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Szafnauer confirms 2022 target for new Aston Martin factory

Aston Martin CEO and team principal Otmar Szafnauer says that plans are on target for the opening of its new state of the art factory at Silverstone in August 2022.

It had originally been hoped that the new facility would be ready for the middle of this season, but disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic has forced the plans back by a year.

Currently the squad is working out of a factory originally built in the 1990s for the Jordan Grand Prix team. But new owners - a consortium led by Canadian businessman Lawrence Stroll - has enabled major investment in the team's aging infrastructure.

Read also: Stroll targets wins as Aston has 'the weight to punch harder'

"[The work is] on line, but the line and the timing has changed because of Covid,” Szafnauer said this week. “We are making progress. We are in the design phase now.

"All the departments are getting their input in to make sure it’s the most efficient it can be and it’s on line and on target to be opened and launched in August of 2022.”

Szafnauer confirmed that the new building would be built to the same design as the one had originally planned, which he had said at the time would “not be extravagant, but fit for purpose” despite the introduction of a new spending cap on teams in 2021.

“It’s still the original plan,” Szafnauer told the official Formula1.com website. “We have to make sure we right-size it.

"I’m sure with the budget cap now we are all learning what trade-offs we make to be able to stay under the budget.

"The plan for the factory is that if for some reason in the future the budget cap changes, the factory is scalable, but it hasn’t changed much due to the budget cap.”

As well as a new name and livery for 2021, Aston Martin will welcome four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel to the fold alongside Lance Stroll.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.