Stroll blasts Williams: "Participating, not competing"

Racing Point Force India driver Lance Stroll has criticized his former team Williams for their 2018 package, saying the Grove-based team merely participated and didn't compete.

Williams ended the year in last place in the constructors' championship with just seven points, with Stroll getting six of those. After finishing fifth in the standings in 2017, the nose-dive in form of 2018 was quite unexpected, even though they had the youngest line-up on the grid.

“It’s been very frustrating for everyone,” Stroll told RaceFans.

“We all come to compete but this year we haven’t really been competing. It’s been more of a participation season rather than an actual season of competition.”

The 20-year-old Canadian followed his father Lawrence to Racing Point Force India as the businessman bought out Force India in the summer following the team going into administration. Stroll replaces Esteban Ocon, who will be Mercedes' reserve driver in 2019.

Looking back on 2018, Stroll did pick out some little highlights along the way between all the misery.

“We’ve still had out little highlights along the way,” he continued.

“I know they’ve been hard to see from an outsider’s perspective because we’re battling for 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th if not 19th, 20th every weekend. But there’s days when we did pick up a couple of points: in Italy, in Azerbaijan. I got into Q2 those few times, those are the highlights throughout the year.”