Lance Stroll

Points 9 Position 9 Date of Birth October / 29 / 1998
Place of Birth Montreal Team Aston Martin Car Number 18

Profile

Lance Stroll is a Canadian racing driver born in Montreal, Quebec on 29 October 1998.

A former member of the Ferrari Driver Academy from 2010-2015, Stroll made his F1 debut at the 2017 Australian Grand Prix after signing for Williams, claiming the first podium of his career that year at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after finishing P3.

2018 proved a difficult year for Stroll as rookie errors and Williams' serious lack of pace left him struggling to compete - he would score only six points.

But when his father, Lawrence, purchased the bankrupt Force India team in August 2018 that presented the opportunity for Stroll to make the switch.

He would be confirmed as a driver for the new Racing Point team alongside Sergio Perez for the 2019 season, remaining with the team for 2020, and beyond when they rebranded to Aston Martin following Lawrence's investment in the British car manufacturer.

Due to the financial backing he has received from his father, first at Williams and then his switch to Racing Point/Aston Martin to work for the team his dad owns, Stroll often draws a negative reaction from F1 fans who feel he is yet to show he deserves a seat through talent alone.

In his defence, Stroll gained more positions on the opening laps of races than any other driver in 2017, 2019 and 2022, while 2020 was his best-scoring campaign to date with 75 points, even if he was comfortably second-best to Sergio Perez.

The biggest test of Stroll's career arrived though in 2021 alongside four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel at Aston Martin, a challenge which by and large, he handled well, though this was followed in Vettel's retirement with the arrival of Fernando Alonso in 2023, who surged clear in the in-team battle at Aston Martin in their first season together.

While Stroll was born in Montreal, he also has Belgian citizenship thanks to his mother, fashion designer Claire-Anne Callens.

Career

After winning the 2016 F3 European Championship title, Williams announced on 3 November 2016 that Lance Stroll would drive for the team in 2017.

In doing so he became the first Canadian driver to compete in F1 since Jacques Villeneuve, a driver who also started his career with Williams and won his only World Championship with the team in 1997.

Stroll would race alongside veteran Brazilian driver Felipe Massa who had been convinced to put his retirement on hold to continue with the Grove outfit.

Stroll struggled to get near to Massa's pace early on, retiring from the opening three races of the season.

His first finish would come in Russia when he crossed the line P11, while his first points finish came in front of his home crowd in Canada with P9.

It was at the next round though where Stroll really got the racing world talking after taking P3 in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

In doing so he became the youngest rookie and the second youngest driver after Max Verstappen to climb onto a Formula 1 podium, at the age of 18 years and 239 days.

The youngster thrived again a few months later at Monza, qualifying P4 on a soggy afternoon, but engine penalties for Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen meant Stroll started the race P2.

That made him the youngest F1 driver to start on the front row of a race at the age of 18 years and 310 days. He would cross the line P7.

P6 for Stroll in Mexico put him ahead of Massa in the Championship for the first time, but points for the Brazilian in the last two rounds and a pair of blanks for Stroll meant he finished one place and three points behind his team-mate in P12 in the Drivers' Championship with 40 points.

Williams had returned to form when the turbo-hybrid era swept into F1 from 2014, but by 2017 there were signs already of a decline.

That decline took a huge step in 2018 - Stroll remained with the team and he had a new team-mate in the form of Sergey Sirotkin, but it was a real struggle for the pair of them.

Multiple mistakes and incidents in the opening races intensified the pressure on Stroll, though in Azerbaijan he was able to score his first points of the season with P8.

His only other points finish of that campaign would arrive in Italy as Stroll slumped to P18 in the Championship with six points, five more than Sirotkin.

While all this was going on, Stroll's father Lawrence purchased the bankrupt Force India team in August 2018.

There were strong rumours at the time that Stroll would be heading to his dad's new team, but Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon would remain in their seats until the end of the season.

The inevitable would eventually happen though as Stroll made the move to the now fully rebranded Racing Point team where he would partner Perez for 2019.

It was seen as an important move for Stroll, who now in his third F1 season needed to show that he was worthy of a spot in F1 in a competitive midfield car.

Stroll scored points on his debut with P9 in Australia, with his seemingly favourite venue Azerbaijan providing another P9 finish.

His best finish would arrive at the chaotic German GP where he crossed the line P4, but a fair bit of criticism still came the Canadian's way.

It wasn't until qualifying for the German GP when Stroll snapped his 14-race streak of Q1 eliminations, while over the course of the season he lost the qualifying battle 18-3 to Perez.

But, like in 2017, Stroll did gain the most positions of any driver on the F1 grid on the opening laps of races in 2019.

Stroll would finish the season in P15 in the Drivers' Championship, scoring 21 points.

Perez meanwhile was up in P10 with more than double Stroll's total, collecting 51 points across the season.

Nonetheless it was confirmed over the Belgian GP weekend that Stroll had been retained by Racing Point alongside Perez for 2020.

Thanks to Racing Point's 'Pink Mercedes', officially known as the RP20, the team arrived that year as quite a force, leading the midfield battle initially and not far off P2 outfit Red Bull.

Stroll once again displayed his talent in tricky conditions by taking a shock first pole position of his career at the Turkish Grand Prix and establishing an early lead in the race.

If it wasn't for damage that he picked up, then Stroll could well have remained in the hunt for a first victory.

Still though 2020 was a season of missed opportunities for Stroll by his own admission. A four-race streak consisting of three DNFs and a withdrawal between the Tuscan and Portuguese GPs saw Stroll fall away from the P4 battle in the Drivers' Championship, a position he had regularly held in the early stages of the season.

