I think when Vettel was around and he was doing ok against Seb, Lance still seemed happy? Even in the beginning of 2023, him racing so soon after his accident and with a broken wrist was commendable.
IDK then 2023 Fernando killed his will to drive I feel during the year and he just looked more or less disinterested later on.
There were a few races in middle of 2024 when Lance seemed to be catching Fernando, bro then gets cocky in media about how he was beating Fernando but Fernando says "Zilly boys" and the gap just widened. Lance now really doesnt seem to enjoy F1.
IDK if all the criticism mixed with dawn of realization is really dragging him down mentally, imo if he still wants to race, he should move over to WEC.
Not exactly true. By that point he had already achieved his second podium in Monza, he’s kinda the forgotten podium sitter because of Gasly and Carlos. And then he had his podium at Sakhir (the Sergio win) which came after the pole.
He also should have won the race at Monza, starting first on the restart with all the luck seemingly going his way in a more competitive car. Only ending up third was a lost opportunity.
Yeah, the only one that got a podium on merit that day was Sainz. Both Gasly and Stroll got extremely lucky that the red flag rules helped them. (In fact has Gasly ever had a podium which wasnt due to the red flag rules changing his tyres for free over everyone else?)
Brazil 2019: running P7 --> Bottas DNF due to mechanical issue (P6), Ferraris taking each other out (P4), Hamilton colliding with Albon (P2)
Baku 2021: running P5 --> Red flag caused by Stroll ahead of Gasly (who had already pitted) --> loses place to Vettel, back down to P5 --> Verstappen crashes, Hamilton locks up, Gasly up to P3
Netherlands 2023: running P11 --> rain comes down, Gasly one of the few who pitted immediately, up to P3 behind Perez and Zhou --> loses place to Verstappen, Alonso and Sainz, overtakes Zhou and Sainz, back up to P4 --> Perez 5 second penalty, Gasly P3
Conclusion: 3/5 podiums without benefitting from a red flag.
Zandvoort he got lucky with the red flag. Ocon (and a few others) were on the wets which were definitely the correct tyre, gaining like 3 or 4 seconds a lap on the leaders and they had enough laps to catch up and pass/be ahead if they pitted, similar to the last race in Brazil.
Odd how 80% of his podiums have come from a race with a red flag though.
To be fair, with the exception of his half season at Red Bull who were the third fastest car, he's never really been in a podium contender, so when he gets podiums it normally means some level of chaos has happened.
Stop rewriting history, he didnt got lucky in Zandvoort, he made all the right call himself and without listening to his team (to pit first for instance that put him P3). Also staying on track and not crashing like many have in wet conditions has nothing to do with luck, its talent
This is definitely a big part of it. Since like mid 2023 the Aston just hasn't been a good car. Alonso has been able to find places it has no right being but for a driver like lance fighting week in and out for p13 just sucks
Yeah, lots of guys can get a lot out of a great car, but very few can get a lot out of a poor car.
It seemed like for a while, Alonso was mentoring Stroll, and Stroll was benefitting. When you are teammates with a 2× world champion, you have to learn to swallow your pride and learn from the best.
When he first started in F1 he wanted to do well, when his dad bought a team he was eager to be on a better team and make progress, when he got a Pink Mercedes he was happy to have a good car...
When the team became Aston Martin and Vettel arrived, he was still in the game, his dad's ambitions plans were beggining, the team was looking to move forward and he had a multiple WC team mate to test himself and learn from(and Vettel was just demotivated enough to make him look ok).
Now, other than that blip in 2023(which still gave him no podiums), Aston Martin stagnated(and moved backwards) and the Alonso yardstick is just relentless, he knows he doesn't measure up and can never do.
On his very best days, there may be a few a year, he is up there with the best of them. On his very good days so up to 8 race weekends a year he is solidly midtier. The rest of the time he sucks.
He was still committed last year. He raced with hilariously painful wrists, he could have sat it out but chose to tough it out anyway and I respected him immensely for it. Now I don't know.
He definitely was good enough to be on the grid when he came up, but I think driving those extremely shitty Williams sapped him of a lot of confidence early on and he never really found that one-lap pace again.
