The challenge of Aston Martin: Performing, even when it barely matters

For Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, 2025 is a tough year. There’s not much to win this season, now that all of Aston Martin’s focus is on 2026.

No one at Aston Martin says it out loud, but for the British team, 2025 is a transitional year towards what should be the first season of a successful era in Formula 1. By then, the newly joined Adrian Newey aims to showcase why he is considered the best designer in Formula 1 history. With the new regulations, Honda’s power unit and Newey’s magic, Aston Martin hopes to finally make that huge leap forward on the grid.

Stroll and Alonso have little to gain in '25

For Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, this year is simply about getting through the ride; their team’s focus is on 2026, but they still need to try to achieve results with a car that, on a good day, competes in the midfield. On an average day, Aston Martin is a team outside the top ten.

However, Stroll is not ready to throw in the towel just yet. “We're not where we want to be,” he says to GPblog, among others. “The year's still young. We're going to do what we can.”

Lance Stroll took a great P6 at the Australian Grand Prix to start 2025, but since then, the Canadian has only finished as high as P12

But, as the Canadian knows, “Next year is also a big rules change and we need to be focused on that. But we're not quitting, we're not giving up the year yet. We're going to try and do what we can. Is it going to be enough to get ahead of the midfield and all those things? We'll see. But we still have an opportunity to break something. So we'll do what we can.”

Aston Martin has no objective in 2025

Yet, Stroll must realise that there’s a difference between wanting and actually being able to. No doubt there will be some updates, but whether they will actually help Aston Martin move forward in 2025, Stroll is not sure.

“Well, that's Formula One. You have years where it's more difficult than other years. And there you have good cars and you're always fighting,” continued the 26-year-old.

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Another sign that Aston Martin is alright with how things are for 2025: where McLaren and Red Bull Racing dream of a world title, the British team sees it all quite differently: “I don't think we have a target. I think, you know, we want to be a lot more competitive than we are at this point.”

“It's just about doing as much performance as we can for the remainder of the year and seeing how much it brings. That's all we can focus on — just bring what we can,” concluded Stroll.

This article was written in collaboration with Olly Darcy