At the Saudi Arabian GP weekend, Aston Martin made headlines more for matters off the track than for the performance of the AMR25. For the third consecutive weekend, Lawrence Stroll’s team failed to score points, slipping 15 points away from fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship, which on paper represents the goal for this transitional season leading up to the highly anticipated 2026, a year on which the team is betting heavily thanks to the debut of the new technical regulations and the first car designed by Adrian Newey. Looking ahead, Aston Martin’s name also hit the headlines due to rumors of a massive offer to lure Max Verstappen away from Red Bull.
The importance of qualifying and Stroll’s shortcomings
The 2025 season, besides confirming expectations of a very tightly packed field in terms of performance, is highlighting the importance of starting grid position. A good qualifying result gives better chances to race in clean air, an aspect proving crucial whether fighting for the podium or for the points positions. In this respect, the AMR25 is certainly not shining: never reaching Q3 and already three eliminations in Q1, with Fernando Alonso’s twelfth time in Australia as the best Saturday result.
Analyzing this situation, CEO and team principal Andy Cowell pointed out: “A really accurate optimization of the car’s setup could gain us about two positions. We are working very hard to ensure we optimize at the right moment during the race weekend. These cars are much more performant when not following another car, which is why qualifying performance is important. Some things have moved in the right direction, but the to-do list is still long, and much of the work we are doing to improve our toolkit and methods will also benefit 2026.”
Speaking of qualifying performance, Lance Stroll’s poor aptitude over a single lap certainly does not help. The Canadian, who in the past did deliver occasional standout performances especially in tricky track conditions like his pole position at the 2020 Turkish GP, was eliminated for the 75th time in Q1 at Jeddah, an absolute record which he received with little self-criticism: “If you put the McLaren drivers in a Sauber for 10 years, they will have the most Q1 exits,” said Stroll. “It depends on the car.” A statement that shifts attention away from his shortcomings, which are well documented by the overall head-to-head qualifying record against his teammates, an eloquent 43 to 130: in no season has Stroll beaten his teammate in the final qualifying head-to-head tally.
The lack of top speed and Alonso’s impatience
Paradoxically, the 10 points currently salvaging Aston Martin’s campaign have come from Stroll, who did well to seize opportunities presented in the first two races of the year in Australia and China. Meanwhile, Fernando Alonso, who has carried the team in recent years, remains astonishingly without a point. After running off track in Melbourne and being forced to retire due to brake issues in Shanghai, during the recently completed triple-header the two-time world champion encountered all of the AMR25’s weaknesses, compounded by the curious – and potentially dangerous – episode of his steering wheel detaching during FP2 at the Bahrain GP.
In Saudi Arabia, Alonso complained extensively about his Aston Martin’s lack of top speed. In qualifying, the Spaniard clocked the second-to-last speed at the speed trap of the high-speed street circuit, hitting 332.3 km/h, and this handicap was also felt during the race even when he had DRS. The Spaniard was forced to stay close to rivals even when the team asked him to create a gap to cool the tires and components: “I can’t do it. If I lose DRS, I’m dead,” Alonso declared over the radio during the race. Even then, following others on the straights proved difficult: “I don’t know how I lost DRS when I had it the previous lap,” he further complained while chasing Racing Bulls driver Isack Hadjar, hoping to snatch the much-elusive points.
Clinging to a future named Adrian Newey
In such a situation, and considering that for Aston Martin the Constructors’ standings prize money is less decisive compared to teams like Williams or Haas, the chances that 2025 will become a long and painful journey toward the awaited 2026 are very high. From this point of view, Adrian Newey fits perfectly in the role of savior, and the team knows it too, as they continue to fuel the anticipation for the first AMR designed by the British engineer, as shown by a recent post featuring Adrian Newey and Fernando Alonso together at the Silverstone headquarters with the caption “Foundations of the future.”
It’s also a way to reaffirm that the team sees Alonso as a cornerstone for this rebirth, pushing back on rumors of possible interest in Max Verstappen: “We are incredibly fortunate to have two very experienced drivers under contract for the next two years, and that means I can focus solely on improving the business and the art of building fast racing cars,” Cowell explained in Jeddah. On the possibility of the Red Bull driver joining in 2026, he added: “My mind is full of ideas to improve the company so that we can build a fast race car for Lance and Fernando.”
What is certain is that Newey will not intervene on the AMR25 to make this season less bitter: “100% of Adrian’s design time is focused on 2026,” Cowell clarified. “He arrived in March, so there was a period where he had to catch up with the regulations and the concept work we had carried out in the previous two months. There are strict deadlines for releasing details, and the cars will start operating earlier for the 2026 season. The test is at the end of January, so preparing a car for that phase requires slightly earlier decisions. And clearly, everything is new. So there is a lot of work to do and Adrian is focused only on that. He is mainly concentrating on the tools we are using rather than any direct aspect of the 2025 car’s performance.”
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