“Lawrence’s passion and commitment and enthusiasm is very endearing. It’s very persuasive. The reality is, if you go back 20 years, then what we now call team principals were actually the owners of the teams.
“It’s a different feeling when you have somebody like Lawrence involved like that. It’s back to the old school model and to have the the chance to be a shareholder and a partner is something that hasn’t been offered to me before. So it’s a slightly different slant. It’s one I’m very much looking forward to. It became a very natural choice.”
As Newey highlights, he now has a share in the team too – something he has harboured since his earlier years with Williams. Furthermore, Stroll’s expansive plans with his team’s new campus has given Newey the confidence that the Silverstone base is the right creative space for him.
“It’s no easy thing to create on a greenfield site what Martin and Lawrence have created here to make a facility of this scale and have it have a really nice warm creative feel to it – after all that’s what we’re here for, to create good solutions with good communication between everyone who works here. I’ve seen some new buildings which haven’t quite fulfilled that.
“In any F1 team there are three principal technical departments. Aerodynamics, mechanical design and vehicle performance dynamics. It will initially be a case of trying to get good symmetry between those three departments and with Honda on the PU side.”
Newey says he sees Stroll in the mould of owner-bosses like Frank Williams
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The above-quote seems to imply that Newey didn’t feel comfortable in Ron Dennis’s Norman Foster-designed McLaren Technology Centre, to date F1’s most notorious – and metallic – modern factory.
However, as he also emphasises, the environment needs the right people communicating to make it a success. Hughes points to the strength of talent Aston has now assembled, and draws comparisons to how another team built itself up to the 2014 rule change.
