Stroll: 'Texas is Texas - and it's awesome!'

©WRI

It seems that all the F1 teams and drivers are excited about spending the week in the United States - but surely none more enthusiastically than Williams' Lance Stroll.

"Texas is Texas," beamed the teenager ahead of his flight to Austin where the Circuit of the Americas is located. "It is awesome. I love everything about the place and especially the barbecues.

"I will be wearing my cowboy hat and boots again!

"It is a great track and I can't say anything bad about it," continued. "There is always a great turn out for the race and the fans are really enthusiastic.

"The track itself has a great flow to it. There is the first sector with the esses and the elevation going up into turn 1 is quite impressive. Driving a lap there is a lot of fun."

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Stroll added that he was hoping to avoid the tyre degradation problems he experienced at COTA last year.

His team mate Sergey Sirotkin is also excited about this weekend's event, but for different reasons. It will the 23-year-old's first Grand Prix in the US, and he can't wait to get started.

"I think Austin is one of the greatest modern tracks currently in Formula 1," he insisted. "For a modern circuit, sector one is exciting with its high-speed change of direction.

"In general, Austin is quite like other newly built tracks," he continued. "Sector two provides a good opportunity for overtaking, due to a slow corner, big DRS zone followed by another slow corner and heavy breaking, before long corners throughout sector three."

Williams chief technical officer Paddy Lowe confirmed that COTA had become a firm favourite with the whole team since it was introduced to the schedule in 2012.

"Austin comes alive during the race week with fans flooding in from across the USA and other neighbouring areas," he noted. "he drivers and teams all enjoy this race and we look forward to seeing what we can achieve this season.

"The circuit itself also has a great layout and looks impressive," he added. "The 5.5-kilometre anticlockwise track is modern but really tests both driver and car with some radical elevation changes, not least the impressive run up to turn one.

"It can be quite challenging and tests the aerodynamics, power unit and suspension."

Lowe and his drivers will be hoping that the FW41 will prove up to that challenge and come away from the weekend with some points in the bag.

So far this season Williams has finished in the top ten in only two races: eighth place for Stroll in Azerbaijan, and a double points finish in Italy that saw Sirotkin earn his first Formula 1 championship point following the disqualification of Haas' Romain Grosjean.

As a result, Williams is currently bottom of the constructors standings with only four races remaining in the season.

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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.