In a season where Aston Martin has produced a car worthy of podium finishes, Stroll's best result has been a fourth place, which he took in the Australian GP.
But it's a year that has been characterised more by the depth of his struggles, as Qatar proved to be his fourth consecutive Q1 exit.
While Stroll said on Friday he didn't know why he was struggling so much right now, a deeper dive into the campaign points to a combination of circumstances that have worked against him, some of which are outside his control, but some of which are not.
"It's been a rough season since kind of the first few races," said Stroll earlier in the Qatar weekend. "It's been difficult.
"A lot of stuff has happened - reliability issues and unfortunate circumstances. And also just the speed at times has been not really there."
Asked if there were common themes to his troubles and elements that were down to him, he said: "There's definitely things in my control, too. I feel like that there's things I can work on, and improve to be faster.
"But there's also been a huge amount of, I guess, just kind of unfortunate circumstances when I look throughout the year.
"From Saudi running in P4 and having an engine problem there. From having a good weekend in Austria to getting a pitstop at exactly the virtual safety car time.
"In Canada, putting on wrong tyres in qualifying. Instead of a new set, we accidentally put on an old set of intermediates, which makes a huge difference in the end results.
"Then just multiple things like that…just things happening and missing out on opportunities to score big points. Sometimes it's like that.
"But there's definitely things I can improve on, and things we can improve on as a group to be stronger."
On-the-nose car
One aspect that looks to be more and more obvious is that Stroll does not appear as comfortable with the way that the handling direction of the ARM23 F1 car has shifted over the course of the season.
Source: Autosport