Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll has admitted that his team mate Fernando Alonso is ‘a little bit quicker’ than him in this year's car, something that will not come as much of a surprise to onlookers in the paddock.
Alonso was at the vanguard of the team's early surge to the front, claiming four podiums in the first five races of 2023 followed up by two runners-up spots in Monaco and Canada.
Although the AMR23 has gone off the boil in recent outings, Alonso remains in third place in the drivers championship by a single point over Mercedes driver (and former McLaren team mate) Lewis Hamilton.
Stroll by contrast has finished in fourth place in Australia but also failed to score points in four of the 12 races so far this season, leaving him in ninth place in the drivers standings.
The 24-year-old Canadian, now in his seventh season in F1, always knew he faced a difficult challenge this year with the arrival of Alonso from Alpine to replace Sebastian Vettel.
While Alonso's talent behind the wheel is beyond question, the speed with which he's taken over at Aston and energised the team as a whole has given rise to speculation that Stroll might have reached the peak of his potential.
"For sure, he’s been at a very high level throughout the year," Stroll told Motorsport Magazine. "He’s made very few mistakes – no mistakes – and you have to give him credit for that.
"He’s been driving at an extremely high level, and really getting the most out of the car every week," he continued, adding that he had enjoyed some good moments of his own.
“There are other times where I really drove well and I was in front of him a couple of times, so I’m proud of that.
"[But] I know that there’s been a lot of races where I felt like I maybe got the most out of the car, and he was a little bit quicker, and that’s just how it is."
“He’s just been at a really high level throughout the whole season and delivering that kind of A-plus kind of performance every week, when I’ve had a few kind of As.
"I’ve had some Cs and it’s been a little bit more challenging, but there's a lot of racing left to go.”
In his defence, the start of Stroll's season was compromised when he suffered a training accident that left him with fractures to his wrists and hands. It was something of a miracle that he even took part in the opening races of 2023.
"It definitely didn’t help to miss 250 laps of testing or whatever it was, and just be physically not at my best earlier on in the season," he said. “However I think more than my injury we probably got hurt more by bad fortune on the track."
Stroll has been struggling to close the gap to Alonso ever since, and the gap between them in the championship in terms of points is the second largest between team mates behind Red Bull, suggesting a major imbalance.
Stroll brushed off such distracting chatter. "I’m kind of more just focused on my own stuff. I’m not really listening to too much of that noise on the outside, because it’s F1,”
“When you have a bad day there’s always going to be a reason why," he commented. "When you have a good day, it’s kind of just normal. I think that’s how a lot of F1 is, or my experience of it over the years.”
A more pressing concern for Stroll is to help Aston get the edge back in terms of development, after recent improvements from Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren has chipped away at their early advantage.
“Hopefully we get back to a stage where we’re that competitive,” he said. “I do believe we can do that."
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