racing driver lance stroll
Dec. 10th, 2023 02:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chiyouinitially cobbled this together to keep track of certain races and stats but ended up going off a tangent. might update this periodically in the future! who knows. a proportionate chunk of the clips in this post is credited to the f1 subreddit.
last updated: 15 jan 2024
i. driving style
gábor wéber, a commentator on hungarian broadcast, wrote and published a book about f1 in which he analyzed the 2019 grid's driving styles. this is what he said about lance, translated by a kind reddit user:
in his first two years in f1, fans and pundits quickly realized that lance's starts were one of his biggest strengths, as he has a knack for making up positions in the first lap. in fact, he's done exactly that in his f1 debut race. people have downplayed this, saying that because he often underqualifies, it's much easier for him to overtake cars he should've outqualified anyway. but this isn't necessarily correct - he's had these great starts even in the 2018 williams, arguably the worst car he's had in his f1 career. exhibit a: china 2018, where he made up 6 places on the first lap alone (7 before fernando overtook him back), but proceeded to lose all them all again as the race went on because the car simply didn't have the pace.
furthermore, he still gains places even when he starts further up ahead. exhibit b: spain 2020, spain 2023 and austin 2022. in all instances, he started from p6/p5 on the grid and was in p3 by lap two. some highlights:
iii. onwards and upwards
in the past few years, lance was in the top 3 for most positions gained in a season. this stat highlights starting position to finishing position.
while 2022 is exaggerated by the AMR22 having no quali pace but mega race pace (seb placed 2nd after lance with 51 positions gained), lance is never beating the reverse jarno trulli allegations........
iv. driver development
lance was first scouted by ferrari after dominating north american kart races. although lawrence already had a previous connection with ferrari thanks to his dealerships in montreal, he thought their offer to join the newly established FDA (comprised of only 4 drivers back then, notably jules bianchi and checo perez) was a scam. allegedly mclaren heard about this and offered lance to join their own academy, but he opted to stick with ferrari.
i have conflicting feelings about lance's junior career - i dont know enough about FDA and their history to comment on how they run their program. but in hindsight, would have it been better for lance's development if he had gone to mclaren instead? their program seems to deliver much better results, or maybe they just have a good eye for talent (their roster being lewis and lando, highly anticipated up and coming rookies like stoffel, kmag & ugochukwu, and potential future WDCs like bortoleto.) when lance switched over to williams' driver academy, he said he learned so much more than he did at ferrari. i do think that lance's potential and his development was stunted a bit by his father's tight reigns on his career (buying prema, and then team silverstone). similarly, williams post-2015 certainly isn't the most ideal team for rookies to develop, much less for lance who had to learn all the fundamental skills you pick up in f2 (which he skipped) like tyre management, race pace etc. but in an f1 car.
v. teammates
in his rookie season, there was a clause in lance's contract to pair him with an older, experienced teammate to mentor him. set to drive alongside a 28 year-old valtteri at the time, nico rosberg announced a shock retirement, which was the catalyst of many driver movements. esteban had already signed a contract with force india prior to nico's retirement so he was not an option for the seat. mercedes then stole valtteri from williams and bought pascal wehrlein (esteban's teammate at manor, and a fellow mercedes junior) a seat at sauber instead, because mercedes believed wehrlein wasn't ready for the seat. with valtteri suddenly out of the picture, williams was forced to bring felipe massa back (whom lance ironically replaced as felipe retired the previous year). i don't know much about lance and felipe's relationship, other than when felipe got upset when lance told the media that he didn't learn much from him (lmfao?), and felipe argued that the help he gave lance was more than what schumacher gave him when they were teammates. they seem to be friendly enough whenever felipe hung around the paddock post-retirement. lance was then paired up with russian rookie sergey sirotkin for one year. they got along well i guess.
