Stroll fears for Aston Martin investment as Newey ignores 2025 efforts – Lawrence Stroll’s heavy investment in Aston Martin’s Formula One project is looking increasingly precarious as internal tensions within the team escalate. The source of the growing unrest is none other than Adrian Newey, the renowned engineering mastermind who, despite being paid an eye-watering $33 million a year, has effectively abandoned the development of the 2025 car to focus entirely on the 2026 project.
For Stroll, who has invested huge sums and staked his reputation on making Aston Martin a force in F1, the situation is both infuriating and deeply concerning.
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Newey’s focus squarely on 2026 amid 2025 struggles
According to several sources close to the team, Adrian Newey has made a strategic but controversial decision: to concentrate fully on the 2026 car, which will be built around Aston Martin’s new partnership with Honda. This means that the AMR25, the car for the current 2025 season, has effectively been left to its fate – and that fate looks grim.
The AMR25 has proved structurally weak and underpowered, struggling to score points and regressing from its 2024 form. Despite Stroll’s $33 million annual commitment to Newey, there are few results to show for it. Aston Martin’s 2025 campaign is increasingly seen as a write-off, and it’s causing major friction within the organisation.
Even Fernando Alonso, a driver known for his political savvy and typically cautious comments when criticising teams, McLaren Honda aside, has publicly dampened any hopes of a turnaround.
After finishing 11th in Jeddah, Alonso bluntly stated: “We have to get used to P11, that’s probably our position. We finished there in Jeddah because Tsunoda and Gasly had contact and Lawson got a time penalty. Otherwise we would have been P14.”
Internal tensions reach boiling point
Behind the scenes, frustration is reaching a breaking point. Meetings are held without Newey’s presence. Emails from colleagues and team management are reportedly going unanswered. Aston Martin Chief Trackside Officer Mike Krack admitted that Newey is now working in isolation.
“He’s not coming to meetings, he’s not answering messages, he’s just working on a fast car. And we support that process,” said Krack with the kind of diplomatic phrasing that barely conceals deeper frustrations.
In essence, Newey has been given carte blanche to prepare Aston Martin’s 2026 car, but his detachment from current operations is a major sore point. His wife has even hinted at the extraordinary workload he has taken on, posting on social media that she rarely sees her husband as he spends day and night at the Silverstone factory.
Newey’s absence from an urgent debriefing after the disastrous Saudi Grand Prix, where Aston Martin were one of the few teams to actually regress compared to 2024, further underlined the growing rift. Despite fitting three sets of soft tyres in Q1, the team still failed to deliver any meaningful improvement in performance.
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Saudi investors losing patience
Adding to Stroll’s worries is pressure from the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), which owns a 20% stake in Aston Martin. Reports suggest that the PIF is becoming increasingly unhappy with the team’s current development. There are even rumours that Stroll could be forced to sell part or all of the team if results continue to nosedive.
F1 analyst Robert Doornbos captured the mood when he said: “Lawrence Stroll has a huge presence, but it’s not fun to work with him at the moment. The story is that he’s angry because Adrian Newey won’t work on the 2025 car.
Adding to the tension is Aston Martin’s involvement in the ongoing saga over Max Verstappen’s future. The Saudi investors are reportedly backing a $300 million bid to lure Verstappen to the team, a move that would require the organisation to maintain a veneer of competitiveness. If results continue to plummet, their chances of pulling off such a blockbuster move will diminish drastically.
Loss of competitiveness made painfully clear
On-track performance data backs up the gloomy outlook. Lance Stroll’s 2025 season was a miserable one, and in Jeddah he set an unwanted record for the most Q1 retirements in F1 history. His assessment of the AMR25 was brutally honest.
“I don’t think there are any real strengths. We’re not the fastest in fast corners, we’re not the best in low-speed traction. Maybe we’re still OK with the brakes on the straights,” he said, summing up the car’s mediocrity with painful clarity.
Journalist Tom Clarkson conducted a comparative analysis of Aston Martin’s performance in the 2024 and 2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and found that, despite using extra sets of soft tyres, Aston Martin is now on average half a second slower per lap than last season. It’s a sobering statistic for a team that had podium aspirations just a year ago.
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The switch to Honda power units in 2026 presents another major challenge. Newey is tasked with designing an entirely new car architecture, integrating a new gearbox and engine concept. But there is uncertainty about who will drive the car.
Honda’s Koji Watanabe confirmed that the Japanese manufacturer expects to have a say in driver selection, similar to the influential role it played during its Red Bull partnership.
Meanwhile, Aston Martin’s bid to bolster its technical staff has also taken a hit. The team secured ex-Ferrari aerodynamics chief Enrico Cardile, but he will not be able to start until 2026 due to gardening leave restrictions. The delay leaves the technical team understaffed at a critical time of transition.
The team has already seen the departure of Dan Fallows as technical director, another sign that internal restructuring efforts are not yielding immediate results. As analyst Alex Brundle succinctly put it, “I have the feeling that this team has already given up on the season.
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A worrying fall from grace
For a team that was a regular podium contender just a year ago, Aston Martin’s descent into midfield mediocrity is stark. Even more worrying is the rise of rivals such as Williams and Haas, who now pose a real threat to Aston Martin in the Constructors’ Championship.
The prospect of a significant drop in championship prize money would be a financial and reputational blow to Lawrence Stroll, whose ambition has always been to turn Aston Martin into a genuine title contender.
As it stands, Aston Martin’s 2025 campaign looks less like a year of strategic consolidation and more like a crisis unfolding in slow motion. Unless the team can find a way to balance its long-term ambitions with the immediate need to compete, Stroll’s dream of building a championship-winning juggernaut could quickly slip away.
And with pressure mounting from investors, partners and fans alike, the stakes have never been higher.
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The last time there was such a large change in the F1 regulations, Mercedes delivered an uber dominant V6 hybrid turbo power unit going on to conquer all in their path, winning an historic eight consecutive constructors’ championships between 2014-2021…. READ MORE ON THIS STORY
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