The difficulties in driving the current Williams’ car is all a part of the “love-hate relationship” that exists within Formula 1, says Lance Stroll
In his rookie season, the Canadian scored a podium and even qualified for the front row. But in 2018, Stroll and the British team is struggling and have dropped down to the bottom of the grid.
Stroll scored his first points of the season in the Azerbaijan race. But he is unable to get beyond Q1 in most of the qualifying races due to the problematic FW41.
Despite lack of results, Stroll says he still feels the buzz of being a part of F1 “all the time”.
“This sport is a love-hate relationship and you have to have pride in the difficult times,” said Stroll. “You have to reflect on the past and know that there were good times, and [believe there are] good times ahead.
“You have to ride the rollercoaster. That’s what F1 is.
“You just always have to keep the morale high and keep positive and disconnect from the track when you can and come to work motivated and ready to go, regardless of what the situation is.
“This sport changes all the time, and it’s just about being there and waiting for your moment to shine.”
After the disastrous performance of the Williams car, Stroll recalibrated his targets for the year and said: “12th or 13th place in a Williams is a good race”.
“Of course the results are not the ones we want, but picking up points in Baku was good,” he said.
“The few times I have got into Q2 felt good, you have to get everything out of it and as a driver that is satisfying.
“I feel like I made a good step over the winter and that I’m much more on top of the car than I was last year.”
The British team has been busy trying to fix their car and recently admitted they figured out the reason for the car’s stalling. But it is still hard to measure the outfit’s progress, Stroll confessed. He hopes to keep fighting for points for the rest of the season.
“A lot of the time we see some hope after a good weekend and then the following weekend [is tougher],” he said.
“Like in Austria, for example, I got into Q2 and we were a lot closer to and even in front of some of the competitors. Then the following weekend at Silverstone we had that stalling problem which disappointed everyone.
“It’s still hard to come to a conclusion over where we are with development and where we are compared to the others.
“The goal now is to just keep having some consistent weekends with the aim of being further up the grid. Then we can come to a conclusion that we are going in the right direction.”
