New F1 cars are "hard to recover"

The Canadian spent the latter of part of last year testing a 2014-spec Williams as preparation for his rookie season, before being flung in at the deep end with the new high-downforce cars when testing kicked off in Barcelona.

After three incidents during winter testing, Stroll was caught out again by the new-spec car in FP3 at Albert Park today, clobbering the Turn 10 wall after what he described as “snap oversteer” on the exit of the corner.

He wasn’t the only one caught out, with Jolyon Palmer and Marcus Ericsson having had offs yesterday and Daniel Ricciardo finding himself in the wall at Turn 14 after spinning during Q3 earlier today.

Reflecting on the crash, which ultimately led to him only getting one run during the first segment of qualifying, Stroll said the high-downforce cars make it significantly more difficult to find the limit without immediately going over it.

“One thing is, definitely, that there is less room to play with the car than in previous years,” he said.

“Now it’s when you’re hooked up and you’re planted, the car has a load of grip. But I think we’ve seen with drivers [at Albert Park] that when the tyre slips and you do lose grip, it’s quite hard to recover the grip versus previous years.

“In previous years the car moved around a lot more and you were playing on that edge. Now it’s hard to find that edge without losing the car, because when you do have slip it can go away quite aggressively.

“So there are good things about the regulations and some bits that are quite tricky for everyone.”

Big challenge compared to F3

The reigning European Formula 3 champion went on to explain that the biggest difference between F3 and F1 wasn’t the car itself, but the huge differences between tyre compounds and fuel loads.

“The biggest thing is not actually driving the car, or the track, it’s the compound changes, or the mode differences, or the fuel level differences between runs,” he said.

“It’s very challenging to get back to where you left off on your previous run, if you know what I mean. If there’s a one and a half second jump in whatever it is – fuel, tyres, whatever – you’re expected to make by just driving the same way but using the one and a half seconds to your advantage.

“That’s quite tricky. In Formula 3 that wasn’t there. We put the same tyre on all the time. For sure there were different fuel levels, but the differences weren’t so big.

“So it’s getting everything together that’s tricky in Formula 1.”

"Play it safe" plan for the race

Stroll admits that, starting from the back of the grid, he’ll be playing it safe during the race tomorrow, looking to bank mileage and perhaps make headway through attrition.

“I mean, I’ll play it safe,” he said. “I’ll be racing, but at the same time I’m looking for mileage. Starting at the back you win more by letting things happen than just going for gaps that maybe exist.

“I’ll do the race like I always do the race starting at the back.

“There’s always possibilities [to move forward] in races. People can crash, people can have problems, overtaking is still a possibility, strategy comes into play… there are still a load of things that I think are possible.

“I think reliability could be an issue for some teams. It’s the first race, many things can happen.”