after lawrence's consortium bought force india, it was never explicitly said - but obviously implied - that lance would be replacing one of their drivers. the episode on drive to survive covers this period of time where esteban and checo fought to keep their seats. esteban was the better driver that season, and this quite obviously rattled checo which manifested on track, such as him angrily driving into poor sirotkin in singapore and playing dumb about it to the media afterwards. esteban and checo famously did not get along, but esteban and lance did. esteban did not bring in any money, but checo and lance did; surely the obvious choice was to pair esteban and lance together? however, esteban was the one who lost his seat. before he knew he was out of a drive, he posted this on instagram in response the online abuse lance was getting.
prior to becoming teammates, checo and lance hardly interacted at all. checo famously took a dig at lawrence in this driver briefing video, and when asked once if he was looking forward to drive alongside lance next season, he kind of just sighed. now, he calls lance one of his closest friends in the sport (1) (2). checo used to post cute insta stories of lance, and they even spent achristmas new years in puerto vallarta, mexico with checo's family right before his first season with red bull. lance also seemed more emotional over checo's move to red bull than he ever was about seb's retirement lmao. checo later found out he was being sacked because he overheard lawrence on the phone. i think its very interesting that both checo and esteban are just as close, or closer, to lance despite losing their drives because of him. due to this i believe lance doesn't have a say or influence over who gets a seat. reiterating what i once said before, but it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of drivers, especially the older ones who didn't grow up karting or racing lance, had preconceived notions about him because of his background. even so, drivers like lewis and kmag were very friendly to him, and it helped that esteban (and later pierre after his debut in malaysia) were on the grid so he could at least hang around people his age.
the pattern of lance being paired up with older teammates continue with sebastian vettel. tbh their relationship has gagged me speechless but not even in a good way, i genuinely do not have much to say about them lmao. as someone once said, its crazy how little impact they had. but they did get along well, and lance was genuinely happy to have seb back at suzuka this year. lance isn't a stranger to battling his teammates, but seb was the first one i remember lance got pretty dirty with (which he later admitted to regretting). at least they gave us this gem.
which brings us to fernando alonso. some (a lot of) relevant quotes about their relationship:
one thing that sticks out to me is how fernando has emphasized several times that he hopes to continue to have a role in aston martin even after he retires, and that was one of the reasons lawrence was convinced that fernando was the right choice. i can definitely see him having a niki lauda-style career post-retirement.
vi. misc driving momence
last updated: 15 jan 2024
i. driving style
gábor wéber, a commentator on hungarian broadcast, wrote and published a book about f1 in which he analyzed the 2019 grid's driving styles. this is what he said about lance, translated by a kind reddit user:
"On the other side of the Racing Point garage, we find the perfect opposite to Perez on the driver style spectrum, because Lance Stroll is the big improviser on the grid. A true reactive driver, who rides the horse bareback, he operates with very deep braking and carries much speed into the corner because of this. He constantly dances on the limit with the wheel and the pedals. From the outside, it seems like he only plans up to the middle of the corner and somehow fights his way from there to the straight, but his reaction time is incredible. This unrestful style is what limits his qualifying results, but it helps him during the races, because he reacts very well to unforeseen events and changing conditions, we rarely see him making mistakes then."lance's way of "fighting" the wheel to make constant micro-corrections is far from the fastest in the dry, but bizarrely becomes a strength in wet or chaotic conditions. him being a reactive driver and not a predictive one is also why he's so inconsistent. some standout wet sessions across his career:
- monza 2017 qualifying: his first time driving an f1 car in full wet conditions. he was top 5 throughout the whole session, ahead of massa (who in fairness, has never been good in the wet), finishing ahead of everyone bar lewis and the red bulls. paddy lowe, williams' then-CTO, was surprised at lance's front-row start as he was running a dry set-up.
- germany 2019: questionable strat calls saw him trundling around last at one point (behind a williams!!) but a good gamble to switch to inters early meant he led the race for a short while. he held off bottas for so long (who was so tilted that he crashed out) and even defended against seb's ferrari in the corners before getting passed on the straights. lance later mentioned that he was actually driving a lap with his visor half-open to check if the track was drying.
