Aston Martin Formula 1 driver Lance Stroll will miss the Bahrain pre-season test ahead of the 2023 campaign.
The team, which has Stroll’s father Lawrence as its executive chairman, announced that Stroll “was involved in a minor accident” while training on a bicycle in Spain.
He is “expecting a quick recovery and return to driving duties”.
“I am motivated to bounce back from this setback as quickly as possible,” Stroll was quoted as saying.
Stroll drove the new Aston Martin AMR23 in a Silverstone shakedown last week, and – with the Bahrain test entailing three days of single-car running for each team – would’ve been in line for (reliability permitting) a further day and a half of mileage at Sakhir.
The team did not announce how it would allocate driving duties in Bahrain now that Stroll is sidelined. Offering all three days up to new signing Fernando Alonso, who was just recently lamenting a limited testing allowance he saw as “a little unfair”, seems logical, while the team also has the likes of new reserve drivers Felipe Drugovich and Stoffel Vandoorne on the books, though the latter will be in Cape Town for Formula E this weekend.
The season opener will take place on the March 3-5 weekend, likewise in Bahrain. Aston Martin says that it will “issue an update” ahead of the opener regarding Stroll’s fitness, and that it will be “assessed daily” in the meantime.
