MONTREAL — Lance Stroll wants to be Canada’s next Formula One driver, but doesn’t want to risk spoiling it by jumping too quickly into motor racing’s top series.

Just because Max Verstappen won the Spanish Grand Prix for Red Bull this year at only 18 — the youngest winner in F1 history, a year after becoming youngest ever to start a race — that’s no reason to assume that the 17-year-old Stroll can do the same.

"We saw what Verstappen did it at a very young age," Stroll said Wednesday. "It shows that young drivers are capable.

"I don’t want to use him as an example. He could be an exception. He’s obviously very good. But when the time is right, when I’m ready, when we complete all the steps, then we’ll make a decision."

Stroll, a Montreal native now based in Geneva, is one of the promising young drivers in the Williams racing team’s stable. He leads the European F3 circuit, an F1 feeder series, by 38 points. He has three wins in 12 races wit Prema PowerTeam.

He will spend this weekend in the Williams garage at the Canadian Grand Prix, but won’t get a chance to drive in Friday’s practice sessions, at least partly because of Verstappen. A rule change inspired by the Dutch teenager and enacted by FIA, the sport’s governing body, this year bars drivers under 18 from piloting an F1 car.

"For now, I’m in F3 and that’s what I’m focused on," Stroll said. "I think Williams wants me to concentrate 100 per cent on F3.

"F1 will come when it’s the right time. I need to take each step as it comes. Maybe next year, when I’m old enough, I can do a practice. Or a (F1) season, you never know."

If he gets the chance to race in F1 next year, he’d jump at it. But he doesn’t want to rush it.

"You see drivers who went in with potential who maybe took steps too quickly," he said. "Max settled in really well.

"Another driver could be just as good but it takes him another year in F3 or GP2. To have a career like (Lewis) Hamilton or (Fernando) Alonzo, maybe its worth taking that extra year and learning everything as you should rather than being a little stressed because you’re not 100 per cent confident."

To make it with Williams would be special. Jacques Villeneuve, the last Canadian in F1, won the championship in 1997 for the British squad, a year before Stroll was born.

He’s on the right path with a dominant second year in F3. In his last time on the track for three races at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, he won twice and finished second in the other.

And two weeks ago, he was inducted into the British Racing Drivers Club, which run the Silverstone circuit in England, as a "Rising Star." He was selected for the exclusive club because Canada is a Commonwealth country.

"As time goes on, hopefully I’ll become a full time member," he said. "But it was a very big deal.

"For some of the British drivers it’s really huge."

It has helped that his father, fashion magnate Lawrence Stroll, has the means to finance a racing career. Forbes magazine estimates his fortune at $2.4 billion.

Lance Stroll has his own tutor helping him to complete his final year of high school online. And living in hyper-expensive Switzerland keeps him within an hour’s flight of all 33 F3 races. He only gets back to Canada two or three times per year.

"It’s quite a calm place," he said of Geneva. "Very peaceful and relaxing."