Lance Stroll believes third place was still a strong possibility before his crash at Arrabbiata 2 during the Tuscan Grand Prix.
The Canadian lost out to Daniel Ricciardo through the pit-stop phase but was closing back in on the Renault driver before his sudden off at the fastest corner on the circuit, causing the second red flag of a chaotic race.
“It’s a shame I couldn’t bring it home today,” Stroll said.
“I don’t know if it was a puncture or a suspension failure, we have to look into it. It felt like a puncture but at that speed, it’s so hard to tell what it was. We’ll do some investigating and find out.
“We had great pace and we were on for a podium,” he added. “We were hunting down Ricciardo and it was going to get exciting there at the end…”
Some debris was seen flying from the car at the moment Stroll lost control, but Racing Point boss Otmar Szafnauer wasn’t sure if it was a part of the RP20.
“So initially Lance thought it was a puncture, that’s what he reported to us,” he said.
“We immediately looked at the tyre pressure and for sure the tyre pressure was at zero, but that was after he already hit the barrier so not before. We’ve got to find out what it was.
“Thereafter I saw exactly what you saw and Lance did too, and he thinks it may have been a bit of carbon debris that could have gone into his left rear and caused the puncture, and then the spin.”
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Notably, Stroll was the only driver to be using an upgrade on his Racing Point at Mugello, and with that destroyed in the accident, there is now a race on to have the new parts on both cars for Sochi,
“He did have the upgrade so now I don’t know… we’re going to have to do a lot of work to get the parts together so both of them have the upgrade in Russia,” Szafnauer added.”