtake them so there’s no point looking three cars ahead anyway.”
The stewards have handed Stroll two penalty points for the collision, bringing his superlicence points over the last 12 months to seven – five away from a potential one-race suspension.
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