“There’s quite a few races I think that slipped away”- Lance Stroll feels Racing Point missed major opportunities to get better results.
Racing Point right till the end was in contention to finish third in the season but in the end, they slipped and McLaren overtook them in Abu Dhabi with an impressive result.
Lance Stroll feels that this should have never happened as the team blanked on several opportunities where they were at a strong position, and let things slip.
“We definitely had a very strong car,” said Stroll as per the Motorsportweek. “The team has done an incredible job over the winter to develop this car. From my side, I don’t think it was the smoothest year.”
“There’s been some big highlights, the pole as great, two podiums but I think we had a lot more podium opportunities and just points on the table in general that we didn’t pick up if I look back at the season in total.”
“Hungary was an opportunity for a podium but there was some wet weather that mixed things up, we ended up finishing fourth. Mugello, we definitely were on for a podium. We were P4 and hunting down P3 with much better pace there.
“I think Turkey was a major missed opportunity, we were leading the race for 30 laps and finished the race ninth in the end with car damage,” he added.
“There’s quite a few races I think that slipped away from us and then of course, I got COVID. There were some missed opportunities this year so that’s a little bit frustrating but that’s part of the sport.
“It’s all about highs and lows. Enjoying the highs and accepting that sometimes there are some rough patches, and unfortunately in the second part of the season, we’ve had a few rough patches.”
Racing Point had the opposite too
Maybe Stroll had a fair point, but there similarly there were instances when Racing Point was lucky and made the best out of their chances in the end.
Sergio Perez had a great race in the Sakhir Grand Prix, but he was lucky to not have Lewis hamilton not competing for Mercedes over there, and on top of that Mercedes’ crew made a blunder to make his case better.
Moreover, Max Verstappen also did not finish the race, whilst the chaotic race even ended up giving Stroll a podium. So if things never worked out for Racing Point at times, surely there were times, when they had more in their basket than they asked for.