This time, Stroll suffered issues with his battery which led to him becoming the first and only driver who started the race to retire from it. The only other racer not to finish was Valtteri Bottas, who was wheeled off the grid by Cadillac before the Grand Prix began because mechanics could not remove a stuck wheel nut from the rear-right tyre.

Cadillac have also had plenty of reliability issues, but theirs are more understandable given they are F1's newest team and this is their first season on the grid. But there are no such excuses for Aston Martin.

Owner Lawrence Stroll, Lance's father, has poured hundreds of millions of pounds into the outfit in a bid to turn it into a race and title-winning operation. While their new facilities are state-of-the-art and the legendary Adrian Newey is now designing their cars, it has been a disastrous season.

Only seven points have been scored, all of them by Fernando Alonso, in a year which Aston Martin had targeted as being the one in which they had the best opportunity to fight at the front of the grid with the 'big four' teams. Instead, they are 10th in the constructors' championship having outscored only pointless Cadillac.

Commentator Croft said: "Oh no, a problem with the car for Lance Stroll. Well, one day he's going to finish two races in a row, but he didn't finish in Mexico and he's not going to finish here today. And that's another massive shame for him and for Aston Martin, who have Fernando Alonso running in 12th putting pressure on Alex Albon, but it looks like a 21st DNF of the season for Aston Martin."

"What are they going to do for next year? Have they got different ideas, different people to sort the problem out? Where the battery pack, the ERS, the energy recovery system and just the power deficit they've got. That's the problem Aston Martin have at the moment: Where do they go from here?"

Speaking to media after the race, Honda's trackside general manager Shintaro Orihara admitted they were unclear about the root cause of the problem which caused Stroll's battery issue. He said: "We had another battery issue today on Lance's car. We know what happened, but we don't know what is the root cause.

"We will check the data and also we will check the battery, and it may take a few weeks to find the root cause. But from the data we need to find some countermeasure for next year and also we need find the actual root cause of this error for next year, otherwise we keep having the same issue, so this is quite important for us to understand what is the root cause."

Big moments. Packed grandstands. A championship battle that’s heating up.

When the Formula 1 season delivers like this, watching from home just isn’t the same as being there when the lights go out.

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