Aston Martin drivers have three crashes in one day in Australia.
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- Aston Martin is one of only two teams without a point in F1 this season.
- Sebastain Vettel had to sit out Friday practice due to engine issues.
- Stroll and Vettel both crash in FP3; Stroll then crashed again in qualifying.
It is fair to say that Aston Martin is not having a memorable Formula 1 season.
One of only two teams without a point in 2022, its campaign slumped even further south on a dismal day in Australia Saturday.
First up, Sebastian Vettel – who missed an entire session on Friday due to an engine failure – slid wide at the fast Turn 9/10 chicane and smacked into the barriers for Free Practice 3.
During the closing stages of the same practice session teammate Lance Stroll drifted wide exiting the turn 11 right-hander and clumsily wiped the front-left off against the barriers.
That gave Aston Martin a tight turnaround of two hours to get its cars repaired in time for qualifying.
It did so with Stroll’s car – only for the Canadian to stumble into a bizarre incident with compatriot Nicholas Latifi.
In Q1 Latifi pulled over to allow Stroll through, but the Aston Martin was not going particularly quickly, and so after they swapped positions Latifi opted to regain track position. As he did so Stroll moved across on him and clipped the Williams, sending it into a significant accident, and bringing out the red flag.
Stewards described Stroll as having “a lack of situational awareness” and gave him a three-place grid penalty, which had zero influence on account of qualifying last. Stroll was also issued two penalty points on his license, bringing him up to seven of the 12 permitted before a one-race suspension is enacted.
A dramatic moment at the end of Q1 😱#AusGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/vx3TthAaUH
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 9, 2022
“It’s clear he didn’t know I was there, no driver would turn in,” said Latifi. “For sure he didn’t see me there, he wasn’t looking in the mirrors. We’re both on cool down laps but we have to be aware of our surroundings at all times. It’s unfortunate.”
Stroll described it as “just a really awkward incident” and that Latifi “accelerated all of a sudden, but where he accelerated, that part of the track gets quite narrow to the right and it kind of falls away to the right. There’s a lot of camber that falls away to the right there. So where he accelerated, I was just following that path of the circuit and I warped towards the inside of the track as he was trying to accelerate at that last second.”
The suspension to the session gave Aston Martin extra time to repair Vettel’s car and he was able to get in one push lap. But given the AMR22’s limitations, and his own lack of running, he could muster only 18th, lifting him above just the stricken Latifi and Stroll.
“We get a lot of hammering from the outside and we hammer a lot on the inside as in we are not where we want to be and we have a lot of problems,” he said. “We find ourselves at the back, so we will see what we can do tomorrow, but for sure we know the next races are going to be difficult.”
Up front title leader Charles Leclerc will start Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix from pole, ahead of reigning champion Max Verstappen.
Keyword: Three is Not a Charm for The Aston Martin F1 Team in Australia