A total of 75 points earned Stroll P11 in the final standings, 50 points behind team-mate Perez, but it was the Mexican who lost his seat thanks to the Aston Martin rebranding.

Stroll then got the chance to test himself against four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel in 2021, though the question marks were actually more surrounding Vettel, who came to the team off the back of a dismal season for his standards at Ferrari.

The first Aston Martin challenger, the AMR21, sadly was not a patch on the RP20, with Formula 1's new aerodynamic regulations hurting Mercedes and of course Aston Martin, since the AMR21 remained heavily influenced by the Mercedes.

Stroll started out well, claiming points in the opening two rounds while Vettel struggled to get up to speed, though when the opportunities arose for an unexpected strong Aston Martin result, it would not be Stroll picking up those heavy points hauls, recording a best result of P6 at the Qatar Grand Prix.

Stroll in total would score points in nine rounds across the 22-race 2021 season, that P6 in Qatar arguably also proving to be his strongest performance of the season as Vettel crossed the line in P10.

The Drivers' Championship standings were though an improvement for Stroll, who had ended the season only nine points behind a four-time champ.

While Aston Martin were hoping that the heavy investment would lead to a strong starting point for 2022, that was not the case, the team instead starting out as one of the slowest on the grid, their Barcelona upgrade bringing about a fresh controversy as Red Bull initially took issue with the similarity of the AMR22 to their RB18.

By the fourth race Stroll had a point on the board with a P10 finish at Imola, scoring the same result at the next round in Miami, but across the season only Singapore and Abu Dhabi represented rounds where Stroll scored more than just the one point on race day.

Singapore was without doubt the highlight, Stroll crossing the line P6 for his best result and arguably performance of the campaign, while he also signed off for F1 2022 with a P8 finish in Abu Dhabi, as an Aston Martin team which improved as the season went on narrowly missed out on P6 in the final Constructors' standings.

His final tally of 18 lagged behind the 37 scored by Vettel, who after announcing his impending retirement in the summer of that year, seemingly returned to form with the proverbial weight off his shoulders.

2023 saw the arrival of another multiple World Champion to contend with for Stroll in Fernando Alonso, but the Canadian began the year in Bahrain after swiftly recovering from multiple bone fractures following a cycling accident.

That made his P6 finish in Sakhir all the more remarkable, with the AMR23 the surprise package of the start of the 2023 season as Aston Martin flew forward in the competitive pecking order.

A P4 finish in Australia would be his best of the season however, with Alonso quickly seizing the initiative within the Aston Martin garage and scoring eight podiums on his way to 206 points, while Stroll managed 74.

This led to the loudest criticism yet over his driving, but he was buoyed by a strong end to the season that saw him much closer to Alonso's benchmark, with a pair of P5 finishes in Sao Paulo and Las Vegas bolstering his points haul.

History

Lance Stroll began his karting career in his native Canada and across the United States at the age of 10, but really began to make a name for himself in 2014.

He won the inaugural Italian F4 Championship with Prema Powerteam, winning seven races and clinching the trophy with six races of the season remaining and by a very comfortable 94-point margin.

Stroll was firmly embedded within the Ferrari Driver Academy at this stage and his stock continued to rise in 2015 when he emerged victorious in the Toyota Racing Series with M2 Competition.

Another title followed with Prema Powerteam again in 2016 as he won the Formula 3 European Championship in dominant style. He won 14 out of 30 races and finished top of the pile by a whopping 187 points.

His latest Championship win also coincided with becoming a development driver at Williams and, backed by his father's considerable wealth, he was able to completely bypass the next logical step, Formula 2, and become a fully fledged Formula 1 driver with the Grove-based team ahead of the 2018 season.

Networth

Lance Stroll was reportedly on an annual salary of around £1million at Racing Point, which shot up under the Aston Martin identity, though by how much varies between sites.

While some internet sources speak of a salary north of £8m for Stroll at Aston Martin, Forbes did not list him in the top 10 driver salaries for 2021, which had Carlos Sainz P10 on the list with a pay packet of £5.8m.

Stroll has an estimated net worth of £41 million, but the Stroll family possess overall a far greater wealth.

According to Forbes, Lance's father Lawrence has a net worth of $3billion [£2.37 billion] with much of that value coming from the selling of shares in fashion brand Michael Kors, the last of which he parted way with in 2014.

In August 2018, Lawrence Stroll headed up a consortium to complete a £90million takeover of Force India and also wiped out the team's accumulated debt which was estimated to be £15million.

Then in 2020 Stroll led a consortium to invest £182 million into Aston Martin in return for a 16.7% stake in the company, paving the way for Racing Point to become Aston Martin.

The Stroll family had a $200m yacht, which Lawrence reportedly sold to Michael Latifi, father of former Williams F1 driver Nicholas Latifi, as he is now believed to be having a new 80-metre yacht built in the Netherlands.

Lawrence himself is a keen collector of classic cars. He purchased a vintage Ferrari car back in 2013 for what was then a record-breaking $27.5 million.

As for Lance's own personal endorsements, Bombardier, JCB, Socios.com and his helmet manufacturer Stilo are all listed as sponsors on his website, as are Aston Martin team title sponsors Cognizant and Aramco.

Family

As previously mentioned, Lance's father, Lawrence, and his fortune has propelled his son up through the ranks and all the way to Formula 1.

Lawrence is strongly connected to the fashion world and so too is Lance's mother, Claire-Anne Stroll.

Lance also has a younger sister, Chloe, who set out after a career in pop music and released a single called 'Surrender' back in 2012.

Lance was rumoured to be dating ex-Made in Chelsea star Kimberley Garner in 2017 after being spotted on the Stroll family's yacht, but is now in a relationship with Italian model and entrepreneur Sara Pagliaroli.

News