1 ASTON MARTIN IS BACK
Is it just a lick of green paint and slick marketing, or is Aston Martin about to take F1 by storm?
Aston Martin is back in F1. More than that we can confidently predict 2021 will be its most successful ever year. Hardly a risky forecast given that its previous F1 prowess was established in five races at the tail end of the Fifties with a best finish of sixth. Yeah, the whole ‘back in F1’ schtick is tenuous. But the rest of it isn’t.
The Aston Martin Cognizant F1 team used to be Racing Point and before that Force India. In the paddock it’s known as the Silverstone team, as that’s where it is based and has been since it was Jordan. For the last few seasons it’s been riding high in the championship, regularly placing best-of-the-rest behind the Big Three (Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull), raising the tantalising prospect of Ferrari vs Aston on-track battles and Sebastian Vettel avenging himself on the team that ditched him.
Race team and road cars are currently separate, but intricately linked. Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll is the chief shareholder of both. Each branch uses Mercedes power – a 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 for the F1 car, while a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 now sits at the heart of the Vantage, DB11 and DBX. Aston’s new CEO, Tobias Moers, used to be the head of Mercedes-AMG. Mercedes itself is a shareholder in Aston Martin and so, a little oddly, is Toto Wolff, the head of Mercedes’ F1 outfit.
The commonalities aren’t all positive. Both have had well documented financial troubles in the recent past, Force India lapsing into administration in 2018, the same year as Aston’s road car business suffered a freefall launch on the stock exchange. That’s only just started to right itself. And not without collateral damage. Early last year Aston delayed a planned return to the Le Mans 24-Hour Race.
But things are looking up. Aston Martin
F1 is building a brand new 19,000m2 facility alongside its existing premises. What is it going to fill it with? Could it be that the F1 team will extend its reach to run Aston’s Le Mans hypercar programme? “That’s not out of the question,” replies Otmar Szafnauer, CEO of the F1 team. “First and foremost, we’ve got to grow the F1 team. And then we can start looking around to see what else we can do. For sure, in the future, the medium term, we should be doing those types of things.”
So having these two cars together could prove prescient. And while we’re on the topic – how big is a modern F1 car? The AMR21 is a giant, 5.6 metres from tip of front wing to jagged tail. It’s the length of an S-Class limo (although at 752kg much, much lighter), and it dwarfs the Valkyrie. That car, we’re promised, will finally be going into production late this summer. The similarities between the two underneath the surface should make the Valk more identifiable to the F1 team, even if they’ll actually be picking up where Adrian Newey left off.
More than that though, a Le Mans effort would be another Aston versus Ferrari battlefield given the latter’s recent announcement of a 2023 return. Szafnauer has enough on his plate right now, not least a driver line-up that doesn’t give him much room for manoeuvre. Seb Vettel is partnered by Lance Stroll, Lawrence’s son. Last year he finished 11th in the championship while his teammate Sergio Perez finished fourth. Perez was then unceremoniously dropped. But don’t feel sorry for him, he wound up at Red Bull.
The internal politics will surround Lance’s bid to mature as a driver, against Vettel’s need to prove he still has appetite and ability after six fairly unprofitable seasons with Ferrari. Here’s Szafnauer again: “The one thing that we will absolutely do differently [to Ferrari] is give Sebastian the utmost support, make sure he’s loved, listened to, all those little things which are very meaningful from a psychological standpoint. At that level you’ve got to have your head in the game.”
At 33, and with 53 winner’s trophies vying for space on his mantelpiece, Szafnauer has hopefully found his team a potential race winner in Vettel, although an alternative viewpoint is that Stroll Sr has merely bought his son a very expensive tutor. “Their relationship [Vettel and Stroll Jr] has started really, really well. The nice thing with Sebastian is he’s an honest guy. To give you an example, last year he and Leclerc had a few runs on track... but even towards the end of the season, Sebastian was still giving him advice. That’s just how he is. And I could see the same thing absolutely will happen with Lance.”
The cars are little altered this year – the main changes are revisions to the rear brake ducts and floor to reduce downforce and make for closer racing. A cost cap has also been introduced, for similar reasons. The big changes come in 2022, most identifiably with the shift to 18-inch wheels. Right now, 30 per cent of Aston Martin F1’s engineering capacity is focused on next year’s car rather than this, “and that’ll ramp up,” Sfaznauer comments, “to maybe 50–60 per cent in the next month or so and by the end of spring, going into summer it’s going to be at 80–90 per cent.”
But 2021 matters for this team, a chance to go big straight out of the box. F1 teams can seem shallow and transitory, fresh branding applied to familiar cars, uniforms and factories. But this feels different. Aston’s face fits, the tie-up with road cars and a possible Le Mans programme works, as does the Mercedes partnership. The potential on both sides of Aston’s business is huge, the medium-term future bright. Welcome back? Nah. Better to see this as a fresh start.