First points for Stroll felt like a win - Lowe

Above: Lance Stroll celebrates his first F1 points by crowdsurfing with help from fans at his home track.

Williams chief technical officer Paddy Lowe has revealed Lance Stroll's first points in F1 "felt like a race win" for the team in the Canadian Grand Prix.

Stroll has had a difficult start to the season but scored his first top-10 result at his home grand prix yesterday, pulling of a number of overtaking moves as he climbed from 17th on the grid to finish ninth. With the 18-year-old coming under a lot of scrutiny after his step up from F3, Lowe says the result was hugely significant for all involved with Williams.

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"Coming off the pit wall, just following the instinct of how I felt I started heading towards the podium!" Lowe said. "I know it was only ninth, but it seriously felt like a race win, just because we all know it's been a very, very difficult introduction to the sport for him. We've all felt for him and especially in the team willing him to be better and to make the progress.

"I think he went out there and just showed that he can drive. The talent was all there, the racecraft was fantastic. Those points didn't fall in his lap, he went and fought for them. I don't know if we got an overall count of the number of overtakes ... but it was a lot. Almost 10 or something, including a double world champion who he dueled with at the end.

"And he actually handled some pretty tricky situations with traffic into Turn 1 and lots of stuff that could have easily been mishandled. So to do that in his home race... I understand there was extra crowd here because we had a Canadian driver, so it's good to give them that reward."

With Stroll only seven races into his F1 career, Lowe is confident the result will prove a boost to the teenager's confidence in the coming races.

"Yeah, the benefits are immeasurable. He's going to have himself so much more confidence that he now knows what it takes. You know they say in this sport that when you've won your first race all the rest of them are so much easier? I'm sure it's the same with points and I hope we'll see that he's out of the starting blocks and we'll see it come into play now."

And Lowe says some of the moves Stroll backed out of were as telling as the ones he completed, after the Canadian engaged in close battles with the likes of Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg.

"He said afterwards about that there were those few times and he just thought 'It's a long race, I'll get him next time' rather than taking that risk and it ending in tears. So that's really mature, sensible driving. That was the best position he was going to get from 17th and he did with the right sort of control.

"As always with these cars there's a lot of things that are on the edge, he had some issues with keeping brake temperatures in control, keeping some engine temperatures in control, the left front had signs of not lasting the race and he managed that at a certain point, so he did everything that he needed to do. I think we've seen the real Lance there, now hopefully we can see him more regularly."