Aston Martin fresh financial troubles

[Misanthroper]

I wonder how much longer Aston Martin can afford to pour money into F1, which is largely a Stroll vanity project with not a massive amount of success.

The latest financial concern is being resolved via some sort of wooden dollar sale of the name to the F1 team, which is all under the same ownership anyway https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/20/a...

Who knows how long they ll remain in F1 without significantly better results and a tangible connection between F1 and car sales.

[C Lee Farquar]

I would be interested to read a deep dive into both companies finances. Face value seems to be that they are both borrowing increasingly large amounts of money at ever higher cost whilst losing increasingly large sums of money.

In addition, the car company makes less cars and the F1 team scores less points.

[bergclimber34]

Don't forget they have spent a huge amount on a new factory, this is a huge selling point if someone came in, the road car division is in tough times, tough brand to sell right now, as many are it seems. I know people who worked there who have recently been laid off.

Stroll is a tough man, apparently, but that is how you need to be. Newey will get it right I am sure, his new car is ambitious, been let down it seems by Honda who have fumbled new rules yet again.

The sad aspect is Nando who surely will not want to wait around forever, his speed will drop eventually. And Stroll is not good enough as a yardstick to know really.

[C Lee Farquar]

Yep, nice new factory but not paid for so the saving for anyone coming in would be on the timescale to construct similar.

It will be facinating to see if it all comes together as a sucessful F1 team or all turns out to be financial smoke and mirrors.

Or perhaps, more likely, somewhere between the two

Just a thought has anyone ever made a profit from owning Aston Martin car company or F1 successors to Jordon?

[birdcage]

The Middle Eastern customers kept them going in the 80's, then the V8 Vantage was a good car.

Take Bond out of the equation and it's always been a basket case after the 60's

[entropy]

Misanthroper said:

Who knows how long they ll remain in F1 without significantly better results and a tangible connection between F1 and car sales.

It doesn't affect the F1 team as it's an entirely different company - the one Larry saved Racing Point with - and is basically Team Stroll sponsored by AM. The road car division is a different company and Larry is just shifting money from one company to another to help the road car side.

Happy to be corrected

[TheDeuce]

entropy said:

Misanthroper said:

Who knows how long they ll remain in F1 without significantly better results and a tangible connection between F1 and car sales.

It doesn't affect the F1 team as it's an entirely different company - the one Larry saved Racing Point with - and is basically Team Stroll sponsored by AM. The road car division is a different company and Larry is just shifting money from one company to another to help the road car side.

Happy to be corrected

That's basically correct. He controls both the team and the car company. He named the team after the car company to essentially provide the car company with, I would assume, relatively low cost global exposure. If you controlled both you'd naturally seek to use one entity to inflate the fortunes of the other!

If the car company collapsed the team would be unaffected, other than it would require attachment to a different brand.

Aston Martin as a car manufacturer are deeply screwed for all sorts of reasons, they're far too small to develop and keep pace with modern automotive technology - theur future is likely as a sub brand for one if the automotive ginats. I think Mercedes are already well aligned to become that parent company, as and when Aston can no longer pay their bills.

[Piginapoke]

TheDeuce said:

entropy said:

Misanthroper said:

Who knows how long they ll remain in F1 without significantly better results and a tangible connection between F1 and car sales.

It doesn't affect the F1 team as it's an entirely different company - the one Larry saved Racing Point with - and is basically Team Stroll sponsored by AM. The road car division is a different company and Larry is just shifting money from one company to another to help the road car side.

Happy to be corrected

That's basically correct. He controls both the team and the car company. He named the team after the car company to essentially provide the car company with, I would assume, relatively low cost global exposure. If you controlled both you'd naturally seek to use one entity to inflate the fortunes of the other!

If the car company collapsed the team would be unaffected, other than it would require attachment to a different brand.

Aston Martin as a car manufacturer are deeply screwed for all sorts of reasons, they're far too small to develop and keep pace with modern automotive technology - theur future is likely as a sub brand for one if the automotive ginats. I think Mercedes are already well aligned to become that parent company, as and when Aston can no longer pay their bills.

This is the key point- Aston Martin Lagonda pays to sponsor the F1 team owned by Lawrence Stroll, the Exec Chair of AML- they are totally separate. You could argue this is a huge conflict of interest, and no sane car company that's losing £200m per year would pay another £20m to sponsor an F1 team.

With the value of F1 teams rocketing up, Stroll is lining his own pockets by investing in the F1 team at the expense of AML's shareholders, and employees (many of whom are now being laid off).

[TheDeuce]

Piginapoke said:

This is the key point- Aston Martin Lagonda pays to sponsor the F1 team owned by Lawrence Stroll, the Exec Chair of AML- they are totally separate. You could argue this is a huge conflict of interest, and no sane car company that's losing £200m per year would pay another £20m to sponsor an F1 team.

With the value of F1 teams rocketing up, Stroll is lining his own pockets by investing in the F1 team at the expense of AML's shareholders, and employees (many of whom are now being laid off).

That's probably unfair. AML do need to market themselves and they're very likely getting the F1 exposure for a great rate.

If a company is losing £200m a year and paying just £20m a year for global F1 exposure then the chances are they'd be laying off far more people if the F1 deal was ended. That's true more than ever now that there's a very real chance the Bond gravy train might be ended - or at least a long pause before they get a fresh dose of it.

[Blib]

The F1 team will become world beaters. As soon as Alonso packs his bags.

[TheDeuce]

Blib said:

The F1 team will become world beaters. As soon as Alonso packs his bags.

Finally, a time for Lance to shine

[rdjohn]

I think they are two completely separate entities. One owned by shareholders, the other owned by Stroll senior. The car maker is a dead duck. Lawrence has done a good job of finding other mugs to buy into his losses.

The F1 team is gold, in comparison. Cadillac could probably sell for $1billion without yet racing competitively. Has has already turned down more than that. F1 is a BUY in investment terms while the car manufacturing is a definite SELL.

So the selling of title naming rights is simply an accounting procedure. Once Lance becomes convinced that he is never likely to win the AMF1 he will, no doubt, be sold for really big bucks, probably to an ARAMCO consortium who will not use the AM moniker.

[Sandpit Steve]

AML haven t been profitable for seemingly decades now, probably since shortly after they first launched the new V8 Vantage.

Quite amazingly, with the way F1 is now structured the teams have an intrinsic value, so this deal is actually a reverse sponsorship with the F1 team investing in AML. As others have said they re two separate companies, although with many shareholders in common. The F1 team shareholders aren t too bothered as they re sitting on 10x their investment inside a decade.

They just need a competitive racing car now, which definitely wasn t on show in testing.

Edit: @rdjohn beats me to the same point by a couple of minutes!

[StevieBee]

rdjohn said:

I think they are two completely separate entities. One owned by shareholders, the other owned by Stroll senior. The car maker is a dead duck. Lawrence has done a good job of finding other mugs to buy into his losses.

The F1 team is gold, in comparison. Cadillac could probably sell for $1billion without yet racing competitively. Has has already turned down more than that. F1 is a BUY in investment terms while the car manufacturing is a definite SELL.

So the selling of title naming rights is simply an accounting procedure. Once Lance becomes convinced that he is never likely to win the AMF1 he will, no doubt, be sold for really big bucks, probably to an ARAMCO consortium who will not use the AM moniker.

If the trend continues, we could end up with a reverse of Enzo Ferrari's mantra of selling road cars in order to go racing!