Formula One: Felipe Massa and Lance Stroll at odds over Massa’s mentor role

Former Formula One driver Felipe Massa and current driver Lance Stroll are at odds over Massa’s role in mentoring Stroll at Williams Martini Racing in the 2017 season.

Lance Stroll, 19, does not believe that Felipe Massa, 36, his teammate at Williams Martini Racing in the 2017 Formula One season, Stroll’s rookie season, was much of a mentor to him like he hoped that he would be before the season began.

Given Massa’s response to Stroll’s claim and some of his comments during the 2017 season itself, it seems more than safe to say that he is in total disagreement with Stroll.

Stroll ended the 20-race 2017 season with 16 finishes. Of those 16 finishes, seven were top 10 finishes. His lone top 5 finish was a 3rd place finish in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. He went on to finish in 12th place in the drivers standings.

Massa ended the 20-race 2017 season with 17 finishes. Of those 17 finishes, 13 were top 10 finishes. His best finishes of the season were both 6th place results in the Australian Grand Prix and the Bahrain Grand Prix. He went on to finish in 11th place in the drivers standings before retiring having driven in 269 career Formula One races in 15 seasons. He won 11 races over the course of his career in the sport.

Here is what Stroll had to say about Massa not being a mentor to him in his rookie season in 2017, according to ESPN.

"“He was a team-mate like any other. He was busy trying to drive as fast as he could, and I was trying to drive as fast as I could. That was it. There was nothing more to it than that. I don’t know why people seem to think there was a coach or a mentor thing going on.“There wasn’t; it was just him doing his job and me doing mine, and whoever did it better finished ahead. Whether my team-mate is someone with 15 years’ experience or someone of one year’s experience, my approach doesn’t change.”"

Massa took to Twitter to “respond” to Stroll’s statement.

😱😱 better not to comment... @lance_stroll @WilliamsRacing https://t.co/SjnorfIxwp
— Felipe Massa (@MassaFelipe19) February 3, 2018

Prior to the 2017 season, Stroll was looking forward to the veteran Massa being his mentor. Here is what had to say about the possibility of Massa being a mentor to him before the 2017 season got underway, according to ESPN.

"“I really am looking forward to Felipe being a mentor for me. Of course we are competitors and we want to beat each other, but at the same time I think he has a lot of respect as a driver and we all know that he’s very well-respected throughout the paddock, he’s a really nice guy and he’s a team player.“That’s really all you ask for being in a team — you want someone who is a team player and someone who will help the team go forward and not create a problem on both sides of the garage.“I think it’s really important to have two drivers that want to push the team in the right direction rather than fighting against the other. It’s obviously good to have that competitiveness in the team and an urge to beat the driver next to you, but at the same time I think we are going to respect each other, we are going to want the best for the team and we are going to help the team in the best way possible.”"

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Toward the end of last April three races into the 2017 season and Stroll’s Formula One career, Massa revealed that he felt that he was mentoring Stroll in ways that reminded him of the ways by which he was mentored by the great Michael Schumacher, the sport’s all-time wins and championships record holder, when he was a teammate to Schumacher in the 2006 season. That season, both drivers drove for Scuderia Ferrari.

Here is what Massa had to say about mentoring Stroll in a similar manner, according to ESPN.

"“Sometimes you see that, for example, maybe in one corner he’s doing something where he’s losing lap time there and then he’s just asking, and I’m saying ‘you should do it like this, like that’, so yeah, no problem.“I had a good relationship with Valtteri [Bottas] and he grew up massively, also when we started to work together as well. It was never really a problem to pass the information, also getting the information. But maybe I’m doing it more with him [Stroll] because he needed more than maybe another driver.”“I was asking more than what he was giving. But he was giving a lot. For sure when I was in front he was not one hundred percent happy. I was asking a lot because I always look at Michael as a teacher, as a master, and was not afraid to ask and say what are you doing here, what are you doing there. I was asking everything I could for him and he was telling me. But sometimes I need to ask, he would not tell for free.”"

Apparently Stroll didn’t, and doesn’t, see it that way, and he is not afraid to let that be known, especially with 22-year-old Sergey Sirotkin lined up to replace Massa at Williams since Massa announced his retirement last November prior to the conclusion of the 2017 season before retiring once the season came to a close.

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Will Lance Stroll perform better or worse in the 2018 Formula One season with Sergey Sirotkin as his teammate than he did with Felipe Massa as his teammate in the 2017 season, his rookie season? Tune in to each and every one of the 2018 season’s 21 races to find out. The season is set to get underway on Sunday, March 25th with the Australian Grand Prix.