BUXTON: On Stroll and his quick steps to the top

Max Verstappen will find himself in a slightly strange position in 2017. For the first time in his career in the top echelon of motor racing, he will no longer be the youngest driver. Nor, it seems, will he be the sport's favorite punching bag. That honor will instead fall to 18-year-old Canadian Lance Stroll, announced last week as a Williams Racing driver and Valtteri Bottas' new teammate.

But while Verstappen arrived in Formula 1 to much fanfare and amid tremendous expectation in 2015, Stroll arrives cloaked in controversy. While Verstappen was hyped to the point that many expected disappointment, there are a tremendous number who are actively willing Stroll to fail. He has been derided and denigrated before he's even turned an F1 wheel in anger. But it is by no means a surprise. Or anything new.

Stroll and Verstappen began their open-wheel careers at the same time, both embarking on the Florida Winter Series over the early months of 2014. It was claimed that Stroll's father, the billionaire Laurence Stroll, had in fact bankrolled the championship, for once it had done its job of limbering up his son for a season of F4, it duly disappeared.

Even in those early days, there was a marked difference between the two youngsters however. For while it was Verstappen's on-track exploits that frustrated his rivals, it was Stroll's off-track personality that got under their skins. Like the kid at school who misbehaved but got away with it because his father sat on the Board of Governors, Stroll was seen as entitled and arrogant.

And mud sticks in motorsport.

Over his three seasons in single-seaters, Stroll has courted controversy at every turn. His petulance and refusal to learn from his mistakes saw him handed race bans after proving to be the architect of some monstrous accidents in Formula 3. So dangerous was he viewed that his rivals actively spoke out and called on the FIA to throw the book at him.

But he has won two championships in those three years. While it would be true to say that his championship years have come against slightly less than fantastic opposition, two championships are two championships. And, it must be said, he has matured tremendously, particularly over the past 12 months. Under the tutelage of Luca Baldisseri – himself the architect of much of Michael Schumacher's success at Ferrari – and the guiding hand of Prema Powerteam's Rene Rosin – a latter day Eric Boullier/Fred Vasseur character of the junior formulae – Stroll has been put definitively on the straight and narrow.

But again, the controversy swirls. There's been talk of teammates not being permitted to overtake him, the latest upgraded engines being available only to him, private testing sessions at every F3 track and, of course, countless hours on the brand-new Williams simulator set up for F3 and not the F1 car that Bottas and Massa could so well have used in 2016. And then there's the program he's been placed on to get him up to speed in an F1 car. He'd been running Ferrari Cosa Cliente as a young teenager, but in the last 12 months has been placed on an intense course at F1 tracks in a Williams FW26 with a full test team of mechanics and engineers. All bankrolled by his father to the tune of, so reports have suggested, $80 million.

But, does any of that matter? Whether he deserves to have made it to the top on skill alone is a moot point. He's there. Lance Stroll is a Formula 1 driver.

He will arrive with, at the last estimations, close to 5000 miles of F1 seat time under his belt. Given modern testing restrictions, it is fair to say that he will therefore be perhaps the best prepared rookie since Lewis Hamilton in 2007.

He therefore has nowhere left to hide. And neither now do his detractors. As the oldest adage in this game goes, when the flag drops, the BS stops.

Lance Stroll has always wanted to be a Formula 1 driver, and thanks to the tremendous fortune his father has accumulated, he has been afforded every possibility to make his dream a reality. Whether he has as much naturally gifted talent as other less well-off racers could, thus, create a fascinating case study for the debate of nature versus nurture within the realm of motor racing. Sure, from a purist perspective, that's a little sad, but potentially interesting nevertheless.

He now has a chance to prove himself on the most unforgiving platform of them all. And if he does so, then I hope that he is championed. But the reality is that he won't be. He'll always have that stigma. Always be fighting against the rich boy tag. There'll always be a suggestion his teammate's been told to cede position. That Stroll has been given all the updates. Questions asked as to who has been paid off by Daddy.

Even if he was to walk in, obliterate Bottas and start a march that eventually took Williams to its first world championship in 20 years, he would still be maligned.

And if the naysayers are right? If he proves to be a spectacular flop? Then Williams will have played a financial blinder. Again. Look at how well it invested the finances which the last rich kid with a questionable reputation brought to them. Pastor Maldonado may not have had the most solid of temperaments on the racetrack, but he was a champion and a race winner. And brought a huge budget. That Williams was able to invest that money wisely, and from it build the platform from which all of its recent successes have been built, shows a savvy business acumen and one which cannot be overlooked in this scenario.

Williams cannot lose from this link-up. At a reported $35 million price tag for the first season alone, Lance Stroll's seat, regardless of his ultimate capabilities, could serve to set Williams on the solid financial footing it requires to be a success long after the Canadian has shown himself up. Or, long into his glittering F1 career. Whichever it may be.

In many ways, Lance Stroll reminds me of Nelson Piquet Jr. There had always been stories that Nelson had carried out thousands of miles of private testing in his F3 and GP2 campaigns. He was always maligned as a rich kid, low on talent but profiting from Daddy's bank balance. When he finally made it to Formula 1, he never got to enjoy it or to show the best of himself. His successes went unnoticed. His failures were applauded. The wolves circled, he spiraled out of control and, under the orders of a cheat, signed his own execution notice.

Yet for all of Piquet's detractors, I never saw spite like that being thrust at Lance Stroll.

Lance might not be the most naturally gifted driver I've ever seen but he's far from the worst. How he got to Formula 1 is now immaterial. How he drove in Formula 3 matters not.

It's how he fares when the lights go out in Melbourne that should determine how he is judged. Sink or swim, only he can affect his fate now.