While many criticised Canadian rookie Lance Stroll when he crashed into the wall at Albert Park during practice this past weekend, what they failed to admit was that other drivers, a lot more experienced around the Melbourne venue, have done worse.
Who will ever forget the 2006 event when the almighty and legendary Michael Schumacher rounded turn 16 and went into the wall on pit straight? No one hit him, his car didn’t fail. It was toward the end of the race and he made an out of character error. It happens, to all of us, the best and the worst of us.
Remember? (sorry about the foreign language)
Michael was not the only one to make a mistake here, others have also crashed out, Felipe Massa when he was driving for Ferrari, and of course, we can never forget when Ralf Schumacher went airborne into turn one.
The young, and I mean young, as he is only 18, year old, made an impressive start to his first ever Grand Prix, making good progress up to P14. He avoided the collision between Giovinazzi and Ericsson on the opening lap, which caused a flat spot on his supersoft tyres and meant he had to pit early for a new set of ultrasofts. But he came into the garage, calmly and cooly for what turned out to be his first stop.
Lance pitted again and battled with drivers on a one-stop strategy, running as high as 13th, but sadly an issue with his front left brake forced him to retire from his Formula One debut. A mechanical error, not a driver error.
“We were running a decent race and the pace was pretty good. I had a good start, which was risky although I didn’t plan on it being quite so risky! Some guys braked quite early in front of me and I managed to gain some places, but then I had a flat spot so had to stop early and, strategy-wise, we changed to a two-stop,” he said. “Then we managed to have a surprisingly good race."
"It was my first race, and first weekend, so there are a few positives to take out of it. We had what I believe was a brake disc failure. I just hit the pedal, it went long and I was lucky it was in a place where there was a lot of run-off. Unfortunately, that incident yesterday cost us a lot of positions in qualifying, but I enjoyed myself and so a big thank you to the team.”
So to everyone out there criticizing this young guy, I would suggest you take another look. Give him at least half a dozen races, if not more, then we may be able to look a little closer at how he is performing and we can talk then.
