Not just a simple Stroll in the park

This article was written before the 2019 German GP, where Racing Point’s Lance Stroll finished fourth in the race thanks to a brilliant strategy.

When the news of Lance Stroll joining Racing Point was broken out, many expected him to finish in the points more often than he did with Williams. However, has reality matched the rosy expectations for Stroll in 2019?

It would only be fair to say that Lance Stroll ’s Formula One career has been a bit of a bittersweet one so far. From silencing his critics with a few remarkable performances in his first season in the sport to outscoring only two other drivers in 2018, Stroll has ridden the wave of success and crashed off it too, all in the space of two dramatic seasons.

However, the troubles of one team came to the rescue of the young Canadian – Force India’s financial collapse in 2018 paved the way for Lawrence Stroll, the father of Lance and a multi-billionaire, and his consortium to take over the troubled Silverstone outfit and rename them to Racing Point. With Stroll’s dad now one of the major shareholders in another Formula One team performing considerably better than Williams, everyone could join the dots and foresee where Stroll was headed for 2019.

2019: A new beginning

While there was agony and frustration for Esteban Ocon who lost his seat at Racing Point although he didn’t put a foot wrong, there was a ray of hope shining at the doorstep of Lance Stroll. After all, he would now get the chance to compete for higher positions with a more potent car and not worry about his seat at all. The 2016 European F3 Champion just couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas gift! Naturally, the expectations on Stroll grew in the off-season; competing for an upper-midfield team, he would be under greater scrutiny and the pressure to finish in the points would be much greater – which was something that he didn’t face at all in 2018.

While many expected Stroll to be the Achilles Heel in what looked like a very solid Racing Point team for 2019, the Canadian delivered a reasonable performance in Melbourne, finishing 9th, four places ahead of his more experienced teammate Sergio Perez. Things started to drift away in Bahrain and China before a timely 9th place finish in Azerbaijan kept his points tally ticking.

What’s good and what’s not

Amidst a vast number of fairly unproductive races for the Canadian, he did produce a remarkable result at his home race in Canada – an outrageous strategy and a great drive for Stroll saw him climb up nine places up to P9 in front of his home crowd. Although he may have only earned two points out of a very challenging race for him, his performance on race day made him deserving of more points.

However, there is a very evident reason why Stroll’s best finish this season in only ninth regardless of how well he performs sporadically – his qualifying record does not make up for happy reading. For the last fourteen Formula One races, Stroll had been a permanent fixture in the list of drivers getting knocked out of Q1. Only last time out in Germany did he end his unwanted streak to qualify 15th, a result that he wouldn’t be satisfied with as his teammate, Perez qualified 8th.

If Stroll can put up performances like he did in Melbourne or in Montreal and still only take home two points each, he surely needs to perform much better in qualifying. Climbing up eight places in an incredibly tight midfield is a tall order but Stroll was able to make it happen. One can only imagine the result had Stroll qualified further up the order, for instance P11 instead of P18 in Canada; with better performances on Saturday, his points tally wouldn’t show a weak figure of six points.

The road ahead for Stroll

Nobody expected it to be a simple stroll in the park for Lance Stroll in 2019 – a better car doesn’t always mean better results and Stroll would have been fully aware of that heading into the new season. That said, should the Canadian get rid of his gremlins in qualifying, his statistics will look much brighter and the results will certainly reflect his capability. 

The Lance Stroll on Saturday is a liability to Racing Point but the Lance Stroll on Sunday is one of their biggest assets. How can the team and Stroll himself get the better version out during qualifying? That is one of the toughest questions that they must answer over the course of this season.