Racing is all about the Points for the future Aston Martin F1 team

The Silverstone-based Grand Prix team that was once Jordan, then became Force India, is now Racing Point and will in 2021 become Aston Martin, launched its 2020 Formula 1 challenger in fits and starts overt he past few days.  

In an F1 launch season that seems odd to say the least, with Haas sneaking photoshop renderings of its new car out a week or two ago and Renault issuing terrible pictures of inane bits of its mystery car to a disgruntled media, leaked images on the new Racing Point emerged a few days ago with only an announcement of a revised BWT sponsorship deal issued electronically around the anticipated time of the launch. Seems F1 teams are cost shedding in the oddest areas these days…

Through all of this, what we can gather about F1’s latest pink challenger is that its drivers will drink more BWT water and the team is aiming for at least a couple of podiums. “I predict that before the race they will both be drinking water,” team principal Otmar Szafnauer promised of Lance Stroll and Sergio Perez at the water technology company’s Austrian headquarters. “And after the race this year both of them will be on the podium at least once drinking the champagne.”

BWT has pledged to donate a new well in Gambia for every race where the team scores a point in 2021, with Szafnauer expecting Stroll and Perez to improve on the two-thirds of races in which one or more Racing Points ended in the points last season.  

Both Stroll, the son of Canadian billionaire team owner Lawrence and Mexican Perez, who is the charge of homeland tycoon Carlos Slim and who goes into his seventh year with the team, have experience of the podium, but Szafnauer wants much more of that this year: “We’ve got to get both drivers in the points at every race,” he suggested. “This year we want to be a strong fourth, we want to be closer to the top three than we’ve ever been in the past and we want to be the top of the midfield.”

Often a comedian, Szafnauer has targeted the resurgent McLaren, works team Renault and the rebranded AphaTauri as his team’s principal rivals once again this year, in what he also predicts will be a busy season following a busy winter. “A long time ago in America somebody told me that you can’t get busier than a one-armed wallpaper hanger and that’s what we felt like — it was the busiest winter.

“So I’m confident that with the work we’ve done on the new car and the work Mercedes has done on the powertrain, that we will have a good chance to hit our targets for the Formula 1 team, as well as for the water wells of Gambia.”

Racing Point will become Aston Martin's works Formula 1 team next year in line with the sport’s major rules changes following Stroll senior taking a 20% stake in the struggling British sportscar brand on a US$200-million January investment. Aston Martin will continue through to the end of the 2020 season as Red Bull’s technology partner before embarking on its own project next year.  

It remains unclear exactly how deeply the carmaker will become in F1 around its plans for a V6 hybrid future for its street supercars... (Photo: Racing Point)