INTERVIEW: Stroll fights his corner

It's fair to say Lance Stroll has not had the smoothest start to his Formula 1 career.

Promoted directly from F3 at 18 and with a billionaire father, it was important to get off on the right foot because critics would not need long to question the Canadian's place on the grid. A test-ending crash during the first four days of pre-season was hardly what the doctor ordered.

Retirements in the opening three races followed. Even though Stroll was blameless for two of those - brake problems in Australia; and being hit by Carlos Sainz in Bahrain - it meant little opportunity to show his potential over a race distance.

Russia marked the first time that Stroll saw the checkered flag in a grand prix, but despite the difficulties he has faced, his confidence is understandably unwavering.

I say "understandably" because Stroll has won in every junior category in which he has raced. His dominant European F3 title last year - a season he describes as "the best year of my life" - is often used to defend Williams' decision to promote the teenager so early, but the championship wins started coming as soon as he got out of karting.

Yet it isn't the titles that Stroll highlights as standout moments from his junior career, but the spell when he doubted his ability to make it in racing.

"I continued in Canada for a bit, I was winning and it was great, and then I moved over to Europe when I was 12 years old to compete internationally in karting," Stroll says of his progression from racing as a hobby to chasing a profession. "That was actually very difficult. I wasn't winning in Europe from the age of 12 until 14. It was very challenging. I won a couple of races, but generally, it was tough.

"I just wasn't always in the right place at the right time. But it was difficult coming from Canada versus some kids in the UK, who start very young. I always had some catching up to do, I definitely wasn't winning and there were some hard times.

"I kind of thought 'Maybe I don't have what it takes,' but I stuck to it. And then at 15 I went into Formula 4, [and] had a tremendous amount of success in Formula 4, my first year of cars. I dominated the championship and I felt I really was a better driver in cars than I was in karts. I felt more comfortable, more confident and it was more for me."

Freedom from any major concerns about budget meant access to the best equipment and testing opportunities, but it has also left Stroll with nowhere to hide. Growing up with that sort of pressure made the transition to racing on another continent even tougher to take.

"It has been a frustrating path at times, I definitely wasn't winning all of my career, those three years in Europe I wasn't winning in karting I was f*****g struggling, actually! Excuse my language, but it was really hard. I was not doing so well.

"I just came from a very different background in karting – a lot of these kids are coming from Europe. So I won some races, but I was very inconsistent. I had good weekends, bad weekends and I wasn't killing it all the time.

"It was frustrating, for sure. I would come and think I'm a good driver, and I would see these kids from Europe who started off younger and at a more competitive level earlier than I did and they were just simply better than I was at that age. I needed to do that catch-up work and I got there eventually, but it was definitely challenging; it wasn't easy.

"From a life point of view, moving over to Europe - Switzerland at the time - was also a big change for me. It was all new, it was all different and they were tough years, for sure. But I think in some ways that built me as a driver and as a person. If you are always just winning everything, it's not how it goes. Sometimes it needs to be hard, you need to have material that is not perfect and to fight your way through it. That definitely taught me a lot, those three years."

After those difficulties, Stroll's path to F1 took off with victory in the Italian Formula 4 championship, and a strong end to his rookie F3 season provided the platform for last year's dominance.

"I just felt better in cars than I did in go-karts. In go-karts I felt... I could be good, I had good days, and I had weekends when I won races, but I never quite figured it out in the way I did in cars.

"In Formula 4 and Formula 3, I just felt very confident, very happy, I had a very good team around in me in Prema (ABOVE, in 2015), who I was working with through my whole junior career. That was huge. I had a very good environment around me that allowed me to focus on producing."

Already associated with Williams, Stroll's name started cropping up with increasing frequency in the F1 paddock as 2016 went on, even before his remarkable run of seven wins in nine races late in the year.

"It was very late, actually, in 2016 [that F1 became the focus]. I heard some rumors like 'Oh you'll be driving in Formula 1 next year if you win this year,' and I was like 'OK, I don't know, I'm just going to focus on winning this year,' because Formula 3 at the time meant so much to me, more than Formula 1, and I was just so focused on that.

"Then I won, and a couple of weeks later it was, 'You'll drive for Williams!' It was a dream come true. It's kind of amazing, I look now and I realize I'm here and doing this, but when you're in the moment you don't really realize everything that's happening. It happens so quickly. Formula 1 has always been the goal and now I'm here, but along the way you're doing so much that it's hard to kind of stop and realize what you're going through. It's been a good ride."

His use of the past tense would suggest Stroll believes he has made it, and in many ways he has after earning a spot in F1. But he insists he has the patience to bide his time and learn what it takes to be successful at the pinnacle of motorsport.

"I'm a competitor, and I want to do well, for sure," he says. "I want to jump in and be very good, there's no question about that. But if I speak to people who expect me to come in and be who I am, this is what I'm made of at the first race - that's not the right way to think about it.

"I'm 18, it's my first year, there's a lot of tracks I don't know, these cars are challenging to drive - these new regs - so it takes experience and time to handle all those things. Even if you're the best driver in the world, you need experience and time. I can't hide those things, that's just the way it goes, but I accepted that challenge and I'm going with it. I knew it was going to be tough in many ways, but I know it's a process and it takes some time. I'm confident, positive, and taking it race-by-race."

Dealing with preconceptions has been a fact of life for Stroll, and some doors may have opened for him with relative ease, but so far he has walked through them all. With time on his side, he couldn't have a better chance of justifying Williams' choice with his on-track performances in the long run.