Aston Martin to announce another major F1 team hiring

2021 F1 season

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Aston Martin is poised to announce the hiring of another senior team member as it bids to make its technical division second to none in Formula 1.

The team’s executive chairman Lawrence Stroll revealed the forthcoming announcement as part of his drive to double the workforce of the former Racing Point team, which he rebranded this year.

“We are hiring brilliant new senior technical and engineering talent all the time and the result will be a technical and engineering strength in the company equal to, if not better than, any other Formula 1 team,” Stroll told media including RaceFans in an interview on Thursday.

“We announce pretty much almost on a weekly basis now the hiring of brilliant new senior technical and engineering talent. This week we’ll be announcing another very senior member of another team joining us.”

The latest appointment follows the hiring of three senior engineers in the past month, two of which have come from rivals Red Bull. Andrew Alessi has taken over as head of technical operations while Dan Fallows is due to arrive as the team’s new technical director in 2023. Luca Furbatto will arrive from Alfa Romeo as Aston Martin’s new engineering director next year.

The team, known until 2018 as Force India, had one of the smallest workforces in the field when Stroll bought it three years ago. It will be around twice the size once his hiring spree is complete.

“We currently have approximately 500 employees,” said Stroll. “When I took over Force India we had approximately 400, we’ve grown by about 100. And it’s not just quantity, it’s quality.

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“In Formula 1 it takes time to get people: contracts, garden leaves, et cetera. But in the near term, we plan to push that number to approximately 800 people.”

However he denied a replacement for the team’s CEO Otmar Szafnauer is among his intended hires.

“We have not been looking for a new CEO to run the team,” said Stroll. “We are looking for just about every other position, in terms of going from the 500 people we currently have to the 800 people.

“But we will always be looking to strengthen anywhere that we can. And we’re getting a tremendous amount of people applying for positions. We never had this luxury before we became Aston Martin.”

The Hamilton Commission, headed by Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton, today issued a report outlining 10 recommendations on improving access to British motorsport jobs to black people.

While Stroll had not yet seen the report at the time of the interview, shortly after its publication, he stressed the team’s commitment to offering equal opportunities.

“We completely support – whether you’re white, you’re black, you’re male or female – we have a very diverse opportunity scheme. As long as you’re qualified for position, whether you’re white or black or male or female is irrelevant. So we’re very open minded, like I’ve been with all my previous companies.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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25 comments on “Aston Martin to announce another major F1 team hiring”

  1. Judging by that picture I hope they are hiring a top class barber.

    1. And personal trainer?

  2. The above has been updated – although Stroll referred to ‘another team’ this is understood not to refer to another F1 team, which the text has been revised to reflect.

    1. Ah, that’s an important change of tone @keithcollantine, thanks for the heads up!

    2. Alexandre Pereira
      21st July 2021, 16:49

      No announcement?

  3. A masterclass in corporate culture what not to.

    Take a team known for creating fast cars on a tiny budget, tell them to stop using your own ideas and just copy someone else. When that doesn’t to the job, hire new management from other teams because the ones you bought and told to work in a different way immediately didn’t produce the result you wanted… I wonder how much he’s tried to throw under Newey’s nose.

    1. You clearly have 0 idea on what F1 is about. First they copy the Mercedes because it was supposed to be the last year of the current regulation and they wanted and easy way to get back to the midfield and focus on the new car. It worked last year as they had the third fastest car. Second, they’re hiring a ton of money because its the first time in team history they have the money to expand. And last, all they time teams hire personal from other teams, RB hired a ton of Mercedes employees. It will always happen, he’s doing a good job at AM, he’s elevating it to be a contender

      1. Right. The point of the pinnacle of Motorsport engineering is to rip off entire designs. Good chat.

        I don’t care about hiring staff from other teams, it is indeed a core part of the sport. Force India were a giant killer, with a brilliant record against teams with bigger budgets. Now they’re an underperforming pseudo manufacturer.

    2. Disagree, the whole thing was brilliant. Just got unlucky with the new floor regs. Still, they now know in detail what a top car is and that will benefit them hugely going forward.

      The existing team was great, especially operationally, but strengthening the technical side will not take away from that at all.

      Impressed with Stroll. His success formula from previous businesses of increasing brand value is also going to work. Top people will want to work for a punchy Aston Martin.

