Aston Martin unsure about timing of Stroll's return

© XPB 

Aston Martin cannot yet make a call on whether Lance Stroll will have fully recovered from his cycling accident in time for next week's Bahrain Grand Prix.

Stroll suffered an injury on Monday while training on his bike. Aston Martin provided no details on the whereabouts or circumstances of the accident but qualified the crash as "minor".

Stroll was however ruled out of this week's pre-season testing in Bahrain.

On Thursday, Aston team boss Mike Krack remained evasive on the extent of his driver's injury, save that it involved Stroll's hand and wrist.

"He was training, trying to work on his fitness last week, he was cycling," said Krack.

"He has a small incident and hurt himself and for precautionary reasons, we decided it’s better to wait a little bit and be ready next week."

"This is his personal thing, so he is injured on the hand, the wrist so I don’t want to go into detail, this is privacy."

Pressed on whether the Canadian would be fit and well for next week's opening round of racing in Bahrain, Krack replied: "We will let you know in time".

If Stroll is ruled out of the Bahrain Grand Prix, it's likely that reserve driver Felipe Drugovich who tested with Aston this morning at Sakhir will sub for Stroll.

"He [Drugovich] did the morning session today so this is also something we have to do as a team to cover eventualities," added Krack.

"We have not made the final decision yet on where we go the next few days, we will do this in the next hours."

Unfortunately, it was an inauspicious start for Aston and Drugovich whose session was hindered at the outset by an electrical issue that limited the Brazilian's mileage to 40 laps, the lowest lap count of the morning.

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter