Stroll shrugs off 'team leader' tag at Williams

Lance Stroll insists that he shouldn't be viewed as Williams' lead driver in 2018.

Stroll made his Formula 1 début 12 months ago, and captured a podium in Baku during his maiden season.

Even so, there was never any question that Stroll was second driver to the vastly more experienced Felipe Massa.

But with Massa now retired from the sport, he starts his sophomore season as the de facto senior man in the line-up compared to Russian rookie Sergey Sirotkin.

"Lead the team is maybe the wrong word,” Stroll said when asked if that made him the team leader in 2018.

"I have a year under my belt compared to Sergey," he agreed. "But at the same time we’re all in it together.

"There’s not a lead driver and a second driver, it’s one team and we want to get the most out of the package that’s available."

At 19 years old, Stroll will still be the youngest man on the grid in 2018. By comparison, Sirotkin is practically long in the tooth at 22.

Williams hits out at criticism of Stroll and Sirotkin

Stroll insisted that regardless of the change in team composition over the winter, it would be business much the same as usual this season.

“My job remains the same, regardless of who is on the other side of the garage,” said the Canadian.

He will continue to be supported by race engineers James Urwin and Luca Baldisserri. The Italian previously worked with Stroll at Prema in F3.

“I have a group of people I work with and we want to get the most out of our package," said Stroll. "Our meetings are the same, everything’s the same.

"Of course we don’t have the most experienced line-up but there are some good people around us.

"There is a lot of experience around the engineering table in order to help us," he pointed out. "So I believe we have a good team in place going into the season.”

"That’s the objective for this year, just like it was for last year."

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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.