Against the background of Alonso, the weaknesses of his partner are clearly visible

When a team claims high places in the Constructors’ Championship, and therefore high prize money, both drivers must show good results. There may be a bright leader in the team, but ideally the partner should not be too conspicuously behind.

At Aston Martin there is a somewhat unusual situation this year. For the first time in the history of the Silverstone team, by whatever name it trades, its driver is regularly climbing the podium, and this driver is Fernando Alonso. He has finished in the top three in six of the season’s eight Grands Prix so far, and it has been a long time since the double world champion has seen such a crop of career podiums.

At the same time, the best result of Lance Stroll, his partner, remains 4th place in the race in Melbourne, so the Canadian has 37 points so far, despite the fact that Alonso scored more than three times more.

It is not surprising that critical arrows are already flying at the Canadian. For example, here is the opinion of Eddie Jordan, the founder of the Jordan team, on the basis of which Aston Martin F1 was founded thirty years later:

“The question is, if you own the Aston Martin team, have a fortune invested in its development and you have huge amounts of sponsorship money, how do you respond to sponsors who are interested in whether Lance can handle it well? with the case?”

Obviously we are talking about Lawrence Stroll, the father of Lance, chairman of the board of Aston Martin and his co-owner.

Fernando Alonso occasionally praises even his 24-year-old partner, but against his background Lance’s weaknesses are more apparent than ever, even though he is already in his seventh season in Formula 1 and the last Canadian Grand Prix is ​​the 130th race was in his career. Oddly enough, it was only in Barcelona, ​​Alonso’s home round, that things didn’t go well for him, where Stroll was slightly quicker in both qualifying and the race.

To date, the Spaniard has earned 75.97% of Aston Martin points, with Lance accounting for 24.03% respectively. At the same time, the team was tasked with staying ahead of Mercedes and taking second place in the Constructors’ Championship. It is clear that we are not talking about the victory in the team classification, it definitely goes to Red Bull Racing.

Aston Martin is not far behind the Mercedes, losing just 13 points, but if Stroll regularly finished at least in the top five the picture would be different. There is also some disequilibrium in the Mercedes drivers’ results, with Lewis Hamilton having 102 points to George Russell’s 67, but there’s no doubt that he’s on par with his famous partner in terms of speed.

Incidentally, Alonso alone earned almost as many points as both Ferrari drivers: Carlos Sainz scored 68, Charles Leclerc scored 54, for a total of 122. But the Scuderia has a bad car this year, while the speed of the AMR23 is the envy of all teams except Red Bull Racing. But at the same time, the Ferrari drivers have a completely different point balance – Sainz earned 55.7%, his partner – 44.3%, which once again confirms the approximately equal class of drivers.

But judging by the results of the Canadian Grand Prix, the Scuderia is gradually making progress, and it is likely that it will soon be able to oust Aston Martin from third place in the Constructors’ Championship. Unless, of course, Lance Stroll doesn’t add and it needs to be done quickly.

Of course, Alonso encourages his partner and assures that Stroll is very capable: “I think the most important thing for Lance is to achieve consistency in performance every weekend. This will allow him to take the next step in his career and regularly compete for top five places and earn points that matter at the end of the year.

Like I said, he has motivation and commitment. With Aston Martin’s continued development, it’s only a matter of time before Lance starts claiming more.”

But not everyone shares this optimism. David Coulthard, former Formula 1 commentator and television commentator, discussed Stroll Jr. on the Formula for Success podcast with Eddie Jordan: “I don’t want to say Lance isn’t good enough because on his way to Formula 1 he won every youth series he competed in. Plus he had bad luck several times this year.

But there comes a time when you don’t have to make excuses anymore, because in the World Cup everything is decided by the stopwatch, and team leaders only pay attention to the results, especially when it comes to plans for the future.