Lance Stroll missed last weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix due to a flare-up of wrist pain, a hangover from 2023, so what’s next for the Canadian driver?

Stroll pulled out of the race at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya after qualifying, with the pain in his wrists becoming intolerable after several weeks of fighting back against increasing discomfort.

Lance Stroll: A return, or does a premature F1 retirement await?

Stroll’s wrist issues stem back to early 2023, when the Canadian suffered injuries in a cycling accident before the season began.

The early estimates, at the time, were that Stroll would be out of F1 for a month or two beyond the season opener in Bahrain, in order to allow him proper time to rest and recover from his injuries – he had broken his right wrist and suffered some damage to his left.

Having been operated on by Dr. Xavier Mir, the esteemed physician who keeps high-profile MotoGP stars patched together, Stroll went through a very quick rehabilitation programme alongside simulator work and, heroically, raced in Bahrain to take sixth place just 10 days after the procedure.

“The last two weeks have just been the most insane two weeks of my life,” Stroll said at the time, beaming after rewarding his team and fighting against expectations to make his comeback.

“Terrible time to crash on a bicycle, and doctors were telling me maybe Australia, maybe Baku [for a comeback], and the light at the end of the tunnel was very hard to see.

“But I had an incredible medical team that helped me along the way. My osteopath Henry, who was with me 10 hours a day, the surgeon in Spain, who without him I wouldn’t be here – it would be impossible to be driving.

“There’s a list of people that I could name and without them I wouldn’t be here, so a huge thank you to them and well done to everyone back at the factory for building this incredible car that’s a pleasure to drive.”

But, almost two and a half years later, Stroll’s wrists haven’t been thanking him for the lack of rest. It’s perhaps no surprise that the pain he’s encountered has come after what has been a remarkably busy stretch of F1 action.

There have only been three weekends off since the F1 2025 schedule kicked off in Australia, following on from pre-season testing, and the pain Stroll was experiencing was getting worse over a period of six weeks – with no respite due to the race weekends coming thick and fast.

With Stroll now having undergone a procedure with Dr. Mir again – the details of which aren’t clear, due to it being a private medical matter – the big question that hasn’t yet been answered is just what comes next for the Canadian driver as the next race, his home event in Montreal, hoves into view.

“It is quite simple, the ‘Plan A’ is to have Lance in the car – that is the ‘Plan A’, and that is what we are working to,” said Aston Martin‘s Mike Krack in Barcelona. “If the ‘Plan A’ does not work, then we need to pull ‘Plan B’.”

Plan B is obviously putting a reserve driver in the car, although the identity of who that may be isn’t obvious. Both Felipe Drugovich and Stoffel Vandoorne, the team’s official reserves, are scheduled to drive in the 24 Hours of Le Mans that weekend.

“Obviously we always knew that Le Mans was going to happen, so we also had plans in place that if we need a driver that is doing Le Mans, we will bring him, but at the moment this is not the only question,” Krack said.

“We wait for what the next days are bringing, and then we take a decision.”

That decision is yet to be made, as Aston Martin waits anxiously to see whether Stroll – the team’s star points scorer this year – is able to make a comeback any time soon. After all, while his desire to be back isn’t in question at all, his rapid comeback in 2023 ended up with additional complications a long time later.

After all, wrist fractures typically take six to eight weeks to recover from and often leave lasting effects – sometimes for life – in terms of pain and stiffness. But Stroll was back in action just two weeks after his initial injuries, competing in the cramped confines of an F1 car and holding back the pain.

Brave, it certainly was, but the implications of that rushed desire may now be coming home to roost. If his latest surgery doesn’t alleviate the pain, might a premature F1 retirement await?

F1 2025: The season’s winners and losers

👉 The results of the F1 2025 championship

👉 The updated Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship standings

The conspiracy theories presented after Lance Stroll injury flares up

Certainly, it would appear the safe bet would be that Stroll will – or at least, should – miss at least one race in order to allow his wrists to recover from his fresh procedure to give himself ample recuperation time and ensure he gets full mobility back without pain. Climbing back into an F1 car and fighting against understeer and oversteery snaps, or risking a collision, doesn’t seem to be the wisest thing to do so quickly – particularly at a track that demands climbing all over the kerbs for lap time.

Added to that is the fact that, unlike in 2023 when Aston Martin knew it had a very competitive car, the Silverstone-based squad is fighting over much lower positions this year. To that end, missing a few races will be far less off-putting for Stroll than it was back then – even if he is still chomping at the bit to get back.

