Stroll: Williams aren’t racing, we’re surviving

There are so many things wrong with Williams’ FW41 that Lance Stroll says it is “tough to point out one issue”.

Following a tough pre-season, Williams’ troubles continued at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

Stroll finished the race down in 14th place, last bar one, while his team-mate Sergey Sirotkin was the afternoon’s first retirement.

Williams’ performance has resulted in a damning inditment from Stroll, who says they aren’t racing, they’re “surviving.”

He told reporters in Melbourne: “We’re not racing out there at the moment, we are surviving.

“The first lap I had a mode problem, for some reason I was in the wrong mode so I had no deployment.

“I gave a position to [Esteban] Ocon, with a massive de-rate.

“The car wasn’t cooperating the way I wanted it to the balance was all over the place.

“We also had temperature issues the whole race, managing temperatures. So I had to back off.

“I could never race the car, I was always just trying to survive, lift-and-coast, and get the car to the end of the race. That’s costing us massive race time.

“On top of that I didn’t have as much mode as I would usually have in this race, because of what happened on Friday with the overheating issue.

“The whole weekend we expected issues coming into the race, we knew there’d be a lot of problems.

“Realistically, it’s tough to point out one issue. There are a lot of things to sort out.”