Stroll makes slight gains in second season with one of F1's toughest team mates · RaceFans

Lance Stroll has gone up towards some robust group mates in his Formulation 1 profession. One a number of champion changed one other alongside him at Aston Martin final yr.

His father Lawrence Stroll clearly has the very best doable ambitions for the group he owns. For junior to play his position in that, he must at the very least show enchancment alongside drivers who’re way more skilled than him and have been way more profitable than most.

That hasn’t at all times occurred. In 2022, his second yr alongside Sebastian Vettel, Stroll’s share of the group’s factors rating fell in comparison with the earlier season. And his problem solely received harder when Vettel’s alternative arrived.

The competition between the 2 Aston Martin drivers in 2023 was one of the crucial one-sided on the grid. Fernando Alonso reached the rostrum eight occasions, Stroll not as soon as.

Even permitting for the harm Stroll carried into the beginning of final season, his type alongside Alonso was poor. He adopted his group mate residence 14 occasions within the 16 races the place each completed, and was thumped 19-3 in qualifying. Stroll scored simply 26% of the group’s factors: Alonso out-scored him by nearly an element of three.

For his or her second yr alongside one another, and Stroll’s sixth season at his father’s group, each drivers had to deal with a automobile which was far much less aggressive than they loved the yr earlier than. Podiums had been not a severe prospect and by the top of the season reaching the factors had develop into an achievement

Regardless of that, this was a barely higher season for the group’s junior driver. He even led Alonso within the qualifying battle at one stage, going 4-3 up in Monaco, however solely out-qualified his group mate as soon as extra over the remaining 15 rounds.

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Stroll additionally completed forward of Alonso extra usually than final yr. A kind of events got here in Australia, the place Alonso took the chequered flag earlier than his group mate, solely to fall behind as a result of his penalty for an unorthodox piece of defensive driving whereas being pursued by George Russell.

Fifth in Jeddah was pretty much as good because it received for Aston Martin

Regardless of that, there was one key metric the place Stroll didn’t present an enchancment in comparison with final yr, and it was the underside line: His contribution to the group’s factors complete. From that 26% final yr it slipped to 24%. It’s no coincidence that on the time of writing Stroll is within the longest point-less streak of his complete profession.

Final yr Aston Martin’s failure to beat McLaren to fourth place within the constructors’ championship might moderately be blamed on Stroll’s failure to get as a lot out of their automobile as Alonso did. The identical can’t be mentioned this yr: The AMR24 was by no means realistically going to complete greater than fifth within the championship.

Nonetheless, given how slender McLaren’s profitable margin over Ferrari was this yr, Aston Martin ought to ask themselves whether or not their present driver line-up would have delivered a constructors’ title had they constructed an MCL38.