Williams need to blame drivers, not just engine, for 2017 failings - Lowe

Williams chief technical officer Paddy Lowe has insisted that Lance Stroll needs to take some of the blame for the poor performance of the team in the constructor rankings last season, instead of putting the lack of success down to the car.

Last year was Stroll's first full season in Formula One, and in the early part of his rookie year he struggled to get to grips with the action and failed to finish in his first three races, whilst not picking up points in the first six.

Felipe Massa, meanwhile, earned 20 points in those races, and Lowe thinks this proves that it was Stroll's lack of experience which led to the disappointments.

“Some of [the missed results] is down to error here and there, operational issues, some of which was reliability which was not as good as we’d like,” said Lowe.

“Some of it is the driver not being able to exploit the car that is available.

“That’s pretty obvious in Lance’s case that that would have been the case for the first half of the season. He was getting up to speed in his first year of Formula 1, so that was all part of the process with him, and inevitably meant we weren’t scoring quite what we should and could have done.

“But in amongst that there were some terrific examples of Lance’s talent like Baku with his first podium, and Monza with his front row qualifying in the wet. In fact, that Baku podium result is the only non-top three podium of last year. So that was one example of displacing that lockout.

Williams have lost experience in the team now that Massa has retired, and they opted to replace him with another rookie, Sergey Sirotkin. This means that the team have the youngest driving duo on the grid, but Lowe insists they will take it step-by-step to get success.

“As it has always been in this sport you’ve got to do the best you can with what you’ve got,” Lowe continued.

“We don’t have the resources of those teams at the front but we can always do more with what we have and then take it from there. Success breeds more success because it brings rewards and that’s the way forward.

“So it’s not a short game, but I don’t want to call it a long game either. We have to take it step-by-step, we have to make a better car this year and then see where that takes us.

“That’s the challenge and I don’t think that’s any different to how it has always been in Formula 1. That’s why you have seen teams come and go around the front when they get that right or they get it wrong.”