Lance Stroll says the rebranded Aston Martin outfit owes its successful transformation over the past two years to his father's "incredible vision".
Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll led a consortium of investors that acquired the assets of Vijay Mallya's Force India team in the summer of 2018. Racing Point F1 emerged from the restructuring process, armed with adequate financing supplied by Stroll and a long-term plan to fight for the world championship.
However, Stroll's takeover of Aston Martin Lagonda last year led to another identity change when its Executive Chairman brought together Racing Point and the prestigious sports car manufacturer, with the latter acting as title sponsor for the former.
But the Silverstone-based team's transformation has been ongoing for the past two years, its performance elevating it from P7 in the Constructors' standings in 2019 to P4 last year.
Lance Stroll reckons that Aston Martin Racing has little in common today with the team he joined in 2019.
"[It’s] completely different," said Stroll. "A lot of the people are the same, and we’ve got some great new additional people who have joined over the last couple of year and have been a huge help.
"We’ve just evolved so much as a team since I came here in 2019.
"We were a team back then that was, I think, for a long time struggling financially and didn’t have the resources to really build a perfect car in an ideal world with the group of talented people that we have.
"Over the last couple of years that’s changed, we have more sponsorship, better backing. Lawrence has done an incredible job putting a great team together at the factory in order to help achieve what we want.
"Last year, we saw so much progress and hopefully again this year we’ll see even more progress."
Indeed, last year's progress yielded a race win for Racing Point, courtesy of Sergio Perez at Sakhir.
Stroll Jr believes that his father's business acumen and vision coupled with the team's now solid financial foundation have set the team on a path to glory.
"From everything I’ve seen, watching it first hand over the last two years, it has been unbelievable what he’s done," Stroll said as he praised his father.
"How he’s put this project together with Aston Martin and how this team has transformed over the last two years is so incredible.
"He’s just got an incredible vision, and he’s had it since day one with this team.
"We went from a team that qualified 17th and 18th in Hungary in 2019 to a team and in 2020 we qualified third and fourth," added the 22-year-old.
"We improved 3.1s I believe in terms of lap time, just put that into perspective for a second and give that some thought.
"That’s down to the incredible job that my Dad’s done, to give the tools to the incredibly talented people at the factory and everyone who works in this team.
"They did such a good job for years punching above their weight, now we can really just move forwards and it’s exciting times ahead of us, so hat’s off to Lawrence, it’s amazing."
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