By Ben Wilder
IF F1 PAY DRIVERS could be described in a single word it would be ‘controversial,’ or perhaps ‘urgh.’
Without them, some teams might not exist today.
Take Williams for example.
They hired Nicholas Latifi in 2020 for the sponsorship his father’s company brought to the organisation. Understandable, kind of; it saved the team. Latifi might have cost them nearly as much as he provided by sending it into the wall every other race but that’s beside the point.
The point is, pay drivers ruin F1’s integrity. Take another Canadian who has been on the grid for far longer than he should have been, Lance Stroll.
Stroll’s billionaire father, Lawrence, owns the Aston Martin F1 team. Lance is less a pay driver and more a made man.
He could be without any spatial awareness, racecraft or remorse, cost the team money and hours repairing the car for his screw-ups and have a generally punch-able face for eight seasons and AMR would barely bat an eye… Shit.
According to Lance Stroll, “The (super licence) system is to keep the guys who don’t deserve to be there from just buying their way into F1.” In 2023, Stroll’s teammate Fernando Alonso had five podiums in the first six races, while the Canadian’s best result was fourth in a race where seven cars didn’t finish. The sheer hype around the AMR23 was electric, while Lance’s performances were shocking for the wrong reasons.
The car has fallen behind, but it’s consistently the fifth fastest on the grid, right in the middle. So why has Stroll only scored one point in the past five races? He’s in a competitive car – and with AMR’s signing of Adrian Newey set to become a skin-melting, earth-shattering rocketship – Stroll can’t stop blaming other drivers for his mistakes.
Lawrence Stroll is on the record stating that Aston Martin’s 5-year plan should see them fighting for world championships. Meanwhile, Lance is having one of his worst seasons yet, frequently floating his car into other drivers while he’s in his own world, like the crash with Daniel Ricciardo in Shanghai and the puncture after tagging Yuki Tsunoda’s RB in Baku. He blamed both for each incident on-track, and offered little accountability in the post-race interview.
I don’t typically dislike drivers but I expect more from one who has been in F1 for this long. Eight years, 162 starts, three podiums, one pole position, and 292 points.
Bleak.
As a team who aspires to compete for championships, Aston Martin must realise there’s a dead weight eventually, right? With talent in reserve, can they say Lance ‘deserves’ to be in F1? Would they even lose Lawrence Stroll’s money if Lance wasn’t there? I think Lawrence’s dream of a championship outweighs his hopes for his son.
So, Stroll, stroll away, I say. Stroll away, please.
Leave a Reply