Billionaire’s boy Teenage driver defends move to team bought by super-rich father
Canadian defends his move to a team bought by his father, writes Oliver Brown in Spa
Lance Stroll wants to talk, urgently. A summons to meet the young Canadian driver arrives within moments of him finishing the Belgian Grand Prix, and it becomes apparent that the 19-year-old feels deeply hurt at recent suggestions that he owes his rise in Formula One purely to the wealth of his father, Lawrence, a billionaire fashion mogul.
The rendezvous comes amid mounting controversy over his impending move from Williams to Force India, the team whom Stroll Snr, as head of a consortium of investors, has just rescued from administration.
Over coming days, the likelihood is that Lawrence will promote his son, still in only his second season in F1, to a race seat there, in place of the richly talented Esteban Ocon, the third-fastest qualifier in Spa. Despite the sport’s stated ambitions to become more meritocratic, this is one transfer that seems to be rooted uncomfortably in nepotism.
Still in his race overalls, and even before he has attended his Williams debrief, Stroll sits down in his private room inside the team motorhome for a clear-the-air discussion. Until now he has remained tight-lipped on the situation, acknowledging only that he hoped his father would take him to Force India. But the subsequent rich-kid caricatures have wounded him. “I felt that the way I was criticised was not entirely fair,” he says. “Obviously I’m struggling right now in a difficult car, but I have done a lot to prove that I’m not here just because of my family’s wealth.
“I won championships and races and earned my super-licence to get to Formula One. Of course, I was very fortunate to be in the position I was in, but at the same time I delivered. I think I deserve a bit more credit.
“In Monza last year, I had a qualifying performance in the rain similar to what Esteban produced here in Spa. I had a podium finish [in Baku] and I won other points as well.”
Criticisms of Stroll are not, contrary to what he has sometimes indicated, part of some massive media conspiracy.
“The haters will always hate,” he shrugged last year. The debate about whether or not a driver deserves to be parachuted by his father into the fourth-strongest team on the grid reaches to the heart of what modern F1 aspires to be. Is this truly the highest echelon of motorsport, or just a playground for big shots?
On the one hand, most parents would do anything for their children, even to the extreme of buying one of them an F1 team. But on the other, the elevation of Stroll at the expense of Ocon, the 20-year-old Frenchman whose parents had to sell their house to support his F1 dream, sits uneasily even with the leading drivers.
After Ocon’s stunning qualifying display in Belgium, TV cameras caught part of his conversation in French with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel. “Next year, where are you going? You’re staying here?” the German asked him. “No, it [the seat] is taken,” he replied. “Oh yeah? By whom?” “Have a guess. The one who bought it!”
Lewis Hamilton, likewise, said: “The best drivers need to be in the best cars. You can’t let somebody who has got more money leapfrog a better driver. It shouldn’t happen.” Hamilton later claimed he had been talking in general terms, rather than about Stroll,
‘Of course, I was very fortunate to be in the position I was in, but at the same time I delivered’
even though his comments came in response to two questions explicitly about the Ocon controversy and its implications.
Stroll says: “Drivers don’t always know all the pieces of the puzzle behind the scenes. Potentially, my father buying this team can make it a much better team, much more competitive. It’s not, in my eyes, a big negative.
“From Esteban’s point of view, it’s triggered towards me, because my father’s involved in Force India. Drivers from certain backgrounds will have their view on how things should be. Drivers with financial backing will think otherwise.”
At each stage of his racing career, Stroll has been lavishly supported by his father’s fortune, acquired from huge investments in Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger. Even while in Formula Three, he had F1 engineers seconded to him. Still, his results were impressive: an Italian F4 championship in 2014, and a European F3 title two years later. Good enough to graduate to F1 without paternal backing? “Probably not,” according to Martin Brundle.
I put it to Stroll that his switch to Force India in lieu of Ocon, one of the most highly rated products of the Mercedes junior drivers programme, is hardly the best look for the sport.
“I’m not arguing that point, but my results and what I’ve done in the past should have been acknowledged a little bit more,” he says. “It’s very harsh. Sometimes a footballer has more ability, potentially, than another. It just happens to be that one gets thrown in a s----y club, and another with less ability gets a great pay cheque at a better club. I’m not disagreeing that the system isn’t entirely fair all the time.
“But I deserve more than just mention of the money that’s behind me. And it’s not entirely my father. Aside from him, I bring in partnerships with JCB, Canada Life, Bombardier. So, I think there’s a separation between my father and I, to a certain extent.
“If he takes me to Force India, that’s his choice, and I understand that for Esteban, that might not be great or fair. But I think that I deserve to be recognised more for the results I’ve achieved. I wanted to get that off my chest.”
It is time for Stroll to leave for a post-mortem on his 13th-place finish at Spa, the latest misery of an abject campaign for Williams, in which he and team-mate Sergey Sirotkin have won just four points in 12 races.
His escape to Force India, which could be confirmed before the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday, is sure to generate more muttering that his is a story of money over merit. But one is left with no doubt as to his determination to defend his honour.