Stroll unlucky with Safety Car intervention in China

Lance Stroll qualified his Williams FW41 down in 18th place and started the race on a set of soft Pirelli tires.

He made a good start and ran in 12th place before he made his only pit stop of the race on Lap 23 for the medium tire.

“It was a great start again and, like in Bahrain, I made up six positions at the start. It’s always good fun to come back around start finish straight and see P12 on the pit board,” said the Montréal native.

“Really felt like I drove the pace of the car, did the one stop, which was our plan and unfortunately we just don’t have the speed to really fight with the others the way we did last year, especially in the race. I think we could have maybe finish in front of Force India cars because overtaking wasn’t super easy. It would’ve been tight, but they were on a two stop and they basically got a free pit stop because of the Safety Car. So they than had a set of ultrasofts, right at the same time we were all together, so that was big advantage,” Stroll explained.

Stroll, his teammate Sergei Sirotkin and the rest of the Williams F1 Team’s next challenge is the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Last year, in his rookie season, Stroll finished third in that race last year. Does he think that the team has made progress since the beginning of the season and he’ll be in a better position to fight on the streets of Baku?

“I’d like to think we’ve made some steps in the right direction, but we definitely need a lot more be where we want to be. It’s frustrating and we just want to get better,” said the Canadian.

Additional reporting by Oleg Karpov