Aston Martin Formula 1 driver Lance Stroll has incurred his second grid penalty of the Monaco Grand Prix weekend for impeding Pierre Gasly in qualifying.
The Canadian driver has had a three-place grid penalty added on top of his one-place grid penalty from Friday practice, when he collided with a fast-approaching Charles Leclerc at the Hotel hairpin.
But unlike that incident, this newest incident does not carry any penalty points with it, meaning Stroll remains with three points on his license (out of the 12 required for a race ban).
Stroll got in the way of Gasly's Alpine during Q1 at the Nouvelle chicane, and told his team on the radio immediately that he had been caught out by the glare of the sun.
Gasly aborts a flying lap as he encounters Stroll at the Nouvelle Chicane
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He had just let another car through - the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton - but thought this was Gasly, so returned to the racing line without the knowledge that Gasly was still to come through.
The stewards' verdict confirmed and accepted this explanation.
"Car #18 [Stroll] was informed that car #10 [Gasly] was arriving on a fast lap at Turn 10," the verdict read.
"From the radio communications it appears that car #18 was not informed/reminded that car #44 [Hamilton] (whom car #18 had overtaken earlier in that lap) was also coming and that car #44 was going to overtake car #18.
"The driver of car #18 assumed wrongly that there was only one car to be let by and when car #44 (which was not on a fast lap) went by him, he moved back to the racing line, thereby impeding car #10, which was on a fast lap.
"During the hearing, the driver of car #18 stated that he could not tell the colour of the car that had overtaken him because of the position of the sun, which we accepted."
Despite this "acceptance", however, a penalty has still been assessed - with it clear that the stewards' have deemed Aston Martin's communication to Stroll to have been insufficient.
But this penalty shouldn't impact Stroll's starting position of 19th, given both it and the previous one-place penalty are being offset by the 10-place penalty 17th-place qualifier Ollie Bearman received for overtaking under red flags in FP2.
