Stroll revels in his James Bond dream with Aston Martin
Billionaire is out to topple the old order as he leads famous marque’s return to the F1 grid for first time in 60 years
Anyone who has bingewatched the latest “season” of Netflix’s Drive to Survive will have a pretty good idea of what Lawrence Stroll is like. Or, at least what the producers wanted him to look like.
The Canadian billionaire owner of Aston Martin F1 is cast as a sort of Sopranos baddie/bond villain; white hair, bushy eyebrows, permanent scowl. He stalks the pit lane. He terrifies his own employees. At one technical meeting early in the series, at the team’s Silverstone HQ, Stroll glowers, Lord Sugar-style, at the assembled designers and engineers, who fidget nervously, presumably waiting for him to point his finger and say: “You’re fired!” or else just press a big red button which will see their chairs disappear through the floor and into the fiery furnace below.
Whether the characterisation matches the reality is open to debate. Stroll is said to be unhappy about some aspects of the series and how he was made to look. But what is undeniable is that he is now a seriously big fish in F1’s piranha club.
Purchasing Force India’s assets from the administrators in 2018, renaming the team Racing Point and bringing his son, Lance, in from Williams was one thing. Stroll Jnr had been groomed for F1 since he was in short trousers. Now Stroll owned a team in which to run him. No alarm bells there.
Leading a takeover of Aston Martin car company in January last year and announcing that his team would be rebranded Aston Martin F1 from 2021, restoring the famous British marque to the F1 grid for the first time in 60 years? That changed everything.
Suddenly, Stroll was a threat. This was no longer a vanity project – this was tectonic plate-shifting stuff. All of a sudden, the team’s cosy relationship with engine suppliers Mercedes was looking suspiciously cosy, with Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff acquiring shares in Aston Martin, Mercedes’s parent company, Daimler, increasing its stake in the car company to 20 per cent, and Racing Point running a hugely controversial “pink Mercedes” around race tracks in 2020. Mclaren, Renault, Red Bull and Ferrari’s heads fell off. They finally protested the car’s legality, managing to get a €400,000 (£343,000) fine and a 15-point deduction handed down to the team. But Stroll remained bullish. He still is. “The fact is we did nothing wrong [all parties eventually agreed there was a lack of clarity in the regulations and dropped their appeals],” he says, sitting in his hotel room in Bahrain on the eve of the season opener. “We just did a better job. What it did show me, and what truly shocked me, was how low some of them would stoop.
“Rather than focus on their own incompetence, they tried to blame us for doing something wrong when we hadn’t. But we take it as a compliment. If we had been tooling around in seventh, eighth, ninth or 10th no one would have complained. They know we’re a threat now.” The question is, how much of a threat? Could Aston Martin F1 go all the way to the top?
“I think we can,” Stroll says. “Rome wasn’t built in a day. And this team won’t be either. Podiums, race wins and a strong third in the championship are probably the best we could hope for this year. But what we’ve accomplished in a very short period is unprecedented. And I think we can get there.”
Stroll certainly is not lacking in ambition. He has signed four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel to partner his son this year and is building a new team base at Silverstone to replace the 30-year old factory which had basically been left unchanged since Jordan GP’S day.
But Stroll’s confidence really stems from sweeping changes about to hit the sport. With new technical regulations coming in next year, and a new budget cap having already been introduced post-covid, which should in theory bring the “big three” of Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull down to their level, he believes conditions are ripe for a toppling of the old order.
“We’re at the cap now,” he says. “We are spending as much as any team, whether it’s Mercedes or Ferrari or Red Bull. So, we’re no longer penalised by them outspending us or having 500 more employees.
We’re building a new factory, 200,000 sq ft at Silverstone. We’ve hired another 100 people. There were already 400 great people there who have been punching above their weight for years.”
With the Mercedes partnership running deeper than ever, and the power of the Aston Martin brand bringing in a steady stream of sponsors, the project certainly has potential. Stroll concedes Aston Martin’s “F1 heritage” has maybe been a little overplayed. The team had two seasons in the sport in 1959 and 1960, with British driver Roy Salvadori achieving a best result of sixth. But there is no denying Aston Martin’s incredible sports car heritage, or its appeal to fans around the globe, thanks in no small part to the James Bond franchise.
“Aston Martin’s whole DNA is racing,” Stroll says. “It was created 108 years ago to go race up Aston Hill [in Buckinghamshire]. And the brand is just incredible. I think we had a million people watch our [online] launch. Bond is undoubtedly a large part of that. I mean, we all want to live dreams right? When you buy an Aston Martin, you’re buying a dream. What’s cooler than James Bond?”
Whether Stroll is more Blofeld or M, even Aston Martin’s rivals are grudgingly having to admit there is a new player in town.
‘Now we are spending as much as any team, whether it’s Mercedes or Ferrari or Red Bull’