Lance Stroll is on the verge of writing his name into the Formula 1 history books, though hardly for a reason any racing driver would ever want. As Motorsport.com España reports, the Aston Martin Racing driver has stacked up a staggering 13 retirements across 20 grands prix contested in 2026. With three rounds remaining on the calendar, that number threatens to match one of the most unwanted records the sport has ever seen.
The latest heartbreak for the Canadian unfolded in Brazil, where his AMR26 lasted a mere 30 laps before a battery failure forced him to park up. Another Sunday cut short, another entry in a rapidly growing pile of DNFs, and an increasingly grim statistical reality. Yet, to pin the blame for this absolute disaster solely on the driver would be deeply unfair.
Instead, Aston Martin Racing and Honda are doing the heavy lifting to hand Stroll a campaign filled with mechanical grief. Reliability gremlins from both chassis and Japanese power unit have stalked the garage all year long, leaving the driver with far more experience explaining breakdowns than collecting silverware. One of the most infamous precedents belongs to Andrea de Cesaris, who racked up 16 retirements behind the wheel of his Brabham back in 1987. That historic disaster featured a twist—an out-of-fuel drama on the final lap in Belgium that somehow still left him classified third on the podium, meaning not every technical exit entirely missed out on points.
Stroll sits at 13 DNFs right now, with Las Vegas, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi still to face. If he fails to see the checkered flag in any of the final three events of 2026, he will hit that exact figure of 16 set by De Cesaris during his wild 1987 season. There is also the minor footnote that Australia brought a failure to qualify, though it does not officially count toward the retirement tally.
What makes this nightmare fascinating is how little of it lands on Stroll's shoulders. Out of those 13 exits, only two stem from driver error via crashes in Monaco and Madrid. The remaining 11 are technical malfunctions within the AMR26, even if not every single one traces back to Honda directly. The pain has not stayed limited to Sundays, either, with gremlins repeatedly butchering practice and qualifying sessions for both team drivers right from the start of the year.
In Interlagos, Honda hit another battery wall on Stroll's car following a similar failure on Saturday. The truly alarming part is that the manufacturer still lacks a firm grasp on the underlying trigger. "We know what happened, but we don't know the root cause," admitted Shintaro Orihara, trackside engineering chief for Honda, following the race. That follows a campaign where persistent engine vibrations tore through batteries repeatedly, turning life at Aston Martin Racing into an endurance test.
While Fernando Alonso managed to salvage the team's entire seven-point haul, Stroll's points account remains completely blank, with a 12th place in Bahrain—hosted exceptionally in Malaysia—standing as his personal high-water mark for the year. To top off a punishing few months, the Canadian also crossed the threshold of 100 Q1 eliminations over his career.
With three grands prix left, a final window remains for Stroll to dodge an infamous milestone. Given the trajectory of the season, however, watching the Aston Martin Racing machine actually finish three straight weekends without breaking down might just be the biggest shock of all.
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