Lance Stroll, Aston Martin, Singapore, 2024

RaceFans Round-up: 12th January 2025

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Welcome to Sunday’s edition of the RaceFans round-up.

Comment of the day

Aston Martin’s latest technical reorganisation won’t address the team’s biggest weakness, says Leroy:

None of it will result in a constructors’ championship until they get rid of Lance.

They can throw all the money in the world into every other part of their organisation, and more power to them if they do. Unfortunately for them, the weakest link on the team is one of the two people behind the wheel who are most directly tied to scoring the points that win you a championship.

Lance has been in F1 since 2017. He has had plenty of time to prove himself and what he has proved to be is a driver that can be quick on occasion but overall lacks the consistency, drive, and racing talent to compete with the best of the best for an entire F1 season.

They can restructure as many times as they want and throw as much money as they want into their team but until they get rid of Lance, they won’t win a constructors’ championship.
Leroy (@G-funk)

Social media and links

Prema launches 2025 IndyCar endeavour in Charlotte (Prema)

'The event provided a perfect frame to introduce the team's full-time driver line-up of Robert Shwartzman and Callum Ilott, who will be driving the number 83 and number 90 cars respectively. They were joined by Swiss-French racer Romain Grosjean, who was presented as the team’s reserve driver.'

After a year of change, Arrow McLaren targeting stability in 2025 (Racer)

'Although Harner is a fresh face within the organization, his decades of experience as an IndyCar crew member, followed by long stretches as a team manager at Chip Ganassi Racing and other high-level roles at AJ Foyt Racing and Andretti Global, has given the squad a vital layer of support for Kanaan and strengthened the team’s shop floor.'

Ugochukwu and Deligny complete R-ace GP quartet for FRME (Formula Scout)

'McLaren junior Ugochukwu joined R-ace for his victorious Macau weekend in November after a difficult FRegional European CChampionship campaign with Prema in which he finished 11th in the standings. While the American will resume his relationship with Prema when he steps up to FIA Formula 3 later this year, he will first contest the five-round Middle East series – where he finished seventh with Prema last year – as part of a four-car line-up for R-ace GP.'

FIA president apologises for lack of WRC fixes (Dirtfish)

'I’m sorry, I would say I was very busy with fixing the FIA. The WRC was part of it. If you fix the FIA and don’t fix the WRC there will not be a WRC – there will not be a championship if the FIA doesn’t exist. Now, I feel I can tell you that the house is back. I fixed the house and we are fixing the WRC.'

Unseen footage of Sainz's first day with Williams (Williams via YouTube)

Round one - race one (Formula Regional Oceania via YouTube)

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Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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12 comments on “RaceFans Round-up: 12th January 2025”

  1. El Pollo Loco
    12th January 2025, 0:21

    One of the worst COTD’s I’ve seen picked in a long time. First of all, whether they have a good car or not will not depend on Lance at all. Second of all, Aston Martin has not had any big structural reorganizations in a long time. So, this isn’t like Alpine changing TPs and structure every other week.

    Third of all, they have/had Andy Cowell, Mike Krack, Bob Bell, Tom McCollough, Enrico Cardile and Adrian Newey. Of course they were going to need to clear some people out of the way. And if anyone actually cared to read the details of what and why Cowell has done what he’s done is that after three months in the team he’s seen there’s a problem with overlapping and an unclear delegation of responsibilities. What he’s done and is doing is to make it extremely clear who is responsible for what. This is a team that will now be making their own gearboxes, rear suspension, etc. for 2026. That’s a lot of added complexity. So, changes are a must.

    Finally, back to the subject of Lance. If RBR could easily win WCCs with Checo as the second driver in a crazy dominant car, there’s no reason to believe even lazy Lance wouldn’t be capable of the same. But the WDC is really all that matters. So, while a WCC is icing, it’s not the end of the world to not have it.

    1. But it got you responding, which is the whole point of the new format

      1. The responses to this comment from before already discredited it as far as I was concerned.

        1. El Pollo Loco
          13th January 2025, 2:59

          Have to say, it’s hardly rare for me to be surprised by what they consider an insightful comment.

    2. Well, you need a really dominant car to win with a 2nd driver that does nothing, and red bull had verstappen who was excellent.

      Even if aston came out with the best car, I have a hard time seeing red bull, mercedes, ferrari and mclaren all coming up with terrible cars, because if there’s not much performance difference, stroll is obviously gonna get beaten by many drivers in those cars.

      But as you said, it could be they don’t care about the constructor’s championship, like red bull in 2024, else they could’ve easily won it by being more decisive perez-wise.

      1. El Pollo Loco
        12th January 2025, 3:42

        Indeed. And even if we were to accept the argument that Alonso is not on the tier of your Leclercs or Norrises (which I disagree though he’s obviously not at his peak anymore) it kind of doesn’t matter in the event they get a dominant car. He’s still incredibly consistent and with a dominant car, all you need to be is good and consistent to win most races. A dominant car + a tier 1 driver = win most races + finish 20-40 seconds ahead of your nearest competitors which is what Nico and Lewis were doing, what Max was doing, etc.

        So, even in that scenario, you’re still hauling down huge points. While he got crushed by Alonso, he wasn’t pulling a Checo and failing to score or getting knocked out in Q1 left + right. If Lance looked like he actually cared, he wouldn’t get the level of derision and disdain he does and deserves, but it’s this antipathy that leads to people going so overboard in just how badly they rate him.

        1. El Pollo Loco
          12th January 2025, 3:45

          When got crushed by Alonso in 2023 when the car was actually good*

        2. El Pollo Loco
          12th January 2025, 7:09

          PS: Just watched the ‘14 British GP. Here is how dominant the Merc was: in just 15 laps Nico + Lewis pulled 31.5 secs ahead of the field. They were often nearly 3 secs a lap faster than the next quickest car w/identical tire compounds + age. Any lineup would win a WCC w/that.

          1. And then we now know they weren’t really allowed to go full beans with the car to avoid the FIA stepping in to level the playing field a bit with that Merc in 2014 …

  2. Why don’t you blame Alonso instead of Lance? It’s much more about the car than the driver.

  3. What a head of hair that guy Lance has. Like more than twenty average people put together.

    1. El Pollo Loco
      13th January 2025, 1:43

      For someone so rich, it’s amazing his mom still cuts his hair using the upside bowl method.

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