- turkey 2020 qualifying: touted by drivers as one of the worst conditions in f1 in decades because the track was essentially an ice rink. lance was advantaged by the racing point's ability to turn the inters on better than anyone else, and put together a perfect lap that earned him his maiden pole.
- emilia romagna 2021: aside from gaining a pen by cutting a chicane, lance mastered the changing conditions while managing upshift problems with the car (in which seb was forced to retire earlier from the same issue.)
- brazil 2023 qualifying: both max and charles said that q3 was the "weirdest session" they've ever experienced, because the cars behaved as if it was raining. an early banker lap secured him a p3 start.
- las vegas 2023: not a wet race but one of the coldest in history. managed to avoid the first lap melee and finished 14 positions ahead.
in his first two years in f1, fans and pundits quickly realized that lance's starts were one of his biggest strengths, as he has a knack for making up positions in the first lap. in fact, he's done exactly that in his f1 debut race. people have downplayed this, saying that because he often underqualifies, it's much easier for him to overtake cars he should've outqualified anyway. but this isn't necessarily correct - he's had these great starts even in the 2018 williams, arguably the worst car he's had in his f1 career. exhibit a: china 2018, where he made up 6 places on the first lap alone (7 before fernando overtook him back), but proceeded to lose all them all again as the race went on because the car simply didn't have the pace.
furthermore, he still gains places even when he starts further up ahead. exhibit b: spain 2020, spain 2023 and austin 2022. in all instances, he started from p6/p5 on the grid and was in p3 by lap two. some highlights:
- france 2022: +5 positions gained
- suzuka 2022:+7 positions gained
- las vegas 2023: +10 positions gained
iii. onwards and upwards
in the past few years, lance was in the top 3 for most positions gained in a season. this stat highlights starting position to finishing position.
| YEAR | POSITIONS GAINED |
| 2021 | 46 |
| 2022 | 72 |
| 2023 | 63 |
while 2022 is exaggerated by the AMR22 having no quali pace but mega race pace (seb placed 2nd after lance with 51 positions gained), lance is never beating the reverse jarno trulli allegations........
iv. driver development
lance was first scouted by ferrari after dominating north american kart races. although lawrence already had a previous connection with ferrari thanks to his dealerships in montreal, he thought their offer to join the newly established FDA (comprised of only 4 drivers back then, notably jules bianchi and checo perez) was a scam. allegedly mclaren heard about this and offered lance to join their own academy, but he opted to stick with ferrari.
i have conflicting feelings about lance's junior career - i dont know enough about FDA and their history to comment on how they run their program. but in hindsight, would have it been better for lance's development if he had gone to mclaren instead? their program seems to deliver much better results, or maybe they just have a good eye for talent (their roster being lewis and lando, highly anticipated up and coming rookies like stoffel, kmag & ugochukwu, and potential future WDCs like bortoleto.) when lance switched over to williams' driver academy, he said he learned so much more than he did at ferrari. i do think that lance's potential and his development was stunted a bit by his father's tight reigns on his career (buying prema, and then team silverstone). similarly, williams post-2015 certainly isn't the most ideal team for rookies to develop, much less for lance who had to learn all the fundamental skills you pick up in f2 (which he skipped) like tyre management, race pace etc. but in an f1 car.
v. teammates
in his rookie season, there was a clause in lance's contract to pair him with an older, experienced teammate to mentor him. set to drive alongside a 28 year-old valtteri at the time, nico rosberg announced a shock retirement, which was the catalyst of many driver movements. esteban had already signed a contract with force india prior to nico's retirement so he was not an option for the seat. mercedes then stole valtteri from williams and bought pascal wehrlein (esteban's teammate at manor, and a fellow mercedes junior) a seat at sauber instead, because mercedes believed wehrlein wasn't ready for the seat. with valtteri suddenly out of the picture, williams was forced to bring felipe massa back (whom lance ironically replaced as felipe retired the previous year). i don't know much about lance and felipe's relationship, other than when felipe got upset when lance told the media that he didn't learn much from him (lmfao?), and felipe argued that the help he gave lance was more than what schumacher gave him when they were teammates. they seem to be friendly enough whenever felipe hung around the paddock post-retirement. lance was then paired up with russian rookie sergey sirotkin for one year. they got along well i guess.
