Lance Stroll swats away retirement rumours in São Paulo: “Fakenews”
Lance Stroll didn’t need a paragraph to bat this one away. Asked in the FIA press conference at Interlagos about claims he’d tried to quit Formula 1 two years ago, the Aston Martin driver lobbed back two syllables: “Fakenews.”
It’s the latest and bluntest pushback from Stroll after a story that’s been doing laps in Brazil. The claim, first aired live by a Brazilian commentator and later given extra oxygen by Felipe Drugovich, suggested Stroll twice asked to walk away from F1 after the 2023 season and was twice told no by his father and team owner, Lawrence Stroll.
Stroll already brushed off the chatter earlier this year at Zandvoort, quipping that the commentator “needed something to say.” In Brazil, he kept it even shorter.
The twist is Drugovich’s side of the tale. The Brazilian, Aston Martin’s reserve for the past two seasons and now heading to Formula E with Andretti, told the Na Ponta dos Dedos podcast he’d re-signed with the team for 2024 and 2025 believing a race seat might open up. According to Drugovich, discussions with senior figures at Aston left him thinking it had come “very close” to Stroll not continuing into 2024.
From Drugovich’s perspective, the timing looked perfect. From Stroll’s, there was never a decision to be made. The Canadian insists he had no intention of retiring after a 2023 campaign that began with a nasty pre-season cycling crash and ended with Alonso bagging a string of podiums on his way to fourth in the standings, while Stroll’s top result was P4 in Australia.
There’s context here worth remembering. Alonso’s arrival supercharged Aston Martin in early 2023, and Stroll was climbing back from surgery on both wrists. It was a difficult comparison. If there was ever a wobble about the future, only those inside the Stroll household would know. Publicly, though, Lance has kept one line: he wasn’t leaving.
He remains on a rolling agreement with Aston Martin and is set to continue with the team into 2026. That stability is mirrored off-track. Recent filings to the UK’s Companies House, cited in documents relating to Golden Eagle Racing Ltd — the company through which Stroll’s services are contracted — showed a $12.3 million payment in 2024, up from $5.6m in 2023. It’s a headline number that suggests a hefty step, but it’s not a straight salary slip: that figure typically covers the wider services around an F1 driver, from management and coaching to performance staff.
So where does this leave the saga? With a denial, firmly delivered, on the record. Drugovich’s account paints a picture of how close he felt to a breakthrough that didn’t arrive; Stroll’s makes clear there was no retirement letter on the table.
What matters for Aston Martin now is straightforward. The team’s medium-term plan still features Alonso’s firepower and Stroll’s continuity, and the next regulation reset in 2026 — new power units and aero rules — is the horizon Lawrence Stroll has been building toward. Interlagos added a little theatre, but it didn’t change the cast.
The rumour mill will keep spinning, as it always does in the paddock. Stroll, for his part, seems content to let two words do the heavy lifting.
