Lawrence Stroll given Adrian Newey deadline on Aston Martin F1 performance

Lawrence Stroll has been told to let Adrian Newey get on with his job without interference if he wants success at Aston Martin..

Aston Martin’s start of season AMR26 chassis design was a weak machine despite design legend Adrian Newey having designed it, and the team have struggled with performance issues.

Their inability to pick up more than one point in the opening 11 grand prix weekends of 2026 can partly be put down to their chassis, and partly to their Honda power unit, which has caused them some reliability issues.

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Aston Martin have now begun the long journey back to competitiveness, through 16 Newey-designed upgrades which were brought to the Hungarian Grand Prix last weekend.

But now, former Ferrari engineer Rob Smedley has said the team are not going to progress unless they are left in their jobs by owner Lawrence Stroll for 18 months or more.

Stroll took over the Silverstone-based outfit in 2018, and they have seen a high turnover of staff in recent years, particularly when it has come to team principals and technical staff.

Now, the likes of Newey and Enrico Cardile are attempting to get the team all pulling in the same direction, but Smedley has warned Stroll that he should trust Newey to get his team in order and ‘leave it alone’ when it comes to reshuffling the personnel around any further.

Aston Martin’s need for stability

“Leave it alone, right,” Smedley said on the High Performance podcast. “You’ve got a guy, how many world championships has Adrian won? 18? (sic, 26).

“He’s competent, we can tick that box. Then he’s got a great bunch of women and men who are working for him in the technical team, all of them probably very talented.

“Now, it’s up to him to corral them and get them all going in the same direction, but f****** leave it alone, judge them in 18 months time.”

Former Aston Martin boss Otmar Szafnauer then chipped in, saying: “Give them psychological safety at work so they can take the risks they need without feeling that their job is at risk.”

Co-host Jake Humphrey added: “I don’t believe there will be psychological safety there at the moment, because they will look at the evidence in front of them which is lots of people have lost their jobs here in the last four or five years.

“When things haven’t gone right, the human being at the team pays the price.”

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