Lawrence Stroll has recently snubbed reports of him selling the Aston Martin F1 team. This has come after the Aston Martin chairman sold an unconfirmed minority percentage stake to Arctos Partners, a Dallas-based investment firm.
Speaking about this, Stroll said in an interview with The New York Times as per SpeedCafe, “I plan to run these businesses for many, many years. I’m at the beginning of the journey on both.” The Canadian businessman read rumors about his exits post the minority stake sale, and gave his clarification on the same.
“I’m not getting any younger each day. I feel younger, but I’m not getting any younger. But I’m not going anywhere.”, said Stroll.
During the time of sale, the team’s valuation was up to $1.27 billion and reports emerged that Stroll was happy to walk away with that sort of money. Furthermore, his sale of stake to renowned sports investment group Arctos also triggered the exit rumors further.
This was simply because Arctos is a renowned name when it comes to sports-based investment. They already have stakes in MLB outfit Boston Red Sox and in Fenway Sports Group, the outfit that owns Premier League club Liverpool. Nevertheless, the Canadian businessman assured that he is here to stay and that is for at least ten years.
How was Lawrence Stroll repeatedly linked with an exit from the team?
Time and time again F1 experts have said that Lawrence Stroll might sell his team anytime soon. This was because Aston Martin’s main sector of automobiles was going through losses and on top of that his son Lance Stroll was heavily underperforming.
Therefore, there were speculations regarding the Canadian businessman’s withdrawal from the sport. Former Ferrari manager Peter Windsor once claimed that the 64-year-old was holding on just to see his son win the F1 world championship.
Nevertheless, it was Stroll who showed remarkable commitment to his team by back-to-back investments. On this, he said, “You don’t go spending hundreds of millions of pounds, building the greatest new Formula 1 campus, if you’re about to leave the business, and you don’t go hiring another 400 of the greatest employees if you’re about to leave the business.”
Admittedly, Stroll invested multi-million dollars in a new state-of-the-art facility that houses a brand new wind tunnel, aerodynamics development, and housing of the staff. It is situated in Silverstone, United Kingdom. This means, they no longer have to use the wind tunnel they leased from Mercedes.
Therefore, the British team can now focus on having a better F1 season than their 2023 outing which saw lots of ups and downs. Aston Martin started the year as the second-fastest team, but by the end of the season, they were the fifth-fastest team, unfortunately.
