A frustrated Lance Stroll says Williams was not in a position to race at the Australian Grand Prix, as he struggled to a lowly 14th place.
Williams failed to impress during pre-season testing, but Stroll made it through to Q2 in Melbourne, and lined up from 13th position on the grid.
Stroll, though, lost out to Force India’s Esteban Ocon on the opening lap and soon gave up further ground to the recovering Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas, as Williams failed to make an impact on the race.
Stroll eventually trailed home in 14th position, having been passed by Sauber debutant Charles Leclerc, as the penultimate classified finisher, and lamented Williams’ problems.
“We can’t race at the moment,” said Stroll.
“We have overheating issues, major, major overheating issues, I have no mode on the engine because of the mistake the team made on Friday [when the car overheated at the end of FP2].
“We had that overheating issue, we lost a lot of ‘race plus mode’, which is the extra power used for the Safety Car restart, and had none of that, so for the moment we can’t race.
“At the beginning as well we had a problem on the first lap, that’s why Ocon got me.
“We were in the wrong mode for some reason; there was a lot going on and a lot of big issues that cost us a lot of race time.”
Williams’ difficult weekend was compounded by an early retirement for Sergey Sirotkin, who suffered a brake failure after a plastic bag became lodged in his FW41, causing the car to overheat.
