'Misfortune' made 2023 more difficult – Stroll

Alonso settled into Aston Martin in rapid fashion 12 months ago and claimed six podiums in the opening eight rounds. The Spaniard was consistently the team's lead driver and was largely responsible for the outfit finishing fifth in the Constructors' Championship.

The oldest driver on the grid battled with Red Bull in the opening rounds, whilst Stroll was busy getting up to speed. He entered 2023 on the back foot after missing pre-season testing, following a nasty cycling crash which left him needing surgery on his right wrist.

Stroll never really offered Alonso much of a fight and only finished ahead of him on four occasions, two of which were as a result of the veteran retiring.

Come the end of last season, Alonso had eight podiums to his name and 206 points, enough for fourth in the Drivers' Championship. As for Stroll, his best result of the year was fourth at the Australian Grand Prix, whilst he languished in P11 on just 74 points.

His disappointing season meant that Stroll was responsible for only 26.4% of the Silverstone-based team's points, compared to Alonso, who scored 73.6% of them.

Stroll recognised at the launch of Aston Martin's 2024 F1 challenger that he just didn't have the pace to match the 42-year-old in 2023, but believes he often didn't have things going in his favour.

Whilst he doesn't want to rely on luck, the Canadian driver recognises that he had several technical issues at important moments, limiting his overall points haul for the campaign.

He does have some things to try in a bid to be more competitive with Alonso in 2024, but recognises that things need to go in his favour more often.

Needing some luck

"Some speed last year for sure, he [Alonso] was just quicker," Stroll told select media including RacingNews365.

"I have some ideas on where to work on, some things that I want to improve on, for sure, in that regard.

"I don't want to, I don't like to use the word luck, but I think we had a lot of misfortune last year and I think that kind of made things more challenging when we were fighting for good positions.

"Last year, there were a lot of races where we had technical issues. You know, we had things that just didn't go our way. We want to just build on last year."