‘Arrest them both’: Ex-Red Bull engineer reacts to Latifi-Stroll incident at 2022 Australian GP

Nicholas Latifi and Lance Stroll were involved in a bizarre crash during qualifying for the 2022 Australian Grand Prix.

Fans had a mixed reaction to the crash during qualifying between Nicholas Latifi and Lance Stroll, and a former Red Bull engineer settled on both of them being at fault.

Stroll had already crashed earlier in the day when he found the wall at Turn 11, leaving his Aston Martin team with a massive repair job ahead of qualifying.

They did a tremendous job of getting his car ready to head out in the first qualifying session, but moments after he had been sent back out onto the circuit, he was involved in another collision with his compatriot while they were both on slow laps.

READ: Horner suggests cause of Verstappen’s ‘unacceptable’ DNF in Melbourne

Latifi allowed Stroll to pass as they entered Turn Five, but then endeavoured to get back past him on the exit.

However, presumably not looking in his mirrors, the 23-year-old drifted across the track.

The consequence was contact between them, sending the Williams violently into the barrier and out of the session, while the Aston Martin’s suspension also picked up damage, necessitating another repair job.

The former Red Bull employee initially put the blame on Latifi, sparking instant criticism of Stroll on Twitter.

“Arrest Latifi immediately,” he posted.

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“You mean stroll,” replied one user, before another emphasised: “Not his fault, lances awareness was poor there.”

Having had a proper chance to look at the replay, he concluded that they both could have displayed a little more sense.

“Oh I saw the replay **** it arrest them both,” he amusingly said.

He then added a picture of his daughter, who gave her detailed verdict on the incident.

“Don’t worry everyone, the expert steward here with me has proclaimed that one of them was on their phone and it was ‘oh my gosh crazy,’” he joked.

Stroll would ultimately end the session 20th, and the stewards ruled that he was the driver at fault for the collision.

“LAT pulled off course to the left and slowed at the exit of Turn Four to let cars by, the last of which was STR,” read the FIA’s ruling.

“At the exit of Turn Five, STR appeared to not accelerate and was in the middle of the track.

“LAT made the decision to accelerate and pass STR on the right as STR was moving right toward the right hand edge of the track where the tracks curves slightly to the right on the run to Turn Six.

“Contact was made between STR’s right front wheel and LAT’s left rear wheel, with the subsequent damage putting both cars out of the session.

“The stewards find that STR was predominantly to blame for the collision because of his lack of situational awareness of LAT’s passing manoeuvre.”

READ: Disappointed Sainz takes responsibility for torrid Australian GP

He was therefore given a three-place penalty, and had two penalty points added to his superlicense.

The Canadian would start the race P19 though after Alex Albon was disqualified for failing to provide a fuel sample when his Williams stopped at the end of Q1, and he finished the race in 12th after collecting another penalty for weaving on the straight to defend from Valtteri Bottas.

Team-mate Sebastian Vettel, who also crashed in the final practice session on Saturday, found the wall again in the race to compound what was already a torrid weekend on his return after testing positive for COVID-19, thus missing the first two rounds of the season.

Aston Martin are now the only team yet to score points in 2022 after Albon made an exceptional recovery to P10 on Sunday.