To the surprise of absolutely no one, Aston Martin announced this week that Lance Stroll will continue with the team for 2025 and beyond. Given that his father Lawrence Stroll is the team owner, this was a foregone conclusion from the very start. But since his results are lackluster to say the least, it does beg the question: what really is the point of keeping Lance Stroll at Aston Martin?
It’s a question that every single fan, content creator, media outlet and self proclaimed expert (hi there) has asked themselves a million times by now. And the obvious answer is of course: there is no point, he’s only there because of nepotism. It's definitely not because of his results. Throughout his career, there have been flashes of adequacy that have been offset by many, many more examples of incompetence.
I’m sure I don’t have to run through the list… but I’m going to anyway. While his teammate Fernando Alonso was raking in podium after podium in 2023, Stroll was very much not doing that. He almost crashed into Alonso in the opening lap of the first race, he crashed into everything that moved in Monaco, he completely totalled the car in qualifying for Singapore which eliminated him from the race before it even started, and finished outside of the points six times compared to Alonso doing so only once. He ended the season 150 points behind Alonso, and this year has continued to go on his merry way. There was of course his completely unnecessary crash into Ricciardo in China and he had a totally unprompted crash in Saudi Arabia. And yet again he is far behind his teammate in the standings. While Alonso sits at 41 points, Stroll has only 17 points and is behind Yuki Tsunoda.
Now, admittedly, Stroll has been doing a fairly decent job in recent weeks. As Alonso hit a slump and the Aston Martin started lagging behind the competition, Stroll managed to finish about where he should. But that’s the problem with Stroll: he is only being judged on his okay performances, while the other drivers are being judged on their worst. He seems to be performing reasonably well now that the car is back in the midfield, but he absolutely bottled it when the car could fight for podiums.
What is Lawrence Stroll hoping for?
I used to think that Lawrence Stroll could see this too. He invested enormous amounts of money into the team to make it a contender for the win. He seemed ambitious, competitive, and eager to forge Aston Martin into a team that can challenge for the title. I used to think that he would be smart enough to see that that was not going to happen with Lance behind the wheel, and that he too would understand that for the benefit of that vision, Lance had to be kicked out of the team.
Team owner Lawrence Stroll.
That was until this year and the latest season of Drive to Survive. In it, Lawrence explains that all of this is for Lance. The only goal is to give Lance a circumstance where it’s impossible to fail. And that was followed up by similar statements from the team over the course of this year. Statements like: “This entire project has been built around Lance” and “Lance is the future of this team”. It's an echo of what the team stated last year during Stroll's weaker moments. There was absolutely no acknowledgement of his shortcomings, and the team instead sought out excuses for him by suggesting the machinery let him down and that the team should be more focused on increasing his results.
It’s become abundantly clear that there are only three ways this situation can end. Either Lance wins, he quits, or Lawrence finds a way to sell the team with immense profit. But until any of that happens, Aston Martin will continue to sign Stroll to new contracts and the team will continue to suffer from it.
The effects go beyond 2025
The ripple effect of this is of course much bigger than just this season and the next. For one, it essentially consigns the Aston Martin Driver Development programme to the graveyard. As far as young driver programmes go, it’s not the biggest one, with only four people in it. Jessica Hawkins is more a development driver for Aston Martin rather than someone they’re actively trying to get in a raceseat, and Tina Hausmann is a little bit of an obligatory signing after F1 mandated that each team sponsors a driver in F1 Academy. But the other two are fairly big signings: F2 race winner Jak Crawford (currently fourth in the standings) and 2022 F2 champion Felipe Drugovich. Neither one of them will have any chance of advancing to F1 via Aston Martin in the foreseeable future.
There are strong reports too that team principal Mike Krack will soon get replaced in an effort to make the team better. I’m not going to defend Krack here, I don’t have any strong feelings about him either way, but it does show that the team wants to make significant improvements in every department, except of course for their mediocre driver.
And then there is the matter of Adrian Newey. The mechanical genius and star designer, whose cars have won 22 championships in the past 35 years. It’s no secret that Aston Martin wants to bring Newey on board. But is this really a setting that Newey will want to step into? A setting where everything can and will be criticized and everything and everyone will be put into the service of Stroll, just so he can finish eighth at best? I highly doubt that Newey is willing to choose that over Ferrari or Williams.
“Emotionally, I guess, to a point. Yes [I do regret not working with Ferrari]. But just as, for instance, working with Fernando and Lewis would have been fabulous. But it never happened. It’s just circumstance sometimes, that’s the way it is.”
Adrian Newey in Beyond the Grid
So to come back to that question at the start: what is the point of keeping Lance Stroll at Aston Martin? The answer is: there is no point. In fact, the question is already the wrong one. Because while Stroll stands in the way of Aston Martin progressing, he’s also the only reason his dad is still investing in the team. Because as jarring as it sounds, Krack was right with that quote from earlier. Stroll is indeed the future of the team.
And that’s a very disappointing truth.