Photo Credit: Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team
It was a fantastic drive for Lance Stroll today at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Starting in P19 and avoiding the chaos at the start involving his teammate Fernando Alonso, to finish inside the top 5 for the second race in a row will surely delight Stroll after the tough season he’s had.
Starting on the soft tyres, Stroll was able to make up places at the start as others tripped over each other and was up to P9 after the opening lap. The Canadian was able to ditch his softs for a new set of boots on lap 5 under safety car conditions due to Lando Norris’s crash at turn 12.
From then Stroll was in 16th place on new hard compound tyres to attack from the restart. By lap 22 Stroll was up to P2 as he made moves and others started to pit around him. On lap 27 we witnessed some excellent double-stack choreography from the Aston Martin pit crew and both Stroll and Alonso pitted for another set of hards under the next safety car for debris on the track from contact between Verstappen and Russell.
Some fine overtakes followed for Stroll including a a great show of sheer straight-line speed down the Vegas Strip to put a move on Gasly to seal P5. He also made a beautiful pass on the brakes on Albon into turn 14, too.
After the race, Stroll spoke of his delight about how things worked out today.
“For sure I’m delighted, it was a great first lap and I felt really good in the car and we were quick throughout the whole race so ya I really enjoyed it,” said the 25-year-old.
With a season of so many ups and downs and even rumours circulating at one stage about his possible exit from the sport, Stroll is satisfied to be ending the season on somewhat of a high.
“Yesterday was a really tough day. You know [in] qualifying we weren’t that quick and then we had the 5-place penalty which put us in 19th for today, and I didn’t think much was going to come out of it.
“but the car was really quick today, much quicker than it was yesterday in qualifying and we just picked a few guys off on the first lap and had a great race from there,” concluded the Canadian.
