Lance Stroll Blasts F1 Rules but Backs Aston Martin

Lance Stroll says Formula 1 is “destroying the racing” with its current rules, but insists he is not thinking about walking away because he still believes Aston Martin can become a front-running team.

Speaking ahead of the Miami Grand Prix, Stroll delivered one of the strongest critiques of the current formula, arguing that the series remains far from what a proper F1 car should be. “We are destroying the racing with these rules,” Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll said to the media, including RacingNews365. He added that the championship is “still very far from the right F1 cars” and “kilometres away from where we should be.”

Stroll tied that frustration directly to the current power-unit direction and the emphasis on energy management. He said the problems were widely anticipated. “It’s not like we didn’t see it coming. Everyone's said, for the last year and a half, or however long it's been, what everything would look like, that with these batteries and taking downforce off the cars to support the batteries and all this stuff, it was not looking good,” he said. “Now what we've got is what we expected to have.”

That has been especially painful for Aston Martin in 2026. Stroll and team-mate Fernando Alonso have been hit by a Honda power unit described as lacking performance, with early vibration issues compounding the problem and leaving the team struggling.

Even so, Stroll said the direction of the sport has not changed his plans. Asked whether this could be his final F1 season, he answered: “No, because I still have a lot of belief in this project, and the project is so far from our potential.” He pointed to the pieces Aston Martin has put in place, including Adrian Newey, a new factory and a new wind tunnel, adding: “I believe this team has a lot of potential.”

That belief is tied to where he thinks Aston Martin can go rather than where it is now. Stroll said he wants to stay long enough to see the project through. “If, in two or three years, I'm sitting on the sofa and I'm watching two green cars at the front of the field, and I'm not a part of it, it will bother me,” he said. “So I want to be a part of that.”

For now, that leaves Stroll in a position shared by several drivers but stated more bluntly than most: deeply frustrated by the cars he is driving, yet still committed to the team he thinks can eventually rise with them. He said he hopes the machinery “do become better and more fun to drive, which all the drivers would like,” and that over time Formula 1 can “get back to nice Formula 1 cars.”