In 20th place on our list of the 2024 F1 Driver Rankings is Canadian Lance Stroll — his eighth full season in the sport now completed.
A solid first part of the season
All of Stroll’s points came in the first part of the season before the summer break.
His best result was a P6 in Melbourne, although he felt in Abu Dhabi that Silverstone and Canada were his finest moments of the season. The 26-year-old was strong in the mixed conditions in both races, beating Alonso fair and square to P7 at the British Grand Prix.
Even in qualifying Stroll did a respectable job pre-summer break, trailing 5-9 against his two-time F1 World Champion teammate after Spa. He outqualified Alonso at three consecutive events, too.
He was P10 in the Drivers’ Championship at that point, 25 points adrift of the Spaniard.
The low point was rear-ending Daniel Ricciardo behind the Safety Car in China, and he bizarrely refused to take responsibility for it.
Season falls away
However, as Aston Martin continued to fall away as they struggled in the development race, Stroll’s season was utterly forgettable from September through to December.
After trailing Alonso 5-6 at one stage in Grand Prix qualifying, the Canadian was beaten on a Saturday thirteen times in succession from Hungary through to Abu Dhabi.
As well as losing out 5-19 overall, Stroll’s qualifying average of 12.83 was far off the 9.58 his teammate’s as Alonso dragged everything out of himself and his rather poor AMR24 package.
While the 43-year-old managed to add another 21 points to his and the team’s total post-summer break, the Canadian did not score a single point. His best result was P11 in Mexico.
Brazil embarrassment
On the formation lap of the São Paulo GP, Stroll lost his car under brakes at turn 4, gently touching the wall with his front wing.
While that was not necessarily his fault, what followed next will be played on video in sports quizzes all around the world for decades.
Although tarmac run-off was available and he could have reversed, Stroll decided to make the extraordinary decision to try and drive through the deep gravel soaked with all the rain through Saturday and Sunday. The result? He inevitably got beached and led to a DNS.
It was one of the most embarrassing driving errors in the history of F1.
How unfazed he seemed to be was quite telling about his lack of motivation behind the wheel as the year went on.
A general lack of enthusiasm for the sport
Anyone who covers Formula 1 knows that Lance Stroll is notoriously hard to get any kind of lengthy answer out of.
The Canadian spending more than a minute in the media pen after a qualifying session or race is almost as rare as Sauber scoring points in a race in 2024. Even his Thursday sessions are generally a lot shorter than all the other drivers.
While many other drivers do not enjoy the media side of the sport, they give engaging and interesting answers almost every weekend.
The 2020 Turkish Grand Prix polesitter has the safest seat in the sport, and it means his media duties do not really matter to him.
With 166 starts now to his name, we did not learn anything new about Stroll this year: he has flashes of good speed, but he is far too anonymous most weekends.
It’s a trend that will continue until his time in the sport comes to an end.
