Stroll struggled with his seat fit in early 2019

Mark Scott
Lance Stroll raises £11,000 for Breast Cancer Care with P4 in Hockenheim.

Lance Stroll raises £11,000 for Breast Cancer Care with P4 in Hockenheim.

Lance Stroll has revealed that an awkward seat fit was part of “a lot of details” that contributed to poor form, especially in qualifying.

Stroll was comprehensively beaten in qualifying by his team-mate Sergio Perez in 2019, coming out on top in just three out of 21 battles.

The Canadian also went on a 15-race run of failing to get out of Q1 which first began back when he was still driving for Williams.

Discussing the problems that led to the aforementioned dreary stats in 2019,  Stroll said a poor seat fit was part of the problem.

“At the beginning of the year I struggled with my driver [seat] fit in the car, so I didn’t fit very well,” Stroll told Autosport.

And that took a few races to resolve. It sounds ridiculous but that’s a real thing.

“On top of that, it’s been about understanding the mechanical balance, the aero balance, the differential settings, torque settings – to get the most out of the car.

“The weekends go by very quickly that once you get to qualifying if you’re not dialled in with the car, it’s so competitive now in the midfield that there’s just no really room for error.

“There’s just no margin to afford any mistakes, with set-up and driving.

“With experience, all that just gets tidied up and the understanding of where to move, how to drive a car and how to set up a car just becomes much more clear.

“And I think that that’s what I’ve seen over the course of the year – that I’ve just narrowed it down to what I know works on my end and how I have to drive the car, and how I have to set up the car and look for performance in it.

“And that’s really been the biggest shift in performance. It is all down to all that.”

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