Lance Stroll, Aston Martin, Suzuka, 2024

2024 Formula 1 driver rankings #20: Lance Stroll

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At the end of 2024, Lance Stroll was in the longest point-less run in his Formula 1 career. Given the quality of cars he’s had to drive in some past seasons – notably Williams’ poor 2018 car which left them last in the championship – that is a startlingly poor run.

No doubt last year’s Aston Martin was a disappointment compared to the quality of car he enjoyed the year before. But his team mate Fernando Alonso scored points in more than half of the last 11 races of the year where Stroll contributed nothing.

Earlier in the season, when the AMR24’s handling was more benign, Stroll produced some decent performances and even led Alonso home at times. His best result, in Australia, was boosted by his team mate’s post-race penalty.

He began the year with an impressive recovery from last on the first lap to claim the final point. He also climbed to ninth in Imola and produced a solid performance in Austria, albeit unrewarded.

Lance Stroll

Best Worst
GP start 8 (x3) 18
GP finish 6 19 (x2)
Points 24

But the majority of his season was unimpressive. At times the gap between him and Alonso grew far too large, such as in Suzuka, where Stroll finished a minute in arrears.

Then there were the times Stroll committed unacceptably poor errors. He had the same crash twice in Jeddah, drove into Daniel Ricciardo during a Safety Car period in Shanghai and bafflingly drove into Lewis Hamilton during practice in Spain. His pre-race crash at the Brazilian Grand Prix was perhaps the most embarrassing retirement any driver suffered all year.

He was clearly unhappy with his car’s handling in the latter stages of the season, but so was Alonso, yet he persevered. That is a quality we saw little of from Stroll in 2024.

RaceFans’ driver rankings are based partly on the scores awarded to drivers for their performances in each round as well as other factors.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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19 comments on “2024 Formula 1 driver rankings #20: Lance Stroll”

  1. Good choice of photo. This is a driver that doesn’t give two hoots about F1 any more.

    It’s not even a question of performance. He doesn’t want to be there, he just needs to man up and tell his dad he doesn’t want to do it any more so the seat can be given to someone with a bit of hunger.

    1. To be fair his dad bought him an entire team, invested literal hundreds of millions into it for Lance’s world title, it might be a bit more complicated than just “manning up”

    2. It’s always hard to tell, but that’s definitely something that I’ve thought a couple of times when hearing Lance Stroll talk. It might be a defensive posture to ‘not care so much’, which would be understandable given that he is already suspect in many people’s eyes and emphasizing that he’s disappointed about this or that will only aggravate the ‘he shouldn’t be here he is so bad’ talk. Just getting on with it as best as he can does make some sense. But be that as it may, it doesn’t come across as particularly energetic nor motivating for the team.

  2. I can also agree with this ranking for the most part.

  3. Exactly where he should be ranked. I’d actually have been ok with him being lower, but no way could he go higher. As of right now, because those ranked lower than him are not in F1, Stroll is the worst driver in the sport.

    1. I would put him behind Perez, Perez at least part of the year, seemed to care, seemed to want to push, just things never did click for more than a race or even a few laps where Stroll only had maybe 2 races where he wasn’t invisible (or visible only for the wrong reasons).

      1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
        21st January 2025, 8:39

        Stroll also seemed to have a stage of the year where he seemed at least decent, or Alonso must have been pretty awful. Between Miami and Hungary (8 races – precisely a third of the season), Stroll outscored Alonso.

        Admittedly just by one point, but 15 – 14 to Stroll against Alonso really is not bad for such a big chunk of the season.

        It was where he scored well over half his total points (24), which does show how bad he was the rest of the season. But I don’t think it was as bad as Perez.

        Perez had his first quater of the season (6 races) get off to a decent start with 103 points. But then in the remaining 18 races, he scored a pathetic amount of just 49 points.

        I really struggle to find a reason to rate Perez above Stroll.

  4. Agree with the bottom 3. Hard to split them really – you could make arguments for any order but either way, they’re definitely the bottom 3.

  5. Yes (@come-on-kubica)
    20th January 2025, 19:15

    Even if Aston could build a rocketship who could they get along Stroll who isn’t going to embarrass him. Awkward decision for daddy next season.

    1. They can try to put a stronger driver (they already have alonso) and fire him mid season in such a way that stroll can score more points, they have the money to break contracts, however the car still needs to be way faster than verstappen’s car, as it needs to make up for at least 5 tenths gap, perhaps closer to a second in driver performance.

      1. @esploratore1 If Alonso had been fired mid-2024, he still would have comfortably outscored Stroll. If Stroll had been fired mid-season, it wouldn’t have made any difference to his points total.

  6. I suppose it’s fair to put him ahead of perez and sargeant, but indeed difficult to make a case for him being any higher.

  7. Good choice of photo ~

  8. So being a mile slower than Max is not as bad as being slightly slower than Alonso? Perez and Stroll made equally as frequent and as pitiful mistakes, but Perez was even slower than Stroll relative to each driver’s respective teammates.

    1. Slightly? That could be the motto of his career, “Slightly slower than anyone”.

  9. His post-session interviews speak from himself.
    Slow and disengaged.

  10. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
    21st January 2025, 8:48

    I don’t agree with the pre-race crash in Brazil being embarresing – that was very clearly a problem with his breaks. Howver, the issue was with him driving back onto the track through the gravel at a slow speed. That was the stupid mistake.

    He had no steering input at all, and didn’t even break while on the white line / grass. From the replay, that was incredibly obvious that that was a brake issue, but most usually blame Stroll for such things.

    It is the mistake afterwards that should be remembered as the “crash” wasn’t his fault. Funily enough, he wouldn’t even have got himself stuck if this technical fault didn’t occur. Not that I defend him for this.

  11. Its barely credible he has been in F1 for what is now his 9th season. If red flags were always likely given his dad paid $80m for his seat at Williams, his qually in the wet at Monza that year, where i probably enjoyed my least favourite day on the track in my life, that put him net 2nd showed he may have something. Whatever that something is or was, it wasn’t consistency and im not even sure hes enjoying it much anymore. He’ll do better in a better car and get closer to Alonso but in a dud his lack of all round ability is there for all to see.

    1. his qually in the wet at Monza that year, where i probably enjoyed my least favourite day on the track in my life, that put him net 2nd showed he may have something.

      Stroll has been good in these wet-but-not-raining conditions during his whole career. It’s one of those weird quirks.

      Stroll is clearly not slow or just goofing around. But it’s just not enough to warrant a full time drive in F1, never mind almost a decade worth of them.

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