Stroll impressing Williams in Villeneuve-like rookie test programme

Stroll will be entering F1 in next year, graduating into a Williams race seat after he became European F3 champion in 2016.

Faced with a big jump from F3 to F1, the Canadian is going through an extensive testing programme, one that Symonds compared to how Williams prepared compatriot Villeneuve for his respective F1 debut two decades ago.

Villeneuve was runner-up in his first year in F1 in 1996, before becoming champion with Williams in 1997.

"There were those programmes - I think Jacques Villeneuve did a very focused programme with Williams in 1995, I know that they specifically went off to a lot of tracks, which weren’t where the teams were testing at the time," Symonds said.

"Generally speaking, with all the guys who were proper test drivers, they went and did testing so they got the miles under their belt - but the focus was always on them developing the car rather than us developing the drivers.

"We’ve turned it around on this one so it is a bit more like Jacques’ old programme of teaching the driver.

"For example, in Abu Dhabi, he [Stroll] did pitstop practice and we had the full pitstop crew and pitstop practice after pitstop practice after pitstop practice. The crew don’t need that practice, but he does. That is where the focus is."

Symonds has been encouraged by Stroll's progress so far, referring to the Canadian's fast learning rate as an obvious "hallmark of a good driver".

"I think it has been quite enlightening. The programme involves a 2014 car and these academy tyres – and the academy tyres are quite different.

"You don’t know how different, we don’t have data on them - but what we can do is look at what Lance is doing with his data compared to Valtteri [Bottas] in 2014 and Felipe [Massa] – and I’ve been quite impressed.

"He gets down to learning a circuit quite quickly, and that is always a hallmark of a good driver. And by the end of two days in the car, he is running quite well.

"What is more – he is learning. A lot of driving an F1 car now is about managing tyres and learning to manage tyres, learning [that] the stuff that engineers bleat on about all the time is actually true.

"So he has to go out, he has to burn through a set of tyres and say ‘s**t, okay, now I know I can’t drive flat out’. It is those sort of things. He is learning, it is good."

Additional reporting by Jonathan Noble