Who is Lawrence Stroll? How Aston Martin owner became a billionaire

“I’m relentless,” says Lawrence Stroll, who isn’t ready to rest on his $3.8bn fortune and string of successful businesses. “I don’t give up until the mission is completed. In this case, the mission is being world champions.”

Now aged 67, the Canadian businessman owns the Aston Martin Formula 1 team, and a good chunk of the road car division too – which he chairs. Best-known for his commanding presence and no-nonsense approach to business, he is now tackling the monumental tasks of taking Aston Martin to an F1 title on track, and to profit on the road.

That task looks more challenging than ever in 2026; alongside a road car business experiencing some difficulty, the company’s F1 team – for all the money and hires thrown at it – is regularly fighting Cadillac at the back of the field. Not something you’d expect after hiring one of the greatest F1 car designers of all time.

In February 2026 Aston Martin sold its naming rights to effectively receive a £50m cash injection from its owner. The move was prompted by 2025 earnings that were worse than expected. All the above has meant increased speculation around the Aston Martin company – on and off the track.

Despite this, Stroll is putting all of his might behind those goals, and he’s not sentimental about replacing anyone with – in his eyes – a stronger candidate.

He’s now on his fourth team principal at Aston Martin, having first recruited legendary designer Adrian Newey – who won F1 titles with Williams, McLaren and Red Bull – to lead work on the team’s crucial 2026 car, and then promoted him to team boss, replacing the well-respected Andy Cowell after a single season. That role looks set to change once again though, with Jonathan Wheatley expected to drop into the TP seat from Audi – while Newey concentrates on the car once again.

Lawrence Stroll has invested heavily in his mission, ploughing £200m into the construction of a brand new facility at Silverstone, incorporating design offices, a factory and wind tunnel. As well as Newey, he has hired a series of high-profile engineers and currently employs Fernando Alonso to drive alongside his son Lance. He is also thought to have targeted four-time world champion Max Verstappen.

He’s one of the biggest movers and shakers in the automotive world, having started life as the son of a clothing importer. Here’s how Lawrence Stroll has made his fortune; details of how much of Aston Martin he actually owns; and why he is one of the most renowned Ferrari collectors in the world.

Lawrence Stroll net worth 2026 – how big is his fortune?

According to Forbes, Lawrence Stroll is among the world’s roughly 1,100 richest people, with a fortune estimated at $3.8bn in 2026, largely thanks to shares he sold in the Michael Kors fashion brand in 2014. His wealth has held broadly steady rather than grown this year, a reflection of just how much of his own money he’s now ploughing back into Aston Martin’s road car and F1 businesses rather than banking it.

Lawrence Stroll’s start in the fashion industry

Lawrence Stroll’s start in the fashion industry

The bulk of Stroll’s fortune comes from his success in the fashion industry. His father, Leo Strulovitch, worked as a clothing importer who acquired the Canadian licences for Pierre Cardin and Polo Ralph Lauren, and Lawrence – who was born with the Strulovich surname – spent much of his childhood learning the business.

At age 17, he was handed the Pierre Cardin business, with results that were impressive enough to land him the European rights to the Ralph Lauren brand in partnership with Hong Kong contract textile manufacturer Silas Chou.

The pair had come into contact professionally and became friends, then business partners, making a success of the Ralph Lauren brand.

Lawrence Stroll and Tommy Hilfiger

Chou also produced clothing for the US designer Tommy Hilfiger, who turned to him for help when his financial backer hit trouble in 1989. Chou and Stroll formed Sportswear Holdings Ltd and bought 70% of the brand, reportedly for little more than $200,000. At that time, it was selling $25m worth of clothing a year. With Hilfiger’s designs, Chou’s strategic nous, and Stroll’s marketing acumen, the brand rolled out clothes perfectly in tune with the more casual look of the nineties, boosting sales volumes to almost $2bn by the turn of the millennium.

Hilfiger, who grew up near Watkins Glen, and Stroll also shared a love of motor sport. In 1991 the brand sponsored the Lotus F1 team, which also carried Pepe Jeans logos – the company having been bought by Chou and Stroll. The sponsorship deal ended in 1994 after a Lotus clothing line, but Stroll’s passion for Ferrari and the rising fortunes of the Tommy Hilfiger brand brought the two brands together in 1998. For four years, Hilfiger supplied official teamwear, as Michael Schumacher led the resurgence of the Scuderia.

By 2002, Tommy Hilfiger was valued at $1.87bn and Stroll and Chou cashed out.

