For the first time in more than 60 years, Aston Martin, the iconic British luxury automaker, will compete in the world’s pinnacle of motorsport, Formula One. Officially dubbed Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One, the racing team unveiled its new AMR21 car in a virtual event, which was broadcast from London last week. In conjunction with the launch of its new F1 car, the Aston Martin team also announced two global sponsors, technology giants Cognizant and NetApp, along with additional sponsors Crypto.com, SentinelOne, and JCB.

Aston Martin last competed in F1 at the 1960 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, with drivers Roy Salvadori and Maurice Trintignant. Later this month, Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel will pilot Aston Martin’s two entries in the first F1 race for the newly rebranded team, formerly known as Racing Point F1, at the Bahrain Grand Prix. The AMR21 cars they will be driving are powered by turbocharged Mercedes-AMG F1 M12 E Performance engines with hybrid energy recovery.

The launch of the new Formula One team is the culmination of years of hard work and high aspirations for Lawrence Stroll, the Chairman of Aston Martin’s parent company, Aston Martin Lagonda.

“I’ve dreamed about this day for a very long time,” said Stroll. “I’ve always been a car guy and I’ve always loved racing, too. My first dream was to own a Formula One team. My second dream was to acquire a significant shareholding in Aston Martin Lagonda. Today is about the merging of those two dreams. So, as I say, today is all about dreams, and it shows that dreams really can come true, in the shape of our new AMR21. Aston Martin returning to Formula One after an absence of 61 years will have a powerful effect on the sport, the media, and the fans, commanding global attention.”

 

A long racing history for Aston Martin

Aston Martin’s history in major motorsports dates back to 1931 when drivers A.C. Bertelli and Maurice Harvey finished fifth at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Since then, the 108-year-old automaker has competed in some form at Le Mans 31 times, most recently with a podium finish in 2013.

The Formula One field first featured Aston Martin as a constructor through 1959 and 1960. However, the team failed to score any points in six races over those two seasons and ended its participation in F1 soon afterward.

Beginning in 2016, Aston Martin served as a sponsor for Red Bull Racing, and as a title sponsor of the Red Bull team between 2018 and 2020. Many observers around F1 saw the company’s sponsorship as a potential first step toward a factory-backed Aston Martin team.

 

A racing team’s winding journey

The newly renamed team’s origins trace back to 1991 when it competed as the Jordan Grand Prix team until 2004. The team was sold the following year and became Midland F1 Racing prior to the 2006 season but was unsuccessful. Dutch automaker Spyker Cars bought the team in 2007 and renamed it Spyker F1. It was sold again after just one season, this time to Indian businessman Vijay Mallya. The team’s name was changed to Force India, though it continued to maintain its Silverstone, UK headquarters.

The racing team fell on hard economic times in 2018 and was eventually sold again—this time to a consortium led by Lawrence Stroll, who already had built a successful career investing in several high-profile fashion companies. He renamed the team Racing Point Force India midway through the 2018 F1 season and changed the name again in 2019 to Racing Point F1 Team.

In 2020, Stroll led another consortium that made a significant investment in Aston Martin, thus giving him a 16.7% stake in the company and elevating him to the company’s chairmanship. From that position, Stroll made it a priority to re-establish the company’s presence in Formula One, considered to be the highest form of motorsport and one of the best endurance testbeds for automotive technology.

 

The AMR21: high-performance hybrid technology

Like all Formula One cars in 2021, the AMR21 is powered by a 1.6-L V6, DOHC, turbo engine with a sophisticated hybrid-electric energy recovery system (ERS). Mercedes will produce the power units for the AMR21, which run on a mixture of high-octane gasoline and biofuel and produce between 850 and 1160 hp (634 and 865 kW). The ERS in each car produces up to 120 kW of electric power.

“The launch of the new AMR21 is also the celebration of a new beginning for Aston Martin,” said Stroll. “Today’s transformational event has given us the opportunity to communicate the evolution of the iconic Aston Martin Wings logo for only the 12th time in the company’s 108-year history. The Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One car is our group’s highest expression of performance, innovation, engineering quality, attention to detail, and teamwork. For that reason, it’s natural that our new logo should make its debut on our new Formula One car.”