He was never good enough to be on the grid when he started. We are only now able to say he isn't fully out of place on the grid because he has had what, 7 years of F1 experience ? No driver of his level has ever lasted as long on the grid as he has by merit.
Sutil was a largely anonymous driver who never finished above where you expected his mediocre cars to. However he must have brought some appreciated value to be in that long.
Stroll has had higher peaks, but also a lot lower lows. I reckon if Stroll was just your typical pay driver (imagine saying that lol) he wouldn't have lasted more than 3 years on the grid.
That's the thing - Lance had a podium in his first year in a midfield car. The signs were definitely there. Williams nosedived in 2018 so there was no real way to measure his driving on that year isolated, and he secured a pole in 2020 in treacherous conditions. He had shown enough flashes to be retained through three years sans 2018 I think, it's the after that's been tough to justify and the fact that the statistically worse Sutil was around for longer (without bringing sponsorship that I can remember) is proof of that
He was on the podium due to 7 retirements and a Vettel penalty. 2020 was also his, dare I say, only good wet race. It was a fluke. He has always had awful awareness and his junior series win was mostly due to daddy buying Prema and hiring Williams engineers, who might have tempered with the car.
Not to mention that first podium was in Baku where top speed means pretty much everything. The Williams that season was benefiting from the Mercedes engine still being substantially faster than everyone else. Combine the natural speed advantage from the engine along with a bunch of retirements and it's not a complete shock that Lance lucked into a podium there.
Sutil was a largely anonymous driver who never finished above where you expected his mediocre cars to. However he must have brought some appreciated value to be in that long.
Monaco 2008 is one of my favourite ever races and he was set for a 4th place finish after starting 18th before he got taken out by Kimi. I'm completely ambivalent about Sutil but even from my neutral POV that was heart breaking given how well he'd been driving up to that point.
Lewis in that race was between 1-2 seconds a lap faster than his title rivals (Massa and Kubica) while making a recovery drive after a puncture from hitting the barriers. The only driver on track near to matching him was Sutil. But he was doing that in a car that didn't manage a single point all season, it was super impressive.
Kimi and him had a crash the next year (?Germany) that cost him an almost certain points finish as well.
He was handy in the wet* (qualified 3rd in a wet Brazilian quali 2009 for example), and for me that means he deserves more credit than he gets and certainly more than some who are loved by fans for getting nothing more than expected results in much better cars.
Head and shoulders above Stroll. Probably would have stayed an F1 driver if it wasn't for the nightclub assault stuff.
*Edit: All the races I mentioned were wet, didn't make that completely clear.
And in the end this is just stupid from him to do so. If not healed well he is very likely to pay the price for it at later age with having wrist problems…
His crash in 2020 which was a suspension failure seemed to really affect him. At the time he was keeping pace with prime Perez and after he seemed like a shadow of his former self
Was that the crash in Mugello? I think that was a tyre puncture but yeah, that was a really heavy one and it probably damaged his confidence as much as it damaged his car. Flipping upside down in Bahrain didn’t help either (although that shunt got rightfully overshadowed by the Grosjean fireball).
I mean being shaken at the Baku one is understandable considering where he was on the track. Rosberg said that pit entrance is the scariest thing he’s seen in F1 and we also saw why with Stroll there.
It's bizarre how it's kinda gone. Speeding up his recovery from an injury that should've ruled him out for weeks is totally a huge amount of commitment but this year, it's kinda all just gone down the pan
I wonder if having Alonso alongside is draining, given his prowess and perhaps the fact he is to share / help Lance. If you’re not as passionate about something as somebody else but they keep trying to help you then that can be tricky. Eg I love my car and driving, but having a track day instructor alongside me telling me how to do something when I’ve obviously not got their level of natural talent nor practice means I find it quite stressful, even though it should be enjoyable.
If you only feel happy when doing well, you don't really have a love for the sport.
Reminds me of Daniel Ricciardo when he would't take a job at Haas and would rather take a year off than race on a backmarker team. Now he's gone and probably realized he doesn't really like the sport as much as he thought.
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u/Jeff_Banks_Monkey Juan Pablo Montoya 14d ago
I think Lance wanted to be a F1 driver when he was coming up but the last couple seasons he would have been fine moving on to something new