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You will no doubt have heard the expression ‘blood is thicker than water’, and it undoubtedly rings true when it comes to the father-son relationship that is Lawrence and Lance Stroll.
But at this particular point in time, Aston Martin owner Lawrence must be questioning such a phrase following the dramatic collapse in the form of his 24-year-old.
Almost certainly, Stroll Jr’s Formula 1 future would be a serious topic of debate in the boardroom of every other team – if a decision to let him go had not already been taken by now.
Since finishing a creditable sixth in the Spanish Grand Prix in early June – the only occasion in 17 races Stroll has finished ahead of team-mate Fernando Alonso – the Canadian’s performances have capitulated.
Stroll has scored a paltry six points from the last 10 grands prix, in stark contrast to Alonso’s 78, with his run culminating in a Q1 exit in the last four, whilst the two-time title-winner has maintained his 100 percent record in reaching Q3.
What must be gnawing away at Lawrence Stroll is that he is trying to create a team capable of challenging for titles and race wins, and Alonso has come close to the latter this season as on three occasions he has finished runner-up.
You cannot fault Stroll Sr for putting his money where his mouth is as the billionaire entrepreneur has transformed a team from its punching-above-its-weight days as Force India into a heavyweight contender now housed in state-of-the-art facilities that are arguably the best in F1.
To take that extra step, however, any team needs two exceptional – not just good – strong, solid, reliable drivers to bring home the points, and at the moment, that is simply not the case at Aston Martin.
The strange quirk of this season, from Stroll Jr’s perspective, is that his best results came in the early part of the campaign – admittedly when the car was its strongest, too – when he was recovering from two broken wrists sustained in a bike crash just days before pre-season testing.
Stroll was a remarkable sixth in the season-opening Bahrain GP, a result that even had Alonso hailing the superhero qualities of a driver 18 years his junior, followed by a season-high fourth in the crash-strewn race in Australia, and then seventh in Azerbaijan.
So it is evident the talent is there, leaving you wondering exactly what has happened for him to disappear off the radar and become the petulant man-child as witnessed after qualifying for last weekend’s Qatar GP.
Stroll’s anger was understandable in many respects. He had again been knocked out of Q1, finishing 1.1secs adrift of Alonso, and in the same-spec AMR23.
It resulted in Stroll sullenly throwing his steering wheel out of the cockpit before storming to the back of the garage and pushing his personal trainer, Henry Howe, out of the way as he made his escape.
Howe was simply attempting to steer Stroll towards parc fermé out of the front of the garage, as required by the FIA’s rules, the breaking of which has led to a warning from the governing body’s compliance officer after an apology was aired.
Team principal Mike Krack likened Stroll’s antics to that of a footballer unwillingly being substituted during a match, and that player taking off his shirt and throwing it onto the ground in disgust.
Unfortunately, the price of a simple football shirt pales in comparison to that of a US$50,000 steering wheel that bounced off the bodywork, causing damage.
It was the culmination of a brutally frustrating period for Stroll, and no, I am not making any excuse for his behaviour, but this has been brewing for some time.
Now in his fifth season with the team, which was originally Racing Point for two years before becoming Aston Martin, and his seventh overall in F1, Stroll has yet to beat a team-mate.
Initially, in 2019 and 2020, Sergio Perez outscored Stroll by 31 points in the former year, and 50 in the latter. In fairness, by that stage, Perez was part of the furniture as those years were his sixth and seventh with the team.
In 2021 and 2022, Sebastian Vettel was on the opposite side of the garage, with the four-time champion finishing nine and 19 points clear respectively. Again, a degree of credit is due given the German’s longstanding pedigree.
Against Alonso, however, Stroll has run into formidable opposition and has found no answer to the two-time title-winner.
With five races remaining there is a mammoth 135 points difference between the duo, but that does not tell the whole story.
Alonso’s average finishing position has been fifth, with the Spaniard classified in all 17 races. In contrast, Stroll’s is 10th from the 13 races in which he has seen the chequered flag.
The most telling statistic, though, is in qualifying, where a true measure can be gleaned of how team-mates compare to one another in the same machinery.
In the 17 grands prix so far this season, Alonso has out-qualified Stroll by a score of 15-2, and reached Q3 in every session. After being able to match that feat in the first four races, Stroll has only managed to get into Q3 on three further occasions in 13 events.
Another alarming difference is in the relative time gap across the qualifying sessions for the grands prix.
Excluding the Singapore GP when Stroll crashed out heavily at the end of Q1, and taking the time differences between the two drivers at the end of a session when Alonso advanced but Stroll failed to do so, the average gap between the pair is 0.505s.
Ordinarily, such a disparity in results and qualifying performances would send alarm bells ringing inside an F1 team, but this is Aston Martin where young Lance has the safety net of dad Lawrence.
But as mentioned earlier, if Stroll Sr seriously wants to take Aston Martin to that next level, how many chances does he allow his son, who is no longer a rookie but a driver with 138 GP starts behind him?
The ‘blood thicker than water’ reference at the top of this piece is underlined by Stroll’s comments when I interviewed him earlier this year ahead of the Azerbaijan GP, and with Lance still effectively recovering from his pre-season accident, and at that stage performing remarkably.
You could tell Larwence’s paternal instincts were paramount as he said: “He’s my son, and I can assure you my son comes first.
“We have a very special bond and relationship. I’m very fortunate. I’m the luckiest person in this whole place to be having this journey with my son. It’s a hell of an experience.”
Unfortunately, it is an experience that now must be tugging at Stroll Sr’s fatherly heartstrings, and that desire to nurture and protect.
But then he is also a hardened businessman. He has not achieved what he has throughout his formidable career by pussyfooting around and taking a soft-hearted approach.
For the good of Aston Martin, if Stroll Sr wants to push on toward those race wins and titles he desperately craves, he must let Lance go, their “journey”, as he put it, at an end.
When it comes to heart versus head in this instance, surely there is only one sensible option.
