Stroll happy with way Williams bounced back

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Lance Stroll had credited the team spirit at Williams with how he was able to come back from a difficult start to his maiden season in 2017.

Stroll's year started with a troubled winter testing. The season itself began with three straight retirements. The next three saw him finish outside the points. At one point, his compatriot Jacques Villeneuve even dubbed him "one of the worst rookie performances in the history of F1."

"I had a tough time in winter testing, but that was kind of all expected," Stroll recalled.

It was pretty tough, not finishing the first three races," he admitted. "Regardless of whether it was my fault or mechanical failure or whatever. Just the fact I didn’t get to finish a Grand Prix.

"I knew I was going to face adversity at some stage in my first year. It hit me quite early in the year. But I tried to stay level headed and not let it get to me.

But Stroll bounced back and took his first championship points in Canada. The next race out he was on the podium in Baku. By the end of the season he was just three points behind his veteran team mate Felipe Massa in the driver standings.

Stroll just wants a 'team player' at Williams for 2018

Stroll said that it was the engineers and other personnel working with him at Grove that had helped turn things around.

"[They] always believed in me and I listened to them and we bounced back from that," he said. "That’s what matters: we did bounce back from that.

"We made it become a great season," he added. "I look back at the season overall and I’m extremely happy with how it went."

With Massa now departed and the team still to announced a replacement, the 19-year-old is effectively Williams' senior driver at this point. With a full season under his belt, he's confident that he will be stronger in 2018.

"Just coming back to the circuits every time for the second time will be a big advantage," Stroll pointed out.

"I’m going to work on my qualifying over the winter. A lot of that will help by coming back to a circuit for a second time.

"But I would say there’s areas to improve on everything. Just more experience, more knowledge, having time to reflect over the winter will be good."

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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.