after lawrence's consortium bought force india, it was never explicitly said - but obviously implied - that lance would be replacing one of their drivers. the episode on drive to survive covers this period of time where esteban and checo fought to keep their seats. esteban was the better driver that season, and this quite obviously rattled checo which manifested on track, such as him angrily driving into poor sirotkin in singapore and playing dumb about it to the media afterwards. esteban and checo famously did not get along, but esteban and lance did. esteban did not bring in any money, but checo and lance did; surely the obvious choice was to pair esteban and lance together? however, esteban was the one who lost his seat. before he knew he was out of a drive, he posted this on instagram in response the online abuse lance was getting.
prior to becoming teammates, checo and lance hardly interacted at all. checo famously took a dig at lawrence in this driver briefing video, and when asked once if he was looking forward to drive alongside lance next season, he kind of just sighed. now, he calls lance one of his closest friends in the sport (1) (2). checo used to post cute insta stories of lance, and they even spent a
the pattern of lance being paired up with older teammates continue with sebastian vettel. tbh their relationship has gagged me speechless but not even in a good way, i genuinely do not have much to say about them lmao. as someone once said, its crazy how little impact they had. but they did get along well, and lance was genuinely happy to have seb back at suzuka this year. lance isn't a stranger to battling his teammates, but seb was the first one i remember lance got pretty dirty with (which he later admitted to regretting). at least they gave us this gem.
which brings us to fernando alonso. some (a lot of) relevant quotes about their relationship:
"I've known [Alonso] for some time, and we have a really strong relationship," Stroll says. "We have a similar driving style, and we want the same things from the car, which means that we have a really strong working bond." This season, Stroll is learning from Alonso and also receiving immense encouragement from him to keep fighting at the front.
source
"We are all helping him," said Alonso. "I'm trying to do my best as well, my part. If I find something in the car that I feel more comfortable with, I'm obviously listening to all the debriefs, because we are together in the same room. Whatever difficulty that he's expressing, I'm trying to remember what could have been a help for me in the past, or in set-up or whatever. So yeah, we are working very close together to find the right path for the team, and try to score points with both cars."
"I think he's been extremely unlucky with some situations," said the Spaniard. "I think the pace and the speed are not that far when everything goes normal, like in the race in Qatar, the race in Japan, we were within one tenth of the second.
"When he was doing this tremendous comeback from 17th to ninth in Suzuka he had the rear wing failure. So all this is just hitting your confidence, because it's like in football, when you went two or three matches, everything goes perfect. When you lose two or three matches, you start getting stress, and you try to deliver the job in the next one. So we need a clean weekend.
"Qualifying especially is the most intense part of the weekend at the moment, with Q1 being so tight, the field, if you have an unlucky out lap, if you have anything that affects those laps, then the race weekend is compromised when you start at the back. So we just need a clean weekend. And hopefully, this one is the starting point."
source
"It's been very good. I think we have a very unique relationship [compared to] any team that I’ve worked for and in any team that I know in the current paddock," Alonso told the media at the 2023 Abu Dhabi GP. "We talk a lot, we’re in contact every week on the phone, at the factory, at races and we try to make sure that we are all in the same direction, we share so many things."
"He’s been through some difficulties this year, the car was just changing behaviour a little bit and he was just struggling a little bit more than me," Alonso said. "And now we’ve fixed a few things in the car, and he’s back to top form. It was impressive to see his dedication and his motivation in the highs and the lows, at the beginning of the year with a broken hand and then through the season he was so determined to put things back in place again.
