Pre-season testing in Bahrain offered limited clarity on the competitive standing of the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team heading into the new Formula 1 campaign.
The on-track trajectory for Aston Martin remains a developing picture ahead of the second week of testing, which starts on Wednesday.
Commercially, though, Aston Martin is operating from a position of momentum, as was shown during its AMR26 car launch event in Saudi Arabia last week.
“I never want to take things for granted,” Jefferson Slack, Aston Martin’s Managing Director, Commercial and Marketing, tells Sector.
“But we’re blowing through all projections that we ever had, and we’re up really significantly this year. We’ve done, I don’t know, eight or ten deals, if you start deals that started last year for this year.
“We’re starting to run out of key assets, and I guess that’s a good thing. That’s all really positive. The sport is clearly growing.
“The pie is growing, and I think all teams are growing, so it’s not just us, but I also think we’ve got a great brand, and we’ve put together a really good organisation and place to take advantage of that growth.”
Despite not dominating the sport on track in the manner team owner Lawrence Stroll hopes to achieve, Slack believes the commercial acceleration has instead been built around ambition and notable structural change.
As well as key staffing appointments – including Adrian Newey’s promotion to Team Principal heading into 2026 – Aston Martin’s Silverstone base and wind tunnel have now been completed.
“We started six years ago when we had Cognizant as a big global company as our title partner. Then we brought in Aramco. That was before the facility was finished,” explained Slack.
“I think everyone bought into one, the Aston brand, and two, Lawrence Stroll’s vision of trying to become a world champion. He’s a very determined human being.
“People saw a team going from 300 people to 1,100, getting a works deal, building a state-of-the-art campus, hiring Adrian Newey. All of these things contributed to the fact that it was a commercially valuable brand to associate yourself with.”
For Slack, that credibility now allows Aston Martin to structure partnerships differently, particularly as the sport moves towards the 2026 power unit cycle.
With such stark regulation changes, ensuring strong technical partnerships as well as brand sponsorships was key for all 11 teams on the grid.
Aramco is the biggest oil company in the world, and they own Valvoline, so that’s been really helpful, both from a technical and marketing standpoint.
Jefferson Slack
“We have Aramco and Valvoline for the first time doing the fuels and lubes,” he added.
“Aramco is the biggest oil company in the world, and they own Valvoline, so that’s been really helpful, both from a technical and marketing standpoint.
“The other part of it is probably AI. There again, we’ve got some really good partners like CoreWeave, one of the world’s greatest data centres, which is essential for Formula 1. So we are integrating both marketing and technical in those deals and sectors where it’s applicable to the team.”
That balance extends beyond purely technical relationships. As F1’s audience has broadened, so too has the mix of brands entering the category.
The sport itself has signed deals in the past 18 months that would not have seemed possible in the past, and Aston Martin has also made sure to tap into the burgeoning number of B2C brands keen to be associated with modern F1.
“The rejuvenation of the sport in terms of a lot more younger viewers, especially in places like the United States, a lot more women, has resulted in the B2C guys looking at this and saying, wow, this is really a unique global platform,” said Slack.
“You can see the deals, whether it’s Disney, Mattel, LEGO, the things that F1 itself has done – and then that’s helped us as well. So we’ve got Breitling this year, Celsius came on board, we signed a company called Eight Sleep.
“That again is a derivative of the growth and the reach of the sport and the fact that there’s a lot more young people, which are generally traditionally better consumers.”
The commercial environment itself, however, is evolving. With Audi and Cadillac entering the championship, new inventory is coming to market.
But Slack does not believe teams need to start getting their elbows out in a mad scramble to beat a rival to a particular partner.
“If you’re an Audi or a Cadillac, you’ve got a whole car to fill,” he said.
“There will be some downward pressure on pricing because of that if they’re involved. But that’s just part of it.
“The teams are generally better commercially. So they are more competitive. But the pie is growing. And we’re all growing. So it’s not a dog-eat-dog world from that standpoint.
“Most teams today are profitable. That’s because of the budget cap. It gives you a chance to not lose money or make money – it gives somebody like Lawrence Stroll the opportunity to compete with a Ferrari, a Mercedes, a Red Bull that are very large companies.”
For Aston Martin, the immediate competitive picture may still be forming. Commercially, however, Slack believes the foundations laid over the past six years are already delivering.
And in an increasingly crowded sports landscape, he is clear on the one risk the sport can control.
“If we don’t do a good job collectively at continuing to build the fan base – they have a lot of choices,” he said.
“It’s very easy to go from Formula One to UFC to the NFL to Premier League. There’s a gazillion options for young people today.”
