Stroll: "I Could Never Race the Car"

Williams' Lance Stroll believes his team is purely "surviving" following a difficult weekend at the Australian Grand Prix.

Stroll finished 14th out of 15 finishers in Sunday's race, meanwhile, teammate Sergey Sirotkin retired after just four laps with a break issue. The race topped off a troubled weekend for the Canadian, who said:

"We're not racing out there at the moment, we are surviving,

"The first lap I had a fashion problem, for some reason I was in the wrong mode so I had no deployment.

"I just give a position to [Esteban] Ocon, with a massive de-rate. That kind of put us on the back foot after the first lap.

"From there onwards, we struggled with pace. The car was not cooperating the way I wanted it, the balance was all over the place.

"And we had issues the whole race, managing temperatures. So I had to back off, I could never race the car. "

Stroll, who is in his second Formula One season, added:

"I was always trying to survive, lift-and-coast, and get to the end of the race. That's costing us massive race time. "

Williams technical officer Paddy Lowe admitted that Stroll's pace was disappointing, saying:

"In Lance's case, the pace was very poor,

"He was struggling for grip."

Stroll and Sirotkin, in his debut season, will be hoping for an improved performance in Bahrain.