Lance Stroll will continue to stay with the Williams F1 team for now since the family continues to believe in the outfit’s potential, says the Canadian driver’s father and billionaire, Lawrence Stroll.
Williams has stumbled a lot with this year’s car. Their trouble started in the pre-season and the only point of solace was Stroll’s eighth-place finish at Baku.
But the Stroll family still believes in the team and is not looking to pull their son out of the British outfit.
Speaking with Motorsport, Stroll Senior said: “We’re not there yet. I believe in Williams, I believe in the team. Clearly, they got it wrong so far.
“I do believe this is a rude awakening, and hopefully it will bring the best out of the people, and they’ll fix it. I’m sure not as quick as we’d like, and not as quick as they’d like either.
“But we’re not going anywhere else.
“Obviously the car clearly isn’t where we hoped and wanted to be, it’s quite a way off. We struggled when we came here for testing, and we’re still struggling. So it’s pretty apparent to the eye what’s wrong with the car.
“I gather everyone is trying their best, there’s a great sense of urgency in the team. It’s not that they don’t recognise the problem, everybody does. A blind person could see the problem. I know they’re working hard to fix it.”
Sources say Stroll Sr is asking Williams get more technology from Mercedes, and maybe even do a Haas-Ferrari style partnership. But the Canadian businessman downplayed his role in the team’s decisions.
“I’m not a board member, I don’t own one share of this team, I’m simply Lance’s father. Whatever they can do to make the car go better, I’m in favour of, let’s put it that way.”
Stroll has finished all five races of the season, making consistent progress in each race and has avoided opening lap incidents. So it has been a good season so far, according to Stroll Sr.
“I think his performance, based on the car he has, has been phenomenal. This was his fifth great race. He can’t qualify the car much better than where he qualifies it, but he does amazingly well on that opening lap.
“I think he’s beaten his teammate all five times and beaten a lot of people that the car is not capable of beating. So from a performance point of view with Lance, we couldn’t be happier.
“Obviously we’d like a better car to be at the front of the grid! But with the equipment he has, I don’t think he could be doing a better job.”
Nope,I still have no sympathy for the Stroll family and the billions they use to buy their way into f1