Lawrence Stroll’s investment in Michael Kors

Stroll and Chou now had the capital and experience to make their most lucrative investment yet, as Sportswear Holdings paid $85m for an 85% share of Michael Kors. Growth was explosive, continuing through the financial crash of the late noughties. By 2011, the company was valued at $3.6bn when it went public. Stroll and Chou gradually reduced their holdings until, in 2014, with the company valued at $20bn, Stroll sold his final stake, realising more than $1bn.

Lawrence Stroll’s F1 team ownership

Stroll first invested in Formula 1 with Lotus during the days of Tommy Hilfiger sponsorship, but it was short-lived. He became a prominent figure in the paddock after paying several million dollars to secure son Lance a seat with Williams for the 2017 and 2018 season. It coincided with the demise of the team and, in mid-2018, he led a consortium named Racing Point to bid for the Force India team, which had entered administration earlier that year.

The £90m offer was successful making Stroll — along with business partner Chou and other investors, the new team owner. Lance moved to Racing Point in 2018 and it was rebranded as Aston Martin in 2021 after Stroll also took a stake in the car company.

How much of Aston Martin does Lawrence Stroll own?

Stroll was able to re-introduce Aston Martin to the F1 field in 2021, when he led another consortium to purchase 16.7% of the Aston Martin car company for $235m and was later appointed executive chairman.

In February 2026 Stroll went further still, agreeing to buy the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team’s naming rights outright for £50m ($67m), via a Stroll-controlled entity called AMR GP Holdings. The deal extended the licensing agreement and pushed Stroll’s shareholding in Aston Martin Lagonda to 33%.

None of this has dented the value of the F1 team itself. A 2024 private equity raise valued Aston Martin’s F1 operation at $2.4bn; by summer 2025, when Aston Martin the car company sold down part of its own 4.6% stake in the team, that valuation had climbed to $3.2bn, putting Stroll’s personal stake at well over $1bn.

How has the F1 been team doing?

After two mediocre seasons following the 2021 rebrand, Aston temporarily found front-of-grid pace, helped by the hiring of technical director Dan Fallows and Fernando Alonso, who replaced the retiring Sebastian Vettel ahead of the 2023 campaign. But the podium finishes dwindled as the season wore on, and Aston Martin was out-developed by its rivals through 2024 as well.

The team pinned everything on 2026’s wide-ranging new regulations – both on the chassis and powertrain side. Stroll backed that bet with a recruitment drive that included a series of high-profile engineering hires, as well as a £200m state-of-the-art F1 facility at Silverstone. The HQ includes a new wind tunnel that came online in January 2025 in time to develop the 2026 car.

How has Aston Martin’s 2026 season gone?

Badly, by the team’s own admission. Aston Martin arrived at the new rules cycle with a new works Honda power unit and Adrian Newey as chief designer of a ground-up new car, but those ingredients didn’t bring success. Instead, the team spent the opening rounds struggling to finish races at all, hampered first by vibrations from the Honda power unit and then by an AMR26 chassis that Newey himself later called overweight and short on downforce.

The team scored a single championship point through the first eleven rounds of the season, level with new entrant Cadillac at the bottom of the constructors’ standings. Newey has been vocal in explaining the reasons behind this, stating that the project was months behind schedule by the time he got to work on it.

How did Lawrence Stroll recruit Adrian Newey to Aston Martin? 

Newey was officially announced as Aston Martin’s managing technical partner in September 2024. Despite receiving offers from “multiple teams” after announcing his departure from Red Bull, the 25-time world title-winning designer said that he felt a move to Silverstone was a “natural decision”. But as Stroll stated during Newey’s official press conference, recruiting the 65-year-old had been years in the making.

“I had been [trying to] speak to Adrian for a couple of years,” said Stroll. “And I believe when things are meant to be they happen. I believe he shared my passion, intent and vision, and there really is no other Formula 1 team that is as poised for the future as we are.

“We’ve put together a fantastic management team and building this premises was really showing our real intent. But to make this level of investment, to build a premises like this, it’s the first of its sort in Formula 1. It’s so grand, but it’s so special. We could build 100% of the car here. We’re going to have the first, greatest, newest wind tunnel built in over 20 years. That’s a huge tool to make the car go faster.

“So [after] putting all that in place, the people, the premises, we then really went looking for our technical leader. The most recent talks [with Adrian] in earnest began after I read news of his departure.”

Newey and Stroll revealed they had had several chance meetings at the gym, usually over race weekends in the Middle East, where Newey had been impressed by the Canadian’s passion, commitment and enthusiasm. They were ultimately the factors which convinced the former Red Bull chief designer that a move to Aston Martin was the right one.