 

Tech giants serve as sponsors and IT service providers

Cognizant, an IT consulting company, is the primary sponsor of the new Aston Martin F1 team. The sponsorship agreement includes more than just financial backing, but also some technical support from Cognizant. According to a Cognizant press release, the company will provide R&D expertise and data services to the F1 operation.

“We are pleased to be part of the new Aston Martin factory design, bringing Cognizant’s artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, cloud computing, and digital engineering expertise to bear,” said Brian Humphries, CEO of Cognizant. “I expect the end result will be a Formula One facility that is the envy of the racing world. Cognizant’s expertise in technology, coupled with Aston Martin’s expertise in automotive engineering, was an ideal combination, and we expect our technology to have a tangible impact on Aston Martin’s ability to succeed.”

NetApp, a hybrid cloud data services and data management company headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, is also a global sponsor of the Aston Martin F1 team. Using NetApp’s cloud solutions, the data used to inform Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team’s racing strategies will be available in real-time on a global scale. With a data fabric powered by NetApp, the team will be able to extract value from their data to gauge car performance and address necessary refinements before, during, and after each race.

“We are thrilled to partner with Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One as it embarks on a highly ambitious data journey in pursuit of greater speed, higher reliability, and unmatched efficiency,” said James Whitemore, Chief Marketing Officer at NetApp. “By tapping into our 28 years of data-centric innovation, we are proudly supporting the team as they push the boundaries of continuous performance improvement beyond the finish line.”

 

The extended F1 family

When Aston Martin makes its return to F1, it will have more than two Grand Prix contenders on the grid. For the first time, the company will supply the official safety and medical cars.

The safety car responsibility led CEO Tobias Moers to task the Aston Martin Lagonda engineering team with enhancing the Vantage sports car, focusing on improving track performance and lap times. The specially equipped car, which will remain on standby in the pit lane throughout the race in case of bad weather or an accident, gets significant chassis and aerodynamic improvements—with a few additional modifications to make it FIA compliant.

The car’s 4.0-L twin-turbo V8 gets a power bump of 25 PS to 535 PS (393 kW) and its 685-N·m (505 lb·ft) peak torque is now sustained for longer. The vaned grille and a new front splitter create 156 kg (344 lb) of downforce at 200 km/h (124 mph)—60 kg (132 lb) more than the production car’s at the same speed. Beyond the aero changes, there are modifications to the suspension, steering, and dampers; underbody bracing to increase front structural stiffness; and a switch to lower-profile tires. The shape of the roof-mounted LED light bar was developed to optimize airflow towards the exaggerated rear wing. Other changes are the prominent FIA safety-car livery, bodyside mounted radio antennas, and an LED rear number plate.

Official medical car duties are the job of a modified Aston Martin DBX SUV/crossover. It gets prominent FIA medical car-livery, LED rear number plate, and roof-mounted LED light bar. It carries a substantial amount of equipment, including a large medical bag, a defibrillator, two fire extinguishers, and a burn kit, that easily fits in the 632 L (22.3 ft³) of boot space.

Both vehicles have undergone significant testing, including high-speed durability assessments and aggressive circuit driving at Aston Martin’s Silverstone facility for almost 15,000 km (9320 mi), collectively. The vehicles have also been tested in a dyno climate chamber to ensure they will perform in all race conditions.

“To see our acclaimed Vantage, our most dynamic sports car, performing the role of the Official Safety Car of Formula 1 and our first SUV, DBX, operate as the Medical Car on Formula 1 circuits around the world is a proud moment for us all,” said Moers.

Fans will be able to see the Aston Martin F1 vehicle family in action for the first time during the three-day pre-season test at Bahrain on March 12-14 and then again during the opening round of the F1 World Championship at the same venue two weeks later. The Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix will be broadcast live on March 28 from 16:00 GMT.

Kevin Jost contributed to this article.