How Aston Martin plans to become a championship challenger

Only two teams have won a Formula One world championship since 2010: Red Bull and Mercedes. Go back one year further, to 2009, and both titles were won by Brawn GP, which was independent at the time but then morphed into the Mercedes F1 the following year. During the last 14 years, ten other teams (many of which have changed ownership in that period) have raced in F1, yet none of them — even the mighty Ferrari — have secured a title in that period. Statistically speaking, F1’s winner’s circle has never been smaller.

So how does a team break out of F1’s intensely competitive midfield and fight for championships? Alpine, McLaren and Aston Martin all have aspirations of doing so (with Audi set to join them in 2026), yet championship success has never looked harder to come by for a team outside F1’s “big three”.

Alpine was closest in 2022, albeit still 587 points shy of champions Red Bull in the final standings, McLaren has the most recent history of fighting for titles, albeit over ten years ago, Audi will have a clean slate in 2026, albeit with a huge amount of catching up to do, and Aston Martin … well, Aston Martin is arguably the best placed team to make it happen.

The Silverstone-based outfit, which started life as the Jordan F1 team in 1991, has gone through multiple identities and ownerships during its time on the grid, but has never been as financially stable as it is right now. Its current consortium of owners, led by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, have been on a recruitment drive since taking control in mid 2018, cherry-picking top engineers from rival teams as well as bringing former McLaren CEO Martin Whitmarsh back into the F1 fold as the team’s overarching boss.

In quick succession this year, BMW’s head of motorsport Mike Krack was installed as Aston Martin’s team principal, Red Bull’s head of aero Dan Fallows joined as technical director, Mercedes aero chief Eric Blandin was named as Aston Martin’s head of aero and Luca Furbatto joined from Alfa Romeo as engineering director.

The signings were big. The intent was clear.

Meanwhile, the physical manifestation of Stroll’s vision for Aston Martin has been taking shape in a muddy field in Northamptonshire. On a parcel of land sold to Stroll by the same farmer who cut a deal with Eddie Jordan in the late 1980s to provide the original plot for the team’s current factory, the first of three new factory buildings is nearing completion.

The imaginatively named Building 1 is already a mighty…