Aston Martin has taken encouraging steps forward as of late in Formula 1 – scoring consecutive points finishes in Canada and Barcelona with Fernando Alonso frequently showcasing the car’s improved pace thanks to the Imola upgrade.
After his worst season start since his rookie season in 2001, the Spaniard finally broke into the top 10 at his home Grand Prix.
Struggling with balance and feel in the early rounds, Aston Martin introduced its first major upgrade in Imola – including a new floor, diffuser, and revised sidepods.
While not aimed at raw pace, the changes improved the car’s consistency and gave both drivers a better sense of control behind the wheel.
That was certainly Alonso’s impression after securing seventh place in Canada.
“It seems that I’m able to push the car to the limit now in the last few races since Imola,” Alonso told media including Motorsport Week.
“With the new package, I’m much more linked with the car. I feel the car and I can push to the maximum. I feel in a good moment.”
His team-mate, however, saw things very differently.
After missing the Spanish Grand Prix due to lingering wrist issues, Lance Stroll returned in Canada, still without a points finish since Miami.
But his home race offered no turnaround – instead, he finished a lowly 17th, compounding an already frustrating weekend.
Visibly dejected, his tone stood in stark contrast to Alonso’s cautious optimism.
“I don’t really feel any difference in the car,” said Stroll when asked if he shared Alonso’s assessment of the upgraded package.
“Maybe he’s just been getting good results and he feels good in the car because of that, but I don’t know, I felt pretty slow.”
Stroll’s struggles run deeper than strategy
Aston Martin Team Principal Andy Cowell also weighed in, keen to address the growing performance gap between his two drivers.
He pointed to the disrupted qualifying session in Montreal as a key factor in Stroll’s struggles that weekend.
The Canadian had shown promising pace early on, setting competitive times on his first set of Soft tyres.
But in a strategic switch, Aston Martin opted to send him out on Mediums for the second run, believing it offered more potential in the evolving conditions.
That plan quickly unravelled when Alex Albon’s engine cover tore off, triggering a red flag that halted the session.
Stroll was left with just five minutes to respond once running resumed, but couldn’t hook up a lap quick enough to escape Q1.
From there, his weekend never recovered: “The set-ups are a little bit different now, but not tremendously so,” Cowell said.
“We saw in the beginning of Q1, Lance on that first Soft was right up there, and so I think it is just the choice from us of having a Soft and then a Medium in Q1 before the red flag scuppered the opportunity for him to put a quick time in.
“If the bodywork hadn’t blown off of Albon’s Williams, I think we’d have seen both of them in Q3.”
From Stroll’s viewpoint, while misjudged qualifying strategy clearly played a role — he admitted Canada “100% [was] where the weekend all fell apart” — he also hinted at deeper, longer-term issues that can’t be fixed overnight.
“I know we’re slow and I have a good feeling that it’s going to be [the] case again in Austria because the car has some characteristics that never change and there’s problems, limitations, that I feel never change,” he said.
“So it’s probably just going to be the same again and again and again.”
Aston Martin’s quest for race consistency
While a second upgrade package could help address Stroll’s issues, Cowell suggested the team might instead follow its approach with Alonso — adding more downforce to boost driver confidence and enable more effective setup choices.
“Having more load in all corner types helps,” added Cowell.
“It’s then less of a distraction when it comes to what bits to put on the car for FP1, what bits to do experiments with through FP1 and FP2.
“And then you are into refinement on the final order things, which is how a race weekend should be.
“That then means that there’s greater analysis done on those fine order bits, and the drivers can dial it in better.”
With the AMR25 showing strong qualifying pace but struggling to convert that into race results, Aston Martin is carefully reassessing its approach.
Finding the right balance between Saturday speed and Sunday consistency is crucial, especially when tyre management plays such a pivotal role.
Cowell added: “That is something that we were all looking at after the previous few races, where we can see that we’re qualifying better, but we’re not picking points up.
“At the end of the day, what we’re after is chasing championship points.
“So we have to look at the way we set the car up for the race, and we have to think about tyre allocation for [both] qualifying and for the race.”
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