Aston Martin Formula 1 has revealed its new team logo ahead of the start of the 2021 season, the team’s first race in the top tier of motorsport for 61 years. The rebranded Racing Point team is hoping to keep up momentum from a strong finish to 2020, with Ferrari departee and four-time champ Sebastian Vettel racing alongside three-time podium finisher Lance Stroll.
There are plenty of encouraging signs for Lawrence Stroll’s rebranded team, with it having secured a first race win with Sergio Perez – who’s headed to Red Bull – in 2020’s action-packed penultimate round. Vettel will no doubt be fired up to turn his fortunes from this season around, having been consistently beaten during 2020 by his Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc.
Both new arrival Vettel and the incumbent Stroll will commence testing at this year’s short, three-day pre-season stint at Barcelona along with the rest of the teams. Due to the effects of the pandemic, this year’s machines will largely be carried over from 2020, albeit with evolutionary features and a few changes to each car’s floor dimensions as per new regulations, so as to slightly reduce their peak downforce levels. And, hopefully, enable cars to follow each other a little more. Aston’s car will therefore not be all-new, but rather a developed version of the Mercedes-AMG-powered RP20.
Aston will reveal its 2021 car and team livery next month. Perhaps the livery will borrow some features from the brand’s recently-retired green GTE Vantage model, which has achieved much success in recent years – including another win at the 2020 24 Hours of Le Mans. A release from the team said that it “understands the power of Formula 1 when it comes to brand awareness”, so building on Aston’s existing position as title sponsor of Red Bull Racing and becoming a fully-fledged constructor made sense. Aston Martin joins five other car brands on the grid, including fellow new arrival for 2021, Alpine, which rebrands the Renault squad.
“Formula 1 is a hugely powerful platform that will play a key part in the overall Aston Martin strategy as we seek to take the company forward,” said Lawrence Stroll. “It is a truly global sport with a huge audience that we believe can help reignite the brand and further increase its desirability all over the world. This is a brand that has already had huge success in top-level international motorsport such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans – and now we have an opportunity to write a new page in the history books. That’s a hugely exciting prospect for anyone who is a lover of the Aston Martin brand, for fans of Formula 1 and the sport itself.”
2021 looks set to be a significant year for the brand, then; as well as the F1 returns, both DBX and Vantage Roadster production will be up to full capacity. Expect the F1 story to be given a bright spotlight in Aston’s marketing tactics, not least because the company’s other big motorsport project - the Valkyrie-based Hypercar for WEC - appears to have been indefinitely postponed.
