Lance Stroll claims he is only partially to blame for his 12-race streak of failing to make it out of Q1 in qualifying.
The Canadian continued his rather unwanted run on Saturday at Paul Ricard as he only managed to beat the two Williams and claim 18th place, four positions behind teammate Sergio Perez.
But while optimising the tyres for single lap performance has always been the weakness of Stroll, he insists his pace is also limited by his machinery.
"It’s a combination of things," he said to Formula1.com earlier this week.
"At the beginning of the season, I didn’t execute perfectly and that knocked me out early rounds, however, the last few weekends, we just haven’t had the pace to get through with both cars getting knocked out.
"So that’s a focus point moving forward because our race pace looks pretty strong. It’s something we have got to focus on."
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If the 20-year-old can improve in qualifying then he has shown on several occasions he is more than capable of fighting for points, coming through the field twice this season in Australia and Canada.
And after his latest Q1 exit in France, something he blamed squarely on the tyres, he does have higher hopes for the race,
“Yes definitely, sights set on tomorrow and we will see what we can do from there,” he said.
