Lance Stroll admitted that he was “fading” in the immense heat and high humidity during the Qatar Grand Prix on Sunday, with him having been seen going straight to an ambulance after the race.
It was a brutal 57-lap race at the Lusail International Circuit, where the drivers were all pushed to their physical limits.
Several drivers went straight to the medical centre after the race, due to suffering from severe dehydration and heat exhaustion.
Stroll’s onboard camera as he parked in parc ferme showed just how much he’d been drained by the race, as he slowly stumbled straight to an ambulance.
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He wasn’t the only driver to receive immediate medical support, as Logan Sargeant was seen by a member of the medical team whilst he tried to climb out of his FW44, after retiring due to feeling so unwell.
Some drivers have insisted that the Qatar GP simply went too far and beyond being safe, with Stroll having revealed that he was virtually losing consciousness through some of the corners.
He didn’t even leave Qatar with points for his efforts, as two track limit penalties demoted him from ninth to 11th, much to his frustration.
“Yeah frustrated,” Stroll told Sky Sports F1 after recovering.
“We finished ninth but then two track limit penalties put us eleventh. It’s annoying that such a hard race physically and just grinding out there [and] we didn’t come away with points.”
Stroll wasn’t the only driver to be penalised for exceeding track limits, with almost every driver having struggled to stay within the white lines.
The Aston Martin driver slammed the stewards for dishing out so many track limit penalties, as Stroll revealed that the heat meant that “everything goes blurry” through the high-speed corners.
“It’s ridiculous. I mean these temperatures everything goes blurry,” insisted Stroll.
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“The last 25, 30 laps it was just blurry in the high-speed corners, blood pressure dropping and just passing out basically in the car in the high-speed corners with high G-forces.
“And then the kerbs now are painted because they were worried about punctures with these high-loaded G-force corners in the tyres. 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.
“But the last 20, 25 laps [I] can’t really see anything cos you’re just fading as you’re going through those corners. It’s really a shame that with such a hard-fought race we only got eleventh.”