Admitting that a title win is at least five seasons away, Aston Martin owner Lawrence Stroll makes it clear that he's not in F1 to make up the numbers.
While Aston Martin hasn't exactly taken over where Racing Point left off, things are slowly coming together.
It's current position in the driver and team standings aside, it is things like the new factory and the recruitment of Luca Furbatto as Engineering Director, Andrew Alessi as Head of Technical Operations and Red Bull's Dan Fallows as Technical Director that is really making people sit up and take notice.
Speaking to the media ahead of his team's home Grand Prix, team owner Lawrence Stroll made it clear that the high-profile signings and new factory are all part of his master plan to make Aston Martin a title winning team.
"My track record in pretty much every other business I own is to win," said the Canadian. "In F1, that obviously means world championships... ultimately, that's what we are striving for.
"Of course, we all know that success in F1 or any other business doesn't come overnight," he continued. "It takes years to put the right people, tools, processes in place. But we're building and investing in our team with the ambition of moving up the grid year by year and our ultimate ambition is to win world championships."
However, the billionaire businessman admits that in F1 there is no such thing as overnight success.
"I don't think we can expect to win before four or five years," he adds.
As his vision for Aston Martin takes shape, he admits that the factory and recent signings are just the beginning.
"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.
"We announce pretty much almost on a weekly basis now the hiring of brilliant new senior technical and engineering talent," he continued, before adding: "This week we'll be announcing another very senior member of another team joining us.
"We currently have approximately 500 employees, 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.
"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."
With his no-nonsense approach, Stroll was quick to be accepted by the Piranha Club, indeed his bullish attitude is reminiscent of several past and current members, the Canadian not shy when it comes to making his view known, or warning that there will be implications.
"There are a lot of strong personalities and smart people in F1," he said. "If you're going to be pushed around, I don't think you're going to succeed in this or any other sport.
"I have stood for what I believe to be correct," he added. "I have not made a significant investment in this company not to be fighting for the world championships, so we are going to do everything we can within the rules to succeed."
A perfect example being this year's aero rule change, which he insists was introduced deliberately to frustrate Aston Martin, which in recent seasons has been clearly 'influenced' by Mercedes.
"This year was a very controversial year with the cut in the floor with the aero regs," he said. "You are all smart enough to see that the two low-rake cars lost about a second a lap. So it is no coincidence Mercedes are fighting for a championship that for many years they easily won.
"The change in regs that has severely penalised us and Mercedes is the reason for the decrease in performance from this year to last year."
Asked about his drivers, the Canadian replied: "Lance has done an extraordinary job. He is 22 years of age. His performances whether being on pole or several podiums. He is competing this year with Sebastian, they are probably about even. So I don't have any concerns or feelings that Lance has lack of performance. As he grows, he will get more experience, and as he gets more experience he will get stronger."
Admitting that Vettel had made a "slow start" to the season, he admitted that the German is "doing a great job now".
Asked about rumours that he is looking for a new team CEO, Stroll said: "We have not been looking for a new CEO to run the team," he said. "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."
sign in