STROLL MAKES INROADS IN SHORT TIME ON CIRCUIT
Underperforming car contributes to young driver’s struggles to collect points this season
After spending most of his rookie season in Formula One under the microscope because of his wealthy father, things haven’t been much easier for Montreal’s Lance Stroll in 2018, although for much different reasons.
After starting slowly during his rookie season last year while struggling to come to grips with the Pirelli ties, Stroll stumbled out of the gate in 2018 because, simply put, the 2018 Williams F1 car he drives has turned out to be a bit of a dog.
“It is a lemon at the minute, but we are going to make it not a lemon,” Rob Smedley, Williams head of performance engineering, said last month.
“I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with the car fundamentally, but there are areas that we need to work on. There are areas we haven’t perhaps exploited well enough in the past, even going back two or three years.”
Going into the Canadian Grand Prix, where Stroll exited after an opening-lap crash, Williams Racing has scored a total of four points in six races, all delivered by Stroll’s eighth place on the streets of Baku, Azerbaijan, last month. In the first six races, a Williams has only started in the top 10 once, when Stroll lined up in 10th for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
To get an idea of how bad the car is this year, at least one Williams has started in the final two rows of the grid in every race but one.
“I have mixed feelings about the year,” Stroll said.
“As a team we are not where we want to be. It’s been a bit of a frustrating start and we haven’t been as competitive as we were hoping to be, but in many ways I think it’s been a very positive year as well. I feel I have delivered on multiple occasions, I’ve had some great races even though the results don’t look outstanding, I’ve gained a lot of positions and had some good battles, and scored some points.”
Stroll moved into his sophomore season with the Williams team after facing a barrage of critics who insisted that his swift rise to the pinnacle of motorsport had more to do with his billionaire father’s bank account than talent on the track.
The then 18-year-old responded to the doubters with several excellent performances in 2017, including scoring his first career points with an inspired drive to ninth place at his home race in Montreal, scoring Williams’ only podium last year (third in the Azerbaijan GP) and delivering a spectacular frontrow grid spot at the Italian Grand Prix in treacherous conditions at the famed Monza Circuit.
Stroll ended his rookie season 12th overall in points, only two spots below and three points behind his vastly more experienced teammate Felipe Massa, who retired at the end of the year.
Massa was replaced by rookie Sergey Sirotkin, who joined the team after spending two seasons as a test and reserve driver with the Renault F1 team. His last full race season was 2016, when the 22-year-old Moscow native finished third overall in the GP2 F1 feeder series. He also ended the 2015 GP2 season in third overall and has a total of three wins in 44 starts in that series. GP2 is now called the Formula 2 Championship.
Veteran Robert Kubica also joined the outfit this year as a test driver and Stroll insisted that his experience has helped the team get a handle on the issues. The Polish driver, who scored his maiden F1 win in Montreal in 2008 with the old BMW-Sauber team, hasn’t raced in a grand prix since he was critically injured in a February 2011 crash in the Ronde di Andora rally.
With the car underperforming, identifying the problems and
Formula One is a marathon, so I’m looking forward to the rest of the season. Hopefully, we can turn things around.
finding ways to solve the issues to close the gap on the teams ahead is job No. 1 for Stroll and his Williams engineers. Improving the car depends on feedback from the drivers on the way the Williams handles and the areas where it falls short.
“I think it’s pretty straightforward: I give direction in what I want from the car and what I think could be better, and then it boils down to the team back at the factory to take my words and put them into action,” Stroll said.
“It’s a challenging sport and that’s always been the case. Ev- eryone has stepping stones and we will just have to step two stones at a time.”
Unfortunately, the rest of the teams won’t stand still as the Williams team tries to squeeze more speed out of its cars, so even if it does improve the prospects might not improve for its drivers. While Williams might find more speed, the other teams are also working overtime to make their already quicker cars faster. As they try to catch up, Stroll hopes that he can make the most of the chances he gets to shine, such as the points finish in Baku this year. And, as happened last season, getting a good result at home would have gone a long way to erasing the difficulties he’s experienced this year.
“Anything could happen,” he said before Sunday’s race. “We struggled at the beginning of the year and then suddenly Baku came around. It’s a different kind of track, and opportunity knocked and we capitalized on it.
“Formula One is a marathon, so I’m looking forward to the rest of the season. Hopefully, we can turn things around and pick up some more points and go on to have a great rest of the season.”