“[He’s] very persuasive,” said Newey. “The reality is, if you go back 20 years, then what we now call team principals are actually the owners of the teams, Frank Williams, Ron Dennis, Eddie Jordan, etc. In this modern era, then Lawrence is actually unique in being the only properly active team owner, and I think that does bring a different feeling when you have somebody like Lawrence involved like that.

“It’s back to the old school model and for me to have the chance to be a shareholder and a partner is something that hasn’t been offered to me before. It’s a slightly different slant. It’s one I’m very much looking forward to. It became a very natural choice.”

Making Adrian Newey Aston Martin’s team principal

“I provide the right leadership and let these people do their jobs,” Stroll has said. “I don’t know how to build or engineer a Formula 1 car as well as the engineers do, so I give them support, give them the tools, give them the people, the finances, give them everything they need in order to not have any roadblocks.”

Less than a year after appointing Cowell, Stroll decided that the right leadership now looks like Newey, who will have to combine creativity at the drawing board with leading a team made up of hundreds of staff.

“I’m pleased that Adrian Newey will step into the team principal role, which will enable him to make full use of his creative and technical expertise,” said Stroll. “Both these changes will ensure the team is best placed to play to their collective strengths.”

How much has Lawrence Stroll invested in Lance Stroll‘s F1 career?

Aside from a big family fallout, Lance Stroll is set to remain on the F1 grid for the foreseeable future. When he graduated from his role as a reserve driver with Williams in 2017, numerous reports speculated on how much his father had paid the team to ensure he got a full-time F1 seat. But in truth, Lawrence’s investment in his son’s future began many years earlier.

After showing signs of promise in karting, winning the Quebec rookie of the year award in 2008 and the driver of the year award in 2009, Lance entered competitive car racing for the first time in 2014, in the Italian F4 series.

Backed by a $60m investment into Prema by his father – buying him the best cars, equipment and a state-of-the-art home simulator – Lance won the championship in his debut season, and was quickly promoted to F3 – finishing fifth in 2015 and first the following year.

Two ‘tortuous’ years at Williams were ended when Lawrence intervened again, leading a consortium of investors to form Racing Point, buy Force India and appoint Lance as one of its drivers for the 2019 season, ousting Esteban Ocon in the process.

Eighteen months later, Racing Point was re-branded, now as Aston Martin F1 Team and Lance remained with the team, first partnering Sebastian Vettel, and now Fernando Alonso.

The younger Stroll’s current salary is unknown, but he should remain a part of the team for the foreseeable future.

Lawrence Stroll’s epic car collection

Even whilst conquering the world of fashion, Stroll’s enthusiasm in the world of motor sport was apparent. Throughout the years, he has built one of the most impressive car collections in the world, composed of over 27 cars featuring a Ferrari 250 GTO, a 1998 McLaren F1 and an original Ford GT40. All told, his assembly of racing heritage is worth just over $140m.

See some of the highlights of Stroll’s car collection below.

Ferrari Enzo

The Ferrari Enzo, named after the Maranello outfit’s legendary founder, is a must-have in the world of car collectors. And with only 400 produced, Lawrence Stroll is part of a highly esteemed club.

But this Ferrari is one of many in the Canadian’s collection, as it sits alongside a Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa Scaglietti, a Ferrari LaFerrari, a F40, a F50, a Ferrari 458 Speciale A and a Ferrari FXX K.

Stroll also used to own a Ferrari 250 GTO, which with a price tag of $70m is one of the most expensive cars in the world, but sold it for an undisclosed fee in 2018.

Ford GT40

Widely regarded as a motor sport icon, the Ford GT40 earned its stripes at Le Mans, most notoriously whilst racing Ferrari at the 1966 24-hour event.

Little is known about how much Stroll paid for it, but it currently has a price tag north of $7.4m.

1996 McLaren F1

Few road cars are more iconic than the McLaren F1. Its central seating position and 240mph top speed gives people like Stroll a taste of grand prix racing whilst making the commute to work, and its uniqueness has made it a target for luxury car collectors around the world. But for $20m, it certainly isn’t cheap.

Aston Martin DB5 Convertible

As the owner of Aston Martin, it would makes sense that Stroll has at last one classic in his expansive collection.

Only 123 examples of the Aston Martin DB5 Convertible were ever produced, and it’s an instantly recognisable classic. Its 4.0-litre inline-six engine, that produced 282 horsepower and could reach a top speed of 145 miles per hour, was used prominently in the James Bond film series — which has since turned the DB5 into a hugely collectable car.