Lance Stroll began his racing career in karts at the age of ten, competing around North America and Europe, winning titles in the Canadian National karting Championship and the Montreal and Quebec Cups before graduating to single seater racing in 2014 with a pre-season in the Florida Winter Series ahead of a full campaign in Italian F4.
Stroll dominated the Italian F4 championship, winning 10 of the 17 races, to take the title by over 100 points.
His success prompted a move to the Toyota Racing Series in New Zealand in early 2015 where he took four wins en-route to the title, before launching into his first F3 campaign driving in Europe for Prema – a team owned by Dad Lawrence.
He finished the season with one win and 5th in the championship before heading to Macau for the Grand Prix, where he finished 8th.
By now, Stroll had been accepted into the young driver programme, acting as Scuderia Ferrari’s development driver in 2015 before leaving at the end of the season to join Williams where the Strolls clearly (and correctly!) reckoned Lance had a better chance of a full-time F1 drive.
A second season in European F3 beckoned in 2016, where he won 11 times, taking the title at the second attempt.
In November 2016, Williams Racing announced Stroll would join the team for the following year to become the first Canadian F1 driver since Jacques Villeneuve.
Stroll endured a tough start to the year with three retirements and three finishes outside the top ten, before taking his first points in F1, finishing ninth at his home Grand Prix in Montreal.
Better was to come in Baku, when a race of high attrition and sensible driving by Stroll to avoid any drama left the Canadian in second place approaching the chequered flag, before being demoted a place by former Williams driver Bottas at the line, having to settle for an excellent third place.
Five more points finishes followed before the end of the year, taking young Lance to 12th place in the championship in his first year in F1.
Both Stroll and Williams were keen to make progress on their 2017 results, but an unstable FW41 made it difficult for or team-mate Sergey Sirotkin to get into any kid of rhythm and the team finished with single digit points for the first time – Lance scoring six and Sirotkin just the one.
By now it was clear that the Strolls were pushing for more control of the team, and frustrated with Williams’ unwillingness to comply and an uncompetitive FW41, they took their sacks of money and invested into buying Williams’ rivals Force India where they could have as much say as they like.
Lance Stroll’s first season with Force India was a marginal improvement on his second with Williams, but not the great strides either he or his father would have hoped for.
His inability to qualify well seemingly anywhere or in any conditions has disadvantaged him come Sunday, and he’s yet to take his second #F1 podium.
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