formula evie

This was originally published in March 2025. In the interest of displaying my work, I am leaving it up on my blog but that does not mean that I agree with any recent actions he may have taken nor do I align myself with any beliefs suggested by those actions.

I would comfortably say that Lance Stroll is one of the most disliked Formula 1 drivers on the grid right now. However, I don’t think fans treat him fairly, and they’re so busy hopping onto the hate train that they don’t even think to look past all the copy-paste insults and consider anything further.

Lance Stroll was born in October 1998 to billionaire buisnessman Lawrence Stroll, who later bought the Force India F1 team when it was forced into administration, changed its name to Racing Point, and then changed it again to Aston Martin after he invested into the luxury car brand in 2021. Lawrence is the current chairman of Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 Team, the team Lance drives for.

This is the base for much of the criticism of Lance- his dad bought a team so his son could drive. I don’t know about you, but that sounds to me like a dad who just really loves his son; if my dream was to be a Formula 1 driver, and my parents were billionaires, 100% they would do the same for me. Is it a crime to be loved by your parents? Lest we forget that Nico Rosberg’s father, former F1 world champion Keke Rosberg, bought a karting team so his son could race with his boyfriend best friend Lewis Hamilton back in 1999, and Lando Norris’ father paid for him to become the Mclaren test and simulator driver in 2017. Nepotism runs as rampant in F1 as it does it any other sport, but seemingly this criticism is only reserved for certain drivers.

I’m not saying that as if I have no idea what the reason is. Its about performance. Lance has racked up an impressive number of crashes in his career so far, including his debut race in Australia and notably an incident with Daniel Ricciardo in China last year, where he rear-ended the RB during a safety car restart. That was pretty indefensible, and I won’t pretend that his number of race incidents, DNFs, and outright crashes isn’t eyebrow raising. But he finished in P13 out of 24 drivers in the 2024 season; that is firmly midfield, in my opinion. Sure, his teammate Fernando Alonso picked up 46 points more than him and also out-qualified him at every race, but the car was just objectively bad last year. It’ll be extremely interesting to see how Lance performs in an Adrian Newey designed car in 2026, probably the best chance he’s had thus far at securing his maiden Grand Prix victory after 8 years on the grid.

Before F1, Lance earned championship titles in the 2014 Italian F4 Championship, the 2015 Toyota Racing series, and the 2016 Formula 3 European Championship. He bypassed Formula 2 to debut in F1 with Williams in 2017. Allegedly, Lawrence Stroll made a very generous donation to the team prior to Lance’s debut, but maybe he was just feeling charitable. In his first season, he became the second youngest driver to ever finish on the podium and also the youngest driver to start on the front row of the grid, and then in his second season at Williams the car was the slowest on the field and further achievements were definitively not made as they finished dead last in the constructor’s championship. He then moved to Racing Point and has remained there with his dad ever since- becoming the most experienced Canadian driver in the history of F1.

Quick side note: I am researching for this post as I write, and I have to admit that his Wikipedia page does make it seem like he drives bumper cars for a living. I’m not saying my opinion about him has changed, just that I am aware of the chaos this man has caused on track. Do I care? Not really! Anyone who has seen the state of the hubcaps on my car will know that I am not in any position to judge an F1 driver’s skills.

The point I was trying to make was that Lance showed a lot of promise and talent in the earlier stages of him career- he is a good driver. I think real root of his performance issues is the lack of pressure. Most drivers are on contracts for a few years at time, and once that contract ends, there is no guarantee that they will get resigned with that team. And if they don’t, there isn’t any guarantee that another team will take them either. Aside from the prospect of a championship title, this is what really pushes the drivers to perform; drive well, or lose your seat. We know this all too well. But this isn’t a concern for Lance, his seat is pretty much safe so long as the team is under his dad’s ownership. So maybe he doesn’t push so hard, or doesn’t worry so much about crashing because he knows he’s not going anywhere regardless. Maybe he just needs something to drive for again; back at Williams, he was an exceptional rookie even in a bad car, and that was when he was at team independent from his family. Do I think he would ever move teams? No. Not at all, especially with Newey coming in- and Newey could in fact be the thing that motivates him. This isn’t to say that he isn’t motivated or he doesn’t push hard, because any driver in F1 has to do those things or they’ll fall very far behind, but he could be doing more. And I want him to do more.

But, what is the point in trying if you know that no matter how you do, people will still hate you? The online hate is constant and seemingly contagious; new fans to the sport learn from other people’s opinions who to like and dislike, 5 minutes on any social media platform looking at F1 content and you’ll easily find comments, memes, or entire videos hating on Lance Stroll. I can say this with confidence, as when I first started watching F1 last year, I too saw all these comments and memes and videos and as such my first impression of Lance was extremely negative- and I held these views for months, until I managed to break away andform my own opinion and realised that he truly is not that bad. I actually think he’s very funny. However, there’s another aspect to the hate that I feel I need to address: ableism.

A French commentator was suspended in 2022 for calling Lance ‘autistic’, Max Verstappen used ableist slurs towards him in a radio message in a Portuguese Grand Prix practice session in 2020, former F1 Academy driver Bianca Bustamante liked a tweet calling him autistic (and promptly apologised, in all fairness), and similar insults and insinuations populate comments sections whenever a picture of Lance appears online. Whether or not Lance Stroll is neurodivergent is not known nor relevent- using neurodivergence as an insult or means to justify ‘poor’ performance is not acceptable under any circumstance. It says so, so much more about the people making those comments than it does about those they’re aimed at.

The hate towards Lance is nothing short of bullying in most cases. Genuine criticism is, of course, valid but the line is so far crossed when it comes to Lance Stroll- any mistake, big or small, that would be easily and quicken forgiven at the hands of any other driver, opens a door to unreasonable, disproportionate vitriol. I’m not sure exactly what it is that makes me like Lance, but I would definitely say that I do; I am rooting for him and praying for his success in future seasons. Also praying he gets better, since he had to miss the final day of testing in Bahrain due to illness- hopefully not an omen of what’s to come for Aston Martin this year. Hopefully the omen of what’s to come was their incredible F175 Live show and their gorgeous livery, and we’ll be seeing that beautiful shade of green on the podium again soon.