Nov.1 (GMM) Lance Stroll should think about whether he really wants to remain a Formula 1 driver.
That is the frank claim of former F1 driver Christian Danner, towards the end of the 25-year-old Canadian’s stark failure to impress alongside Fernando Alonso at Aston Martin in 2023.
Stroll debuted for Williams all the way back in 2017, but his performance struggles this year have coincided with the appearance of a lack of motivation and even his violent temper-tantrum in Qatar, which earned him an FIA rebuke.
“If someone approaches their job with such a lack of enthusiasm, then there is a lack of fundamental love for that job – for the privilege of being able to drive a Formula 1 car,” Danner told sport.de.
“I don’t see (enthusiasm) in Stroll by any stretch of the imagination,” he added.
But the much bigger problem, Danner insisted, is the lack of performance – even if Lance’s father and team owner Lawrence Stroll attributes much of the 130 points gap to Alonso to his son’s bad luck and early wrist injuries.
“It’s a fact that Stroll is underperforming,” Danner insisted. “(Team boss) Mike Krack can say as often as he likes that everything is great. But it’s not great. You just have to look at the results.”
After his Qatar tantrum, Lance answered with a terse “yes and yes” when asked if he has patched things up with his trainer and still enjoys being a F1 driver.
“If I was Lance Stroll, a grown man, I’d ask myself if I want to continue being a racing driver,” said Danner.
“He has to make that decision for himself, asking ‘do I have room for improvement here? Is there progress?’ If so, ‘what do I have to do about it’.”
Danner said former F1 driver Nicholas Latifi is an admirable example of another privileged son of a very wealthy father who ultimately decided not to pursue his racing career after being dropped by Williams last year.
“It’s a good comparison,” he said, “because he comes from an even richer family. And while he didn’t drive badly at all, he made a good and courageous decision in the life of a young man.
“I think this decision-making process – ‘what’s the point of it all?’, ‘do I really want it?’ – is what Stroll is now going through. It’s no good to walk around always grumpy and in a bad mood,” Danner added.