Paddy Lowe admitted the weekend at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve was another unsatisfactory one for Williams Martini Racing, particularly for Lance Stroll, who crashed out of his home Grand Prix on the opening lap.
Stroll’s crash with Brendon Hartley, coupled with Sergey Sirotkin finishing last of the seventeen classified finishers, left the Grove-based team still languishing at the bottom of the Championship standings having scored just four points across the opening seven races.
“This was a very disappointing result, especially for Lance’s fans and there were many of them here for his home race in Canada,” said chief technical officer Lowe.
Williams attempted a split strategy to try and move their drivers towards the points on Sunday, but Stroll’s crash on the Ultrasoft ended his chances of a second top ten finish of the season, while Sirotkin starting the race on the Supersoft saw him unable to push hard enough to maintain the positions he gained at the start.
“As for the race itself, we chose to split the strategy across the two cars, with Lance starting on the Ultrasoft and Sergey on the Supersoft,” said Lowe. “Both cars made good starts off the line, initially gaining places. Unfortunately, Lance had an accident in turn five involving Hartley, which brought his race to a very early conclusion.
“On Sergey’s side, due to the harder tyre slow warm up, he lost the positions he had gained at the start after the safety car. He then settled down to protecting a position ahead of Ericsson and Vandoorne. We chose a relatively early stop for the Ultrasoft to go to the end, thinking that this would gain an advantage, but unfortunately, we didn’t find any pace in these softer tyres, which appeared slower than the Supersofts.”
Lowe continues to acknowledge that Williams are not where they should be in regards to pace and competitiveness, but a lot of work is going on behind the scenes in order to turn their wretched start to the season around.
“We know we are not where we need to be and we have a lot of work to do,” said Lowe. “We are working very hard behind the scenes and intend to come back stronger as soon as we can.”
