Aston Martin plan to knock down their former headquarters, which has been used by Formula 1 teams since 1991, next year.
The old base is being destroyed to make way for the new facility Aston Martin is building at a cost of up to £200 million.
Eddie Jordan Racing’s eponymous boss commissioned the creation of the factory, which sits on a road opposite British Grand Prix venue Silverstone, in 1990 when he wanted to take his successful junior single-seater team into F1.
It was used by Jordan from his team’s debut in 1991 through to the end of 2005, when it was sold to the Midland Group. The team raced as Midland in 2006, as Spyker in 2007 and then as Force India from 2008 to 2018. When a Lawrence Stroll-led consortium then bought the team after it faced financial struggles, it rebranded to Racing Point and then last year became Aston Martin.
Cars designed and constructed in the factory have won five grands prix. The first was the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix, followed by the French and Italian races in 1999. A final win as Jordan followed in Brazil four years later, and the team did not taste success until 2020, as Racing Point, in the Sakhir Grand Prix.
Guy Austin, project manager for the construction of Aston Martin’s new facilities at Silverstone and the demolition of their old ones, explained how that proceed in a video released by the team.
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“I looked after design and construction [of the original factory] for Eddie Jordan back in 1990. So what’s the plan here? Well, since we moved into Building One [the new factory], we’re going to knock this over next summer, which will be a sad day in many ways,” he said.
“We’re going to replace it with a new building. And what’s going to be in that building? Well, we’re going to have our staff restaurant in there, we’re going to have our gym in there for the staff, fitness studio, quite a large space for logistics with all the flyaway races we have these days. Logistics is a nightmare, so we need loads of space for packing and unpacking, and our simulator’s going in there.”
Aston Martin’s new facility will be spread across three buildings. “All three buildings will be linked together with bridges, so our staff never have to go out in the wind and cold in the winter,” said Austin. “But it’ll be quite a long walk from one end to the other. It’ll be about 400 metres from one end of…
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