03/03/2021
NEWS STORY
Aston Martin team boss, Otmar Szafnauer admits that it will be up to five years before the team is ready to challenge for the title.
Surely the appearance of James Bond and NFL star Tom Brady at today's virtual launch underlined Lawrence Stroll's determination to take Aston Martin to the front of the F1 grid.
From the outset the Canadian has said that he isn't in F1 to make up the numbers but to challenge for the title.
Speaking shortly after Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll pulled back the covers to reveal the AMR21, team boss Otmar Szafnauer made clear that winning the title remains the clear aim, though he admits that this won't be the work of a moment.
"It's a lot easier to say we're going to be fighting and winning a world championship than actually doing it," he admitted. "The two things that have to happen are, one, we need a good plan in order for us 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," he continued, "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.
"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."
In the midst of today's fanfare it would be easy to forget how, in an earlier guise, the team was almost lost to the sport. Indeed, the team from Dadford Road has had more than its fair share of upheavals over the years. However, Szafnauer believes it is the team's ability to meet the many challenges it has faced that will help carry it forward.
"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 said. "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."
Check out our Aston Martin AMR21 reveal gallery, here.