Why Stroll believes his “de-risked” Aston masterplan is feasible

Tread the streets of St James’s and you echo the footsteps of the great and the good, the influencers and dealmakers, the movers and shakers of a corner of London which has accommodated the elite since Restoration times. At its heart, St James’s Square; for at least two centuries 
one of London’s most fashionable addresses until the 
arrival of gentlemen’s clubs and - ugh, whisper it - commercial establishments prompted the aristocracy to up sticks for nearby Belgravia.

Brass plates by the sturdy doors of these imposing high-ceilinged edifices now allude to the present occupants’ line of work. These are no longer houses, since 21st century commerce has no need of bedrest. Within, you will find businesses carrying opaque and anodyne titles, and specialising in such as merger arbitrage and special situations equity and fundamental bottom-up approaches to portfolio construction. Through these vestibules flows wealth to an order of decimal places by which a mere millionaire is a veritable beggar in comparison.

The northern side of the square holds the grandest buildings, erected on the most spacious plots. Number 5, formerly Wentworth House, built in the classical Palladian style in the 18th century by Matthew Brettingham the Elder, is one such. Lawrence Stroll set a new rental record for London when he established offices here in 2017.

A blue plaque on the adjoining building denotes number four as a former residence of Nancy Astor, the first woman MP; it is now the home of the Naval and Military Club, aka ‘The In and Out’, whose president was the late Prince Philip, and which does not publish its membership fees. Further along the eastern row, hoardings cover the demolished remnants of Norfolk House, where General Dwight D Eisenhower drew plans for the D-Day invasion. A £72million office building has been commissioned here by an ‘undisclosed client’. Historic wealth, power and ambition thrum and sizzle through this area like a high-voltage circuit board.

GP Racing buzzes the door of number five and is whisked inwards to a space of restrained opulence: a waiting area with twin leather armchairs and a wide stone staircase leading to the offices of the man himself. Lawrence Stroll, dressed business-casual, greets us from behind a broad desk illuminated by a pair of tall, broad windows which offer a panorama of the square below.

Though we’re speaking to a man with many business interests, only one of them is reflected in the decor: an action photograph of an Aston Martin F1 pitstop on the wall behind the desk, and trophies above the fireplace. The cars are designed and built 70 miles from here in considerably less grand surroundings, but that is about to change and it is from here the strings are being pulled.

Stroll has ambitious plans for Aston Martin, including challenging for titles in five years

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar/Motorsport Images

In mid-September Stroll, alongside JCB chairman Lord Bamford – one of the co-investors Stroll brought to the table to rescue the troubled car brand 18 months ago – broke ground on the new Aston Martin Formula 1 factory near Silverstone which is expected to cost between £150m and £200m. But remember we’re sitting in St James’s, where capital outflows of millions are but chump change. The new facility, which the boss prefers to call a campus rather than a factory, will form the hub of what Stroll aims to grow into a billion-dollar business under the Aston Martin Performance Technologies umbrella.

“Sadly, it’s two years behind the timeframe originally planned because of COVID,” says Stroll. “I’d hoped we would have been in it by today.

“The most essential tool for any Formula 1 team to have the latest and greatest state-of-the-art campus – it’s a campus, not a factory. We will have three buildings with facilities including a restaurant, a fitness centre and a windtunnel. I think it sets us worlds apart from our competitors.

“You know, it’s a huge investment. To win in Formula 1, it’s about the right leadership and vision and, like any business, it’s about having the right finances in place. And quite honestly, with the new financial regs, it really does level the playing field. We will no longer be outspent by our competitors – we will have the same budgets as the top two teams.”

"I would never have bought a team fumbling around in ninth or 10th. What impressed me, and the reason for the acquisition, was this was a team operating on a £90m budget and only 400 headcount, but two years in a row it was fourth in the championship, and it would have been three years without the administration" Lawrence Stroll

Therein lies the difference between Lawrence Stroll and others who have acquired distressed assets in Formula 1 and the wider automotive world over the past few years. He has access to capital and isn’t afraid to spend it – so long as the risks are properly understood and mitigated. That’s a stark contrast with so many wannabe team owners who have looked to swoop when the going is cheap, but using funds leveraged against that team’s future earnings: in effect gambling with somebody else’s money. 


When Stroll’s ventures require others to come in and share the risk, he has a track record of returning a significant profit for himself and has co-investors - which is why so many 
of them happily return to the watering hole. Aston Martin co-investor Silas Chou, for instance, achieved splendid returns on his investment in the relaunch and IPO of the Michael Kors fashion label, orchestrated by Stroll.

