Lance Stroll’s GT3 Debut Was a Total Disaster With Over 8 Minutes in Penalties

Talk about a nail-biter! The GT World Challenge kicked off at Circuit Paul Ricard with a photo finish. Although everyone expected Lance Stroll to do better in his Aston Martin Vantage GT3, another driver snatched the victory at the last possible second. Instead, Stroll’s GT3 debut was one to forget, as his No. 18 car was buried under a mountain of penalties totaling eight minutes and 25 seconds.

While the No. 7 Comtoyou Racing Aston Martin of Nicki Thiim, Marco Sørensen, and Mattia Drudi celebrated a stunning win snatched in the final minutes of the six-hour endurance race, Stroll’s team was left languishing.

The sister car, shared by Stroll with former F1 driver Roberto Merhi and Aston Martin junior Mari Boya, ultimately finished in a distant P15.

The trouble for the No. 18 crew began early and compounded throughout the challenging event at the French circuit. The team’s litany of errors included a stop-and-go penalty after Boya caused a collision.

Stroll himself was not immune to such errors. The Canadian was personally responsible for penalties after ignoring blue flags and exceeding track limits, adding to the team’s already substantial time deficit which was too large to overcome in the end.

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A Different Kind of Racing

Taking advantage of two cancellations in the Formula 1 calendar, Stroll decided to dip his toes into GT3 racing, an entirely different discipline from his current single-seater gig.

Despite the team’s disastrous result, Stroll showed respectable pace during his stints, with his qualifying lap time a mere five-thousandths of a second slower than his more experienced teammate, Merhi.

However, this weekend was a lot of bad luck for the driver who deserved more.