Why is the best-prepared rookie since Hamilton struggling?

Lance Stroll arrived in Australia as arguably the best-prepared Formula 1 rookie since Lewis Hamilton.

The Canadian teenager had spent the winter toughening up his body to prepare for the rigours of the new generation of F1 cars and religiously researching every aspect of a grand prix weekend.

He had also completed a bespoke seven-month test programme, pounding around various racetracks across the world in a 2014-spec car, in addition to extensive time spent in the simulator to get up to speed.

Nothing had been left to chance. And yet five races and a quarter of the way into his rookie F1 season, Stroll finds himself without a single point to his name.

In contrast, Felipe Massa has excelled on the other side of the garage, sealing three points finishes to generate all the Williams team's 18 points.

Considering the outfit had decided Massa was no longer good enough to be part of its future midway through last year, only to call on his services when Valtteri Bottas hotfooted it to Mercedes at the 11th hour, it does not reflect well on Stroll.

But is it as bad as it looks?

In Australia, Stroll was outclassed by Massa. Though he got to within 0.2 seconds of the Brazilian in second practice, it's worth noting his team-mate did not manage to do a performance run following an electrical failure.

Stroll then crashed on Saturday morning, which in turn meant only a single run in qualifying, and he ended up starting 20th. A flat-spot at the first corner of the race prompted an earlier-than-planned pitstop before a suspected brake failure forced his retirement. It was a tough weekend.

China was more encouraging, Stroll making Q3 for the first time. He noted a steering change transformed the car, giving him confidence going into the race. But his presence lasted just a handful of minutes before a collision with Sergio Perez ended his day.

Stroll's struggles getting the Pirelli tyres to work were highlighted in Bahrain, where he failed to get on terms with Massa once more. He recovered from losing ground on the first lap, but was taken out of the race by Carlos Sainz Jr as the Toro Rosso exited the pits.

A second Q3 appearance was a boost in Russia, but his qualifying was messy and he ended up nearly a second off Massa. He spun over a kerb on the first lap but recovered well to 11th. Points could - and should - have been collected.

Throughout those struggles, Stroll maintained an air of confidence that things would turn around. But on arriving in Spain, that seemed to have evaporated.

His head appeared to have dropped. Qualifying was reasonable, the Canadian finishing around three tenths adrift of Massa, but his race was by his own omission "not great".

Stroll was around 50s up on Massa after his team-mate had to pit with a puncture following contact with Fernando Alonso at Turn 2 at the start. But he ended the race 11.5s down.

"I didn't feel great in the car and couldn't get the feeling the way I wanted," Stroll said.

"It was just one of those races, but I am sure it will be better next time. At every race, I get more and more confident, but this weekend was just a tough one."

Deputy team principal Claire Williams gave her backing to the teenager at Barcelona, arguing the 2016 European Formula 3 champion has the ability and just needs time.

The team continues to take an "arm round the shoulder approach" with him. But internally, Williams had hoped he would have achieved more by this point in the season.

Rookies aren't traditionally given much time to deliver, even if publicly they are backed by the team, but Stroll can at least take comfort from the fact that he will be afforded that luxury.

His billionaire father Lawrence Stroll has pumped upwards of £40million into Williams over the course of the past 24 months. Such a cash injection brings influence in the team.

Having that buffer is helpful in this instance, but his family's wealth is also a strain. Many said he only got the drive because of his father's money. Williams said it was based on talent. The truth is somewhere in between.

Stroll is a championship winner. He clinched the Italian Formula 4 title with seven wins from 18 races and followed up a fifth-place finish in his debut F3 season with the title the following year, collecting 14 wins from 30 races along the way.

So why is he struggling? A large chunk comes down to pressure - and the combination of differing burdens being placed on his shoulders.

The fact that there is an element of him having to prove to others that he is in F1 because of talent, rather than money, creates huge anxiety. He's a racing driver who believes he is the best, so there is the pressure from himself.

He will also want to make good on all the money his father has invested in him.

"Lance is a driver with a lot of expectation around him from not just people close to him but even more across the paddock, because there's a spotlight on how he got here and 'does he really deserve the drive?' and all those things," says Williams technical chief Paddy Lowe.

"Racing drivers are by their natures super-competitive, they are the best and the worst at beating themselves up if they don't think they are performing as they should. There are no easy answers to how you undo that pressure."

Max Verstappen's explosive impact on F1 at a young age will not have helped either, nor will the fact that Stroll has entered F1 at a time when the cars are much faster and more physical.

"I feel for him in the sense that it's the toughest year to come in to Formula 1," said Hamilton during testing.

"I know he's been travelling around the world testing with Williams; he's definitely had more preparation time than any other driver would have had.

"It's to be expected. It's not an easy car to drive at all. It's so much faster through the corners. Precision is even more important than in the past - last year's car is easy compared to this year's car."

For all the training Stroll will have done over the winter, combined with the thousands of kilometres he will have racked up in a 2014-spec car, it appears that wasn't enough to prepare him for F1 '17.

Even the most experienced drivers have spoken of the physical demands of the new formula. Hamilton even suggested that he might not jump into his mechanics to celebrate victory after a race again because that used all his remaining energy, so demanding was the race. You can't shortcut physical training - you need to build it. So that will take time.

Stroll has joined Williams at a time when it's been sucked into the midfield battle. The probability of racing incidents increases, as you more often find yourself jostling in the pack.

The loss of Bottas as a mentor was offset by the arrival of Massa, against whom Stroll would have felt he had a good shot. But Massa has, for the second time in his F1 career, looked like a man reborn on being given another opportunity.

It has only been five races, and things haven't gone Stroll's way on occasion this year; contact with Perez in China and Sainz in Russia, for example, was unfortunate. But this, combined with his own mistakes, has meant he's been unable to gather any momentum.

What he needs, of course, is a clean weekend. And then another. And another. That'll allow him to get into a rhythm and with that, the pace will hopefully come.

There's also evidence from his single-seater career that it takes him time to settle into a championship. Stroll made a positive start in his F3 career, but there was a feeling he got too greedy too quickly, always trying to get big results even when they weren't possible. That resulted in some questionable race tactics.

On recognising this, he went too far the other way and became a bit of a soft-touch in races, and that initially carried into his title-winning season in 2016.

But he had sought good advice over the winter and was armed with the experience from his debut year. He mixed the two approaches, pushing for victory when it was there but playing it safe when necessary. Lessons had been learned. The result was a title.

The challenge - and the pressure - is far greater in F1. But there have been signs that suggest Stroll can cope and turn things around.

Fortunately, time is on his side - given his circumstances. If he gets to the end of the season and he's still off Massa's pace and remains point-less, it may be time to start worrying.

But for now, there's certainly no need to hit the panic button.