Aston-Martin-Pilot Lance Stroll has secured a record around the Formula 1 weekend in Saudi Arabia, which he certainly didn’t want to have. The Canadian replaced the former F1 driver Kevin Magnussen in the “leaderboard”.
The dramatic crash of Formula 1 racing team Aston Martin continued in Saudi Arabia at the weekend. Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll were only passenger in the AMR25. Both were clearly too slow to attack the top 10 and at the same time not fast enough to drive away from the backbenis. The result was the 11th place for the Spaniard and 16th place for the Canadian.
For Stroll, the debacle emerged in qualifying the day before, in which the 26-year-old was only 16 and even missed the move into Q2. To make matters worse, he also immortalized himself in the Formula 1 record books with his Saturday performance: Since the qualification of Dschidda, he has been the first F1 pilot of history to fail for the 75th time in Q1.
So far, the Canadian has shared the inglorious record with the Danes Kevin Magnussen, who tries 74 times in the first qualifying segment in 185 during his Formula 1 career. Meanwhile, Stroll “only” needed 171 racing weekends for 75 early celebration evenings. The Swede Marcus Ericsson, who failed 71 times in Q1 at 97 attempts.
Alonso fears historically bad Formula 1 season
For Stroll and Aston Martin, the weekend in Saudi Arabia was another slap in the face. The ambitious racing team has now arrived far below in the food chain. In the last three races, the team scored zero points – and therefore just as many or little as the bottom.
Improvement is not in sight for the upcoming races. On the one hand, everything is already being used in the domestic factory in Silverstone on the development of the 26 car. A project in which Adrian Newey is in charge. In addition, Aston Martin suffers from the Red Bull problem from the pre-season during these weeks: The in-house wind tunnel spits out data that does not match reality. This leads to massive performance losses on the track.
The deficit is now so serious that Fernando Alonso in Dschidda already recorded that the 2025 season could become the second of his career, where he does not get a single point in the end. For the first and only time it happened to him in 2001 with Minardi.