If you were a fledgling new Formula 1 fan who did not know any better, it would be easy to fall into the trap of assuming the only reason Lance Stroll is on the grid is because he is the son of Aston Martin’s executive chairman Lawrence Stroll.
It’s easy to overlook the fact the younger Stroll is a Formula 3 champion. One of the youngest drivers ever to line up on the F1 grid, he has multiple appearances on the podium and is already one of the more experienced drivers in the field at the age of just 25 – when many world champions of old were still finding their feet in the highest level of motorsport.
Yet if 2023 was your first full season of following Formula 1, no one could blame you for having serious questions about Stroll’s worthiness for his Aston Martin seat – or even on the grid at all.
Some allowance must be made for the fact Stroll’s season started in the worst possible manner. As he trained ahead of the new campaign, he suffered a hand injury and a broken toe in a nasty cycling accident that caused him to miss the only pre-season test the week before the opening round of the season in Bahrain. While many assumed the time had come for Aston Martin’s reserve and junior driver Felipe Drugovich to get an opportunity to make his grand prix debut, Stroll knew the team had a fast car and was determined not to miss out. Despite a lack of track time in his car and being in a considerable degree of discomfort with his injuries, Stroll put in one of the gutsiest performances of his career to finish sixth – a very respectable result in the circumstances.
But that admirable showing in Sakhir remained potentially his most impressive of the season. For over the bulk of the year, Stroll was simply nowhere in comparison to his new team mate, veteran Fernando Alonso. While the 42-year-old twice world champion was on the podium six times over the opening eight rounds, Stroll peaked with a single fourth place finish in Melbourne – which only then he gained courtesy of Carlos Sainz Jnr’s costly penalty.
There was no mistaking the prowess of the AMR23 over the early rounds but Stroll was continually unable to make the most of it. If he wasn’t being beaten by cars that could not touch his team mate ahead, he was starting to regularly miss out on Q3 – something Alonso never failed to achieve over the first half of the season. Stroll was genuinely unlucky in Monaco to be caught out…
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