For the first time in Formula 1 history, Williams is the only team yet to score a point in a season – but Lance Stroll was nonetheless boosted by his race display in Bahrain, as Sergey Sirotkin racked up his first finish.
Four teams arrived in Bahrain point-less but Toro Rosso, Sauber and Force India all secured top 10 finishes, leaving Williams as the sole outfit on zero.
It compounded a miserable weekend for Williams in which its young drivers were knocked out in Q1 and came across the line as the final classified finishers – albeit each promoted two places post-race due to time penalties for Sergio Perez and Brendon Hartley.
Stroll, though, expressed positivity with his performance, having been compromised when he sustained front wing damage while scrapping with Haas’ Romain Grosjean.
“I was really happy with my race, even though we were nowhere in terms of position,” said Stroll.
“I had a really good start and picked up five positions, so I was happy about that. After that I touched the front wing fighting with Grosjean, so I had to box early and we lost 10 seconds as we had to change the front wing at the stop.
“But I managed to recover from that and beat my team-mate at the end. I am obviously happy with the recovery we made after the first couple of laps. I still believe we did the maximum we could have done.
“I hope we can be better in China, but behind the scenes there is a lot of work to be done.”
Sirotkin’s finish was his first in Formula 1, after his debut in Australia was cut short when a plastic bag caught in his FW41, leading to overheating.
“It was a good experience, but we switched our plan,” he said.
“Our strategy was a two-stop, which we ended up sticking with and it was not optimum as I think we lost a bit of track time with that. Then I was caught by quite a lot of lapped cars, so again I lost quite a bit of track time.
“The pace was OK but we cannot follow other cars. It’s something we definitely need to improve.
“It’s a big problem on the first lap as it’s impossible to fight people without damaging the front tyre. However, as we said a few days ago, we’re just trying to get to the end of the race.”
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