Lance Stroll put together a solid drive in a “fun” weekend for him and Aston Martin at the F1 Hungarian GP, qualifying sixth and finishing seventh for just his fourth points finish of the season. Combined with teammate Fernando Alonso’s P5 run, it was Aston Martin’s second double-points finish of the season—but second in three races, and best overall showing of the season.
”Clearly, our strengths are more in this kind of track”
Coming off a dreadful run at Spa the previous weekend, Aston Martin’s turnaround was a surprise to Stroll.
“We have some ideas, but we need to keep trying to understand why this weekend was so much better. Clearly, our strengths are more in this kind of track than Spa with efficiency and lower wing level. We seem to be more competitive when we put the downforce on in tracks like this. The car was in a nice window from the beginning of the weekend until the last lap of the race.”
Aston Martin have a puzzle to solve re: consistency
Stroll admitted the struggle to understand these pace differences stretches across the Aston Martin garage. “I think we all have the same thought process around it. We don’t really know week to week, depending on the nature of the track, where we’re going to be. Either fighting in Q3, one tenth off pole, or the last two and a half seconds off pole. I don’t know.
“We have to look into it and learn from this week why we were 19th and 20th last week, and then 5th and 6th, 6th and 7th this week. We’ll try to figure it out.”
Stroll “at one with the car” throughout
One thing Stroll was confident in was his comfort with the car, despite the pace disparities. “I mean I felt at one with the car in Spa, but we’re just slow, you know? You feel at one here, you feel at one there, but one week you’re last and the other week you’re fighting up at the front.“
While the team figures out the nature of their pace fluctuation over the break, Stroll gave no guarantees for their return in the Netherlands. “We’ll see how we go in Zandvoort. And then different kind of tracks, you know, different nature of circuits, and we’ll try and get the most out of it every weekend like we can.”
