Williams Martini Racing’s Lance Stroll had a tough qualifying session at the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace, being knocked out in Q1 after setting the eighteenth fastest time of the day.
The Canadian had limited running going into qualifying, having missed Free Practice Three due to a gearbox failure at the beginning of the session. This also warranted a gearbox change, which will result in a grid penalty.
Stroll also admitted to making a few mistakes during the session after trying too hard to find the limit of the car – something that he had not been able to do on Saturday morning. This meant the few laps he did have weren’t good enough to get him into Q2.
Conversely, team-mate Felipe Massa had a good session for what will be his last home race. He will line up ninth today, benefiting from Daniel Ricciardo‘s engine penalty.
“It was a tricky day missing out on FP3 and not doing any running until qualifying, so it was always going to be hard,” commented Stroll.
“We got helped by the red flag, but I was starting from zero today. It was just very hard. The car felt good, but I just made too many mistakes trying to find the limit of the car on the couple of laps I had.
It has been a difficult weekend up to now, but tomorrow is a new day. We will have a penalty for changing the gearbox, but we will take it from there.”