Williams rookie Lance Stroll says his experience from computer games translated into reality as he crashed out of the second practice session for the Monaco Grand Prix.
Stroll, after an error-free first session, ran wide through Massenet in FP2 and hit the barriers, the impact causing terminal damage to the right-hand side of his Williams FW40.
The session was red-flagged, allowing Stroll’s car to be retrieved, meaning he missed the remaining 30 minutes of the session, in which he placed 16th fastest.
“The track is great and I was really happy with the car, but then there was the crash at the end,” he said.
“I just basically centred in looking for the limit, got onto the dirt a little bit and lost the rear. It was a typical street circuit mistake. I got into learning the circuit pretty quickly and I was happy with the day until then.
“I think corner eight [Portier] and the last corner [Antony Nogues] are the two places I need to improve on.
“It really annoys me because every time I play the Playstation game it has always been those two corners that I couldn’t get right, and in reality it is still those two corners!”
Stroll nonetheless remains confident that he can make progress across the remainder of the weekend.
“What is good here is the tyre seems to be hanging on quite a bit, so we are able to do multiple push laps,” he said.
“In FP3 I am just going to build up my rhythm in that area, but I think I know pretty clearly in my head what I did wrong.
“I am going to look at the little areas I can improve on for Saturday, as I know we can do that and have a good day.”
Williams team-mate Felipe Massa finished the day in 13th position on the leaderboard.
