Aston Martin Sells Part of Itself and Pivots to F1

Aston Martin is no longer cash-strapped and in peril, as car enthusiast billionaire Lawrence Stroll has smashed into the office and handed over £182m in return for him and his car-loving businessmates taking a 16.7 per cent ownership stake in the company. It's Dragon's Den for real.

Stroll is known in the car world as the backer of the Racing Point F1 team, entirely coincidentally the team driven for by his son Lance, and part of the deal with Aston allows this team to be rebranded to Aston Martin Formula 1. So from 2021, Aston will be in F1, albeit having had extremely little input into the cars' production. There will at least be time to apply DBX decals to the sides and glue the relevant badge on the nose, and wait for the carmaker's current ad deal with Red Bull to expire.

And Racing Point itself is a rebranded version of the old Force India team, which Stroll bought as recently as 2018, for something to do with his money. [Guardian]