Aston Martin says new factory a 'game changer' for F1 team

Aston Martin says its new state-of-the-art F1 factory whose construction is in progress at Silverstone will be a "game changer" for the F1 outfit.

Aston's 37,000 square meter, £200 million campus which broke ground at the end of the summer of 2021 will see its first building – the F1 team's main factory – completed in just six months, or in May of 2023.

The British outfit will move into the new facility from its adjacent old factory that was originally built for Jordan Grand Prix, and the latter will be demolished to make way for two other units: Aston Martin's new wind tunnel and a final building that will house the team's simulator as well as a space dedicated to its staff's wellbeing, with, among other perks, an on-site gym.

The design of the site's main hub complex features a 160-meter-long corridor that will serve the team's various departments located on either side, with almost all spaces entirely open plan and the technical departments located on the upper floor.

The layout and configuration will greatly facilitate communication and interaction between Aston Martin's various departments according to team boss Mike Krack.

"The fact you can talk to people without having to arrange meetings – it facilitates dialogue easily," he explained during a media tour of the new factory that took place this week.

"The other thing is logistics, to bring stuff from left to right or from A to B it will be massively easier.

"So from that point of view I agree with using the name gamechanger, for team dynamics and logistics."

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Krack admits that Aston's current factory set-up significantly lacks efficiency, so there will be much to be gained for the team and its personnel by the changes.

"[The way we] run [the factory] now with different locations is also costing quite a lot in terms of logistics and building rentals, so it is about efficiency and we make a step there," added Krack.

"You have the ability to make everything yourself but you have the ability to decide: do you buy or make it?

"And you can make it [a component] faster – if you can make them also cheaper it means you can make more, and maybe one or two upgrades more due to time and due to financial reasons you couldn’t do [before], so I think it is a good step."

Aston Martin technical director Dan Fallows also underscored the new factory's crucial efficiency level.

"Efficiency covers all of it," Fallows said. "Efficiency in terms of cost, time, one of the things that marks out a competitive team is its ability to turn things around quickly, to go from design to reality in the shortest possible time.

"There are great leaps forward you can make in efficiency with that type of facility, and obviously in a cost cap world anything you can do to maximise efficiency of the cost of those parts is worth doing.

"Also with the smart factory, we have the ability to be much more detailed in terms of the analytics, detailing the production process and analysing that in a way that allows us to improve it much more than using external people."

Fallows insisted that each of Aston's three new buildings that will form its future campus will be as important individually as they will be collectively.

"Building this team is a journey, and each of these things are kind of milestones in that journey," Fallows explained.

"They all kind of contribute to our ability to operate at the level we want to operate at. And obviously, the last phases of it, which is building three, which is going to be more the employee experience, the wellness side of things, and the gym things, I think, are almost as important as the initial stages.

"But I think demonstrating that we are going that way, that we are looking at these things is almost part of the solution itself, you know, because that’s what engages people: It’s knowing that we are thinking about them.

"We want them to operate at a good level, [and] we also want them to feel like they’re supported and part of a team that they want to be part of."

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