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Nico Rosberg has criticized Lance Stroll for the excuses he gave after the mistake-prone 2023 F1 Qatar GP, where the Canadian once again could not score any points. Stroll has been under pressure since the summer break as the driver has not scored a single point.
In the meantime, Aston Martin has a podium finish while Fernando Alonso continues to be a regular presence in points finishes. The race in Qatar was especially harsh for Lance Stroll as he was almost a second slower than his teammate in qualifying. Not only that, there was the incident on Friday where Stroll shoved his trainer after getting eliminated in qualifying.
After the race in Qatar, Lance Stroll blamed the conditions for being poor and said that the hazy conditions played a major role in him getting the track limits infringement.
Nico Rosberg however was not buying it as the former Mercedes driver told Sky F1 that something like this can't be an excuse for a bad result. He said:
“I think it was a decent race perhaps, for him but still an extreme way of stating it that he says the last 25 laps he’s almost passing out in those high-speed corners. I mean, I believe him that is just crazy, crazy difficult out there."
He added:
“But, nevertheless, all the other drivers managed to do without penalties – or many of them – especially the best ones out there today. So it’s not really an excuse, I think, to still have so many mistakes to get the penalties that he did.”
Lance Stroll complains about the heat in Qatar
Lance Stroll complained about the heat in Qatar in his post-race media scrum. He was not however the only one who complained as there were other drivers including Esteban Ocon and Lando Norris who complained about the heat.
Looking back at the race, Stroll told the media:
“It’s ridiculous. I mean, these temperatures… everything goes blurry. The last 25-30 laps were just blurry in the high-speed corners, with blood pressure dropping, and just passing out basically in the car in the high-speed corners with high G-forces."
He added:
“Then the kerbs were painted because they were worried about punctures with these high-loaded G-force corners and the tyres, and they painted the kerbs to make the track even narrower. So you’re relying just on your visual reference to the outside of the track and what that is.
"So you can’t really see anything because you’re just fading as you’re going through those corners.”
Lance Stroll will be hoping for a reversal of fortunes because the pressure of getting outperformed by Fernando Alonso seems to be getting to him.
