Stroll ‘a lot more on top of the car’ this year

Williams are in the midst of a wretched campaign, struggling just to avoid being the last two cars in the classification.

Points have been extremely difficult to come by with Stroll managing just one top ten finish in Baku, while Sergey Sirotkin is the only driver yet to get off the mark.

But while the results haven’t been favourable, Stroll says his experience is helping him out on track.

“I just feel like generally I am a lot more on top of the car,” the 19-year-old told Motorsport Week.

“I have a lot more of an idea on how to extract as much as possible out of it, especially also my working relationship with the engineers and what I’m looking for, what I’m trying to find from the car.

“That wasn’t really there for me last year, because I felt like I was always one step behind during the weekend.

“I often got surprised on what I would feel when I was in the car, but now I’ve experienced every circuit, mostly every circuit, I’ve got a bit of a better picture of what’s going to happen.

“I feel more on top of things, and that leads to a lot of improved areas.”

But, despite what he says as his own improvement, Stroll ackowledges that there is still more to come.

He added: “I’ve built on some of my strengths, I’ve improved on some of my weaknesses, and there’s still definitely plenty more to come.

“I’m still 19 and I still believe that I can definitely get a lot more out of myself with more seat time.

“I’m happy still that when there was one weekend in Azerbaijan when the car was somewhat competitive, we were just on the edge of Q3. For some reason it just kind of clicked that weekend.

“We were able to grab some points, and bring home a result. It gives a bit of hope.

“At least for myself, I know that when there was that opportunity, and we were around the top 10 in the fight, in the mix, we were able to steal that points. That can happen again this year.”