It feels a long time ago now, but Stroll broke both wrists and a toe in his biking accident back in February, yet 15 days later he was racing in the Bahrain Grand Prix.
And more than racing, he was scoring solid points, finishing sixth to back-up Fernando Alonso’s third place as Aston Martin made a stunning start to the year. Not that Stroll – as proud as he was of making the comeback – reflects on the race itself in positive fashion.
“I was actually a bit disappointed after the weekend, because I felt like I didn’t drive a great race,” he tells Motor Sport. “In all honesty, I was happy to be in the car, but there were things I didn’t do in the test – I didn’t get to do any long runs in the test. So I didn’t really do any long runs on the medium tyre before the race, then I pushed it a little bit too hard, and I degged it early, and then I had to get on the hard a bit earlier than the others.
“I saw [Lewis] Hamilton was a second and a half up the road and [Carlos] Sainz was just in front of him, and then I kind of realized after ‘F**k, if I would have driven that medium tyre stint a little bit better. I think I could have picked them off no problem with the car pace we had’.
“So I was really frustrated about that. But that’s just me being a racing driver.”
There have been a lot of frustrations for Stroll this year, which are sometimes allowed to overshadow the racing driver part. Regularly seeing his place in F1 called into question due to his father’s ownership of Aston Martin, the fact he is still a high quality driver rarely gets the credit it deserves. That’s not to say he’s produced many results this season to quieten his critics, but on the few occasions he has matched or even beaten Fernando Alonso in the same car – think Spain or qualifying in Austria and the sprint – Stroll still doesn’t seem to win over many fans.
“I don’t really pay too much attention to that. I know more myself deep down when I do a good job, and I extract the most from the car. Whether I’m ahead or behind them I know when I should be patting myself on the shoulder, or the first one to kind of criticise myself in a constructive way, learn from it and come back stronger.