We were all unbelievably surprised at the news that Lance Stroll, and not Felipe Drugovich would start the race alongside Fernando Alonso at Aston Martin in Bahrain. Now, in the wake of Stroll’s excellent performance and Alonso’s podium, the Canadian has revealed the full extent of his horrifying bike crash in Spain, which shows just how much of a miracle it was that he can even drive a car, let alone compete in the first race of the season. Plus, a familiar face returns to save Mercedes, and McLaren reveals how 15mm ruined their car.
Lance Stroll’s incredible comeback
“I want to take a moment today to reflect on the last couple of weeks, and share my story with you guys,” Stroll said on Instagram, Tuesday. “On Saturday, February 18th I crashed on my bike while training in Spain. The scans showed I had a fracture and displacement in my right wrist, a fracture in my left wrist, a partial fracture in my left hand, and finally another fracture in the big toe on my right foot.”
Stroll says his medical team thought he was “realistically” going to miss the first few races of the season, let alone Bahrain. 48 hours after the accident, Stroll had surgery on his right wrist and was told by Doctors he would make Jeddah in Saudia Arabia and possibly even Bahrain “if [he] worked hard and with a bit luck.” Strolls left hand/wrist and toe injuries need conservative healing and can’t be surgically fixed. Stroll showed signs of difficulty in practice, turning his wheel awkwardly into turn one and telling his race engineer he couldn’t compromise the angle to get a better exit into turn 2 as a result of his injuries. The “love tap” he gave Alonso on lap one apparently had him in tears, but he managed to bring it home in sixth place ahead of George Russell and just four seconds behind Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes.
James Allison returns to Mercedes
@Motorsport_IT reports that James Allison has returned to active duty in his role as Mercedes’ Head of technical operations to oversee upgrades to the W14 that could arrive early as Imola. Allison most recently worked as CTO at Ineos Team UK in the America’s cup. His resume boasts 11 F1 championship-winning cars including Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari from 2000-2004, the ‘05 and ‘06 Renault, and the W09, W10, W11, and W12.
15mm from success
McLaren’s technical director James Key has revealed that a decision to raise the floor edge of 2023’s F1 cars by 15mm has absolutely ruined McLaren’s performance thanks to the direction it chose with its concept for the new regulations. "We all agreed to that as porpoising protection, which was very sensible given at the time last year that was still quite a major issue. It began to improve for everyone as things improved during the year,” Key told Autosport’s Adam Cooper.
"That sounds very small, but these floors are huge and incredibly sensitive. Look at how much downforce it generates, massive. So when we did it on our car, it actually gave us a much bigger loss than anticipated.”
Key says McLaren is in the minority of two camps that developed last year, and that it knew it wouldn’t be able to recover performance in time for the season opener. However, he insists they weren’t “dawdling” and that the team has prepared “a completely refreshed and revamped approach to that area of the car.” While frustrating, Key promised papaya fans that the development rate “is so much higher than what we had” on the new concept and “the route we're on now seems to be pretty prolific.” With P17 and a DNF on the timesheets after round one, the only way is up for McLaren.