It helps that in the post-Bernie Ecclestone era, F1’s commercial rights holder takes a more collegiate and collaborative approach to growing the business. The budget cap – agreed in the face of much gnashing of teeth from F1’s entrenched big-spenders – and the $200m ‘entry ticket’ enshrined in the latest Concorde Agreement have put the competitors on a better financial footing.

The cost cap will make F1 more equitable and, Stroll hopes, give the likes of Aston a chance to take on the establishment more often

Photo by: Motorsport Images

While the cap isn’t going to transform the competitive landscape immediately, it means F1 is no longer a bottomless pit into which the frontrunners lob money indiscriminately. Together with the new barrier to entry which enshrines each team with a franchise value, it makes all the competitors much more investible. When Stroll rescued what was then known as Force India from administration in the summer of 2018 this was not yet a done deal, but was certainly part of the plan for F1’s new owners.

“I had several meetings with Chase [Carey, F1 CEO] at the time,” says Stroll. “And that was a very, very big part of my decision-making process whether to buy the company or not. It had a big influence on my decision. If there would have just been no spending limits, I couldn’t compete.

“People – human capital – is a very important factor. I would never have bought a team fumbling around in ninth or 10th. What impressed me, and the reason for the acquisition, was this was a team operating on a £90m budget and only 400 headcount [at the time, Mercedes was spending £332m per year, and had 900 staff at Brackley alone], but two years in a row it was fourth in the championship, and it would have been three years without the administration. All on a third of the budget and less than half the headcount of the competitors above them.

“There was already a nucleus of 400 very passionate people – that famous expression, punching above their weight. They were doing more with less than other teams, so this was an incredible opportunity to build on an already strong base. We weren’t starting from zero.

“When the company [Force India] went to administration, there was not a plan at that point other than trying to focus on whether we g0t the asset. After getting the asset, yes, it was a very clear vision of mine that this is an automotive company. And I had this dream that, being based at Silverstone for nearly three decades, it needs to be a British brand. And for me there’s only one British brand that warranted being on the F1 pedestal. And that was Aston Martin. It was kind of a dream come true.”

The COVID-induced delay to the building of the new ‘campus’ has worked in Stroll’s favour since the plans have evolved during the hiatus and accommodate new developments, chief of which has been a change of plan regarding the windtunnel. Originally this was off the menu since the team believed it could handle ongoing development by continuing to lease time in the Mercedes tunnel up the road.

A disappointing 2021 campaign – disappointing, that is, based on the team’s form last season as well as its expectations for this one – is understood to be the chief reason for the volte face. Having cloned Mercedes’ low-rake aero concept, Aston Martin was similarly affected by the rules changes in the off-season and has struggled to develop its way back into contention.

Stroll performed a U-turn on the decision to include a windtunnel in Aston's new premises

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar/Motorsport Images

During a Zoom press conference the week before GP Racing’s audience with him, Stroll explained chief technical officer Andy Green had sold him on the advantages of an in-house tunnel, the crux of the conversation being “if you really want to be world champion, it’s a tool you’re going to need”. By signing off on it Stroll is in effect betting against a windtunnel ban, presently mooted for 2030, ever happening.

“It cost a bit of money, that change of mind,” said Stroll at the time. GP Racing gently presses him on this, since it’s become almost a cliche of F1 news writing that any story about him will reference his chequebook before the first paragraph is over. And yet he obviously didn’t get where he is today by squandering investors’ funds or, indeed, backing many losing horses.

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

“Actually none,” he says. “We invest to build a business for the future. I don’t think I’ve ever spent a lot or lost.”

"It’s a 108-year-old, iconic British institution. Companies like [Aston Martin] don’t come up very often, and you can’t recreate them – it would take another 108 years. For me it is by far the premier British luxury brand" Lawrence Stroll

The car manufacturer Aston Martin was an altogether different class of distressed asset compared with the F1 team which has now been folded into the brand. While it was doing most things right in terms of its model range – an SUV was on its way, as well as a high-profile halo car designed in collaboration with Red Bull – its stock exchange flotation in October 2018 greatly overvalued the business as it stood. When demand inexplicably plummeted over the course of 2019 its share price followed
 a similar trajectory and it went to the market to raise more cash.

Stroll’s consortium rescued it from going bust for the eighth time in January 2020, and when the pandemic nudged the finances further into crisis it was Stroll who stepped in, via his Yew Tree investment vehicle, to provide what is described in the London Stock Exchange filings as “£55.5m of short-term working capital support”. In effect, keeping the lights on and the salaries paid.

