Lawrence Stroll, the world’s poorest billionaire, has apparently awoken from his Scrooge McDuck like slumber and finally realized that his ownership of both Aston Martin road cars and Aston Martin F1 could very quickly eat into his personal $2bn fortune. Aston Martin is $1 billion in debt and possibly requires at least another $1 billion on developing new products. And that doesn’t even factor in the transition to electric vehicle technology. Stroll presumably realized this after waking up in a cold sweat, caused by a nightmare vision where Aston Martin F1 has turned into a colossal fire-spitting giant eating into his bank vault.
Making cars and running a Formula One project at the same time is an expensive business for sure. The constant nightmare that haunts Lawrence Stroll has finally gotten to him according to rumors. It appears the world’s poorest billionaire is looking to off-load Aston Martin F1 to a Chinese business consortium. An Aston Martin spokesperson denied the rumors with the utmost professionalism:
Aston Martin Spokesperson
“absolute bullshit and totally untrue”
“he (the world’s poorest billionaire) couldn’t be more excited about, and sincerely believes in, the team’s long-term future success.”
The last sentence is more revealing than the first. It’s classic PR speak, the rebuff is flat, monotone, unconvincing and all but confirms that Lawrence Stroll is looking to sell Aston Martin F1 as a going concern. However, for now, we will have to mark it down as nothing more than a rumor. But anything in F1 is for sale at the right price. There is no passion with the dollar sign.