The logic underpinning Stroll’s Aston F1 ambition

Lawrence Stroll is a man with a plan, as well as a mountain of ambition to match the size of his bulging bank account. The 61-year-old Canadian made himself a billionaire with investments in the fashion world, and now he is set upon becoming a success in F1.

Stroll has loved F1 for decades and has been a key behind-the-scenes influencer since the 1990s. He’s preferred to operate under the radar, but becoming a team owner when he saved Force India from administration in 2018 raised his profile. Now he takes another step into the spotlight by renaming the team he called Racing Point after one of the world’s iconic motoring brands, Aston Martin.

“My aims with this, like the other businesses I’ve owned, are to win,” he says, in a rare interview. “The first step of winning was kind of what we accomplished with the team last year. Our goals for this year have only gotten greater.

“Turning this 31-year-old British institution into Aston Martin is really transformative in a motivational manner. I saw the guys putting up the Aston Martin sign (at the factory) and taking down the Racing Point one. There were tears.

“It’s kind of like we’ve found another gear now and it has raised everyone’s level of enthusiasm and excitement. And we all know that boils down to lap time one way, shape or form or another.”

The new name above the door has raised expectations, too. From a team battling in the upper midfield, notwithstanding Sergio Pérez’s maiden win in Bahrain last December, Stroll’s investment and the responsibility of a famous name mean the performance level of 2020 will now be considered the minimum starting point.

And as a statement of intent, signing four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel is significant. Now the team has to walk the walk.

Lawrence Stroll introduces the rebranded Aston Martin F1 team

Photo by: Aston Martin/GP Racing

HOW ASTON CAME BACK TO F1

For a man who has been a fan of F1 since the days of Gilles Villeneuve, and who has an extensive classic car collection, Stroll appears to have come to team ownership late. It can look from the outside as if a self-made billionaire has bought an F1 team as a vehicle for his son’s career – 22-year-old Lance is one of the team’s drivers – but Stroll says that for a long time he had “never thought about owning an F1 team”.

He was a shareholder in Team Lotus, he says, in the early 1990s, but other than that he says he always agreed with the famous old F1 adage. In his words: “How do you become a millionaire? Start with a billion and buy an F1 team.”

Stroll says his decisions to buy Racing Point, and then to take control of Aston Martin, and finally bring the two together, were based on cold, hard business logic, even if there was a bit of romance mixed in.

"If the team wouldn’t have been fourth two or three years in a row, and it was a team struggling in 10th with no chance, I would have had no interest" Lawrence Stroll

When US group Liberty Media bought F1 in early 2017, Formula 1 chairman Chase Carey explained his business plan to Stroll, an acquaintance of many years. The idea was to grow F1 as a business from $1.5bn to $2.5bn within five to seven years, by making the racing more competitive through the imposition of a budget cap. The field would also be limited to 10 teams.

The effect, Stroll believes, will be to turn F1 teams into franchises, in the manner of NFL or NBA teams, and to make them profitable businesses whose value will increase.

He says: “So based on FOM, based on what the team was already doing with only 400 people and only a $90m budget – so a third or a quarter of some of the other teams and still finishing fourth – I said: “That’s a hell of a group of guys.’ What’s any business about? People. So, I bought it as a business investment that I believe over the next five or 10 years will be way over a billion in valuation, based on all the other sports.

Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel unveil the AMR21

Photo by: Aston Martin/GP Racing

“By the way, if the team wouldn’t have been fourth two or three years in a row, and it was a team struggling in 10th with no chance, I would have had no interest.”

Stroll says he has “always thought Aston Martin was one of the greatest brands in the world” and he has owned “many” of their cars. He first approached the company’s owners in 2018 when he bought Racing Point. At that time, Aston’s deal with Red Bull to sponsor its F1 team and build the Valkyrie hypercar precluded an investment. But that changed in 2019, when the brand ran into financial difficulties and its owners decided on a rights issue, at the same time as the Red Bull deal was coming to an end.

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“I did my due diligence and realised the potential was enormous,” Stroll says.

Stroll believes that with his new chief executive officer Tobias Moers, head-hunted from AMG, in place, and plans to expand the range, he can double Aston’s production to about 10,000 cars a year – about the same as Ferrari – and leave financial concerns well behind.

“Only then I said: ‘I own this F1 team and the best way to market Aston Martin is through owning its own F1 team,’” Stroll adds. “So that’s when the whole picture became clear. The two together make magic.”

The Aston Martin F1 team during testing

Photo by: GP Racing

WHERE THE F1 TEAM COMES IN

Creating a positive image for Aston Martin means the F1 team being a success, and Stroll says he is determined to push on from 2020.

A close commercial relationship with Mercedes – too close, many of their rivals would say – led to Racing Point’s most successful season last year. The car was cloned from a 2019 Mercedes – an exercise that, according to the FIA, went too far in copying the world champions’ rear brake ducts, one of the ‘listed parts’ teams have to design themselves. Racing Point was handed a 15-point deduction and fined €400,000.

But while the process was controversial, it was certainly effective. On balance, Racing Point had the third fastest car on the grid and missed out on that position in the constructors’ championship only through a combination of that penalty, a more complete performance from McLaren, and the Racing Point drivers – Sergio Pérez and Lance Stroll – missing a total of three races with coronavirus, plus some bad luck.

