Why Lance Stroll deserves much more respect than his ‘pay driver’ label gets him

Let me preface this piece by stating I do not believe Lance Stroll is in the top five drivers on the grid, probably not even the top 10 but this week’s announcement has brought the talents of the driver into sharp focus.

The arrival of Adrian Newey was met by some sceptics with the response ‘what about Lance?’ as plenty doubted whether Aston Martin would ever reach the top with Stroll in the seat. It is a fair question, one I have asked myself, but in the modern world of social media, there is a tendency to jump on the bandwagon when it comes to Stroll.

Plenty see him as another Nikita Mazepin. A driver on the grid solely because of his dad’s money and yes he is a pay driver, nepo baby, whatever you want to call him, but to compare Stroll to someone like Mazepin ignores what the former has achieved. For a start, he can go round corners without spinning.

Stroll Jnr is in the unfortunately fortunate position of being the son of a determined billionaire. As to how much he wants to be in F1, his demeanour around the racing would suggest otherwise, and how much he is there to appease his father, only they will know, but it is not a case of Stroll just being dropped into the sport.

According to his own website, Stroll first sat behind the wheel at the age of four in a go-kart and he enjoyed the typical route up the motorsport ladder. He won the rookie of the year award in his first season of karting and followed it up with driver of the year. In 2010, he swapped Canada for Geneva and joined the Ferrari Driver Academy at the age of 11, becoming colleagues with the likes of Sergio Perez and Jules Bianchi.

More on Aston Martin

Five reasons why Adrian Newey’s big-money Aston Martin move makes sense

Lawrence Stroll: How the Aston Martin F1 owner made his $3.9 billion fortune

Once he made the switch to Europe, the level of competition was notably higher. George Russell won the 2011 and 2012 KF3 title as Stroll finished 21st. In 2013, he moved up a class and finished sixth in the standings, three places back from Max Verstappen.

It was not the only time Stroll faced Verstappen in their junior careers, they both graduated to the Ferrari-run Florida Winter Series and his first taste of action out of the go-kart.

Next, Stroll Snr invested money in the Prema team to give Lance a spot in Formula 4 and a chance to learn from Brandon Maisano in the seat alongside him. It worked. Stroll won the championship (Maisano was too old to be eligible for the title) and was just 15 years old at the time of his victory.

From there it was onto the Toyota Racing Series, which he won, and then another successful outing this time in the 2016 Formula 3 championship where he beat Russell.

This youth career was enough to get him on the F1 teams’ radar and when Valtteri Bottas was picked up by Mercedes in 2017, Stroll stepped in at Williams to replace him with his father paying a reported $80 million to make it happen. In doing so, Stroll became the second youngest F1 driver in history, behind only his old karting rival Verstappen, and finished 12th in his first year, just three points behind team-mate and F1 veteran Felipe Massa.

That start to his F1 career was seven years ago and, it may seem hard to believe, but the Canadian is now the 10th most experienced driver on the grid.

As for that career, it is one that is actually better than most people realise. He has 292 points, three podiums, and even a pole position scored at the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix. In only one season has he scored below 10 points and when it comes to team-mates, Stroll may have had a tougher battle than any other driver on the grid.

Aside from Sergey Sirotkin who represents the one F1 team-mate Stroll has had who could not be classed as a top level driver, the Canadian has battled Sergio Perez, Felipe Massa, Sebastian Vettel and now Fernando Alonso. Plenty is said about the calibre of Lewis Hamilton’s and Max Verstappen’s team-mates but Stroll has got them beat hands down.

As for how Stroll has fared against them, he has certainly held his own. He has scored less than a third of the team’s overall points in just one season and 2023 was the first time he was really destroyed by his team-mate and it just so happened to be a two-time World Champion.

Of course, not being destroyed by your team-mate is a low bar compared to how we usually talk about drivers but we are not talking about a championship-level talent here.

With eight races left to run, Stroll is 10th in the standings ahead of Nico Hulkenberg who everyone would agree is having a great season, as well as the VCARBs of Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo. And yes, Stroll does have a better car than them, but his old team-mate Sergio Perez is showing it is one thing to have a quick car, it is another to be able to score regular points in it.

All of this to say is look away from the memes and the running jokes and Stroll is a perfectly capable F1 driver for most of the teams and if you listen to anyone from Aston, it is clear he has other positives as well.

“He has played a key role in building this team. His technical feedback, alongside his committed simulator work, has helped contribute to the continuous development of the car each season,” Aston team principal Mike Krack said in June.

“The consistency and stability of both Lance and Fernando remaining with our team is a great platform to continue to realise our ambitions. We look forward to creating some more incredible memories and achieving further success together.”

Even Fernando Alonso praised Stroll’s ability to dissect a car’s issues and relay that to the engineers.

“I think the analysis that Lance can reach and can feed back to the team is crucial to us and to improve the car. I’m a little bit [less] sensitive to things sometimes, and this is not a good thing.

“I think we are [both] trying to help Aston as much as we can, and I think that the direction we develop the car and we finalise normally the set-ups on a weekend is exactly the same. We arrive to the same conclusion and maybe in a different way, and I think those two different styles is just a good thing for Aston.”

Reading these quotes will no doubt have some saying ‘they were paid to say that by Lawrence’ and yes, neither Krack or Alonso are going to go out of their way to say something that will upset the Strolls – but the latter in particular has not been shy to give criticism if he feels it necessary.

Of course, no one is going to shed a tear for the son of a billionaire whose career has undoubtedly been helped by his dad’s money but the rhetoric around Stroll sometimes suggests he was plucked off the couch of his Canadian mansion and put into an F1 car.

Being the son of the team owner has made Stroll an easy target to pick on but the reality of F1 is that’s the name of the game. Lando Norris’ father is one of the richest men in the UK, Logan Sargeant is from one of America’s richest families and then you have the likes of Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz whose fathers were racers before them.

No one is saying Stroll is one of the best drivers to have ever raced in F1 but his branding as an outright failure is too harsh.

Is he ever going to win a World Championship? Almost certainly not. Can Aston win the Constructors’ whilst he is there? I have my doubts. Does he crash more than he should? Absolutely. But of all the nepo babies in the world, Lance Stroll is more talented than most.

Read next: Five big Azerbaijan GP questions: Perez really a street fighter? Papaya rules changed?