Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack expressed strong disagreement with the Penalty imposed on Lance Stroll following his contact with Daniel Ricciardo during the Chinese Grand Prix in Formula 1.

The incident occurred as Stroll made contact with Ricciardo while the safety car was out, causing chaos as the cars gathered up for a restart on Lap 27.

This collision led to Ricciardo being forced to retire due to the damage sustained by his RB car, with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri also suffering rear-end damage as a result of Ricciardo’s car being pushed into him.

The stewards attributed full blame to Stroll, citing his failure to exercise more caution to avoid the collision. Consequently, they penalized him with a 10-second penalty and two penalty points. Stroll himself deemed the penalty as “a joke”.

Mike Krack, standing firmly in support of Stroll, questioned the swiftness of the decision-making process, suggesting that it lacked thorough understanding. In an interview, he remarked, “A very, very quick verdict today without really understanding… I thought it was very, very fast and very harsh, very quick decision.”

“I think it was a chain reaction at the end of the day. You saw Fernando [Alonso] locking and another car behind and I think everybody was a little bit caught out there.

“I would have liked that this would have been looked at in a little bit more detailed way. We tried to discuss it, but the verdict was very quickly that Lance was to blame. And he got a 10-second penalty, additional to the front wing damage.”

Ricciardo’s frustration was evident as he felt Stroll was evading responsibility for the collision, highlighting that the Aston Martin driver was focused on the apex of Turn 14 rather than the events unfolding ahead of him.

“These situations are created in the front,” Krack replied. “Now, you can always say, you need to be more careful.

“But on the other hand if you’re too careful, and you have the restart and you lose more than one car length – everybody says ‘Are you asleep?’

“Things like that happen at different tracks. You remember the incident we had in Mugello [at the 2020 Tuscan GP], where there were a lot of cars involved.

“This is always the erratic movement that happens on a safety car restart. And we have some of these every year and it will continue to be.”

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