Are Aston Martin on track for F1 championship glory in 2025?

"Like my track record, pretty much as with every other business I own, it is to win," asserted the Canadian billionaire businessman at the time.

"In this case, winning in Formula 1 means obviously world championships, and ultimately that's what we are striving for, what I am striving for. Of course, we all know that success in Formula 1 - or any other business for that matter - doesn't come overnight. It takes years to put the right people, the right tools, the right processes in place.

"But we are building and investing in our team, with the ambition of moving up the grid year by year, and our ultimate ambition is to win world championships."

As to the timescale, Stroll added: "It’s four, five, six years."

Now in the third season of the programme, few could have foreseen the jump Aston Martin has made, especially after finishing seventh in last season's constructors' championship.

Stroll, however, has put his money – and that of the consortium he has in support – where his mouth is and invested heavily in the people, tools and processes he spoke of almost 21 months ago. A new state-of-the-art facility is close to completion, while a wind tunnel is scheduled to be online by the middle of next year, in time to aid with the development of the 2025 car. With additional sundry facilities on the burgeoning Silverstone campus, the build cost is a staggering £200million.

As for personnel, from the 450 that helped what was once Force India punch above its weight, the workforce is now pushing 800-strong after hiring some of the most senior names in the industry. Chief amongst them has been Dan Fallows from Red Bull, formerly the reigning champion's chief engineer of aerodynamics for eight years, and now Aston Martin’s technical director. Alongside him as his deputy is Eric Blandin, former chief aerodynamicist with Mercedes for almost five years.

The duo have been instrumental in evolving last year's AMR22 which initially took a wrong turn in terms of development following the introduction of new aerodynamic regulations at the start of last year.

Under the guidance of the team's long-term technical director Andrew Green, who has now moved aside to oversee the company's technology business, the AMR23 has caught everyone by surprise. The back-to-back third-place finishes in the opening two grands prix in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia for Fernando Alonso were fully deserved and on merit.

That was despite the wisecracks out of Red Bull after the two-time F1 champion had initially finished on the podium in the curtain-raising race, suggesting this year's Aston Martin was effectively a chip off the old block of last season's all-conquering RB18.

While there are similarities between the two cars, there are also far too many discrepancies to disrespectfully suggest it is a copy. It is also not the route Fallows and Blandin have wanted to go down, despite his former Red Bull links and close ties to that team's legendary designer, Adrian Newey.

“Both of them when they came were very much of the opinion – and Dan said it first – that we want to do things the Aston Martin way,” said performance director Tom McCullough.

“That means listening to everything, to all the people internally, getting the input from two different ways of developing a car, and then looking at where we need to improve and looking at what we think is the best way of doing that. So that’s one thing that Dan’s been very good at doing, just saying that you always look at what other people are doing but you’ve got to do things your own way if you want to try and beat them.

“That’s very much been Dan and Eric’s sort of mantra from the beginning, from an aerodynamic and a concept side of things, so that’s the reality and why the cars do look quite different.” 

With the pair possessing "a lot of understanding and experience", according to McCullough, they have additionally helped apply the new processes Stroll spoke of.

“A lot of it is about creating that atmosphere, to give that creative thinking, which Dan and Eric have been very keen to do from the beginning,” he added.

“They’ve been quite happy with the ideas and the information that have come from even existing people, and been really happy with the level of what they’ve had to work with, so I think that’s been good. But then that leadership, that direction, that competitiveness, and that drive is what Eric and Dan have really brought to the party.

“And as well as being very competent, very good people, they’re really decent human beings, they really want this project to work, so it’s actually really easy and fun to work with them.”

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has suggested Aston Martin has discovered two seconds per lap over the past six months. That has enabled the team to comfortably possess the second-quickest car on the grid, although there is still a considerable gap to Red Bull who, at this stage, is in a class of its own.

Make no mistake, however, Aston Martin has thrust itself into contention in such a relatively short period of time that Stroll's aim to be champions by 2025 is not now as far-fetched as it seemed back in 2021 when he first aired his visionary target.