“Lance Stroll’s way of working” has apparently left Aston Martin’s new recruit, F1 design legend Adrian Newey, “positively surprised”.

That is the claim coming from six-time F1 race winner Ralf Schumacher, who says this is a statement which Newey has personally made to him.

Adrian Newey left ‘positively surprised’ by Lance Stroll

Following his shock Red Bull exit, Aston Martin moved to snap up the services of Newey – who has contributed to over 200 race wins and 26 titles in his F1 career – issuing him the newly-created managing technical partner title, while the 66-year-old also became a shareholder in the team.

By joining Aston Martin, Newey has ticked one of the key drivers off his bucket list to work with in Fernando Alonso, the two-time World Champion.

However, Lance Stroll on the other side of the garage has been making a positive impression on Newey.

During an appearance on the Backstage Boxengasse Podcast, it was suggested to Schumacher that, rumour has it, Newey would like to show both Alonso and Stroll the door looking ahead to the huge reset coming for F1 2026, when new chassis and engine regulations come into force.

“That’s not what I heard in Africa,” Schumacher replied.

Ahead of linking up with Aston Martin at the start of March, Newey’s manager Eddie Jordan confirmed that the F1 design guru and his wife had been spending time in South Africa with him.

And as Newey now gets properly stuck into the challenge at Aston Martin – with a particular focus on F1 2026 – Schumacher claims that Newey actually likes what he has seen from Stroll.

Schumacher continued: “Privately. I have to say, he [Newey] is busy on the racetrack and it’s actually the case that he can walk past me and because he’s just looking at his notepad, he doesn’t even realise who is next to him.

“And he told me himself that he is actually positively surprised by Lance Stroll’s way of working.

“He seems to have a lot more energy than when he’s shuffling around the paddock. That’s how it is. So, maybe we’re doing him a bit of an injustice.”

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Alonso has generally had the beating of Stroll over their past two seasons as team-mates, and in that time, a rumour that has done the rounds is that Lance would leave the team owned by his father Lawrence Stroll to pursue a tennis career.

However, Lance put that one firmly to bed ahead of the F1 2025 season, stressing he is nowhere near good enough to consider doing that anyway.

When his apparent tennis sensation talents were brought up on The Fast And The Curious podcast, Stroll responded: “Be careful, don’t believe everything you read!

“No, I’m really not that good at tennis! Someone came up with that, I don’t really know how that started brewing.

“I mean, I always grew up playing a lot of sports, for sure. They were saying like I was going on the ATP World Tennis tour. Am I good enough to do that? No.

“Someone came up with this, I think it was Crofty [Sky F1 lead commentator David Croft], Crofty said it. Pulled that one out of somewhere, I don’t really know where.”

Stroll and Alonso are both under contract at Aston Martin into the new F1 era from 2026.

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