amurph182

At what point does Big Daddy Stroll care more about winning championships than keeping Lance in the car? Can they even win a WCC with him on the team?

Carrera51

Wow! Mr. Stroll must have stroked a rather large check at Sir Adrian couldn't refuse. Max to Aston Martin?

multi21

Depends on how good the car is. We've seen pedestrian drivers like Bottas and Perez help the team to win the WCC when the car is dominant but doubt they could help if the car is nearly equal to competitor's cars. Alonso is signed through 2026. We'll see if he still has it in him to drive at a top level at age 45 if Newey pulls off a miracle in 2 year's time.

Carrera51

Something tells me that Newey has a 2025 car already penned. And probably has a nice jump on what he will do under the new regs in 2026.

Ksdaoski

Pretty sure he's doing this entire thing for his son and for his son to win a championship.

Buying the team
Making his son a driver
Bringing in Alonso
Buying Adrian Newey

amurph182

Yeah, but those pedestrian drivers have still managed to do better than 50% of their teammates points total. If you do the math over the last several years it’s only when the car is exceptionally dominant that you can be off by that much and still lock up the WCC. 2023 was just absurd for Red Bull, but generally speaking that kind of delta between the two drivers leaves enough points on the table to swap the 1st and 2nd place WCC teams and/or leaves no room for a DNF or another major points-impacting issue during the season. I know that’s all retrospective and “what if” but Stroll will need to be considerably better than he has been unless they can turn out a car that is as dominant as the RB was last year. Just “a lot better than everyone else” might not cut it.

Nowanker

In order for that championship to happen... add one more line to that list:
Paying off every other driver on the grid to let him win.

multi21

Agree, but 50% is a pretty low bar. I'm not intimating that Bottas and Perez are that.

Is Lance Stroll WDC material? No. There's no evidence and there hasn't been over a number of years in F1 that he is. Can he help? As you say, he's going to have to raise his level or the car has to be the best in F1 history.

LuigiVampa

Some argue Jenson Button was not WDC material but just happened to be in the dominant Brawn car at the right moment. Things like that do happen and Adrian Newey is probably young Lance's only longshot to a WDC.

skl

I'll bet Fernado wishes he was about 10 years younger...

Carrera51

I think Button won in the right car because he was a better driver than Stroll is now. I don't think Stroll would have won half as much in the RB23 as Max did. Lance makes too many unforced errors.

Carlo_Carrera

You also have to factor in that Aston is moving to Honda engines for 2026 so that is huge variable Adrian has no control over.

multi21

True, but there is an element of consistency with Newey working with the Honda Powertrains as they chassis and PU need to work in harmony. When you add up the fact that Honda will be the sole providers of engines to an F1 team, Lawrence Stroll has a lot of people rowing in the same direction. It will be interesting to see how Newey does in what will probably be his last ever contract.

Carlo_Carrera

I consider Honda only supplying one team a big big detriment. RedBull ran Honda in four cars which greatly aided development from the McLaren days. In the past thirty years one team engines have not done well at all.

thebishman

Thr last time there was a major change in the PU regs in F1 Honda choked, and it took them years to get it sorted. I don’t see Alonso and/or Newey wanting or even being able to invest that much time waiting for a viable PU from Honda should they poop the bed again.