Rookie Lance Stroll enjoys solid first day in Australia
Lance Stroll put his Barcelona incidents behind him as he enjoyed a solid first Friday as a Williams race driver in Australia at a venue which can easily catch out the unwary.
Stroll admitted that he was leaving a margin as he learned the track, while yellow flags spoiled his run on the ultrasoft tires, leaving him in an unrepresentative 16th in FP2.
“I think it was a positive day,” said the Canadian. “It feels good to just finally break the ice, and do some driving. There’s been a lot of waiting this week, getting here earlier to get used to the time change and all that, so it’s quite a long build-up. But it was really good to get behind the wheel and do some laps.
“It was quite a scruffy [second] session for me. The first run was alright, but then on the second one it was a shame as there was a yellow flag so I had to abort the lap, and then I had traffic. It wasn’t the good run on the ultrasoft that we want, but it’s a practice, and tomorrow’s another practice and there’s still time. I think that’s not such a big deal.”
Stroll said that he would be closer to the limit on Saturday: “It’s obviously a weekend to build up to it. It is not a track I have been to before, so I can’t just go out and basically push and look for the limit, and that’s what I was doing today, leaving a bit of margin still in some areas. It’s practice, and the most important thing is laps more than anything else. It is quite a dodgy track, there’s not a lot of room for error, but so far I’ve really enjoyed driving the track. I think it’s really cool.”
