Stroll will learn from mistakes quickly - Williams

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Claire Williams says rookie Lance Stroll has shown he can learn quickly from his mistakes ahead of this first season in F1 in 2017.

Stroll was named as the new team-mate to Valtteri Bottas on Thursday as Williams confirmed its 2017 driver line-up following Felipe Massa's decision to retire. While Stroll will step up from F3 at the age of 18, the Williams deputy team principal says his year as development driver has shown he has the capacity to learn from his errors.

"It will obviously be Lance’s rookie year in Formula 1 and as much as we are doing a lot of work behind the scenes at the moment to make sure he is as prepared as possible, going into Melbourne next year it is going to be an eye-opener," Williams said.

"We have noticed in a short term with Lance he is so capable, extremely intelligent and he puts the work in. The one thing I have learnt about Lance over the 12 months we’ve been working closely with him is his work ethic is second to none for a 18-year- old to achieve what he has in such a short space of time.

"I have a huge amount of confidence that when he gets into the cockpit in Melbourne he can deliver but he will need some time like any rookie does in this sport to bed in. There may be some mistakes but that is going to be an inevitability, but we already know from Lance that he learns from his mistakes quickly."

And Stroll himself believes the step up from F3 will not be as big a promotion as many observes may suggest.

"Obviously it has much more power and the car is a step up from Formula 3 but in many ways F3 is a really good level as the cars have a lot of downforce and grip which teaches you how to use all of that grip and all of that downforce," Stroll said.

"Anywhere you go from Formula 3 is never too overwhelming."

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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.