Racing Point F1 Team driver Lance Stroll says that he was happy with his rhythm around the Baku City Circuit before a collision with the barrier at Turn 2 ended his Free Practice 2 session in Azerbaijan.
Stroll had been gathering data on the medium tyres to compensate for the widespread lack of running in Friday morning’s Free Practice 1, due to George Russell‘s incident with a loose drain cover leaving the session to be aborted around 20 minutes in.
The Canadian lost the rear of his car on entry to the left-hander and could not avoid hitting the wall with the left front corner of his Racing Point.
Racing Point tried to get his car back out for the end of the session, but missed out due to an issue with getting the damaged chassis off of the flat-bed truck it was brought back to the pits on.
“It’s been a tough start to the weekend, we lost track time this morning but it was the same for everybody,” said Stroll.
“Free Practice 2 had started better: I felt a good rhythm with the car in the laps I did this afternoon, but I had a snap on entry coming into Turn 2, the rear came out on me and that was that, I ended up in the wall.
“It’s frustrating, but it is what it is. The team did their best to get the car back out on track for the end of the session, but we just missed out by the smallest of margins.”
Stroll added that both he and Racing Point need to utilise Free Practice 3 on Saturday morning, with only team-mate Sergio Pérez‘s data to use over Friday night.
The 20-year-old was left an unrepresentative eighteenth on Friday afternoon, over five seconds adrift of pacesetter Charles Leclerc, but did not use the soft tyres.
“We will look at the data we have overnight and focus on getting as many laps as we can tomorrow and take it from there,” Stroll added.