      1. Just got unlucky with the new floor regs.

        That still is only a theory. High rake, low rake, not sure how the floor effects performance. We do know the Red bull was able to beat the old mercedes on merrit last year last race with the complete floor.
        We do know they bought a copy but did not know how to innovate on that unknown platform.
        Several races in the first copy year showed clearly they had no clue how to develop the car. Without knowing why some choices are made that is a hell of a job.

  4. They should try hiring some new drivers instead. Mercedes has Hamilton and soon Russell, Red Bull has Verstappen, Ferrari has Leclerc and McLaren has Norris. Stroll and Vettel are neither on level with above mentioned names. Drivers are the biggest factors making the difference when the top teams are so close on the grid. If Lando can put that McLaren in P2, I wonder what he could do with Aston.

    1. Dumbest comment I’ve seen in a while. Vettel may have lost some confidence in his later Ferrari days, but he’s not lost his driving ability nor his knowledge to win championships. The kids you’re hyping up, Norris and Leclerc have never been put under the scrutiny of a title fight. Maybe until they do before you rate them above a 4-time world champion yeah.

      1. Winning 4 titles doesn’t mean anything if you then don’t perform on track, I’m not saying vettel didn’t have some good races this year, but I don’t rate him any better because of having titles, you’re only as good as you’re performing atm, so I don’t agree with the previous one being a dumb comment.

        A better lineup would help for AM but it’s not terrible and the car is the biggest differentiator nowadays, when between best and worst driver there’s 1 sec but between best and worst car there’s 2,5 sec or so.

      2. Vettel hasnt lost it, since he never had it. Putting a car on pole and then driving into the distance on Sundays doesnt really qualify as race skills. He’s sure is fast with no one around, that’s true. Hiring Vettel only makes sense when you are in a Mercedes situation where you’re so dominant even your scrappy nr 2 takes wins should nr 1 fail.

    2. They’re not at a stage to win WDC/WCC yet – their driving pairing is fine. Vettel will help the team in its expansion. They’re still years away yet.

  5. All the driver you just mention except Lewis are academy drivers, you can’t compare them to teams with acadamy. And Vettel is still a top driver, as he demonstrated on Baku and Monaco

    1. “ And Vettel is still a top driver, as he demonstrated on Baku and Monaco”

      And here I am thinking a top driver would have demonstrated his skills in Bahrain, Imola, Portimao, Spain, Austria, Styria AND Baku and Monaco……

    2. Verstappen is not really a academy driver though.. he only took part to try the TR.

  6. There’s a part of me that wants to shout, this is silly, there’s no way he’ll be successful, you cant just throw money at a project, throw your voice around and expect it to work. But there’s another part of me that knows this is exactly how some successful business people go about building businesses, and there’s a fair chance that it will work. The question is how good is he at picking the diamonds from the rough, how well they can work together and whether he will be able to give them a motivating environment where their potential is realised.

    At the end of the day he is being very upfront about him being the one to build this enterprise up, so whether as with Mateschitz before him he builds a decades spanning legacy, or ends up being forced to up tuck and run is a story yet to come.

    1. There is not much more to say about this, I agree.

    2. @skipgamer Mateschitz/Red Bull is probably the best recent example to prove this approach can work. They bought Jaguar, a midfield team at best, hired some big names (Adrian Newey) and eventually got to the top of the sport. Hopefully that can bring us something like the 2010 season, with several drivers from several teams fighting for the championship until the last race.

    3. The question is how good is he at picking the diamonds from the rough, how well they can work together and whether he will be able to give them a motivating environment where their potential is realised.

      I would argue that as a team principal/owner, that is exactly the difference between the successful ones and the lesser ones @skipgamer.

      As @Warheart mentions, it is how Mateschitz was able to build up top notch sports teams with Red Bull. And it shows in how Ross Brawn, and then Toto Woff together with Lauda built up Mercedes. And it seems Zak Brown is doing a similarly solid job at McLaren recently. On the other hand, that seems to be what is missing most at Renault in recent years.

  7. The reason this often works in business is because it frequently doesn’t matter whether a company produces a good product, only whether people think it is a good product. Unfortunately, you can’t impress a stopwatch with a slide show and a black turtleneck.

  8. Adam (@rocketpanda)
    14th July 2021, 10:57

    Isn’t doing this, going round buying up particularly good people to create a ‘dream team’ of sorts the exact thing Red Bull did when they entered the sport? I mean it did kinda work out for them.

    That said because of how intimately tied to Mercedes this team is I just don’t see them ever challenging for a title. Wins, maybe.

  9. As long as you’re qualified for position, whether you’re white or black or male or female is irrelevant.

    That’s professionalism.

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