Eighteen-year-old Canadian racing driver Lance Stroll will become the first Canadian F1 driver since World Champion Jacques Villeneuve in 1997. He will also become the second-youngest driver in F1 history behind Belgian Max Verstappen, who competed for Red Bull Racing when he was still six months short of turning 18. This goes beyond auto racing betting; this is a truly inspiring story of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity. There is nothing you can’t do if you work, hard, keep your eyes on the prize, and never give up. Having a father whose net worth is estimated at US$2.4 billion also helps.
On 3rd November 2016, Williams Martini Racing announced that Stroll will join Valtteri Bottas in the upcoming in the 2017 Formula One season, thus becoming the latest representative of a trend we at this here auto racing betting online sportsbook would like to call the “Benjamin Button effect,” in which, as The Globe and Mail puts it, “an even younger crop of drivers who have been groomed from a young age in sophisticated development programs.”
Just like Ender’s Game but – one would hope – without the bigotry. For instance, Stroll was signed by Ferrari in 2010 when he was 11. He was young enough to still believe that a car might transform into something else. But even at that tender age he was undoubtedly familiar with the Italian manufacturer. With his father being a collector of vintage Ferraris.
Funny story, this one time Lance’s friend Ferris talked Lance into taking his father’s prized 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder for a joyride. Later on they return the car to Mr. Stroll’s garage and unsuccessfully try to run it backwards to remove the miles they’ve added; Ferris suggests they crack it open and turn the odometer back manually. Long story short, the car falls off the jack and flies out the back, crashing into a ravine behind. Good times. Nevertheless, Stroll took a stroll over to Williams’s side, where the grass is apparently greener.
Now to be perfectly fair, fans who bet on auto racing should that young Stroll did not like Kevin Durant and left the team that groomed him to go be where the money at. Did we mention his father is worth $2.4 billion? He is already where the money at. As it turns out, and again per TGAM, “Formula 1 requires millions in seed money just to bring along a driver, even before signing on with a team,” and “most drivers are then expected to bring millions of their own money to the table as a prerequisite for competition.” So it wasn’t just because he’s rich that he skipped F2 and went straight from F3 to F1. Also, there currently is no F2.
By way of example, five years ago Ontario-born Robert Wickens could have been the first Canadian F1 driver since Villeneuve but did not have the moolah to make it happen. In other words, you gotta pay to play, but as they say, you have to spend money to make money. And you can make money with a little auto racing betting.