Formula 1: How Lance Stroll can silence his critics in the 2019 season

Lance Stroll has a golden opportunity to silence his many critics in the 2019 Formula 1 season. Here is how he can do it.

Ever since Canadian billionaire investor Lawrence Stroll spent $80 million to land his son Lance a ride with Williams Martini Racing in the 2017 Formula 1 season, Lance has faced a boatload of criticism, which anybody could have expected.

Stroll drove for Williams in the 2017 and 2018 seasons, but he is set to replace Esteban Ocon at Racing Point in the 2019 season.

Why? Because Lawrence Stroll led a consortium to purchase the team this past summer after they were sent into administration by the financial backers of Sergio Perez, the team’s other driver.

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It was at this point when the team were renamed from Sahara Force India to Racing Point India. They have since been renamed Racing Point, but their name is set to change once again before the 2019 season begins.

As a result of the fact that Stroll is set to be one of Racing Point’s two drivers in the 2019 season, many people have used the phrase “born with a silver spoon in his mouth” to describe the 20-year-old Canadian and his situation in Formula 1, and it is hard to argue against the fact that his father’s wallet is the reason why he is where he is in his racing career. However, it is also impossible to deny the fact that Stroll has showcased his talent before and the fact that he has showcased a lot of it.

In each of the three years leading up to him coming to Formula 1 as Felipe Massa’s teammate in the 2017 season, Stroll won championships in three different series. He won the 2014 Italian Formula 4 Championship, the 2015 Toyota Racing Series championship and the 2016 Formula 3 European Championship.

In the 2017 Formula 1 season, the then 18-year-old Stroll earned a podium finish in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and a front row starting position for the Italian Grand Prix in a mid-pack car.

Stroll was the only non-Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport, Scuderia Ferrari or Red Bull Racing driver to pull off either one of those feats in the 2017 season, and he did both. Not only that, but he did both driving for a team that did not even win the unofficial “best of the rest” championship.

However, Stroll still finished in 12th place in the driver standings in the 2017 season, which was behind where Massa finished in a tie for 10th, and the 2018 season was an overall struggle for Williams, making it hard to truly assess him. He finished in 18th in the driver standings while teammate Sergey Sirotkin finished in 20th (last).

Sirotkin, however, outqualified Stroll in 12 of the season’s 21 races, while Stroll only outqualified Sirotkin in eight of them (Stroll missed one qualifying session).

As a result, the 2019 season is set to be a make-or-break season for Stroll. He has a golden opportunity to silence his many critics and perhaps even make them focus on the good that Lawrence Stroll did for Formula 1 by preventing a team from potentially leaving the grid as opposed to focusing on the fact that he essentially handed his son a ride with a mid-pack team.

But how can the younger Stroll silence his critics?

A lot of it will come down to how he battles Perez, who is set to be his teammate in the 2019 season. Perez has finished higher than his teammates in the driver standings in each of the last four seasons, and he won the unofficial “best of the rest” championships in both the 2016 and 2017 seasons. He won both of them quite comfortably.

If Stroll can finish ahead of Perez in the driver standings and record the occasional top six finish as the “best of the rest” driver in individual races, that should prove that he belongs in Formula 1 regardless of the fact that his father is who he is. Winning the unofficial “best of the rest” championship would also bolster his case.

At that point, Stroll’s critics, at least those who actually care about his performance and aren’t just hating on him because he is in the position that he is in as far as his father’s wallet is concerned, should be silenced.

But expect his critics to continue full on with their criticism if he doesn’t at least accomplish this in the 2019 season, and justifiably so.

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Will Lance Stroll silence his critics with a strong performance in the 21-race 2019 Formula 1 season? Regardless, this season will be a true test to see what he is really made of. It is scheduled to get underway with the Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit in Melbourne, Australia on Sunday, March 17, 2019.

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