Aston Martin ‘3-5 years away’ from fighting for F1 world titles

Aston Martin will need a “3-5 year time period” to be in a position to fight for and win a world championship title in Formula 1, according to team principal and CEO Otmar Szafnauer.

The former Racing Point squad has rebranded to Aston Martin for 2021 after team owner Lawrence Stroll took a majority shareholding in the British manufacturer at the start of last year.

Stroll has outlined bold ambitions of turning his outfit into a world-championship winning side in the future, having captured the signature of four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel from Ferrari to partner his son Lance at the team for the upcoming season.

Speaking at the launch of Aston Martin’s AMR21 2021 F1 car on Wednesday, Szafnauer stressed the team is still a few years away from reaching its target.

“It’s a lot easier to say we’re going to be fighting and winning a world championship than actually do it,” he said.

“The two things that have to happen are one we need a good plan in order to start today and get to world championship contenders and then we’ve got to execute [the plan].

“We’re in the midst of that planning now and the execution will definitely take some time. People in Formula 1, in other teams have said you’ve got to give us 3-5 years to do so and we’re no different.

"For the last year we’ve planned a new factory with new infrastructure in a place to house all of us under one roof, to grow the team, and the implementation of that has just now begun at Silverstone and towards the end of 2022 we should be moving into a new factory.

“And within that factory we’re going to need state of the art tools that will help us design and develop a car that’s worthy of contending for a world championship.

“That’s a few years away. If I have to look into the future it’ll be in the 3-5 year time period.”

Having overcome financial pressures and challenges both on and off-track in the past, Szafnauer insisted the Silverstone-based team has demonstrated it can cope with the additional pressure the Aston Martin name brings.

“As a group of racers and having that special DNA at the team we’ve always put pressures on ourselves to compete to the highest levels with the resources that we had,” he explained.

“In the past, we had other pressures, financial pressures or times where we couldn’t put an entire car together but we had to go racing and do the best we could with it.

“This is just a different type of pressure but we’re absolutely used to it. We’ve got to make sure that the pressure we exert on the system is helpful and drives us in the right direction.

“I tend to believe that pressure can either create diamonds or burst pipes and we’ve got to make sure that the pressure we put on ourselves to achieve will create that diamond we are searching for.”