Alonso's breakthrough paints Stroll into a corner
Anyone familiar with his long career knows that Alonso does not suffer fools lightly, if at all. His first objective is usually to destroy his team mate utterly in order to establish his dominance. Would Stroll be the latest to be crushed? As it turned out, the two-time champion has been on conspicuously genial behaviour toward Stroll this season, helping him out and giving him tips and encouragement, almost as though aware that no matter how good his performance in the car proved, it was how he got on with the boss's son that was going to determine how long he would stay with the team.
Unfortunately for Stroll, six podium finishes in the first eight races for Alonso and two more at Zandvoort and Interlagos later in the season putting him P4 in the drivers championship did all the talking that Alonso needed. Week by week, it piled on the pressure on Stroll whose best result was fourth in Australia. Two further back-to-back P5 finishes in Brazil and Las Vegas helped him to tenth in the final standings but he was 134 points behind Alonso in the same equipment. Stroll's relative failure to contribute points had cost Aston any chance of finishing in the top four in the constructors championship.
It's not like Stroll can play the 'young up and coming rising star' card anymore. He'd been at Aston for several years longer than newcomer Alonso, and is a veteran of 143 races over seven seasons. Statistically this year should have seen Stroll at his peak, but instead the takeaway image of 2023 was his very public pit lane meltdown when things did not go his way in Qatar. It left him looking flustered, unprofessional and frankly out of his depth.
At this point, any other team would be looking to find a new driver to pair with Alonso to make the team perform at its best. Surely some of Stroll Sr's business partners in the ruling consortium must be wondering how much of their money is being used to prop up a driver who seems not to be up to the job, and who is even doubting his own ability to go any further in the sport he clearly loves. Will the Stroll family project be able to continue beyond 2024, or is it time for Lance to take a new direction in life and leave Aston to show what it can do without the elephant in the cockpit? And if that happens, how long will Lawrence Stroll himself remain committed to F1?
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
