Lance Stroll finished third at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in 2017. He was 18 years old, it was his first visit to the circuit, and nothing in the seven starts since has got anywhere near it.
Eight starts, 27 points, one podium. More than half of that total came before his twentieth birthday.
The best day came first
2017 was a Williams season in which very little went right, and Baku was the exception. He qualified eighth, kept the car out of the walls while a good deal of the field did not, and came home third for fifteen points. It is still the largest single haul of his Azerbaijan career by some distance.
The follow-ups were respectable rather than remarkable. Eighth in 2018 from tenth on the grid, then ninth in 2019 from thirteenth, that one with Racing Point. Six points across two years, and the sense of a driver taking what a midfield car allowed.
Then came the lean stretch. He started nineteenth in both 2021 and 2022, the first ending in an accident and the second in vibrations that left him sixteenth. Two weekends, no points, and no real position to work from on either Saturday.
2023 briefly interrupted it. Ninth on the grid and seventh at the flag was his only scoring finish for Aston Martin at this track, and the only time since 2019 he has left Baku with anything.
2024 ended in retirement from thirteenth on the grid. 2025 was a quiet seventeenth. The gap back to that first afternoon has only widened.
Lance Stroll's Azerbaijan GP record year by year
Every Azerbaijan Grand Prix start, with the grid slot it came from and what it was worth.
| Season | Grid | Finish | Points | Team |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 8 | P3 | 15 | Williams |
| 2018 | 10 | P8 | 4 | Williams |
| 2019 | 13 | P9 | 2 | Racing Point |
| 2021 | 19 | P19 | 0 | Aston Martin |
| 2022 | 19 | P16 | 0 | Aston Martin |
| 2023 | 9 | P7 | 6 | Aston Martin |
| 2024 | 13 | P19 | 0 | Aston Martin |
| 2025 | 14 | P17 | 0 | Aston Martin |
Eight years on from the high point
Five of the eight starts have come with Aston Martin and they have produced six points between them. The two Williams years produced nineteen. That is the shape of the record: a strong start, a long plateau, and a single good Sunday in the middle of it.
He goes again at the Baku City Circuit on 26 September in the AMR26, still without a point in 2026. Baku rewards drivers who simply survive it, and he has done that five times in eight attempts. On this circuit that is not nothing.
