Formula 1: Lawrence Stroll is ruining his son’s chances at a great career

Lawrence Stroll is the main reason why his son Lance has a ride in Formula 1. But is he really ruining his son’s chances of having a great career?

Before the 2017 Formula 1 season began, billionaire Canadian investor Lawrence Stroll spent $80 million to get his son Lance a ride with Williams Martini Racing, the team for which Lance drove in the 2017 and 2018 seasons.

In the middle of the 2018 season, which was a disastrous season for Stroll and Williams as a whole, Sahara Force India were sent into administration by the financial backers of Sergio Perez, one of the team’s two drivers.

This allowed a Lawrence Stroll-led consortium to purchase the team, changing their name to Racing Point Force India and now just to Racing Point ahead of the 2019 season.

It also opened the door and made it pretty much inevitable that Lance Stroll would end up replacing one of the team’s two drivers, likely Esteban Ocon, considering what his father had previously invested in his Formula 1 career.

After months of speculation, the team confirmed that Stroll will, in fact, be Ocon’s replacement for the 2019 season and that he is in the team’s long-term plans, completing the grid for next year.

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This has caused a lot of criticism of Stroll, as fans have cited the fact that he has “Daddy’s money” to thank for having the opportunity to drive in Formula 1. This is often overshadowed by the fact that Stroll does, in fact, have talent.

Stroll won the 2014 Italian Formula 4 Championship, the 2015 Toyota Racing Series championship and the 2016 Formula 3 European Championship before landing a ride with Williams in the 2017 Formula 1 season. He earned a podium finish, a third place finish, in his eighth career Formula 1 start and a front row starting position in his 13th.

But at the end of the day, this sizable amount of success isn’t what got Stroll into Formula 1, nor is it what has kept him in it — his father’s wallet did, and this is an indisputable fact.

It is highly unlikely that anyone, including top-tier Formula 1 teams, will look at Stroll and assess him by using anything other than the fact that his father bought him a ride — not today, not tomorrow and likely not for many years to come. They will see him as a pay driver and not much more, if anything more.

As a result, Stroll likely won’t have a chance to drive for teams that are much better than the mid-pack Racing Point team even if he has a substantial amount of success in his time driving for them. It will take a lot more than him just beating his teammate to make a top-tier team even consider giving him a chance.

Whether they have talent or not, drivers whose fathers buy them into Formula 1 aren’t viewed by the top-tier teams, or really by anybody, in the same way as drivers who get in solely by climbing the ladder, even though the financial aspect is still often involved with those other drivers.

This is what Stroll is up against.

He is simply not in a position to get looked at from top-tier teams like drivers such as Sebastian Vettel, Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, Pierre Gasly and even George Russell and Ocon have over the course of their careers. Sure, Stroll has progressed like these drivers have and he wasn’t just shot straight to Formula 1, but none of these drivers’ fathers spent $80 million so their sons wouldn’t be without rides — rides with non-top-tier teams, nonetheless.

Yes, Stroll did test drive for Ferrari in 2015, but the odds that that ever amounts to anything as far as a full-time ride is concerned are small, especially given all that has happened since then as far as his father buying him rides is concerned as well as Ferrari’s drivers situation.

The bottom line is that Stroll is talented, but his father’s approach of buying him his Formula 1 seats with backmarker and mid-pack teams could end up preventing him from having a chance to display that talent in its entirety.

While there is certainly no guarantee that Stroll would get to drive for a top-tier team anyway, the fact that his father continues to buy him rides with non-top-tier teams effectively makes him a lock to drive for nothing better than mid-pack teams, perhaps no other team aside of Racing Point to be specific, throughout the rest of his career even if he has a ton of success doing so.

Barring something completely unexpected, Stroll is essentially a lock for mediocrity when he has the potential — even if it wouldn’t be overwhelmingly likely — to be so much more if his father’s wallet wasn’t inevitably attached to all of the success that he has had, has and will likely continue to have.

Where will Lance Stroll’s Formula 1 career go from here? Will he have success driving for Racing Point? If so, will he end up driving for a top-tier team? If he does not have success, for how much longer will he drive in Formula 1? If he does end up driving for a top-tier team, when will he do so? If he does not end up driving for a top-tier team, will the fact that his father’s wallet played a large part in getting him to where he is now be the primary reason for it?

There are several questions about the 20-year-old Canadian’s career that have yet to be answered, and these questions should at least begin to get answered in the 2019 season.