An angry Lance Stroll claimed last Sunday’s Australian GP was about “surviving” for Williams not racing such were the array of issues he was having.
The British team entered the new season with low expectations as they look to figure out a new 2018 car which has a much different approach in terms of design from its predecessor as well as the youngest line-up on the grid.
Something as simple as a plastic bag would scupper teammate Sergey Sirotkin as he retired with brake problems and the Canadian would finish penultimate of the 15 finishers with only Brendon Hartley behind him.
“We’re not racing out there at the moment, we are surviving,” the 19-year-old said afterwards.
“The first lap I had a mode problem, for some reason I was in the wrong mode so I had no deployment. I gave a position to [Esteban] Ocon, with a massive de-rate.
“The car wasn’t cooperating the way I wanted it to the balance was all over the place and we also had temperature issues the whole race, managing temperatures. So I had to back off.”
Stroll’s difficult race came after a decent performance in qualifying when he produced a good final effort to make the second segment in a close battle with Sauber and Toro Rosso.
That meant little, however, with the former European F3 champion admitting Williams knew what was coming.
“The whole weekend we expected issues coming into the race, we knew there’d be a lot of problems,” he said.
“Realistically, it’s tough to point out one issue. There are a lot of things to sort out.”
