A year after clinching his front start at Monza, Lance Stroll delivered another impressive performance at the Temple of Speed in Saturday's highly disputed qualifying session.
Thanks to some good work and crafty slipstreaming, the Williams driver nicely negotiated his way through the first two massively tight segments of qualifying. Q1 in particular saw the drivers outside of the top six separated by just half a second!
Stroll denied that any secret sauce was involved with his result, rather hailing a perfect driver/car relationship that got the job done.
"I think it was all pretty straight-forward today," he told Sky F1.
"I know we didn't expect that coming into it, we expected a much more challenging session.
"It all kind of came together in Q1, the car felt good, we managed to get a good tow all the way through our qualifying and that helped us.
"I put in a good lap in Q2 to get into Q3, and yeah, one of those when it just kind of all clicked."
For all the dismal times Williams has endured this season with its problematic FW41, Stroll insisted his P10 result - his second this year after Baku - was rightly deserved.
"For sure we've had a tough run when you look at the results, and in the cockpit it hasn't been very pleasant for a few months now," added the 19-year-old.
"But today I'm really pleased for everyone and really happy for us as a team. I think we really deserve this result and it was one of those when I had a good chemistry with the car, and hooked it up."
Asked if the performance would perhaps contribute to his cause or set him up nicely for his anticipated move to Force India, the Canadian said he preferred to focus on what the result brought to his teal rather than to himself.
"I don't compete for those reasons, I do it to prove to myself and I embrace the challenge, I'm not here to prove to everyone what I can do.
"That’s a big part of the business but I'm just really happy for us as a team.
"The people I work with every day, we put in a lot of hours and we look for every tenth all the time and a result like really just makes everything worth it.
"We'll see what the future holds, I'm really not thinking about that right now, I'm just going to enjoy the moment. I'm sure it's going to sink in later and I'm looking forward to an exciting race tomorrow.
"We're going to be in the mix which has been rare this year."
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