There are records worth celebrating and there are records that simply confirm what everyone already suspected. Lance Stroll’s latest falls firmly into the second category. At Monza qualifying, the Canadian became the first driver to rack up 100 Q1 eliminations since the current three-part qualifying format arrived in 2006. Nobody hands out a trophy for this one.
A Century Nobody Wanted
Stroll qualified last for Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix, finishing just under a tenth behind teammate Fernando Alonso, who himself never even got to complete a final flying lap before the chequered flag fell. That the gap between the two Aston Martin drivers was that tight tells you everything about where the team’s priorities and its car’s limitations currently sit: not with each other, but with an engine that simply cannot keep pace.
The numbers back it up. Aston Martin’s AMR26 was consistently around 20km/h down on the Mercedes-powered runners through Monza’s speed traps, a chunk of the reason the team found itself 2.6 seconds off Pierre Gasly’s Alpine over a single lap in Q1. At a circuit that is essentially one long straight interrupted by chicanes, that kind of horsepower shortfall isn’t survivable. It’s a death sentence dressed up as a qualifying session.
Stroll Isn’t Even Pretending to Be Surprised
What’s most striking is how little Stroll bothered to soften the blow. There was no forced positivity, no talk of learnings or green shoots. Just blunt acceptance of a car that was never going to compete this weekend.
“It was what we expected [with the] engine. We’re three seconds off, so we’re not going to stay with the pack tomorrow.” – Lance Stroll, as reported by Motorsport.com
That’s not a driver managing expectations. That’s a driver who has stopped bothering to manage anything, because there’s nothing left to manage. Aston Martin arrived at Zandvoort with an updated Honda powertrain and extra upgrades layered onto its Hungary overhaul, supposedly the fix that would drag the team back toward the midfield. Instead, Monza has exposed the same underlying problem: whatever gains were made in the corners mean very little when the straights are where races are actually won and lost.
The Numbers Behind the Milestone
Stroll’s first Q1 exit came at his very first grand prix, the 2017 Australian Grand Prix with Williams, when he finished nine-tenths shy of Marcus Ericsson, who claimed the final Q2 spot that day. He bounced back with a Q3 appearance the following weekend in Shanghai, though contact with Sergio Perez ended that race on the opening lap. He picked up his first F1 points at his home race in Montreal and followed it with a podium in a chaotic Azerbaijan Grand Prix. There was even a pole position, at the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix, where Racing Point’s RP20 and Stroll’s evident feel for wet conditions combined to devastating effect. That year, he didn’t drop out in Q1 once.
Since then, the trend has been in one direction. Stroll’s worst season by this measure was 2018 with Williams, when he was eliminated in Q1 on 15 occasions, a tally matched again in 2025. This year he sits on 13 Q1 exits and has yet to escape the first part of qualifying at all in 2026.
Stroll’s Q1 Eliminations by Year
| Year | Times Out in Q1 |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 12 |
| 2018 | 15 |
| 2019 | 14 |
| 2020 | 0 |
| 2021 | 7 |
| 2022 | 12 |
| 2023 | 7 |
| 2024 | 5 |
| 2025 | 15 |
| 2026 | 13 |
What This Says About Aston Martin’s Season
Stroll sits twenty-first in the drivers’ championship with 0 points from twelve races this season, level with his own admission that the green cars simply won’t run with the pack on Sunday. Alonso isn’t faring much better; the team as a whole has managed just 3 points all year, leaving it tenth in the constructors’ standings, ahead of only Cadillac. This is not a team quietly building toward something. This is a team whose engine partner has left it exposed at exactly the kind of circuit that punishes power deficits without mercy.
It’s worth remembering this same weekend produced its own share of Monza chaos further up the order, with Oscar Piastri picking up a grid penalty for impeding Liam Lawson and a string of other penalties reshuffling the grid. None of that touches Aston Martin’s situation, though. Piastri’s problems are the kind that come from being fast enough to be in the mix. Stroll’s aren’t.
There’s no spinning a statistic like this one. A hundred Q1 eliminations isn’t bad luck repeating itself, it’s a career pattern, and right now it’s a pattern the whole team is stuck inside. Sunday’s race starts at 13:00 UTC, check the calendar for your local time, though on this evidence the more interesting battle at Monza will be for minor points somewhere well behind the podium fight, not for Aston Martin’s cars anywhere near it.