"And eventually he did after I think Mexico, the race in Brazil, the race in Vegas. And to be honest this was a surprise to me, the level of commitment and the level of motivation that he has. So you know, this is only good news and good things for the team."
source
Despite the 17-year age gap between the pair, Alonso has known Stroll since meeting him in the Ferrari Academy in 2012 when the Canadian was just 13. But given Stroll’s father Lawrence owns the team, questions have been raised with regard to the potential dynamic between the two drivers and the fact Lance is virtually fireproof.
Asked whether he has any concerns over likely complications, the 41-year-old Alonso said: "Not really. I've been here long enough to know different things and to experience different team-mates, different personalities. I was thinking about Jacques Villeneuve when you were asking the question – that was an experience, and we had only three races (at Renault at the end of 2004). Yeah, that was fun!
"With Lance, it is a little bit different. I feel it a little bit different as I have known Lawrence and Lance for many years. Lance was in the Ferrari Academy, that was in 2012, so it’s 11 years we have known each other. Now we have this wonderful opportunity to share the team, to work together towards an Aston Martin that will hopefully be in contention for the championships in the future."
source
Alonso was asked why he’s prepared to help Stroll, he replied: “Yes, I tried to help Lance but we cannot forget that also he’s very smart. He's a driver that I think as a teammate, as we saw in Baku, we spoke about saving tyres," explained Alonso. "We didn’t know exactly in a sprint format how long the tyres will last. We were saving tyres and he said, 'I will not attack Fernando'.
"Last year I had maybe the opposite," added the Spaniard, in a shot at former Alpine teammate Esteban Ocon. "Always, you know, for my teammate, the first target was me. And that was obviously not beneficial for the team. So, I think Lance is also playing a part in the relationship."
source
"I think we saw many times in the past sparks of Lance, in wet qualifying, in races, at the starts, Lap 1 performance, these kinds of things that are outstanding," said Alonso. "And then, some other weekends that the result was not coming, or you get in a bad loop in qualifying, so something like that, and then the weekend is a little bit compromised.
"I think, for him, the most important thing now is to get the consistency, weekend after weekend... That consistency is going to be the next step in his career, to be constantly fighting for the top five and then at the end of the year, you see the amount of points that you gain when you get all the weekends right."
source
one thing that sticks out to me is how fernando has emphasized several times that he hopes to continue to have a role in aston martin even after he retires, and that was one of the reasons lawrence was convinced that fernando was the right choice. i can definitely see him having a niki lauda-style career post-retirement.
vi. misc driving momence
- this class around-the-outside overtake on carlos in jeddah. beautiful stuff on the 360 cam (+ esteban's pov for good measure). we were robbed of this being overtake of the month
- overtaking daniel on the tightest section of the marina bay circuit. the 4-car battle between lance, daniel, carlos & romain even when they were well out of the points was more exciting than the non-events happening at the front
- analysis of clean battle with fernando in styria (which lance bragged to fernando about after and fernando not wanting to admit he got cooked)
- something about lance and his starts in spain etc etc. adding this because that near-miss with romain is pretty scary, shows how quick f1 drivers' reaction times are.
- cute moment with seb in monza where he helps lance up & opens lance's visor to apologize after shunting into him (also very informative comments)
no subject
Date: 2023-12-09 11:16 pm (UTC)the fernando quotes are crazyyy some of them i remember but i don't remember being this apparent and informative. also the checo info about spending christmas with his family in mexico 😗🥹
also i cannot tell if the clause about older and more experienced teammates for lance is a reddit joke but Felipe being pressed that lance said he didn't learn much from him is making me kinda scream djdjjd
no subject
Date: 2023-12-10 03:17 am (UTC)i am pretty sure this clause is real, or at least a real rumor, because its been referenced in articles several times lmao
i died @ fernando once again defending lance's bad luck and acknowledging his comeback drive in japan before the rear wing failed. he loves him and is watching over him....