Poor Lance Stroll. That’s not a phrase you hear often, as he’s the privileged son of a billionaire father who actually bought him a Formula 1 team.
But right now, the 24-year-old Canadian is truly a prisoner in a golden cage. That’s because its shape is remarkably shaky. He is ninth in the drivers’ standings, with 47 points, compared to team-mate Fernando Alonso’s third, with 170.
Even more damning is that Alonso has spent just one lap outside the top 10 this season, walking 276 laps. Alonso’s average grid position is 5.6, Stroll’s 11th.
Stroll’s failure to score at last weekend’s Italian Grand Prix saw Aston Martin drop to fourth in the Constructors’ Championship as Ferrari moved up. This has painful financial consequences. Aston, like most teams, pay serious bonuses to their staff if they finish third or higher, but very little if they finish lower.
Suddenly the 750 employees of their brand new factory at the gates of Silverstone are on the verge of losing the dividend they could have expected when the team started the season so brightly, as close pursuers of the all-conquering Red Bull.
Lance Stroll (L) form has dropped, in stark contrast to teammate Fernando Alonso (R)
F1 teams pay big bonuses to staff if they finish in the top three of the Constructors’ Championship
Stroll performed quite well in that promising early stage, notably taking fourth place in Australia. That result suggested, as I have long believed, that Lance is not the worst driver on the grid at all, even if he is enabled by his father Lawrence’s clothing-guzzling wealth and ownership of the team.
But his form has clearly slipped, with the relentlessness and consistency of Alonso’s driving no doubt seeping into the younger man’s mind. A source close to the team told me about Stroll: “He’s getting lazy, lethargic, miserable and grumpy.”
A social media clip of the drivers leaving a Grand Prix Drivers’ Association meeting last weekend showed him lost in his own thoughts. He looked dejected, unlike his peers who talked animatedly to each other.
So what to do? The best and simplest solution is for Stroll to record it. But does he have what it takes to do this, both in terms of hunger and talent? And could he ever live up to the bar set by Alonso, for whom racing is a way of life, an obsession even, in a way it isn’t for Lance?
The second best result, and perhaps the most realistic, is Lance taking time for himself and giving way to someone better equipped to propel Aston forward (although that may not be the easiest conversation to have with his old man, who spared nothing in financing Lance’s journey to Formula 1).
Unless one of the Strolls decides that Lance’s position is untenable, no one in the team’s hierarchy will pull the trigger. Take team boss Mike Krack’s statement at the Italian Grand Prix: “Next year will be fine for the two drivers.”
Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? To say otherwise is a criminal offence. Stroll rules, rightly as owner, everyone is terrified of him.
Below Stroll is Martin Whitmarsh, a CEO with a suitably large office adjacent to Stroll’s even larger office. A cynic might say, as I have been suggested, that Whitmarsh appointed Krack because he would pose no threat to him; rather, he can dominate him.
A skilled engineer and a decent man, Krack is team boss in name only. The idea of him going up against Whitmarsh, let alone Stroll, is laughable.
It remains an open question whether Whitmarsh can make the most of the excellent new senior engineering team set up by former boss Otmar Szafnauer, the foundation upon which its success at the start of the season has been built. The signs are not good. Aston would rather drop out than march on as the campaign goes on.
The Lance Stroll riddle is an emblem of decline. It must be arrested. But then one big question enters the arena. What future does Lawrence Stroll see for an Aston Martin without his son?
Toto tried twice to get me fired!
I wonder if Toto Wolff regrets his merciless remarks about Max Verstappen’s tenth consecutive win – a first in 73 years of Formula 1.
“Completely irrelevant,” sneered the Mercedes boss, compounding comments he’d made about Sky and dismissing the landmark as a statistic “for Wikipedia, and no one reads that.”
Mercedes chief Toto Wolff should praise Max Verstappen for setting a new record
The Austrian likes to portray himself as an honorable fellow, the essence of reasonableness and decency. But of course he is as ruthless as the next F1 director. Times a thousand.
I know this from personal experience: he tried to fire me twice.
Only Wolff usually knows how to dress his comments in sheep’s clothing. But it is apparently easier to present yourself as a paragon of sportsmanship in triumph than in defeat. Whatever Kipling says. If I were Wolff’s PR advisor – a position he strangely never offered me – I would suggest that he take another look at his grudging remarks and do both himself and Verstappen a good job by finding a tribute that fits in a historic first.
Sigh… no budget limit either
Formula 1 has shown a genius talent over the years to produce something worth writing about as the action on the track has dwindled.
So with a journalist’s sigh I received the news that no team had exceeded last season’s budget cap.
All ten F1 teams have been awarded certificates of compliance by the sport’s governing body
But hats off to the FIA for the thoroughness with which they conducted their audits.
For a long time it was argued that a budget ceiling was unmanageable. I’m not naive enough to think that all teams pull every trick allowed, ingenious enough to think of ways to do it, but for now the process works well.
The downside is that performance differences are recorded in aspic.
Imagine if Mercedes could spend, spend, spend; try this, try that. Same for Ferrari. They can’t, which is the biggest drawback of a cost cap.