Even before you meet Lawrence Stroll, there’s a foolproof way of forming a strong impression of his success and prowess at leadership.
Just take a walk along the wide central corridor of his brand-new, £200 million Formula 1 team headquarters, built on the site of the old Jordan and Force India factories at Silverstone.
It will teach you much of what you need to know in a short time – especially if your guide, like ours, is an Aston Martin insider who has worked in other F1 teams and knows the differences.
Aston Martin Aramco F1 is now “by a mile” the best-equipped team in the sport, your guide will tell you with pride, and the winning ambition of its Big Boss and his 800 employees fully matches the fabulous facilities.
This place is filled with the anticipation of success, part of which comes from the fact that Stroll is the only remaining “old-style” F1 team owner, involved every day in leading a winning business.
The Frank Williams and Ron Dennis characters are gone: apart from Stroll, today’s F1 team owners are OEMs and investment funds. Building this F1 team would have been a mammoth achievement if Stroll and Aston Martin had taken 20 years to create it, but the opportunity arrived “very unexpected and unplanned” about six years ago, says Stroll, when we settle in his corner office, sumptuous but simple, to hear the story.
There had been lots of time before the meeting to wonder what it – and he – would be like. This Canadian billionaire, who cites fashion as his business and cars as his passion, has a reputation even among business equals for being a tough character who wastes little time getting to the point.
Photographs usually show a poker player’s features, unsmiling, hard to read and absolutely no pushover. Today has apparently turned into a busier day than Stroll expected: will urgent business pressures make our talk too much of a pain in the backside? It has happened before.
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Stroll is Canadian. Aston Martin's management also said they would be Cash Flow positive in the 2nd half of 2023 & 2nd half of 2024. Didn't exactly happen.
Emmm plaudits from Auto car are a little misplaced I feel. He's now loaded the firm with debt, not the first American to perform a UK buy out then load it with debt, Man U style. And the F1 part was purely to get his son a drive.
Stroll is actually Canadian.