"Williams have sold their soul to Stroll's riches" - Villeneuve

1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve is continuing his verbal rant against his fellow Canadian Lance Stroll. Stroll silenced most of his critics in 2017 after some decent performances including a podium at Baku. In early 2017, opinions on the Williams rookie were negative. Villeneuve even went as far as labeling Stroll as “the worst rookie in the history of F1”.

The 19-year old had a tough start to the season as he registered DNFs in the first three races of the season. After his home race in Canada, Lance put together a string of good results, including a podium at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku. But it didn’t matter to Villeneuve.

Lance Stroll

He said, “Even Massa was faster than Lance. His podium in Baku does not convince me as it was pure luck”. Villeneuve also said that Williams’ potential 2018 driver choice, which sees Sergey Sirotkin pitted against Robert Kubica, is all about money.

He continued, “They already sold their soul to the billions of Lawrence Stroll, who only cares about his son.” He also spoke about former Williams driver Valtteri Bottas.. Villeneuve said, “Mercedes won because they still have the best engine, but only Hamilton was able to take advantage of it. Bottas’ performance was almost embarrassing. He is a solid number 2 and no more. I would have chosen Wehrlein.”

Claire Williams

The veteran was banned from the Williams Martini motorhome during the 2017 season as he was relentless in his criticism of Lance Stroll. Deputy team boss Claire Williams said, “With regard to Jacques, he’s obviously been pretty vocal in the media. I don’t want to go into a huge amount of detail about it. The way that Lance describes it, he just wants to get on and let his track performance do the talking. I think that’s what we should do because that’s when the critics will stop — when Lance proves he deserves to be in formula one, which we all at Williams believe anyway,”