Lance Stroll is kind of the awkward elephant in the room for fans and teams alike. Yes, yes, he is not completely out of his depth in F1; he's posted poles and podiums and some performances that are worthy of the spot. But everyone knows he would've been out of here years ago without the benefit of driving for a team owned by his father.
And every year when we consider who could go where during the silly season of driver moves, one man stays consistent with no doubt of where he'll be. He also makes the outlook for Aston Martin so much less fun. Imagine what F1 in 2026 could be if that second seat opened up? Man.
But anyway, Stroll is not having a bad year, really, but he presents nothing that we didn't already know, either.
Stroll's stats
Standings Position: 12th
Points: 26
Best Finish: 6th
Best Qualifying Position: 6th
Head-to-head race finishes (vs. Alonso): 5-9
Head-to-head qualifying: 0-14
Head-to-head points: 26-26
Stroll this low despite matching Alonso — is that fair?
The Canadian has already topped his 2024 point total (24) and is on level in points with his legendary teammate. But (spoiler alert) Alonso is nowhere near Stroll in these rankings. Why?
Let's be honest about Stroll's 2025. Two of his four point-scoring efforts were war of attrition races in the wet (Australia and Great Britain). I'm not wiping away his accomplishments here, but let's be real that it wasn't quite his pace delivering him a P6 and P7 at those GPs.
In China, Stroll finished P12 on the road, but he had three drivers DQed ahead of him, promoting him to P9. Stroll's best effort came most recently at Hungary, where Aston Martin clearly took a step forward on their way to 16 points for the team.
All this to say: Stroll has put himself in good-enough positions, but he has lacked anything that we can really call a convincing drive.
And now in year nine in F1, we really can't expect much more.
Stroll's gap to Alonso is still clear as day
Since joining Aston Martin, Alonso has laid down a marker on Stroll every year.
2023: 18-4 in races, 19-3 in quali
2024: 18-6 in races, 19-5 in quali
And now this season, it's 9-5 in races for Alonso vs. Stroll. That's a slightly closer marker at this point in the season. But the really glaring number is in qualifying: Despite a tough start to the season for the Spanish driver where he didn't put a point up until round nine, Alonso is shutting out Stroll on one-lap pace, 14-0.
This isn't a new thing: Stroll has never beat a teammate on head-to-head figures for qualifying. Sergio Perez humbled him, Sebastian Vettel at the end of his career didn't give huge gaps but still beat him and now Alonso is leaving him in the dust.
Stroll has hit his ceiling, so why stick around?
It's clear we've gotten the best from Lance Stroll. We're now nearly five years removed from his last podium.
Yes, Aston Martin has dipped in performance, but I keep going back to 2023, when Alonso put the Silverstone team on the podium eight times. Stroll's best was fourth, one time.
There's a lot of buzz surrounding Aston Martin with Adrian Newey's vision for their car coming into effect in 2026. So the struggling Stroll would be silly to go now. But if Stroll is still miles behind a 44-/45-year-old Alonso in 2026, and the car is either good and he's not reaching its potential or it's not good, why continue?
There can't really be fun or intrigue in doing this anymore after a decade. You have to look around and wonder what the point is if you're only here for one reason. Why not drive sports cars or do something else?
Or he'll stick around another decade and produce mediocre results 90% of the time. We'll see.