This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
Because this is the Racing Point team thread? If I want to discuss Kubica's struggles I'd go to the Williams thread.
I don't see anybody here fixating on Stroll. But he is one of the two drivers of this team, so it shouldn't surprise you that he is being discussed here.
The fact that he hasn't gotten out of Q1 this season is a legitimate concern for the team, I'd say.
The concern for the team should be why didn't the updates work. Perez being the last guy in Q1 and them starting 15 th and 18th is what they need to worry about. They were much better last race. But i had hoped with their new updates they could stay in the fight for 4th. The next race does not bode either since both cars finished outside the points last year.
Still have big hopes they will get it together and finish strong this year.
They'll score points in several more races this year. The challenge is that the car is really one of the slower (non-Williams) cars in the midfield. They've scored points so far largely because Perez has been "overdriving" the car to more points than it probably deserves on the basis of pure speed. In Spain, the blunt aero requirements overwhelmed the ability of Perez or anyone else to overdrive the car. This team always has better odds when the track/weather/tire situation goes outside the norm. This sounds weak but it probably makes them the most interesting team to root for. The opposite end of the midfield spectrum is Haas who have near-frontrunner speed in perfect conditions on aero-dominant tracks, but have no practical ability to race their way out of a paper bag the rest of the time. Cheering for Haas would be truly exhausting.
This weekend in Monaco, Stroll qualified 18th of 20, got his ass handed to him by his teammate for the 10th (?) race in a row in qualy (going back to last year in the Williams when rookie pay-driver Sirotkin consistently handed sophomore Stroll his ass in the second half of the season), and failed to remove himself from Q1 for the 10th (?) race in a row (again, last year, etc. etc.). Will Stroll Sr., having already bought his son's way into the back-markers and midfield, now purchase a front-running team to secure Lance a proper forum in which to display his prodigious talent? Perhaps purchase Red Bull or even Ferrari? He really must, because it's unacceptable that the teams he shovels money to are consistently preventing his boy from having successful performances. Obviously just bad luck choosing teams to hand money to.
Can anyone nominate a more lousy pay driver from the last 10 years? I can't think of any. If the question is "pay drivers of the last 30 years" then many worse-than-Stroll candidates come to mind. But the quality of F1 pay drivers was getting pretty high over the last few years until the Stroll family came along.
I admit to being a Stroll hater, and this whole situation is shaping up to be delicious. Yummy, yummy.
Stroll is definitely not one of F1’s future stars, but I don’t think he is a bad driver by any means... Putting things in perspective, his partner is one that was consider a potential future star in Formula 1 (Perez) which was part of the Ferrari driver academy, raced for Mclaren and has been in F1 since 2012 (year in which he got a podium with Sauber) and also has way more experience than him (this is Stroll’s 3rd season) it is expected for Perez to be ahead of him.
If anything, his biggest issue is his awareness in the track, especially at the beginning of the race when he seems to struggle to deal with avoiding contact.
Stroll is definitely not one of F1’s future stars, but I don’t think he is a bad driver by any means... Putting things in perspective, his partner is one that was consider a potential future star in Formula 1 (Perez) which was part of the Ferrari driver academy, raced for Mclaren and has been in F1 since 2012 (year in which he got a podium with Sauber) and also has way more experience than him (this is Stroll’s 3rd season) it is expected for Perez to be ahead of him.
If anything, his biggest issue is his awareness in the track, especially at the beginning of the race when he seems to struggle to deal with avoiding contact.
I also don't think Stroll is all that bad, but this is his third season in F1, and if he isn't challenging Checo like Ocon did by summer break, that'd be sufficient reason to question his presence in F1.
Well haters where are you? bill shoe tell me how stroll is worse than gasly (who is getting crushed by verstap)or robert kubica (who is not even close to rookie russell) So bill do you have the same hate for those drivers who are also struggling?
Stroll qualifies just over a 10th slower than perez with an old motor after missing out on fp 3 because of a blown motor. Goes from 17th to 9th in race. Pulls off some real good passes, magnussen, sainz and best of all, perez. Seems to finally be connecting with his engineer. Set up changes have made his car "come alive"
Takes time to connect to new car, new engineer and new personal that work on his car.
Like i have posted before, a big part of the success of a driver is his relationship with his engineer. The ability of his engineer to understand what the driver needs to be fast. Stroll started out at williams with a rookie engineer. now he has a veteran that worked with ocon. Seems that this last race they found something to help his style of driving. I was at the race and the car looked solid. The passes he made were at different corners of the track and showed his confidence in the car. He still has work to do when it comes to qualifying. Has good race pace but in F1 it's all about qualifying.
I'm canadian so i have to stick up for stroll (hockey mentality) Been involved in racing for 40 yrs (building and racing cars) still have my grandson racing, so i understand how hard it is for a driver to advance to the next level. Have to confess though that my favorite driver is lewis hamilton. Been following him since F3. My grandson is a verstap fan so it makes for an interesting household.
Going to be interesting when Racing Point gets their updated car, which i hope will put them back in the midfield fight.
Exactly right bosyber. You can see his times are starting to fall on lap 36 and you wonder what the're thinking. If you can make the yellows go 20+ laps on a car full of fuel wouldn't you be able to do 13 laps on reds with a car on a light load of fuel? With mid field being so tight you need to be a little creative with strategy. Perez was stuck where he was, stroll had a shot to make a point.
Stroll and his engineer need to figure out qualifying. His race pace is fine. I would like to know where perez found that 1 sec in qualy.
Yes, I think getting out of Q1 is more or less the only thing Stroll should concentrate on - maybe they should always go for almost all soft tyres for him, and get him on a regular program of starting slow and ramping up on Friday, then turning it up; and then Saturday, tune down the engine in FP3, get him doing steadily improving laps with lots of fuel. I think he has pace, but in quali he just doesn't seem to be able to get there. Sure on Sunday is when it counts, but if he can manage to start 3-5 positions further up the grid on average, then he actually has a chance of points, until then that needs small miracles and luck.
