Confident Stroll finds form at Baku

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Maybe it's the confidence boost from winning his first championship points, but Lance Stroll was in fine form in Baku on Friday.

The 18-year-old Canadian was 11th fastest in the first free practice session as he learned the track. That improved to a strong sixth place in the afternoon, jumping him ahead of his veteran team mate Felipe Massa.

"That was good fun!" he said afterwards. "I am enjoying the track. The car was working well and we didn't have any issues, which was great.

"Things could be better, as this is still the first day of my first time here," he said. "But all in all I have to say it was a very positive day in many ways.

"I think what was really positive was we didn’t have any issues," he pointed out. "Nothing that got in the way of us running our programmes.

"What was really important for me on this kind of track was to get confidence on every lap and every run.

"Today we did exactly that and didn't lose any laps with problems or stuff going wrong," he continued. "The balance was good and now we just need to think overnight, improve on little bits, come back tomorrow and continue pushing.

Williams' chief technical officer Paddy Lowe was full of praise for Stroll, who clinched two points in Montreal after finishing in ninth place.

Verstappen tops FP2 but ends the day in the barrier

"He’s not been here before and it’s quite a tricky track," Lowe noted. "I’m pleased to say that he drove very well.

"He progressively built up his pace and managed to put himself sixth in FP2. He never went off the circuit, which makes him one of a few drivers who had a clean day. It was a great job by Lance."

Lowe added that Massa's time had been largely spent on carrying out tests for the team and had been caught up in traffic as a result. Even so, the Brazilian considered Friday to have been time well spent.

"It was a good day, I was happy with the car," reported Massa. "I was happy with the balance and I was happy with the long runs.

"The little mistakes that we made today weren’t a big problem, because we didn’t damage anything, which is always a positive thing here.

"We’re definitely in the fight, so I hope that we can put everything together for qualifying tomorrow."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.