Lance Stroll reacts to recurring trend of Fernando Alonso being ‘a little bit quicker’

With his heavy defeat to Fernando Alonso leading to rumours he could lose his Aston Martin seat, Lance Stroll insists he doesn’t “pay too much attention” to F1 rumours.

Lining up against a new teammate this season in double World Champion Alonso, Stroll always knew he had a battle on his hands and he wasn’t helped in that when he suffered broken bones in a pre-season cycling crash.

Still sporting bandages at the opening race in Bahrain, it was Alonso who put the Aston Martin AMR23 on the podium, but he was quick to praise “my hero” Stroll for his P6 in the grand prix.

Fernando Alonso has been ‘A-plus’, Lance Stroll says he’s had ‘some Cs’

But while Alonso has gone on to record six podiums for Aston Martin, Stroll has yet to finish inside the top three while only once, Spain, finishing ahead of his teammate on a Sunday.

Trailing him by 47 points to 149, pundits have blamed Stroll for Aston Martin losing second place to Mercedes and have questioned whether he’ll still be with the team next season.

“I don’t really pay too much attention to that,” he toldMotor Sport. “I know more myself deep down when I do a good job, and I extract the most from the car.

“Whether I’m ahead or behind them I know when I should be patting myself on the shoulder, or the first one to kind of criticise myself in a constructive way, learn from it and come back stronger.

“I know that there’s been a lot of races where I felt like I maybe got the most out of the car, and he was a little bit quicker, and that’s just how it is. And other times where I really drove well and I was in front of him a couple of times.

“So, yeah, I’m proud of that. But for sure, he’s been at a very high level throughout the year, he’s made very few mistakes – no mistakes – and you have to give him credit for that, because he’s been driving at an extremely high level, and really getting the most out of the car every week.

“But like I said, I’m kind of more just focused on my own stuff, I’m not really listening to too much of that noise on the outside, because it’s F1. When you have a bad day, there’s always going to be a reason why, when you have a good day, it’s kind of just normal. I think that’s how a lot of F1 is, or my experience of it over the years.

“But I just know that when I get the most out of myself and the day, I’m happy about that, I’m proud of that. And the days where I don’t I’m the first one to admit that and think to myself ‘I gotta come back stronger next week’.

“He’s just been at a really high level throughout the whole season, and delivering that kind of A-plus kind of performance every week, when I’ve had a few kind of A’s, but I’ve had some Cs and it’s been a little bit more challenging. But a lot of racing left to go.”

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Lance Stroll adamant rumours do ‘not frustrate me’

From being called the“most stressed driver” on the grid by Le Mans winner Richard Bradleyto David Croft declaring he’s lost his “mojo”, Stroll’s gap to Alonso has pundits questioning what comes next for the Canadian.

Although he is the son of team owner Lawrence Stroll, it has been suggested this could be his final season on the grid.

“I don’t read the stuff, so it does not frustrate me… You’re on social media, I’m not during the week!” Stroll said.

“I’m playing Xbox with my friends or – I used to mountain bike but I’m not allowed to do that anymore! In the winter, I’m snowboarding. I’m on the golf course, playing tennis.

“I’m doing other things that I can’t really speak about in the interview… So I mean, there’s not a lot of time to be on social media.

“There’s a big wide world out there. That’s where my head’s at.”

‘Bad luck’ has played a part in Lance Stroll’s season

From his hand injuries to mishaps on the track, Stroll reckons his year has had more than its fair share of bad luck.

He’s hoping that’s now done and that he can return to the track after the summer break to look forward to a strong conclusion to the campaign in a competitive AMR23.

“Hopefully we get back to a stage where we’re that competitive. I do believe we can do that,” he said.

“I mean, it definitely didn’t help to miss 250 laps of testing or whatever it was, and just be physically not at my best earlier on in the season. However, I think more than my injury we probably got hurt more by bad fortune on the track.

“We were running fourth in Jeddah and then we had the engine issue. We were competitive as a team in Miami, but we had a very bad qualifying, so we were on the back foot there on a track you can’t overtake. Same thing in Monaco again, we hit [Lando] Norris’ debris in Q2, and that was just the end of our session starting 14th, and at a track where you want to be up at the front.

“So, those are some of our most competitive races, and I think we got more hurt by… I don’t like to use the word, but I guess bad luck in a way – misfortune, whatever you want to call it – rather than my injury.”

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