‘We need to try and find four seconds of performance,’ says Aston’s Stroll

Lance Stroll says Aston Martin is around four seconds off the pace of the quickest cars at this stage of Formula 1 pre-season testing in Bahrain.

Aston Martin was late to the shakedown in Barcelona as the first Adrian Newey-designed car for the team was not ready until the end of the penultimate day. With a works Honda partnership beginning this year, too, it is a period of significant change for Aston Martin and Stroll says there is a lot of work for the team ahead, after Fernando Alonso (pictured above) finished day two of testing 3.975s off the fastest time.

“We are where we are and we have the issues we have and we just keep pushing forward and trying to extract more performance from the engine, from the car and see where we get to in Australia for the first race and how we can develop going from there,” Stroll said. “We have all the tools to fight for race wins and championships. If we're not doing that at the moment, then we have to think about what we can do better.

“Right now we look like we're four seconds off the top team, four and a half seconds. It’s impossible to know what fuel loads and everything people are running, but now we need to try and find four seconds of performance.”

Stroll admits it will take a lot of improvement from Aston Martin to become a race-winning constructor, and is not expecting significant amounts of that deficit to be recovered during pre-season itself.

“I don't think it falls from the sky. I think you have to improve and find performance in the car and the engine," he said. "I mean, these are just usual things in F1. When you're behind the competition, you have to think about ways to extract more from the package you have and at the same time also improve. No one stands still in this business.

“Everyone's trying to find performance in every way, every weekend, all the time. So, we're doing that. We're trying to find, extract more performance every day from the car and I think also longer-term, bring upgrades on the PU side, on the chassis side. We will see in Australia where we line up and then we will see throughout the season how we progress."

Stroll made clear that the team isn't letting its pace issues out of the gate affect its approach.

“I don't have an emotional reaction to it. I mean, we are where we are," he said. "Do we want to fight for race wins? Yes. Are we fighting for race wins today? Doesn't look like it. Does that mean we can’t fight for race wins in the future? No, I believe we can.

“I don't have a crystal ball. I didn't have a crystal ball before the season started and we are where we are here today. It doesn't look like it's amazing. Can that change in the next few weeks? Can it get a lot better? For sure. Will it 100% get way better? I don't know, I don't have the answers to those questions.

“So, all I can say is we are pushing as hard as we can. We are focused on bringing performance to the car, to the engine every single second of every single day. And time will tell how competitive we look at the first race and throughout the whole season.”