Aston Martin: People "judge too quickly" amid Stroll incident criticism

Amid a tough 2023 campaign, Stroll's frustration boiled over after being knocked out in Q1 during Friday qualifying at Losail.

While storming out the back of the garage, he appeared to shove his trainer Henry Howe as he attempted to direct his driver to be weighed in parc ferme.

Stroll was investigated by the FIA's Compliance Officer and received a written warning for his behaviour, "reminding Lance of his responsibilities as a competitor bound by the FIA Code of Ethics".

In the FIA's statement it added that it "maintains a zero-tolerance stance against misconduct and condemns any actions that may lead to physical harassment.”

Stroll's outburst came during another difficult weekend which extended his streak of scoreless grand prix weekends to five, while seeing his gap to team-mate Fernando Alonso soar to a mammoth 136 points.

The divisive Canadian's behaviour was the subject of plenty of debate among fans and observers, but Aston's team boss Krack has outlined why the team itself isn't as concerned about the incident as people on the outside.

"You accumulate delivering below your own expectations and then the theme of frustration comes on at one point," Krack said.

"You take a football player off the pitch and he doesn't do high fives to the manager; he throws the jersey or throws the water bottles, we have seen that quite a lot.

"And to be honest, I always try to delay this [media session] as much as possible to just try and get rid of the adrenaline, but I'm sure we run maybe 10 to 20 times less adrenaline on the pitwall than the drivers but you put the microphone straight away in front of them or you gauge every reaction that they do."

Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR23, leaves his pit box

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

He added: "I think emotions is what we want from sportsmen and then if they react, we judge them quickly. We need to be careful with that.

"I think it goes one step too far when you have 10 people sitting on the sofa or in an air-conditioned room say, 'this is too much or you cannot do that'. I think we need to have a bit more respect for the drivers and for elite sportsmen, I would say.

"It's easy from the outside. I think we judge too quickly."

The Stroll incident drew parallels to Max Verstappen shoving Esteban Ocon at the 2018 Brazilian Grand Prix, for which the Dutchman was slapped with two days of public service by the FIA.

However, that incident involved violent behaviour towards competitors, rather than an internal altercation that was caught on the world feed.