What next for Lawrence Stroll and Aston Martin after huge Adrian Newey coup
Adrian Newey is coming but what's next for Aston Martin?
When Adrian Newey opted to move from McLaren to Red Bull in 2006, it was the biggest leap into the unknown of his career.
Aside from his entry into F1 with March, Newey’s CV had so far been filled with two of the sport’s biggest hitters. Patrick Head pounced to add Newey to an already talented Williams technical team and Ron Dennis was able to prise away the man whose cars had dominated the last seven years of the sport.
So in 2006 and when an entirely unproven project owned by an energy drink came calling, it took one of Newey’s former colleagues to convince him to join – David Coulthard.
Newey’s desire for a move away from the “stale” McLaren was Coulthard’s in and soon enough, the Scot had convinced Newey to make the same leap of faith that he had done a year previously.
The rest, they say, is history but now Newey is facing another new challenge, and another attempt to build a championship-winning team from the ground up.
Aston Martin at least are a few steps further down the path than the early years of Red Bull. For a start, this team has been racing in some form or another since 2019. Last year they opened a state-of-the-art facility next to the Silverstone circuit and they represent one of the world’s most recognisable car companies.
They have enjoyed a taste at the top though. Aston Martin’s ability to catch everyone but Red Bull sleeping at the start of 2023 propelled the newly arrived Fernando Alonso to eight podiums and the 280 points collected was the most the team had achieved in a season since Lawrence Stroll took over.
In theory then, and with a Honda works partnership coming in 2026, everything is set up for another era of success for Newey and the possibility of adding even more title-winning cars to his 12-strong collection.
And yet, nothing is ever that easy. Aston Martin’s form since the midpoint of 2023 will be as concerning as the start of the season was inspiring.
When the first round of major upgrades took place, Aston Martin found themselves not only upgrading slower than their rivals but also going backwards in terms of the pace they started the year with.
That problem has continued into 2024, with the team operating in a no man’s land of P5. Way off the top four and more likely to be looking behind instead of ahead.
Now with Newey signing on the dotted line, there are legitimate questions to be answered.
First things first, Aston Martin must solve their correlation issue. The Silverstone outfit are not the first to suffer from unreliable data but for every week that goes by that the problem is not resolved, the harder it will be to catch those ahead.
This does not of course fall into the remit of designer Newey, but his experience will be beneficial in bringing a team up to title-winning standard.
The next question is what does Aston Martin look like post-Fernando Alonso? Newey’s Red Bull exit does not officially come until March 2025, meaning the first car he will work on in full will be 2026’s challenger – the final year of Alonso’s current contract which he penned in April.
The arrival of Newey will give Alonso a fresh determination to continue as his pursuit for that third world title goes on but come the end of 2026, the Spaniard will be 45 and even the seemingly ageless Alonso will surely show signs of his years then.
So who comes next? Honda’s arrival has made an obvious link with the Honda-backed Yuki Tsunoda but it remains to be seen what kind of driver talent they could entice as well.
Alonso was in a unique situation of Alpine looking to have their cake and eat it when it came to his and Oscar Piastri’s future, meaning Aston Martin could swoop in, but will they be able to attract another driver of that calibre?
To do that, they will need to come flying out of the blocks in 2026, which could well happen given Honda’s dominance in the current regulation but, if they get off to a slow start, then they may find it harder to get the top level drivers around the negotiating table.
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2026 is another key target for Aston Martin. In Adrian Newey they may have the best individual mind but as a technical team, can Aston beat the likes of McLaren, Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari? As we saw in 2022, new regulations can act as a reset and it was Newey’s team who discovered the best formula – 2026 will show if it was Newey or the combined efforts of the Red Bull design team that achieved that.
The changes in 2026 are also dramatic in terms of the impact it will have on the sport. The ICE has been reduced to sharing responsibility with an elongated battery. A brand new power unit has seen plenty of the expensive parts stripped away and six different suppliers are currently penned to be on the grid. Honda may well do it again but until that first race, there is no way to know who really is on top.
And then of course there is the question that has followed Stroll Snr since he got into the racing business – his son.
Criticism of Lance Stroll has often been harsh and misplaced. Yes he is a pay driver but of the drivers with that tag, he is one of the better ones. He won F3 the season before he was propelled up the motorsport ladder. He is the second youngest driver to ever race and is 37th in the list of all-time point scorers. He also has a pole position to his name and three podiums.
So Stroll is no slouch, the problem is the question of whether he is good enough to compete in a team that has ambitions for the title.
Stroll certainly held his own against Sebastian Vettel, losing out in quali but beating him in the race head-to-head, but the German was on the way out of his Formula 1 career and his results reflected that. Alonso holds a 29-9 lead over Stroll on Sunday and has been better in quali on 30 occasions to Stroll’s eight.
So there is no doubt that Stroll is not in the upper echelon of drivers – but is he good enough to be a dependable number two?
The most recent benchmarks of such a driver are Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez. Before his move to Mercedes in 2017, Bottas had nine podiums to his name and had finished a high of fourth in the Drivers’ standings. Perez, a team-mate of Stroll’s from 2019 to 2020, was an F1 veteran by the time he earned his Red Bull move and had even managed a win in the Racing Point.
Even these two with more filled out CVs than Stroll found life in a title-winning machine difficult. Bottas was beaten 74 times in the 100 races he shared with Lewis Hamilton. The 2024 Italian Grand Prix was the 71st time Max Verstapoopen finished ahead of Perez out of 83 attempts.
It comes down to what, then, does Lawrence Stroll want from his F1 project – a title-winning team or for his son to be the World Champion? If it is the latter then no amount of convincing will persuade him otherwise, but if it is the former then the other owners, including the potential buyer of the 25% he was reported to be considering selling, may have to persuade him that the ultimate success is only possible with another driver.
There is also the factor of whether Lance Stroll wants to keep doing it. He would not be alone in having a disdain for the substantial media engagements drivers are subjected to but his attitude in these sessions hint at a driver who would rather be on the golf course.
The final factor in the way of Aston Martin’s title charge is just how competitive F1 is right now.
When Red Bull entered the sport in 2005, Renault were fighting solely with McLaren for the Championship. The following year it was the French outfit and Ferrari. Now though, there are four constructors, all of which have won the title in the past, who have credible chances of doing so again in 2025. Right now, it is hard to see Aston Martin breaking into that top four without an almighty upturn in performance.
To Lawrence Stroll’s credit, he has put his money where his mouth is. Their factory, built on the site of the former Jordan team’s HQ, cost £200 million. Alonso’s contract is reported to be around the £13.7 million mark. Even Newey is arriving on a deal that could reportedly earn him £30 million a year.
But money does not always equal results and although it is not out of the question, Aston Martin reaching the top of F1 is no guarantee even with Newey on board.
