Lance Stroll: Racing Point driver is still clueless about the graining on his intermediates after missing out on Turkish GP win.
Lance Stroll had a dream of a Saturday, taking the pole for the Turkish Grand Prix. But after leading more than half the race, he was consistently overtaken, seeing his maiden F1 victory slip away. His pit stops to intermediate tyres did not seem to work, mostly down to the graining it suffered.
“I don’t know what happened, I don’t understand.”
“We had so much graining on the first set of intermediates. We decided to pit, we were losing seconds a lap. I just don’t know where that graining came from, it just happened instantly. It grained again, massive graining, and no pace. We’ll have to look into it, it was pretty terrible today.”
Lance Stroll has been consistently accused of being a ‘pay driver’, but he showed it this weekend that he’s much more than that. As for the undeserved P9 finish, Racing Point needs to introspect and find out what went wrong. Especially with his teammate Sergio Perez lasting much longer on his set of inters and finishing second on the podium.
“It’s just frustrating that you’re in the lead by 10 seconds, and then all of a sudden you finish ninth. I don’t understand how that happens. I mean I do, it’s graining, but we just need to look into why it hit me so much harder than the other car. I’m not so sure why.”
Red Bull need to snap up Sergio Perez and demote Alex Albon
Sergio Perez became only the fourth driver to win 100 points this season, in spite of missing out on two races. Both Lewis and he showed how to last long, consistently keeping a safe distance from the chasing pack. If Red Bull chooses not to contact him after this performance, they can very well say goodbye to their title aspirations next season.
“I told my team on the radio, I think one more lap on those tyres and they would have exploded.”
“The vibrations were extremely bad towards the end. But I think it also made that race, looking after them in the beginning, towards the end with drying conditions. The team did a fantastic job in terms of strategy reading the race. I think Lewis today was extremely strong, and towards the end, we died, but we managed to get a good result.”
