Lawrence Stroll admits 'patience' struggle in Aston Martin project

Aston Martin F1 owner Lawrence Stroll has admitted that he struggles with 'patience' in a discussion of his lofty ambitions for the team's future.

As well as being a motivated businessman, the Canadian billionaire is part-owner and executive chairman of Aston Martin and the father of F1 driver Lance Stroll.

Stroll and his team-mate Fernando Alonso are seeing Aston Martin into a new era next season when they tackle the sport's regulations overhaul, which is expected to completely reset the competitive order.

The Silverstone-based squad are hoping to benefit from this and hit the ground running, with an upwards trajectory not ruled out thanks to the continued presence of two-time champion Alonso among their ranks.

But the team have made an even more impressive signing to give them the best chance of hitting the ground running in 2026, with F1 design legend Adrian Newey having already begun work on their challenger for next season.

Aston Martin's journey to the top F1

In 2018, Lawrence Stroll led a consortium to buy the assets of Force India, rebranding it as Racing Point, before he invested in Aston Martin and became the Executive Chairman two years later.

As a result, the team then went through another rebrand for 2021, entering the championship for the first time as Aston Martin.

Ever since, the squad has run with the driver lineup formula of Lance Stroll and an F1 champion on their mission to bring glory home to the iconic British automobile brand.

After Sebastian Vettel retired from the team and the sport as a whole in 2022, Alonso was brought in to try and revitalise Aston Martin's chances of becoming competitive, something that looked entirely possible early on.

In his first season alongside Stroll, Alonso secured eight podiums and finished P4 in the drivers' championship, but no improvements have been made in the subsequent years and the squad now sit down in P7 in the team standings.

But they have already written off this season, instead focusing on mastering the new regulations, a slow burn process that team owner Stroll appears to have struggled with at times.

Speaking on the latest episode of Aston Martin's Unearth Your Greatness series, Stroll admitted: "In this business there's a lot of disappointment, there's a lot of lows before you get a lot of highs.

"It's a matter of being patient which is a word that I struggle with in my vocabulary, but this does take time. The expression 'Rome wasn't built in a day' is very appropriate to a Formula 1 team."

"This is all on the road of the journey, I said when I took over this team, bought the team, it's about six years ago now, I said, 'it'll be a 10 year journey to winning an F1 championship'."

So by his own calculations, the 66-year-old only has four years to go until he is expecting Aston Martin to either bring home a constructors' or drivers' title. But despite the lengthy journey, the Canadian has maintained that he is determined to see his mission through.

"I'm relentless. I don't give up until the mission is completed. In this case, the mission is being world champions.

"You just have to filter the highs and the lows and kind of be monotone. You can't get too excited when it's really great and you can't get too down. There's always next weekend. There's 24 weekends, it's a long season. Each weekend is not the end of the world... and by the way even one year is just one year out of a journey of many years!"

READ MORE: F1 world champions: Full list from Farina to four-time King Verstappen

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