Alonso’s teammate broke his arm two weeks before the first F1 race. A couple of bolts and patience – and he taxied one in the top 6

There are two heroes in Aston Martin .

Before the winter tests, Aston Martin temporarily lost one of the pilots: on February 18,  Lance Stroll fell off his bike in training near Spanish Malaga and injured his hands – he broke his left wrist, his right wrist with a displacement and partially his left arm . The reservist and F-2 champion Felipe Drugovich ran tests for him – it was expected that he would also perform at the first Grand Prix (although there were crazy rumors about the return of Sebastian Vettel).

According to Brazilian journalists, on Thursday before the Bahrain Grand Prix, Drugovic was furious – Aston Martin announced the return of Stroll. The Brazilian did not hear about Lance’s medical tests and until the last he was sure of the upcoming full-fledged debut. But how could Lance give up a place in the new fast Aston Martin?

“It’s kind of crazy,” Stroll said in the middle of the weekend after qualifying. – Exactly two weeks ago there was an accident, 12 days have passed since the operation, and a week ago I left the hospital. I couldn’t move my arms, I couldn’t walk – I broke my toe. It seemed very far from Bahrain, there was almost no light at the end of the tunnel.

I am very grateful to be here and back in the car. Thanks to everyone: my physiotherapist, a doctor in Spain [Yoan Mir, who usually operates on MotoGP riders – Sports.ru], who performed the procedure. Everyone helped me a lot to be here.

In fact, today [Saturday] is the first day that my toe has recovered enough that I can step on it. It does not hurt in the car, except on bumps. Every day I feel better: I go to physical therapy, put ice on my wrists. Every day the situation improves by ten percent.”

 

Nevertheless, the press and fans doubted Stroll’s ability to properly control the car to the end. But Lance insisted that everything was in order:

“I have done two sessions on the simulator and I feel good. We turned on the usual physical response settings on the steering wheel, and I felt perfectly fine when making a full turn of the steering wheel, climbing curbs, and so on.

The first days were very difficult. Then in the last 4-5 days my condition began to improve significantly. The doctors gave me the green light to participate – they are sure that I can race and that the bones have grown together normally.

Only now I have a few bolts in my hands – they were placed during the operation. I don’t know when they will be taken out. Depends on how you feel. There are still some painful sensations behind the wheel of the car, but in general everything is fine. Nothing that I have not had to deal with in the past. I can drive the car normally even with a little discomfort – nothing that would really interfere with racing, like bouts of sharp pain and so on.

In fact, Stroll’s hand hurt so much that in some places he piloted one

Lance continued to recover throughout the weekend. According to journalist Pedro Flores, Stroll did kneading exercises for his hands all the time. And he also had a bandage not only on his right wrist, but also on his left – he just hid it under his watch. And no matter what Lance says, the injury still affected aerobatics.

In practice, the Aston Martin pilot kept letting go of the steering wheel due to pain:

He had to adapt to difficult turns – and because of this, at times he became a threat to the rest. This is how McLaren rookie Oscar Piastri almost flew into him before the technical first turn:

Sometimes, due to the pain in his hands, Stroll could not even follow the instructions of the race engineer:

Engineer: Lance, you need to do the first turn differently to get a better trajectory in the second. Sacrificing the first turn for the second.

Lance: I can’t. I can’t because of my hands.

And in general, look at how Lance pilots (in the same video): in some turns, he removes his left hand and presses it on the steering wheel – at such moments he could no longer turn his right because of a sore wrist.