What Lawrence Stroll ‘couldn’t believe’ he was seeing during his first visit to Force India’s F1 factory

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Otmar Szafnauer has revealed what billionaire team owner Lawrence Stroll thought of the Aston Martin factory at Silverstone before it was taken over.

Before being taken over by a consortium led by Stroll in 2018, Aston Martin ran under the ‘Force India’ guise and was owned by Indian businessman Vijay Malja.

The team often punched above its weight as it did not have the same resources as everyone else including a wind tunnel facility, and would often need to cut back on high-tech appliances because they could not afford them.

During the latter years of Force India the team eventually ran out of money, and Szafnauer admitted that on two occasions he paid ‘millions’ in salary money to every staff member before it went into administration midway through 2018.

At the time the team was looking for a buyer, with Lawrence Stroll leading a consortium of investors who were looking at fully investing in a team beyond their involvement with Williams. When he came to see Silverstone base for the first time, he was surprised at what he saw according to Szafnauer on the High Performance podcast.

Lawrence Stroll could not believe an F1 front wing was being assembled on a rubbish bin

Force India finished fourth in the Constructors’ Championship for two seasons prior to being excluded from 2018, owing to them going into administration.

Stroll knew he could improve the team’s fortunes when he took over the entity, but it did involve some convincing and a rather odd moment during the factory tour led by Szafnauer.

“Lawrence himself said ‘I couldn’t believe it’ – He walked into the electronics department and they were instrumenting a front wing with someone sitting on a stool, and the wing was on top of a rubbish bin so he could work at the right height,” said Szafnauer.

“He couldn’t believe that we were performing at the level that we were performing with having the front wing instrumented sitting on top of a rubbish bin. But that’s all we had.”

Aston Martin now has ‘most modern’ factory on the F1 grid

When Stroll took over Force India it was briefly renamed ‘Racing Point’ before a deal to use the Aston Martin name was struck at the end of 2020.

Since then he has embarked on a spending spree to bring it up to date with teams at the top of the grid like Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull in a bid to challenge for titles.

Aston Martin’s factory which recently opened at Silverstone was named the ‘most modern’ on the grid, with three buildings that will be used to build the cars.

READ MORE: Everything you need to know about Aston Martin F1 Team from team principal to lineage

Buildings two and three are the main wind tunnels and gearbox assembly buildings, while the team will outsource its engines to Honda from the 2026 season.

Adrian Newey referred to the factory when he was announced as joining the team in September, and even took a dig at McLaren’s facilities when talking about what is needed to succeed in F1.