Inside Line: When will Papa & Son Stroll have 'that' talk?

I buy into it because had Fate decided differently and made me a billionaire of Stroll fortune (aka $3,8-billion according to Forbes) I too as a petrolhead with Racing in my Blood, would do exactly the same for my son, who too loves his racing and was pretty handy in the far too short time he did karting until the budget ran dry. Motorsport is a sport for millionaires and billionaires even at junior level, a Club I regrettably belongeth not to!

In very sharp contrast, Lawrence's budget for his son's karting never ran dry and flowed handsomely by all accounts, I shudder to think how much he has invested in his son's rise to Formula 1. No doubt, the shrewd entrepreneur that he is, he will recoup that all, make a profit and probably double his worth in years to come.

Nevertheless, the reality is, a lot of money has been sunk into Lance's career, to get into F1 and to now be part of it. I would imagine no racing driver has had so much invested in him in the history of motorsport. Remember all the testing in private before he even set foot on the F1 grid? That cost a fortune, as did Racing Point and Aston Martin!

Before that, every junior team Lance raced for, his father bought or invested heavily into, always to ensure his son had the very, very best kit at his disposal; just like any petrolhead father would do for his lad. Indeed Lance repaid the faith and delivered F4 and F3 Titles which entitled him a shot at F1, it had others like Ayrton Senna and more recently Max Verstappen.

And, in the beginning, the kid showed signs of being very good, especially in trying conditions. He rose to those occasions when things were tricky. While few acknowledged it, I personally saw talent in the young Canadian that few others saw.

For a while I was justified in my beliefs, and was even anointed, President of the Lance Stroll fan Club for my stance by our GrandPrix247 Crew. And for a while, I gloated in private coz Lance was not so bad. In only his eighth start in F1, he scored his first podium with third place at the 2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix. He was 19.

The Force India takeover triggered the beginning of Lawerence's foray into F1 team ownership after the Williams chapter ended as it did, but soon after Racing Point rose from the ashes of Vijay Mallya's F1 dream turned nightmare.

In 2020 (by hook or by crook) the Racing Point was a potent package, and with it, Lance did some cool stuff. Two more podiums that year at Monza and Sakhir, plus a pole position in Turkey, at that time he was 22-years-old, which was still pretty impressive.

Important before we proceed with this tale: When race fans, including me, say of F1 drivers: "So-and-so is cr@p" or "That dude is slow" or "What a w@nker" it's relative to the best guys on the grid, aka Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso. The best of the best.

Relative to you and I, pundits and everyone not actually in one of those 20 coveted F1 seats, all twenty of them are racing gods in my book. Just getting there, even if a guy does not have the talent of a Senna or a Schumacher, that ladder to a seat (whether you are moneyed or not) is a slog that many fail.

So those that succeed to be there, no matter how they got there, deserve it. Of course in varying degrees, but all have earned respect. But once in the focus of F1 there is nowhere to hide for drivers, and the measure right now is Verstappen.

Thus I figured with a consistently good car, with winning potential Lance will be good again. But last year with an awful car, so bad it turned his illustrious teammate - Sebastian Vettel - from an F1-winning machine and living legend, into a hippy, almost overnight.

Hippy versus Lance was not a pleasant site because both, in a shitbox of a car, were rubbish. Really rubbish. Yet old Seb at the very worst he has ever been in 2022, with his one foot in the car and the other in the Amazon or whatever jungle he was saving, beat young Lance in the Championship.

By now I had resigned my STR Fan Club Presidency because I began to realise I was probably wrong about Lance. He is not for F1. But hang on 2023, Fernando Alonso is in the Greenhouse, the clever guys have delivered an amazing car in the AMR23. Kudos to Lawrence, he finally got his son a car worthy of his talents and the 41-year-old Spaniard as a gauge for his son.

Fast forward to this week, when David Coulthard finally had the balls to call it. When will Aston Martin stop making excuses for Lance? Alonso is totally destroying his new teammate, despite trying to mentor him, even during races! The "I-am-faster-than-you" guy holstering his gun to allow his student to finish ahead of him was the talk of the paddock

Notably, Lance has a great car (second best on the grid) and an obliging teammate to show his skills, yet while Fernando beams from podiums just about every race Sunday, the Billionaire-son skulks away to the private jet and out of town ASAP; contemplating no doubt how comprehensively outclassed by a driver nearly twice his age.

I've been through most of this season's season F1 statistics, Canada is the freshest in my travails on this subject, where Alonso simply blew Lance away in qualifying and in race pace. Total annihilation as the 2023 F1 Championship points show: Of Aston Martin's 154 points in eight races, Fernando has scored 117 of those.

For the record, Stroll made his 130th Grand Prix start on home soil in Canada last time out. At that point in their respective careers, his veteran teammate Alonso was already a double F1 World Champ and a 21-time GP winner.

Fellow 25-year-old Verstappen on the occasion of his 130th Grand Prix was already a 15-time F1 winner. He is now on 41 victories in the top flight! These are the inevitable timeline benchmarks for modern F1 drivers.

If any other driver (barring rookie Logan Sargeant who is being blitzed by Alex Albon at Williams) was competing so badly vis-a-vis his teammate, he would be out of a job or at least replaced by a reserve. Nyck de Vries is an example of a driver who is hanging onto F1 by his fingertips. No surprise they replace him if he continues to struggle beside Yuki Tsunoda at AlphaTauri.

But Stroll has no such fears. He will not be replaced as long as Lawrence says he will drive the second Aston Martin, the son will do so and no one will question it. And in fact, the media side of the team will continue to make those excuses for Stroll Junior that Coulthard is now questioning.

Like Lawrence will give a hoot what the media are saying about his boy? He won't because he is a "My way or the highway" guy, and still believes his son will be World Champ one day. After all this is what the whole project is about.

Results and performances show that Lance was at his best in 2020, he peaked then, stayed at that level and has not got better since, with Alonso now showing him up drastically with what is clearly a very good car. Yes. F3 and F2 Champion, three-time F1 podium finisher and one-time F1 pole starter - in 130 Grand Prix starts - but that's as good as it has been for too long, with no excuses this year with the AMR23 so effective.

We all know Stroll senior believes in his son, and so does Fernando who sees his teammate as a Grand Prix winner. Perhaps the only two who see it and who are we to argue? Perhaps "IF" he can find that inner Lance of podium-finishing and pole-winning ability on an every-race basis, he may be a decent F1 driver after all, but it is taking a mighty long time.

When do the Strolls sit down for a proper Papa-Son heart-to-heart and admit that Lance is not good enough for F1? And give the seat to a deserving and talented youngster of which there are many on the horizon right now.

Junior can go spearhead an Aston Martin Hypercar project, or DTM team or whatever he wants and money can buy, but how long can underperformance be rewarded with a seat among supposedly the 20 best race drivers in the world?