"In the new factory we’re going to have 100% capability to build every single part in-house. That’s a game-changer, because currently we contract a lot of it out because of the size of our facilities. We’re putting everything in place" Lawrence Stroll

Stroll defends the design approach to 2020, emphasising following the champions’ low-rake aerodynamic philosophy made sense given the team was buying a gearbox and rear suspension from Mercedes. Stroll insists “the biggest game changer for us was to go from 400 to 500 people”.

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“In addition,” Stroll adds, “I gave them an extra £50m of budget that they didn’t have the year before. And the biggest contribution we had from Mercedes was that we began to use their wind tunnel. It was better than the wind tunnel we were using in Germany, the Toyota one.”

Stroll believes the introduction of the budget cap from 2021 will play into his hands, as the big teams have to reduce in headcount towards where Aston already is. Aston Martin remains a customer team to some degree – it still buys a number of parts from Mercedes, including the gearbox and its hydraulics, and permitted suspension components. But Stroll says he asked his senior managers whether this would stand in the way of success and they insisted it would not.

Lance Stroll, Sebastian Vettel and technical director Andy Green at the Aston Marton launch

Photo by: Aston Martin/GP Racing

“I challenged Otmar [Szafnauer, the team principal] and [technical director] Andy Green, on that before Christmas,” Stroll says. “I said, ‘We have the new rules coming in for 2022. We are here to win. That’s why I’m here. It’s why we’re all here. But I have the ability to give us the resources we need to win – what would we do, if anything, differently in order to become world champions?’

“And Andy said, ‘My initial answer is I don’t think I would change a whole lot.’”

The thinking is that aerodynamics will remain the key differentiator under the new 2022 rules.

Stroll adds: “He [Green] said: ‘I believe we have the best tool in being able to be in the Mercedes wind tunnel.’ I said: ‘I’ll build our own.’ He said: ‘It will take us years and we’re not going to make it any better. And with the rules they’re not allowed to use theirs for the amount of time anyway, so it doesn’t make sense because of the limited times we are allowed to run, which are being reduced year by year. It is going to become more CFD and less wind tunnels.’

“He said: ‘Then it’s about people, having the best CFD guys, the best aerodynamicists. And of the 100 people we have added to the company, I’d say about 65% of them are in that area.’

“In 2022,” Stroll continues, “the cars are going to be remarkably the same [as each other]. The big differentiations today you won’t see in 2022 – good thing, bad thing, I’m not commenting; but they are going to be remarkably similar. So, it is going to be about your aero department, [and] of course things like reliability. But we are not going to get a better power unit, I don’t believe, than we get from Mercedes, I don’t think we need to go back to designing and building our own gearboxes; it is a dinosaur thing of the past.

“So, in the new factory we’re going to have 100% capability to build every single part in-house. That’s a game-changer, because currently we contract a lot of it out because of the size of our facilities. We’re putting everything in place.”

Sebastian Vettel talks to the media at the pre-season F1 test

Photo by: GP Racing

THE DRIVER LINE-UP

The signing of Vettel is a calculated part of this ambition. The German’s reputation has been tarnished by his performances over the past four years at Ferrari, but Stroll believes a new environment, where he is loved and wanted, will bring out the best in Vettel and that his mere presence will strengthen the team.

Insight: Has Vettel got his mojo back at Aston Martin?

“One of the ways we are going to be world champions is to get my guys to think and act like world champions,” Stroll explains. “And how you do that is you bring a four-time world champion into the team. I think he is going to take the team in a direction of leading us to where ultimately we want to be.

"We’ll be more mature, we’ll be a full-grown team, we’ll be in our new factory. So, step-by-step fighting for more and more wins [is the target]. And I think it’s very realistic" Lawrence Stroll

“So, I am not concerned. I know Sebastian well, and I have 100% confidence and belief he will do a fantastic job with us. He is more motivated than he has ever been.”

Stroll is equally frank about his ambitions for his son. “To be world champion,” he says. Stroll Jr has had some strong results – not least his pole and leading half the race in Turkey last year – but not many believe he has consistently demonstrated he is the stuff of which champions are made. 

Nevertheless, Lawrence believes Lance has been “extremely impressive – I think at 21 he did an incredible job. Last year demonstrated he has the ability to perform very well”.

The AMR21 pre-unveiling

Photo by: GP Racing

MORE WINS THE TARGET

Confidence is not in short supply. But having taken a team that has outperformed its budget in the last few years and furnished it with better resources, a new factory in the offing, and rules that ought to bring the big teams back towards them, Stroll sees good reason for his belief. Ambitious Stroll certainly is; naive he is not.

“F1 is a process that takes years to be successful, it is not an overnight,” Stroll says. “But no business is built overnight. This will be the same. I want to continue where we finished last year, only stronger. We had several podiums; we had a win. I’d like to have several more podiums and another win or two.

“Being very realistic, start knocking on the door for second, and with these new rule changes in 2022, which are all meant to bring the field closer together – at least that’s the intention, we will see if it’s the reality – then we’ll be more mature, we’ll be a full-grown team, we’ll be in our new factory. So, step-by-step fighting for more and more wins. And I think it’s very realistic.”

The team's rebranding has extended as far as the pit barriers

Photo by: GP Racing