I actually feel a little bad for Lance Stroll. Not only did he not feel well in Russia but he came to Germany and things went from bad to worse. Bad enough to miss qualifying nd the Eifel Grand Prix prompting another stand-in performance by Nico Hulkenberg.
Things don’t stop there though. No, team boss Otmar Szafnauer went on to describe what Lance was dealing with in great detail…TMI dude!
“He hasn’t been feeling great since Russia,” he explained. “I think he had a bit of a cold. At first we thought, ‘Well you had better get tested for the virus.’
“We’ve tested him multiple times, including the pre-event test for this race. And he’s come back negative three or four times. He doesn’t have the classic COVID-19 symptoms, he just doesn’t feel well in himself.
“And last night he had a bit of an upset stomach. So he was on the toilet the whole time. And he said, ‘I’ve got rid of a lot of fluid, and I can’t get off the toilet for long enough to get in the race car.’
“I don’t know if it’s something he ate, or if it’s a tummy bug. He just said, ‘I’m just not feeling up to it. We’re going to have a double-header coming up soon. And I’d rather rest and get ready for that.’
“We were hoping that he was going to get better. He had kind of flu-like symptoms. Just not well in himself, and couldn’t exercise, and so now that, with whatever he ate or a tummy bug together, he said, ‘I can’t do it.’ We’ve got a doctor looking after him and when he’s fit to leave, he’ll go home.”
Now that the world knows that Lance had, what we might politely call a “dippy tummy”, we get the graphic imagery of the poor Canadian seated on the porcelain throne all night and that’s just not an image I want to linger. I doubt Lance wants that either.
We hope he gets well soon.
Theoretically, it would’ve been fine for him to soil his suit, seat, floor, engine, spoiler, the next car, the next car, pit lane and the entire paddock.