Lance Stroll admitted ‘nothing worked’ all weekend, after finishing last of the classified runners in Formula 1’s season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Stroll, who finished his maiden F1 campaign in 12th position in the drivers’ championship, narrowly avoided elimination from the first part of qualifying by 0.013 seconds.
He started in 15th but suffered a miserable race with three pitstops and dropped down the order, finishing in 18th place.
“It was not a good race today,” said Stroll. “I hate to be negative – but nothing worked this weekend so I just couldn’t get the tyres switched on and I was just lost out there.
“We weren’t in the race today. We had three pitstops and still, it didn’t work.
“The last two weekends were ones to forget and before that, we were doing just fine.
“We need to understand what exactly went wrong. I know it was tyre related, but we are missing a huge chunk of lap time and it is coming from somewhere because before that I was confident in the car.
“Now I shall have some time off, but then get back to work and work harder than ever and come into 2018 as strong as I can possibly be and be on top of my game as much as possible.”
Williams Chief Technical Officer Paddy Lowe described Stroll’s demise.
“It was a much tougher afternoon (than Felipe Massa) for Lance. He didn’t have the pace today,” admitted Lowe.
“He had a good start and got up to 13th with some good opening laps but finally lost position to Grosjean after a very close fight.
“He then had a big lock up, so we boxed early for the first tyre change.
“From there the race really went backwards due to additional pitstops and two more lock-ups whilst fighting for position, so not a weekend to remember.”