But what was interesting about Stroll’s misfortune was that it triggered quite a few conspiracy theories in the paddock in Spain – ranging from him simply not fancying toiling around in the midfield on a hot Sunday afternoon, all the way to the far more drastic idea of a potential F1 retirement.

There was also the suggestion that Stroll had lost his temper in the garage on Saturday, initially reported by the BBC, and that his injury had been triggered as a result of him losing his cool – the same report saying a spokesperson had stated the injury was unrelated to any moment of anger.

“No, no,” Krack said of this suggestion.

“First of all, I was on the pit wall and I have not heard anything. I think this is typical [media stories].”

While no denial of Stroll getting angry has been forthcoming from Aston Martin, what does seem to be the case is that the Canadian’s frustration appears to have been with himself and his physical pain rather than aimed at the personnel around him.

Harry Rush, a leading mechanic in the team, took to Instagram to comment on one such story, pointedly saying, “Swore at team members? Absolutely not true” – a statement which doesn’t shut down that there was an outburst.

Another theory that was put forward to PlanetF1.com by several sources was that, at a time when the team is heavily linked with trying to lure Max Verstappen away from Red Bull with speculated big-money offers, Stroll’s injury could offer him, the team, and his father Lawrence, a dignified way to leave F1 behind and free up one of the most desired seats on the grid for the new regulation cycle.

There is some logic to this – if his father and the various shareholders of the team do wish to run the team to its full potential, having two World Champions – Verstappen alongside Fernando Alonso – to lead the team forward in a new Adrian Newey era under Honda power, would be perhaps the strongest driver pairing on the grid.

But, if this is a tempting scenario, this would involve Lawrence having to drop his own son from the line-up – an unpalatable situation for everyone involved, especially given that Stroll’s purchasing and investment into the team has always been with the aim of giving his son the vehicle to showcase his talents and target the title.

If Stroll had to retire from F1 due to injuries that are causing him too much pain and risks long-term damage, it would clean up the optics of this scenario entirely, while giving Stroll Jnr. a soft landing to go into another category. Say, the World Endurance Championship, where the cockpits are a little more spacious and some tweaks could be made to allow Stroll to reduce the physical stress on his wrists –  a luxury not possible in an F1 cockpit. And where Aston Martin already has a factory team entry, courtesy of the Valkyrie in the Hypercar class.

As this writer suggested in 2023, the establishment of another high-profile racing venture requires exemplary drivers, and Stroll would easily be capable of being a top-level endurance sportscar driver in what could be marketed as a side-step in the company, rather than a demotion.

There is some (limited) logic to the wrist conspiracy theory, granted, but it doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny.

After all, the whole point of the Aston Martin team has been to help Stroll continue his F1 journey, and, by all accounts, his motivation and desire to compete has never wavered. As a canny businessman, Stroll Snr. has turned Aston Martin into a team with all the facilities and personnel to beat anyone if all the ingredients come together.

Seemingly on the cusp of potentially huge success and giving his son a very competitive car, why turn away from that journey at this point? After all, while Lawrence is a businessman and investor, there has been little reason not to think that he’s a father to Lance first and foremost.

Up until 2024, it could have been argued that Stroll was the weak link on the driver side, such was the points deficit he had against Alonso during their time together – perhaps justifying some of the talk of dropping him from the line-up. But this dynamic has shifted this year, and it’s Stroll – not Alonso – who has been the stronger performer for most of this season.

So, if there is any shareholder pressure to go after the biggest and the best names in F1, then Stroll is justifying his position to a far greater extent than he perhaps has in recent years.

Added to that is the fact that a driver going through an operation and the team supplying medical reports to the FIA would be a rather draconian sequence of events to carry out for the sake of attempting to plant the seed that, perhaps, this could be the start of Stroll starting to feel his way towards the exit.

While it’s easy to think that pretty much every action in Formula 1 has some sort of ulterior motive or is a controlled attempt at shaping a narrative, Occam’s razor surely applies here – Stroll is suffering complications from his wrist injuries and, until he returns to the cockpit to drive, there is no prognosis.

Until that point is reached, conspiracy theories should remain just that and, with a young man currently fighting to ensure his F1 career can continue, let’s hope that when Lance Stroll’s retirement from F1 does eventually come, it isn’t due to an unfortunate injury.

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