Outside Line: Alonso starred, Stroll bombed for Aston Martin
F1 NewsWednesday, 13 December 2023 at 19:37
Fernando Alonso showed that with a half-decent car, defying the fact that he is a 42-year-old, he is one of the best drivers in Formula 1 while his teammate Lance Stroll, in the same Aston Martin, was destroyed and only has a ride because Papa owns the team.
"Oooh, nasty!" I hear. The facts are that in no sport I can think of - except our Formula 1 - where a man can buy a sports team because his son is good at it in junior years, and then expect him to play a key position in the first team no matter how good or bad his form/talent is or was.
Would it happen at the Miami Dolphins, Manchester United, Greenbay Packers, LA Lakers, Waikato Chiefs etc? No of course not. Let's proceed...
Alonso's shock move from an increasingly lost Alpine team to an eager and willing Aston Martin was what the team needed to replace an underperforming Sebastian Vettel, the four-time F1 World Champ turned Chief-Bee-Keeper (or whatever) during the sad final years of his stellar racing career.
Ditching the French team turned out to be the smartest move Alonso made in an F1 career littered with dubious decisions (to put it politely) and an equally clever mega-cheque signing by Lawrence Stroll who finally had a proper measure for his son Lance to measure up to provided the AMR23 was better than anything they had produced before.
Aston Martin lucked into a very handy F1 car in the AMR23 then lost their way
In retrospect, it proved to be exactly what Aston Martin needed to bring out the best of Alonso whose energy and ultimately results energised the team, whose engineers
lucked into a two-second jump in performance with the car during the off-season.
I write "lucked" in retrospect. After Zandvoort, in a battle with Mercedes for P2 in the F1 Constructors' title race, the 'Clever Guys' bolted on a raft of upgrades they had evolved that saw the whole it all go backwards. Suggesting they clearly misunderstood why they were there in the first place.
Only after Alonso [reportedly] insisted on going back to the older-spec AMR23 did they get competitive again as the Spaniard's late-season podium in Sao Paulo testifies.
Even Stroll improved but it was all too little too late, for a driver who appears to only drive fast when he has a near-perfect F2 car at his disposal. But at a total loss, when confounded with a bad one to drive.
In a nutshell, AMR engineers messed up their maths badly, even though they will hate to admit it. But it is a very familiar story which I like to term Paddy Lowe Syndrome. A team hires a guy, thinking he is their new messiah until he petrol bombs the place to near oblivion and disappears.
Alonso made the most of what he had to claim eight GP podiums to Stroll's zero
As for engineers never being wrong ask AlphaTauri's no-BS departing boss Franz Tost for the reality. Nevertheless, they did turn Stroll's mega-bucks team from 2022 F1 backmarkers (P7 with only 55 points) into front-runners for the first half of this year's campaign, in which Alonso scored most of his eight podiums. And boy was it good to watch his celebrations! Epic.
The man from Oviedo went on to finish P4 in the final 2023 F1 Drivers' standings, scoring 206 of AMRs 280 points for their P5 in the F1 Constructors' title race. It was his best showing since 2013, back in the Ferrari days.
This means Stroll Junior brought home only 74 of those points for the team, ending the year P10 in the final standings. Unlike his teammate, Lance did not score a podium and was beaten 18 times out of 22 by Fernando in races; 19 times the Spaniard beat the Canadian in Qualifying.
Although at 25 Stroll is still young, he does have an astounding 143 GP starts on his resume! Relative to his generation benchmark Max Verstappen plus his current illustrious teammate Alonso, as another yardstick, Lance has been found wanting and not delivered. He was destroyed in 2023 by his Fernando, no matter how you try to candy-coat the mauling.
Excuses made for Lance's poor showings were far too many.
From my swivel chair, it appears to be that Stroll is in F1 - irrespective of the poor results, the tantrums, the pained grimaces - simply because Papa Stroll has the money to buy his son the best job in the world aka being an F1 driver.
I was a believer early on in his career. Junior showed potential in good cars I thought, acknowledging he was suspect when the car was not quite in the zone. I figured he would mature and evolve. But I was wrong. He did not improve. I would argue he was better when he first started than he is right now. For any other driver in F1 the report card would be a fail and time to go IF big-big-big-money didn't talk.
"Big" three times indeed to underscore this: Never in the history of the world has a father spent more money to get his son into the sport he loves than Lawrence Stroll has dished out for Lance's career. And even more so now to keep his son in the sport he is failing at.
In an ideal world for Aston Martin last season, a handy driver, running close to Alonso and helping to steal points from rivals the Greens might've finished P2 in the 2023 F1 Constructors' standings, with the extra money that comes with it.
To be taken seriously Aston Martin need a second driver close to Alonso, Lance is not the guy
Granted the preseason bike training accident did Stroll no favours. But why was he even near anything or doing whatever he was doing that could injure him so badly? On the eve of the F1 season starting? Too many questions remain from that whole saga...
But it matters not because whatever the case, in F1 the best are judged for their on-track performances with nowhere to hide. If you are broken they replace you because the sport waits for no one.
It seems Lance won't go away, as long as Papa calls the shots at Aston Martin I bet no one dares - not even Alonso - to sit the multi-billionaire down and tell him the harsh truth that his son is not made for F1.
In the end, F1 Stats speak for themselves and I would not be Nostradamus in predicting any other team would sign Lance if he became 'available' now or in the future. If this team is serious, something has to be done about their current Driver Number 2, hire someone more like Driver Number 1 to start.
Big Question: Will Aston Martin ever ditch Lance Stroll for a driver closer to Fernando Alonso's level to be more successful?
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