Stroll: Car felt 'alive' as Racing Point impress in practice

Racing Point haven’t had the best of times in the last couple of races, the pink cars failing to score since Azerbaijan. But in Canada, and boosted by a Mercedes upgrade on a power sensitive circuit, they found themselves back inside the top 10 after an encouraging second practice…

Sergio Perez was seventh quickest, just 0.82s off the pace, with team mate Lance Stroll just over a tenth further back in 10th. It was a particularly encouraging day for Stroll, in front of his home crowd, having struggled for pace in the last few Friday sessions and extending his run to 10 successive Q1 exits.

“Today was better than the last couple of Fridays we’ve had lately, so that’s promising,” said Stroll after climbing out of the car following FP2. “So now we just have to build that. The car feels alive at the moment, which is good.

“I’m sure that there are still some things to improve on as always leading up to qualifying and the race, but both the performance runs and high-fuel runs seemed promising, but for sure, the others are going to work hard overnight. The key is to remain composed going into tomorrow and see what we can do!”

Perez was equally complimentary, suggesting the team had carried out a series of tests as they evaluated which direction they wanted to go with set-up for the remainder of the weekend.

“It was a promising day,” said the Mexican. “We got the most out of today, but it doesn’t matter, it matters tomorrow. We did a lot of tests with different packages and hopefully tonight we can come up with the best possible solution and maybe be a bit stronger for tomorrow’s qualifying.”

Stroll added the upgraded Mercedes engine has “been good so far” while Perez said he was excited to see “what the party mode brings” when the team turns up the settings for qualifying on Saturday.

The stewards are investigating an incident between Stroll and Romain Grosjean, when the Racing Point driver went to overtake the Haas at the end of the straight and as he pulled back across to take the racing line, the two lightly touched wheels, leading Grosjean to exclaim “Mate!” on team radio.

When asked for his view on the incident, Stroll said: “I felt a little touch, so I’m not sure – I need to look at the replay.”