Lance Stroll has said that Felipe Massa gave him ‘no guidance’ during his first season of Formula One.
Speaking to Autosport, the Canadian driver said he does not understand why Massa was perceived to be a mentor to him:
“I don’t think I had any guidance from him last year, whatsoever. He was a team-mate like any other. He was busy trying to drive as fast as he could, and I was trying to drive as fast as I could. That was it. There was nothing more to it than that. I don’t know why people seem to think there was a coach or a mentor thing going on. There wasn’t; it was just him doing his job and me doing mine, and whoever did it better finished ahead.”
Felipe Massa, whose seat has been taken by Sergey Sirotkin for the 2018 season, reacted to Stroll’s comments on Twitter:
?? better not to comment… @lance_stroll @WilliamsRacing https://t.co/SjnorfIxwp
— Felipe Massa (@MassaFelipe19) February 3, 2018
The driver pairing scored 83 points between them in 2017, with Massa out-scoring Stroll by three points.
After graduating in 2015 with a First Class honours degree in English Language and Literature, Nicky Haldenby, a lifelong fan of Formula 1, founded the Lights Out F1 Blog in 2016. Now in its sixth season, the blog has become a firm fan-favourite, delving deep into the sport’s history books and lifting the cover on unusual F1 statistics. Nicky also writes at F1Destinations and Motorsport Guides. In 2017 and 2018, he wrote for Badger GP. Nicky is also the host of the F1 Rewind Podcast and can be heard as the resident stats man on the 2 Soft Compounds Podcast.