Lance Denied Podium Shot at Mugello

Lance Stroll was cruelly denied a shot of a second podium in a row, after a mechanical failure took him out of 4th position at the Tuscan Grand Prix.

Following on from his first podium of the season in Monza, Lance headed to another Italian venue and a first for Formula 1, at Mugello for the Tuscan Grand Prix.

At a brand new circuit, Lance and teammate Checo acclimitised themselves to the new high-speed and abrasive circuit during Friday's two practice sessions.

Qualifying day saw Lance up the pace in Free Practice 3, ending P4 on the timesheets, following up with P7 in Qualifying - after he was unable to complete his final lap due to a yellow flag for a spin for Esteban Ocon in the opening sector of the lap.

Lance held position at the start, before the race was immediately under Safety Car following a multi-car collision at Turn 3.
At the restart, even more chaos ensued! As a huge pileup on the main straight put the race under red flag conditions whilst the circuit was cleared.

It was all about keeping it cool and collected during the Red Flag before we restarted on Lap 10 of 59 – with Lance wasting no time in charging up to P4!

Lance then began to hunt down the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc, gaining time lap after lap before launching a successful move into Turn 1 and moving into the top three.

Lance went longer into his stint, stopping on Lap 31 and returning to the track in P4.
Lance really hit his stride in the second stint, using his new set of Mediums to chase down Ricciardo – who had jumped ahead on the undercut – in the battle for P3.

After reeling the Renault in, Lance was setting up a grandstand finish until a sudden loss of the rear caused by a puncture cruelly led to our Canadian crashing at Arrabbiata 2.

Thankfully, Lance is OK following a high-speed shunt, but it cruelly deneid him a shot of back-to-back podiums in Italy after a strong race in the upgraded RP20.

‍

Lance: “First of all, I’m OK after what was a big impact. We’re still investigating the cause of the crash. It all happened so quickly, but it felt like a puncture.

We need to go away and look at the data and fully confirm the reasons for it. There were some really strong points on the table and we were closing on Ricciardo for the final podium place before the accident, and it was all set up for an exciting finale.

I’m pleased with how the upgraded package performed this weekend, and it gives us a good platform for the coming races.

We were able to make a good start to the race and get a good launch in the restart to keep out of trouble until late on.
It was an unfortunate result and sometimes that’s how the cookie crumbles, but I’ll take the positives!”

Formula 1 heads into a two-week break before returning to action at the Sochi Autodrom for the Russian Grand Prix on the 25-27 September.