Launches Stroll into a downward spiral

He throws his steering wheel out of the cockpit, extracts himself from the passenger compartment and pushes his osteopath and coach Henry Howe before leaving the garage. This time, it's one setback too many: 17th, 1''1 second behind his teammate Fernando Alonso, who finished this first qualifying segment in 3rd place.

« My first lap was scrapped due to track limitations and I had to abort my second due to traffic, so I had a lot of work to do for my final run, he soon declared in the team’s press release. The car was going well, but we just didn't have the pace. »

Conversely, Alonso continues his uninterrupted series in Q3 since the start of the season; something no other pilot has managed to do. For Stroll who has only reached the final stage seven times, this is his fifth Q1 exit.

Trapped by the mixed conditions, he failed at Zandvoort. At Monza, he blames Friday free practice for failing to prepare properly. In Singapore, he suffered a violent exit from the track and had to withdraw from the race the next day.. At Suzuka, he missed Q2 by a few tenths during a weekend where Aston Martin was not particularly competitive.

Friday evening (October 6), after a single practice session disrupted by the wind on a very dusty track, he lost enormously compared to Alonso in the tight left – turn 6 – and in the following straight, as well as in showing a significant speed deficit in the sequence of 12 to 14 at high speed.

This series of poor performances rather than bad luck would disturb any driver. Stroll is not the first to show his anger after a particularly bad session, but shoving one of his colleagues at the back of the garage is the limit that must not be crossed and shows that he is sinking from the crisis.

He is certainly not the first to send his steering wheel, his gloves, his helmet wandering where we don't know what in a moment of great stress, to lose his composure. But there it becomes a limit. Caught in a negative mental spiral, he watches helplessly as a succession of failures result from performances leaving more and more to be desired. Worrying.

If he is defended tooth and nail by his team for the understandable but increasingly questionable reason that he is the son of the boss and that he is capable in certain circumstances of remaining less than 3/10th of his Spanish referent , it is urgent that he calms things down and finds some serenity.

Asked about his situation, the man speaks of “ difficult season " from the beginning. He talks about his bike accident, his serious hand injury which compromised his preparation and his first races, reliability problems, unfortunate circumstances, while admitting “ that the speed has not always been there. »

« There are things I can work on and improve to be faster, he conceded during the last Japanese GP. There are definitely things I can fix, things we can improve as a group to be stronger, and now I'm looking forward to the rest of the season and what we can do to finish strong. »

He also spoke of cars that were “more on the nose” as he put it, which perhaps did not suit him. Clearly, his overreaction yesterday shows that he is on the ropes and the big question now is whether he can use the last six races to regain his – sometimes excessive – placidity and convince the skeptics that he has really his place in a top 5 team!