Lance Stroll saw his testing curtailed early for a second consecutive day after crashing at turn five of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Wednesday afternoon.
The Canadian teenager had completed 98 laps of the Spanish circuit in his Williams Martini Racing FW40 but came to grief on his 99th lap, heavily damaging the front end of the car.
Despite the incident, Stroll believes it was a good day as he got a good number of laps under his belt, feeling that progress had been made with the FW40, although the crash means it could see the team absent from the final day of the test on Thursday.
“It was a good day. We covered nearly a 100 laps and I was getting used to the car producing good short and long runs,” said Stroll. “Unfortunately, we had the incident at the end which prematurely stopped our running.
“It was still a good day – the team is happy and I am happy with the way it went with the car, and everybody is still positive. It was unfortunate what happened at the end but things like that happen and you have just got to move forward and make the best of it.”
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering at Williams, said Stroll had been caught out by cold tyres, and revealed both the Canadian and team-mate Felipe Massa had commented on the snappy nature of the Pirelli tyres this week.
“Unfortunately, Lance was an innocent victim today when he was caught out by cold tyres at the end of the session,” said Smedley. “The incident caused some damage and as a result we missed the final hour of running.
“The tyres being a little bit snappy has been something that both Felipe and Lance have commented on so I guess we’re all just acclimatising to them.
“Lance, however, has acclimatised well during his first day. It’s his first full day of F1 testing with the FW40 and we are comfortable with the progress he is making.”
