Lance Stroll's fortunes improve as he stays out of trouble in Barcelona
Lance Stroll made up for lost time on Wednesday with solid afternoon performance in Barcelona, the teenage rookie logging 59 useful laps of the Spanish GP venue.
The Canadian had a disastrous first week of testing with the FW40, causing damage to the car that lost vital track time. Today he took over after team mate Felipe Massa had run for a day and half and demonstrated the potential of the car.
“I am quite happy with the afternoon and pleased with the morning watching Felipe do some solid running,” said Stroll. “I think it was a good day. As a team we got a lot of laps in, so we have a lot of positives to take out of today. I am not really focused on lap times, as it is testing and we are exploring a lot of different things on the car and trying to move forward. I am just happy with getting some good running in, trying some stuff on the car and moving in the right direction.
“That is what we are focusing on over these few days, and so far so good. We did some short runs, and tried some different compounds. I went to the softer compounds today. I tried the supersofts but still have the ultrasoft remaining that I haven’t tried. It was good to get a feel for them for the first time.”
Chief test engineer Rod Nelson said: “Lance was back in the car in the afternoon and he did a good job. He’s never tried the supersoft tires before but he acquitted himself really well considering the circuit conditions he had at the time.”
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