Lance Stroll finishes last in the Japanese GP in an interview

Obviously Lance stroll is still a mystery. The Canadian pilot, who began his career in Formula 1 in 2017, is often capable of the best and the worst in terms of pure performance. After two good Grands Prix, in Australia and China, where the No. 18 extracted the maximum from its Aston Martin To score points, the Japanese Grand Prix marked a serious setback in his performance. Qualifying last on Saturday, it seemed clear that this was mainly due to a mistake during his last attempt. Even though he declared on the official F1 website that “the passage to Q2 would have been a close call”, we clearly imagined the Aston Martin moving up in the pack and getting closer to the level of the car de Fernando Alonso.

Starting on soft tires in an attempt to maximize his pace on a track that no longer degraded the tires following a resurfacing, Stroll was unable to do so. The Canadian only managed eight laps ahead of Gabriel Bortoleto's Sauber, before falling back to last place, and staying there since. Worse, he was the only driver to be lapped by the day's winner, Max VerstappenIn an interview after this third round of the season, Stroll remained as calm as ever. While one might have expected disappointment and irritation, the 26-year-old driver presented a calm face, even smiling when discussing his Grand Prix.

"We tried to make up some places at the start, which didn't really happen. From there, I don't have much to say, we stayed where we were overall. I don't think we had any problems, we were just very slow on the track.", he explained, while his teammate Fernando Alonso finished eleventh, three seconds behind Oliver Bearman and a potential first point this season.

Such detachment after such a complicated weekend can only be surprising, especially after two Grands Prix that showed us what Lance Stroll was capable of. Let's hope for his sake that the Aston Martin will be a little more in its element in Bahrain, and that he can get back into the points, or at least show the desire and determination that we expect from a racing driver who is not in the position he considers his to be.

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