Adrian Newey immediately has a ‘distracting’ problem with Lance Stroll at Aston Martin

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Adrian Newey will take over from Andy Cowell as Aston Martin’s team principal at the start of 2026. He will oversee a driver line-up of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, who have raced together since 2023.

Alonso was arguably one of the best pound-for-pound performers on the 2025 grid. A late surge – 16 points across the last two weekends – elevated him into the top 10 in the championship.

Stroll finished 10th at the season finale in Abu Dhabi to end an eight-race scoreless streak, but he still only finished 16th in the standings. Alarmingly, he lost out to Alonso in every single Grand Prix qualifying session.

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The Canadian was eliminated in the first segment of qualifying 14 times across the year, more than any other driver. He now holds the record for the most Q1 exits in F1 history.

Lance Stroll’s behaviour is ‘distracting’ Aston Martin, Christian Danner says

Reviewing Stroll’s performances for sport.de, former F1 driver Christian Danner said his attitude was a bigger problem than his talent.

One former colleague believes that Stroll treats F1 as a job rather than a calling, unlike every other driver on the grid.

Stroll has often shown a total lack of enthusiasm for his media duties, and Danner believes this ‘grumpy’ demeanour is a distraction for the whole team.

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In fact, the German claims that any ‘normal’ team would have moved on from Stroll by now, but he’s protected by his father’s majority stake.

“I wouldn’t be so hard on him and say he doesn’t belong in Formula 1 at all,” he said. “What Lance Stroll completely lacks is any spark of enjoyment in what he does.

“That’s why he constantly comes across as bad-tempered, reluctant, and grumpy – it’s distracting. This indifference is extremely out of place.

“In a normal environment, there would have been plenty of reasons to show him the door. But Aston Martin is simply not a normal team environment.”

What has Adrian Newey said about Lance Stroll?

One of Newey’s first challenges when he takes over will be to energise Stroll. Perhaps that will be easier if the legendary designer delivers a race-winning package.

When a driver, one of the faces of a team, occasionally comes across as disinterested, it’s bound to affect the motivation levels of staff.

One report at the start of the year claimed that Newey didn’t feel Stroll was ‘good enough’. He worked with legendary drivers like Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen at Red Bull.

But speaking in May, Newey made clear that this wasn’t the case.

“Lance, I think, has an unfairly bad rap,” he said, via Autosport. “When you compare him against team-mates he’s been up against – Checo [Sergio Perez], Nico Hulkenberg, Sebastian and now Fernando – then he’s been right there.

“Any driver who gets to Formula 1 is clearly very good, but I think Lance is much better than people give him credit for.”