The LSE filings adumbrate the consortium’s rescue plan – better matching of supply to demand, more focus on marketing, headcount reductions in key areas, delaying development of certain models – but GP Racing remains curious as to where the seasoned entrepreneur draws the line between a distressed asset with potential and an irredeemable basket case.

“You sit down with smart people and do due diligence,” he says. “This is beyond a brand, it’s a 108-year-old, iconic British institution. Companies like this don’t come up very often, and you can’t recreate them – it would take another 108 years. For me it is by far the premier British luxury brand, and probably the greatest global premier luxury brand.

Heritage of the Aston Martin brand was a key draw for Stroll in rescuing the troubled manufacturer in 2020

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

“And then it was a matter of understanding, well, what happened to the business? Why did it go off-track? In the case of Aston Martin, after a few days of due diligence it became very clear to me what happened, and what needed to be done.

“There was a lot of risk when I took on the job [executive chairman] in April last year, there were five boxes that needed to be checked. I've checked every one and now we’re on the road to success. The business is now de-risked and the momentum is just phenomenal, as you’ve seen in our numbers. And as I said in my last quarterly report, I’ve delivered everything thing I’ve promised. So was there risk? Absolutely. Is that risk today behind us? Completely."

Those figures are impressive, albeit with the caveat that comparing the first half of 2021 with the first half of 2020 (revenue up from £146m to £499m, operating losses cut from £159m to £38m) is complicated by the effects of the pandemic. Aston Martin has benefitted from pent-up demand, but the business still carries a large debt burden and may be affected by the stormy weather forecast for the global economy. The City seems to take this view since share price growth has stalled since the beginning of the year after a strong recovery in the second half of 2020.

There are questions, too, about the realism of the stated aim of making Aston Martin a world championship-winning team within a five-year time frame. Firstly, as Renault amply proved while shifting its own goalposts over the past five years, this is easier said than done.

Potential uncertainties include the completion of the campus (the main building should be ready in 18 months but the windtunnel won’t be operative until 2024) as well as the starting dates of new staff, owing to gardening leave. Alfa Romeo’s Luca Furbatto will join as engineering director early next year, but putative technical director Dan Fallows remains the subject of a protracted wrangle with Red Bull, where he is (or was) head of aerodynamics.

The scope and scale of all this headhunting is a further indicator of Stroll’s seriousness about building his F1 team into a world championship contender as part of a wider “billion-dollar business”. He talks about the new campus as being different in form and function to the McLaren Technology Centre: the architecture will both strongly reflect the Aston Martin brand and be conceived as a pleasant environment to work in, the better to recruit and retain key staff.

Column: Why Aston Martin's new F1 base marks a significant step

“We’re gonna have what I think will be the best fitness centre by far in F1,” he says. “We’ll have outdoor running, walking and training, therapists, fitness instructors and physiotherapists. It’s all about healthy body, healthy mind. In the plans for the three buildings on campus, the centre one is focused on that, it’s about well-being and it will have by far the best restaurant in F1. We’re going to have a lot of farm-to-table, fitness classes during the morning and evenings. The better you feel, the better you think.”

The new Aston Martin Campus has been billed as a 'reverse MTC'

Photo by: Aston Martin Racing

While road car design and construction will continue in Aston Martin’s base at Gaydon, some design and technology function is expected to transfer to the new Silverstone campus, where they will be joined by other businesses “to be determined”. F1 and the road car business are now operating under the wider umbrella of Aston Martin Performance Technologies, to which Stroll has recruited former McLaren man Martin Whitmarsh as CEO.

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

McLaren recently sold off its Applied division, a move its CEO, Zak Brown, told GP Racing was a strategic decision because McLaren was a racing organisation rather than a technology company. Stroll, interestingly, doesn’t regard these as mutually exclusive.

"The goal of this is being world champions in F1, that is the purpose of the new campus and recruitment drive. It’s all F1 based and focused" Lawrence Stroll

“Formula 1 will be one of the main pillars by far in this group,” he says. “We will also be having other businesses under Performance Technologies, and in years to come other racing activities perhaps. We will have a group of 700-800 professionals who will have expertise that can be shared in various other fields of businesses.

“I don’t see having a performance technology business is any distraction from F1. The goal of this is being world champions in F1, that is the purpose of the new campus and recruitment drive. It’s all F1 based and focused.”

He pauses, then leans forwards, fixing GP Racing with a stare to emphasise his point: “Very focused!”

Stroll broke ground on the new 'campus' earlier this year

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images