At the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the Aston Martin team notched up their first podium. In light of that, the British outfit has grown a lot more confident. In fact, they have stepped up their recruitment process. Before their factory opens next year, the team plans to have at least 250 or more employees.

The team has come a long way since being known as Force India. After it went into administration, the team underwent its own phoenix transformation into Racing Point. It is only from this year onwards that the team was renamed again, this time to Aston Martin.

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Team principal Otmar Szafnauer said, “We’ve added significantly the amount of people we have since we were Force India. The new factory is on track, we have started building already, and it’s a big, big programme to recruit even further. We are at about 535 people now and we will get to about the region of 800 or whatever the right size is under the cost cap and we are strategically working on that now and trying to recruit likeminded individuals that want to come work for Aston Martin Racing and go racing at the highest level. The recruitment process is going well.”

The Aston Martin team have big plans in the future

Although the  Silverstone-based outfit lies sixth in the Championship, they are progressing well. Aston Martin currently sit two points adrift of AlphaTauri and are seeking to close the gap to the other teams. However, Szafnauer is aware that the outfit has a long road ahead of it.

“There is a bigger gap to the teams in front than to the teams behind and we have to do a good job for the rest of the season, bring some more upgrades, understand the car better, get the drivers even more comfortable and fight as hard as we can to finish as high as possible in the midfield,” he continued. “It won’t be easy, even for fifth, but we will do the best we can.”

For the moment, the British team head to the Circuit Paul Ricard, high on confidence. This is largely due to Vettel’s podium finish in Azerbaijan.

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