Billionaire Lawrence Stroll bought the team and wanted to turn it into a winner, but it hasn't happened ... yet.
- Aston Martin enters the stretch run of the Formula 1 season in ninth place in the Constructors’ Standings.
- “We are not where we want to be,” Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack says.
- Next season, Fernando Alonso will team up with Lance Stroll, now a veteran of more than 100 Grands Prix, and whose presence on the grid is invariably associated with his father Lawrence Stroll’s ownership of Aston Martin.
It has been four years since Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll acquired the Force India Formula 1 team and set about exploiting its potential.
It was a team that had a rich history of punching above its weight as an underdog, and the (briefly) rebranded entity, Racing Point, captured a shock win in 2020 and fourth in the championship, aided by its clever imitation of the previous year’s Mercedes design.
Its rebrand as Aston Martin for 2021—with a view on the new 2022 regulations—was supposed to herald in a new era of success and prolonged competitiveness.
But that has not yet happened.
Aston Martin slipped to seventh in 2021, hurt by subtle yet critical tweaks to Formula 1’s floor rules, while this year the squad has slumped to ninth in the competitive order, on just 25 points.
Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack
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“It did not go according to our expectations,” is the blunt assessment of Aston Martin’s 2022 by team principal Mike Krack, who took up the reins in March, in an interview with Autoweek. “We are not where we want to be. We are P9—this is far, far away from our ambition. The performance of the car has been a disappointment.”
Aston Martin’s season began in wretched style, failing to score across the first three events, its predicament accentuated by Sebastian Vettel’s Covid absence. Australia was a particular nadir, with a string of incidents and accidents leaving its drivers bereft of confidence, while points for Williams relegated Aston Martin to plum last.
Since then it has scored in 10 of the following 13 Grands Prix, a credible statistic, albeit often in the lower reaches of the top 10. It has essentially spent the year playing catch-up, having introduced a revised concept at May’s Spanish Grand Prix, after realizing that its initial car design was flawed.
“We need to consider there was a significant change in regulations and different directions were taken by different teams,” Krack said.
Aston Martin principal owner Lawrence Stroll
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“We realized after a couple of races we could not go further in that direction, even though it was very promising in terms of performance—but we couldn’t run it because of the porpoising issues that we were having. We had to change concepts, and this really set us back. We were always a couple of races behind. Disappointing, explainable, now next year the rules are staying more consistent so we should be on it from the beginning.
“But still: we need to deliver. We did not have a good car in ‘21, we have not had a good car in ‘22.”
Team owner Stroll has been “very patient—and we have to admire his patience,” says Krack, but there remains high ambition.
“He knows he made these investments, he would like to have success come quicker—we all want that—but he is also very aware that you cannot just change it like a switch. I admire his patience, and I think through the years coming, this patience will also have to be less. He put everything on the table that we need, and we want, so now it is up to us to deliver.”
Putting everything on the table has indeed been Stroll’s modus operandi. Krack was one signing among a large recruitment drive, with the other headline names along with Dan Fallows from Red Bull Racing and Eric Blandin from Mercedes. A new factory is under construction around Aston Martin’s existing facility at Silverstone, with an anticipated opening date of Q1 2023, while an on-site wind-tunnel will be built in the coming years.
Aston Martin driver Sebastian Vettel, right, will be looking for new hobbies next season.
Eric AlonsoGetty Images
“I think it will be a game-changer for us,” Krack says. “The current headquarters is really exploding, as there are too many people inside, and we have units rented all around the place. And for team dynamics it will be really good to have people on site, working together, having production together with design and development. This will help us a lot. And there is a logistical improvement as you don’t have to drive from site to site. We have people in Brackley, we have people all around Silverstone, and if we bring them together on site it can only help.”
Bringing those people together in the same direction is also critical. The mindset has changed since its Force India days, but new faces must gel with those who worked miracles on a shoestring budget, while pulling together with fresh determination.
“You need to be careful that when you add (people) you keep the culture—or the DNA—of the team intact, so you need to be very careful not to add too much new and preserve the old,” Krack says. “But you need to also change the mindset on the old [employees], because they have been the underdogs, they have done incredible things with the [limited] possibilities they were having previously, but now the situation has changed. There is more possibility, and you need to come out of being the underdog and have the mentality to being a front-runner.
Fernando Alonso will be Aston Martin’s new No. 1 in 2023.
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“Fifth is not good enough (any longer), and if you are not in the top, it is a disappointment, whereas before (as Force India) it was more ‘survival mode’ and having a P5 [here and there] was not expected. Now the expectation level is really different, and we need to learn how to manage that, and it is a different mindset.”
There will be one significant change for Aston Martin when 2022 rolls into 2023. Sebastian Vettel will exit the squad, and into retirement, and be replaced by Fernando Alonso. The veteran two-time champion is known as a relentless competitor, demanding maximum performance from those around him, but is Aston Martin ready for his presence given its current languid results?
“If we are not ready then we have to be ready,” asserts Krack. “The team, if we want to make the step to becoming regular front-runners, we have to be able to fulfil the requirements and manage drivers like that. They are very demanding, very competitive, but this is what we need—also to learn, I think it’s a great signing. It is for sure not the easiest signing, but we do not want to go the easy way—trying to go to the front is not an easy path, and we should not take any comfortable detour.”
Alonso will team up with Lance Stroll, now a relative veteran of over 100 Grands Prix, and whose presence on the grid is invariably associated with his father’s ownership of Aston Martin. Accusations of nepotism are rarely far from the surface but Stroll is a curious case given his career record.
“He’s very, very strong,” insists Krack. “We must not forget he never had a winning car. The only season where he had a front-running car he delivered: pole in Turkey, podiums. Lance is a very underrated driver.
Constructors’ Championship
Standings
- Red Bull 545
- Ferrari 406
- Mercedes 371
- Alpine 125
- McLaren 107
- Alfa Romeo 52
- Haas 34
- AlphaTauri 33
- Aston Martin 25
- Williams 6
“I think he handled the situation with Sebastian very well, there’s many quali sessions where he has been in front of a four-time champion, and this tends to get forgotten sometimes, because it’s not a nice story to tell. I think if we have the right car, and the right environment, Lance can do incredible things, and I would not be surprised if he is in front of Fernando a couple of times.”
The desire of Stroll Sr. to compete at the front remain undimmed—and Krack is conscious that Aston Martin has to step up.
“It is very important that we show progress because we have not seen any since the team was green,” Krack relays. “I think it’s important that next year we have a front-running car from the beginning, and the most important is to see steady progress.
“In Formula 1 nobody is waiting for you, you have to have your act together. We are happy that we have improved (in 2022), I think we did, but not enough what we would like to see.”
If it remains ninth then ‘Team Silverstone’ is on course for its worst classification since 2009—an unacceptable outcome. A new factory, and the recruitment of Alonso, are just a couple of the components ensuring Aston Martin’s trajectory is firmly upward—it cannot afford a 2022 repeat.
Keyword: How Aston Martin Plans to Get Back to F1 Relevance