‘No pace in the car or myself’ - Lance Stroll lacks answers for woeful qualifying

Lance Stroll says he doesn’t “have the answers” to explain his dreadful qualifying at the F1 Japanese Grand Prix.

The Aston Martin driver provided the shock of the first part of qualifying at Suzuka when he was eliminated with only the 16th-fastest time.

Stroll was left puzzled by his poor performance, especially with teammate Fernando Alonso going on to qualify fifth.

“Everything felt fine,” he told F1.com. “Just very slow today. No pace in the car and no pace in myself in my car.

“The car looks quick and Fernando was quick, so I don’t know. I don’t have more answers.

“We have to look at the data, see if tyres, everything was working properly in the right window. It’s just one of those days, I don’t know, I don’t have answers yet, we have to look at everything.”

Both Aston Martin drivers ran the upgraded AMR24 package, but Stroll conceded he doesn’t have “anything positive to say about it, but it looks good with Fernando.”

Stroll has now failed to advance from Q1 during the last three qualifying sessions at Suzuka, finishing 19th in 2022 and 17th in 2023.

Alonso admitted he didn’t expect to be so competitive in qualifying.

“Yesterday I had the old package, today the new package. Tonight we will have all the data to confirm that, and to quantify the improvement, but everything felt good in qualifying," Alonso said. "Little bit unexpected, to be that competitive, to be honest.

"Just a couple of hundreds from [Sainz] Ferrari, Leclerc [is] behind us, Piastri behind us and Mercedes. So we were here six months ago - 1.5 seconds from pole position. And now we are four tenths."