The BWT Racing Point F1 Team has explained that turning into Aston Martin Racing will not see them become a ‘Monster’ Formula 1 team, Andrew Green has admitted.
The 2021 FIA Formula 1 World Championship will see Aston Martin return to the Formula 1 grid after a prolonged period of absence. This comes after Racing Point owner Lawrence Stroll made an investment and bought shares into the British car company. This also saw the announcement of Red Bull Racing‘s sponsorship with Aston Martin coming to an end.
The team is currently seeing an upgrade to its facilities including a new build factory for the team. After the team dealt with several years of financial difficulty as the Sahara Force India F1 Team before the Racing Point consortium purchased the team in 2018.
However, with this Green, the technical director of Racing Point, expressed that they are not looking to expand to the size of bigger F1 teams. He stressed they would under being efficient under the new Formula 1 cost cap which will be introduced next season.
Green explained during Formula 1’s Beyond the Grid Podcast: “It was one of the first discussions that we had [with Stroll], ‘what do you need? What should we be doing?’, with a view to not becoming one of these big monster Formula 1 teams,
“[We wanted] to try and maintain the efficiency and the size that we currently have, which we really felt was a proper, sweet spot, as far as a team size is concerned.
“We don’t want to suddenly expand from 450 people to 800-900 people. That was never on the wish list.“
Green touched on the deal which has been struck with the world champions Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team, which sees them being able to use the wind tunnel and he explained how this was big for the team. He added that it would not have been possible without Stroll helping to make the breakthrough with his investment in the team.
“One of the big discussions that we had, how do we shortcut reducing the gap to those top three teams?
“We’ve seen it year after year after year, that these top three teams just completely outperform the rest of the grid. And it’s not rocket science – it’s just physics.
“We have been having discussions with Mercedes for a very long time about using their wind tunnel. It wasn’t really until Lawrence turned up and the regulations started to allow it.
“Lawrence turning up and adding that additional lever to allow Mercedes to open up to us, as far as the wind tunnel is concerned, that was a big, big change.”
