{"id":17701,"date":"2023-12-25T04:56:21","date_gmt":"2023-12-25T09:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=17701"},"modified":"2023-12-26T09:07:16","modified_gmt":"2023-12-26T14:07:16","slug":"lance-stroll-bad-luck-contributed-to-alonso-points-deficit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2023\/12\/25\/lance-stroll-bad-luck-contributed-to-alonso-points-deficit\/","title":{"rendered":"Lance Stroll: &#8220;Bad luck&#8221; contributed to Alonso points deficit"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Lance Stroll admits he faced major struggles in 2023, although he believes external factors impacted his performance gap to Alonso.<\/h3>\n<p>Amidst Fernando Alonso&#8217;s sensational Bahrain podium, Lance Stroll was also highly praised for his start to the year. Despite missing out on pre-season testing due to injury, the Canadian showed respectable speed in the AMR23.<\/p>\n<p>In the Saudi Arabia GP, before a reliability failure ended his race, he was also impressive. Compared to his <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2023\/12\/23\/f1-news-alonso-reveals-aims-for-next-2-3-years-at-aston-martin\/\" target=\"_self\">two-time Champion teammate,<\/a> Stroll was holding his own in qualifying.<\/p>\n<p>However, a sequence of difficult races saw Alonso comprehensively outperform Lance Stroll.<\/p>\n<p>Monaco, Miami and Canada were among the most detrimental Grand Prix for the 25-year-old&#8217;s campaign. They weren&#8217;t just costly in terms of the points gap to his teammate &#8211; but also regarding his perception among the fans.<\/p>\n<p>In the second half of the season, especially as <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2023\/12\/21\/f1-news-aston-martin-deliver-warning-ahead-of-2024\/\" target=\"_self\">Aston Martin fell behind,<\/a> pressure continued to rise. This reached its climax in Singapore when he crashed out in qualifying and didn&#8217;t race on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"AUzgI_DtQ5JPYer2ftc4Kw\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1715283990\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'AUzgI_DtQ5JPYer2ftc4Kw',sig:'e5Y9PZe6bUUkd3vngb8Wlmd0Sk-ga-iGr6jaAh4XQSE=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1715283990',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Thankfully for Stroll, a series of strong races in Brazil and Vegas helped alleviate this scrutiny. Criticisms began to subside as the Canadian showed flashes of improved performance.<\/p>\n<p>When reflecting on his 2023 season, Lance Stroll explained what he saw as most significant:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;It&#8217;s been a season with a lot of bad luck, a lot of missed opportunity,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsportweek.com\/2023\/12\/24\/stroll-missed-opportunities-dwarfed-2023-points-gap-to-alonso\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Motorsportweek<\/a> quotes him as saying.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;I don&#8217;t like using the words bad luck, but I think missed opportunities.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;But I guess it&#8217;s bad luck when I think about the failures and stuff.\u00a0<\/em><em>We had races like Saudi [when I was] running P4, engine problem. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Monaco qualifying, hitting debris &#8211; damage to the car and starting from the mid-pack in Monaco, you lose your weekend.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Stroll&#8217;s assessment holds some truth, with some extraneous variables impacting his overall points tally.<\/p>\n<p>These results also severely impacted his early-season momentum, which dissipated very quickly. However, it would be inaccurate to overstate the impact of misfortune.<\/p>\n<p>After all, bad luck cannot fully account for a 130-point discrepancy. Alonso was undoubtedly a few steps ahead of Lance Stroll, all whilst adapting to a new team. There is no shame in losing out to Fernando Alonso in the same machinery.<\/p>\n<p>Even World Champions like Kimi Raikkonen have struggled with this challenge.<\/p>\n<p>However, Stroll will not be expected to outperform the 42-year-old next season. Instead, the aim should be to replicate his late-season form and stay within touching distance of the Spaniard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lance Stroll admits he faced major struggles in 2023, although he believes external factors impacted his performance gap to Alonso. Amidst Fernando Alonso&#8217;s sensational Bahrain podium, Lance Stroll was also highly praised for his start to the year. Despite missing out on pre-season testing due to injury, the Canadian showed respectable speed in the AMR23. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4927,"featured_media":16605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[2186,1566,68,23,224],"class_list":["post-17701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formula-1","category-news","tag-2023-formula-1-season","tag-aston-martin","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-lance-stroll"],"modified_by":"Jaden Diaz-Ndisang","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}