Meet Canada's first F1 driver in 20 years Eighteen-year-old Lance Stroll prepares to join Formula One as the Montreal native is expected to be named driver for Williams Racing on Thursday.

Rick Westhead TSN Senior Correspondent Follow|Archive

When Lance Stroll was 11 years old and racing in a go-kart series, a scout for the Ferrari racing team approached his father Lawrence after a race and handed him a business card.

“He’s got talent,” Lawrence Stroll recalls Ferrari official saying. The scout suggested Stroll move to Italy and join Ferrari’s racing academy.

With that, Stroll – then in the sixth grade – moved to Italy to further his goal of making racing a full-time career.

The Montreal-born prodigy appears poised to take another step forward on Thursday.

That’s when the Williams Racing team is announcing its driver lineup for the 2017 season. Coming on the heels of an announcement by Lawrence that Lance will compete in Formula One next year, speculation is widespread that Stroll will join Williams, replacing the retiring Felipe Massa, a Brazilian who has raced with Williams since 2014.

Stroll would become the first Canadian to compete in Formula One since Jacques Villeneuve in 1996. Villeneuve won the circuit’s world championship in 1997.

If Stroll, who turned 18 on Oct. 29, does join Williams, he would become a teammate of Valtteri Bottas, a Finnish driver who is currently in eighth place in the FIA Formula One standings, two spots behind teenager Max Verstappen, the son of Jos Verstappen, a former Formula One driver.

Verstappen joined Formula One as a 17-year-old, becoming the youngest driver in the history of the series, and won his first race in May, the Spanish Grand Prix.

Stroll, meantime, prepares to move into Formula One after winning the European F3 championship this year with 14 wins in 30 races.