Can Whitmarsh appointment help Aston succeed where its F1 rivals failed?

The return of Martin Whitmarsh to Formula 1 is the latest move by Lawrence Stroll to give his investment in Aston Martin – both the car company and the racing team – every chance of success.

Stroll likes heavy hitters with a proven track record. Witness his appointment of former Mercedes-AMG boss Tobias Moers, tasked with reversing Aston Martin’s sales and fortunes on the stock market, and one-time Inter Milan CEO Jefferson Slack as the F1 team’s managing director – commercial and marketing.

Slack later brought in McLaren’s Rob Bloom as chief marketing officer, bolstering a commercial operation that achieved notable successes on the sponsorship front during the early part of this year.

Sadly, the on-track results haven’t followed suit, the impact of those tweaked technical regulations stifling the performance of the team’s 2020 race winner. Little wonder team boss Otmar Szafnauer was an unhappy man back in the spring. I wouldn’t have wanted to explain this to Lawrence either…

PLUS: How Stroll plans to build Aston Martin into F1 world champions

On the technical front, talented team stalwart Andrew Green has been elevated to the role of chief technical officer, supported by three reports in the form of performance director Tom McCullough, engineering director Luca Furbatto and technical director Dan Fallows. While McCullough has been with the team since 2014, Furbatto left his role as chief designer at Alfa Romeo while Fallows resigned from his position as chief engineer – aerodynamics at Red Bull.

These are the men facing the not inconsiderable task of hauling Aston Martin into contention for the world championship title upon which Stroll has set his heart.

Stroll has set Whitmarsh a significant challenge in leading the success of Aston's diversification strategy

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

It’s a goal that has helped lure Whitmarsh back into a frontline role in F1 as group CEO of Aston Martin Performance Technologies. Stroll has big plans, as he turns ‘Team Silverstone’ from much-loved corner shop into a giant superstore.

Not satisfied with turning Aston into a Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari-beater, the aim is for the group Whitmarsh leads to become a ‘£1billion business’ within the next four or five years.

PLUS: Why Aston Martin's "limitless" F1 ambitions aren't misplaced

As tall orders go, that’s high, but Whitmarsh was a key lieutenant in Ron Dennis’s drive to turn McLaren from a Formula 1 team into a diversified technologies business with the creation of McLaren Automotive and McLaren Applied Technologies. Whitmarsh knows it can be done, or at least something quite similar. He will also be aware of the pitfalls.

Not satisfied with turning Aston into a Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari-beater, the aim is for the group Whitmarsh leads to become a ‘£1billion business’ within the next four or five years

While Toto Wolff pushes to make Mercedes’ Applied Science business a successful venture – thanks in no small part to shareholder Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s quest for Americas Cup glory – and Christian Horner is rightly proud of Red Bull Advanced Technologies’ development of the Aston Martin Valkyrie hypercar, there are rather more salutary tales to be told of such ventures at McLaren and Williams.

McLaren’s Applied division is no more. It was sold off to Greybull Capital back in August as McLaren renewed focus on Racing and Automotive. A division that Dennis once viewed as a much-loved prodigy later turned into a troublesome child. Once the McLaren Group’s new executive chairman Paul Walsh arrived in March 2020 – not a great month for business – Applied’s days were numbered.

Williams Advanced Engineering sold out to EMK Capital in 2019, so two of Britain’s most iconic F1 teams found that, while technology and innovation sells, scaling it beyond prototype engineering is not easy.
It will be fascinating to see how Whitmarsh uses those past experiences to help Stroll achieve his future goals.

Whitmarsh can lean on extensive experience gleaned from time at McLaren

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images