Stroll reveals if Aston Martin will retain him next season

Lance Stroll has confirmed if he will stay at Aston Martin in 2025 and beyond.

As the driver market continues to move at pace, Lance Stroll has become the latest to give an update on his future. Stroll is on a rolling contract at Aston Martin. The Canadian has had yearly extensions since starting at the team previously known as Racing Point in 2019. The team morphed into Aston Martin in 2021, but Stroll has yet to reach the heights of his Sakhir podium in 2020.

Aston Martin had its best year to date in 2023. Stroll’s teammate Fernando Alonso was rarely off the podium in the first half of the season. However, its performance tailed off in the latter part of the year. Stroll’s best performance of the year in Australia, finishing P4, was not matched after the summer break.

The team is currently a distant fifth in the constructors’ standings this year. It has struggled for pace in races, now falling behind Mercedes and McLaren so far in 2024. Stroll has endured a challenging first half of the year. This includes crashing out in Saudi Arabia and hitting the back of Daniel Ricciardo’s RB during a Safety Car period in China.

Long term project

Despite the challenges, Stroll believes in his team and its ambitions. Alonso leads Stroll 5-4 on qualifying performances, with the Spaniard currently enjoying a 24-point advantage over the Canadian in the championship. Speaking to formula1.com, Stroll confirmed when asked that he intends on remaining with Aston Martin next season:

Yeah, that’s where my head’s at, for sure. It seems to be a pretty popular question that I’ve been getting asked recently.

It’s super exciting, everything that’s happening at Silverstone and the project with the team and how we’ve grown over the last few years. And we continue to grow, so it’s definitely in my mind to continue being a part of that.

Stroll was also questioned about Aston Martin’s dramatic drop-off in performance this season. He said a combination of degradation and mistakes were to blame for his and the team’s struggles:

“It’s definitely been the tendency… It was the tendency last year.

“We were always fighting [in the] top five, and then again this year, I think we were quick over one lap at the beginning of the year, suffered a little bit more with [degradation], but we were still kind of top five, top seven range.

“Now we’re kind of scrapping for a point or two on a good weekend, which is not what we want as a team. I think we definitely do understand our issues. I think we understand some of the decisions and directions that we’ve chosen to follow through with.

“We know some of the mistakes that we’ve made, and now it’s just a matter of sorting ourselves out and putting some new upgrades on the car going forward that address some of these issues that we know we have. But it’s not an overnight fix.

“Realistic expectations, it’s going to be over the course of, I hope not too many races, but definitely a few races. And yeah, but there’s still a lot of racing left. There’s still, I think, 13 or 14 races left, if I’m not mistaken. So [it’s a] long season, but we have some work to do.”

Feature Image Credit: Aston Martin F1 Media Portal