Lance Stroll says Williams’ team-mate Sergey Sirotkin’s relatively strong form during qualifying in Germany does not necessarily mean the squad has made a breakthrough.
Williams introduced a new front wing for its recalcitrant FW41 at Hockenheim and while Stroll struggled, Sirotkin progressed through to Q2, qualifying 12th.
Williams has scored just four points courtesy of Stroll’s eighth-placed finish in Azerbaijan and is 12 points adrift of Sauber at the foot of the Constructors’ Championship.
Stroll, though, was hesitant to believe that Williams has made substantial progress over the last couple of weeks.
“It looks like we made a bit of a step, so yeah, we’ll see this weekend,” said Stroll ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix.
“It’s one race. I don’t want to jump to conclusions based off one qualifying session. In the race, we still did struggle with pace.
“Coming into this weekend, still very open-minded and we’ll see where we are.
“We did look more promising, but I could say the same thing about other qualifying sessions like in Austria for example, we felt like we looked quite competitive.
“I got into Q2, we were much closer to the field and then the following weekend in Silverstone we were back to where we were before.
“I don’t want to say that is the case this time. I hope it’s not, I hope we can carry on that good momentum, but we’ll see where we are this weekend.”
Added Stroll on getting to grips with the updates, he said: "As the driver, I felt I could exploit more from it. It’s still early days, only one qualifying session. To be sure, we need to just keep chipping away at it."
