Lance Stroll says that reverting a set-up that was used at the start of the season allowed him to stick in a rapid lap which saw him outqualify teammate Felipe Massa for the first time this season. Stroll will start tomorrow's race from P8, ahead of Massa in P9.
The Canadian hasn't started off the season ideally, being out-performed in both qualifying and most races so far. However, after surging to his first points score of the season last time out in Montreal, Stroll admitted that he was much more confident this weekend.
"It's been a great weekend so far," the 18-year-old said when speaking to Sky Sports. "In FP1 I felt really confident immediately, with the track, the car, the balance – everything. This weekend we came back to where we were with the set-up a few races ago, when we were more competitive, in China and Bahrain, where we were 10th, 12th on Saturdays.
"We drifted away from that to see if I'd like something different, but now we've kind of come back to it, and I've felt so much more comfortable and confident this weekend. And, of course, Canada was great for my confidence, scoring points there."
Stroll knows that tomorrow is the when the most important stuff counts and is hoping to keep it clean around the long circuit to claim another points finish.
"There are a lot of details to it, it's so many different things," he said. "We're a team, we do it together. It's not someone's fault or anything, that's not how it works. At Williams we all discuss together and we take the direction that we think is right.
"Just like any championship you need to discover what's good for you. Sometimes it takes a couple of weekends off where you should be, and then you kind of come back to it and figure out, 'No, that [previous set-up] was better'.
"We're only eight races in and this is hopefully a long term project. Today, I'm just really happy with the result, obviously the race is tomorrow and that's when we've got to score points, so just a clean day and it'll be good."
Fergal Walsh
Local time
Local time
Bahrain International Circuit - Winter testing
Replies (1)
Login to replyf1fan0101
Posts: 1,804
Fair play to him, great lap and great confidence builder