Lance Stroll stayed silent in the Italian GP’s most bizarre interview

Lance Stroll is not a man of many words, that much is known. But his appearance in the media pen after Formula 1’s Italian Grand Prix on Sunday evening was strikingly uninteresting, even by his standards.

Having just crossed the finish line 18th and last, one lap down on race winner Max Verstappen, Stroll faced a first question suggesting his strategy of running nearly 50 laps on a single set of tyres hadn’t paid off. His epic response: “Yep.”

And that was it. Asked if he had anything else to say about the race, he remained silent. Same with the question about Esteban Ocon’s penalty – Ocon had forced him off the track at the Variante della Roggia, and been handed a five-second sanction and a penalty point for it.

Then, when asked if there was at least something positive he could take away from Monza, Stroll answered: “Not much.” Two whole words.

By then, the team’s PR seemed embarrassed, even throwing in one of those classic “Okay, well then…” lines that usually wrap up awkward phone calls. But one reporter still pressed on: “Did Esteban squeeze you?” Stroll didn’t bother answering.

“Do you agree with the penalty he got?” All Stroll offered, with a shrug, was: “I don’t have anything to say about it.” And then he walked off.

An hour or so later came the next media session at Aston Martin. This time, chief trackside officer Mike Krack was holding his traditional Sunday evening debrief.

When told that Stroll had been less than talkative and asked whether the Canadian was angry about the strategy, Krack defended the team owner’s son: “No, I think in these situations when you have a race with almost no degradation and you start from the back, you have to hope for opportunities.

“We always get safety cars when we have done our pitstops, so we said let’s wait until the safety car comes this time and then it doesn’t come. It is normal that you are a bit frustrated because you are fighting for nothing, although you are pushing to the limit. So I can understand a certain level of frustration.”

On top of that, there was “an issue on the pit gantry that we need to understand,” Krack said. “As a result, Stroll was held longer in the pits than necessary. “We have downloaded now the log data and this is another thing that will have to be analysed,” Krack said.