Lance Stroll has detailed what caused him to drive through high-speed corners at Silverstone with full lock on the steering wheel of his Aston Martin.
Footage of the Canadian going through Copse and the iconic Maggots-Becketts sequence with his steering wheel upside down went viral on social media during the British Grand Prix weekend, raising further concerns about the current performance of the AMR26.
The Silverstone-based squad has endured a torrid start to the F1 season, and Stroll is yet to score a point nine rounds into the campaign.
Aside from the underpowered Honda power unit, in the team's first voyage as a works outfit with the Japanese car giant, Adrian Newey's first Aston Martin chassis has been riddled with issues.
Upgrades are expected next weekend at the Hungarian Grand Prix, which should go a long way to unlocking the potential the Briton insists is inside the car, but for now, Stroll and Fernando Alonso must get through what is anticipated to be another difficult round at Spa-Francorchamps.
When the three-time podium finisher was asked about the surprising clips that gained traction online, he explained the underlying cause.
"We have entry instability in braking and medium-low speed, and then we have this kind of aero stalling — that kind of front-of-floor, front-wing stalling — where we just completely wash out in high-speed corners," Stroll told media, including RacingNews365. "So, a few limitations."
When asked for his first-hand account of the experience, which revealed his motivations for what appeared to be drastic action from inside the cockpit.
"Some of these aerodynamic stalls are very hard to see on the pressure taps, and where it's coming from," the 27-year-old replied.
"So I'm just trying to kind of give more of an idea to the guys back in Silverstone that are doing aero and everything what we're feeling in the car. Sometimes it's hard for them to see it just on data."
'Alarms triggering' on the Aston Martin pit wall
Mike Krack, the team's chief trackside officer, was also asked about the footage. The Luxembourgish engineer corroborated Stroll's motivation, whilst sharing how it set "alarms triggering" on the Aston Martin pit wall.
"Lance has always been very vocal about the front end, and I think he wanted to show, basically, that there is nothing coming from the front [end], even at that high speed, if you give them more," he said.
"So I didn't see these videos on social media; I saw them live when it happened because you have some alarms triggering on your screens.
"But I think that that was mainly the background to show there is not- I can turn whatever I want; there is not more front coming."
When it was queried if the extreme behaviour of the AMR26 was still prevalent with maximum wing angles at the front, Krack responded: "With what we ran, basically, because there are limits. There are legal limits in terms of what you can do.
"At the end of the day, it's a track where you need a lot of front, which they didn't have, and I think it was a way of showing that this is a weakness."
Originally published by RacingNews365 —
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