2023-11-30 00:30:00
Lance Stroll’s lackluster performance this year in Formula 1 has cost the Aston Martin team valuable points and a ton of money. After seven seasons at the wheel of a single-seater, the Quebec driver is among the worst of his generation.
Landing at Williams at the age of 18, at the dawn of the 2017 campaign, Stroll has since garnered 268 points in 143 races on the great Formula 1 circuit – less than Leclerc, Norris, Ocon, Gasly and co. in his class of age.
Which relegates him to sixth place among the nine drivers in his cohort who made the jump to the premier discipline and have remained there for more than one season since then, according to a compilation from Journal.
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Last weekend, the small point earned by finishing 10th in the Abu Dhabi GP did not allow him to surpass his “best” collection of 75 points, achieved in 2020 aboard his Racing Point car.
To forget… again!
His score therefore stood at 74 points at the end of the 21-race calendar where he was excluded from points on nine occasions. Marked by injury, a crisis in Qatar and a wayward car mid-campaign, this season in which he finished 10th in the drivers’ championship is another to forget.
Especially since his teammate Fernando Alonso, at the wheel of an identical car, eclipsed him by 132 points to finish fourth behind champion Max Verstappen, his Red Bull teammate, Sergio Pérez, and the seven-time world champion in the seat of Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton.
Embarrassing?
Certainly. Because this delay on his teammate is a revealing indicator. Stroll has only three top 5 finishes in this championship, while Alonso has been on the podium eight times, securing 73.6% of Aston Martin’s points.
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For the sixth time in his F1 career, the driver was beaten by his teammate. The only time it outperformed the other car in the same colors was in the 2018 championship, when Sergey Sirotkin also drove Williams’ real tractor into the bottom of the standings.
This year, Aston Martin had big goals and ambitions having assembled a car capable of competing with the likes of Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes.
And while the title of “Best of the rest” was possible for the British team majority owned by Lawrence Stroll, it was beaten to the finish line by McLaren. This fourth place among manufacturers is worth its weight in gold, especially for sponsorships.
But Papa Stroll persists and insists that the financial health of the team is in good shape. So much so that he sold a minority share to a private investment firm, Arctos, for the tidy sum of $1.2 billion in mid-November.
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Behind Ocon, Gasly and co.
In the fastest and most promising car he has driven since his arrival in F1, Lance Stroll was unable to impose himself and maintain the pace. Two good performances at the end of the season do not make us forget his shortcomings both in qualifying and in the race. Even test driver Felipe Drugovich lapped faster than him on two occasions in free practice, including last week in Abu Dhabi.
Despite his poor performances, he will be back next year, team director Mike Krack has already confirmed.
Does he deserve to be guaranteed a place because Dad owns a stable? Many other drivers lost their seats despite better results.
In his cohort, Stroll accumulated 2.5 times fewer points than Lando Norris, who arrived at McLaren in 2019. And yet, in these four seasons, the Canadian driver was at the wheel of competitive cars from Racing Point and Aston Martin.
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As for the British George Russell, he has 469 career points. True, he drives the shiny Mercedes, but he ate his black bread pushing the Williams for three years, making it go from 10th to 8th place in 2021. The same goes for Charles Leclerc, who moved to Ferrari, another leading team in the top 3, after pushing the limits of its Sauber in 2018.
As Jacques Villeneuve, the uncle, said so well Journal during the Las Vegas Grand Prix, “If you don’t have the confidence, you’re in trouble.”
The fact remains that Stroll had a good “bazou” in his hands which he did not know how to push to the limit like his rivals. We can therefore wonder if the fire is still burning for the Canadian pilot whose steering wheel is not in danger.
Full speed
To evaluate his performance, it is rather against Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon that we must compare him. For Toro Rosso and AlphaTauri, Gasly performed small miracles while riding in the middle of the pack, pulling a few rabbits out of his hat along the way, before moving to Alpine this year.
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Having lost his wheel at Force India, which became Racing Point in 2019, notably at the hands of Stroll, whose father had taken over the team, Ocon found one at Renault and Alpine, where he progressed each season. This has allowed him to collect a total of 422 points since 2017, or 154 points more than the Quebecer. But with one season less.
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Author of three career podiums, including one in Monaco last May, the Frenchman achieved a career-best 92 points, finishing 8th in the championship last year.
He contributed to the success of Renault and Alpine.
The same cannot be said of his colleague at Aston Martin.
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