An NFL Owner Just Bought His Way Onto The F1 Grid

There's a new name on Aston Martin's F1 shareholder register, and it's one NFL fans know well. Robert "Woody" Johnson, chairman and owner of the New York Jets, has acquired a minority stake in the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team, confirmed this week around the Dutch Grand Prix weekend. He steps in as Vice Chairman of the board — no day-to-day team-principal duties, just a seat at the table alongside Lawrence Stroll.

If you've been paying attention to the collector car and motorsport worlds colliding lately, this one shouldn't come as a total shock. It's the latest — and maybe the most on-brand — example of American sports money finding its way onto the Formula 1 grid.

The Deal

Aston Martin's ownership table already reads like a who's-who of global capital: Stroll's Yew Tree Consortium holds the controlling stake at roughly a third of the team, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund holds around 20%, and Ernesto Bertarelli, Geely, Mercedes-Benz, and Lucid Group round out the rest. Johnson's arrival — reported to be in the neighborhood of a 15% slice, based on informed estimates of a team valuation north of $3.5 billion, though the exact figures haven't been officially disclosed — makes him one of the largest individual shareholders outside the Stroll family itself.

Johnson's own statement leaned into the bigger picture, not just the balance sheet:

He and Stroll also pointed to a shared goal of growing F1's fanbase in the United States — a mission Johnson is uniquely positioned to help with, having spent 2017–2021 as U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, a country that knows a thing or two about both Aston Martins and Formula 1.

This isn't Johnson's first cross-Atlantic sporting bet, either. He's also holding a 43% stake in Premier League side Crystal Palace. Between the Jets, Crystal Palace, and now Aston Martin F1, the man has quietly built a three-sport, two-continent ownership portfolio — and a pretty clear thesis: buy into teams with history, and back the people building something at the top of it.

He's Not The Only NFL Name On The Grid

Johnson joining Aston Martin puts him in company that includes two guys who spend their Sundays doing something slightly different for a living. Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce — yes, those two — became part of the minority ownership group at Alpine's F1 team back in 2023, investing alongside golfer Rory McIlroy as part of a reported $200 million+ raise. It puts two of the NFL's biggest stars on the opposite side of the grid from the team Johnson just bought into, which sets up a genuinely funny subplot: an NFL owner and two of the league's active superstars, competing on the same track, while their actual football teams try to figure out the AFC.

Zoom out and the pattern is bigger than any one deal. F1's global audience has exploded over the last several years — Netflix's Drive to Survive, three U.S. races a season now in Miami, Austin, and Las Vegas, and a paddock that's become as much a business and celebrity magnet as a racing series. American ownership money, from tech billionaires to sports moguls to A-list athletes, has been quietly flowing into the sport for a while. Johnson buying into Aston Martin isn't an outlier — it's confirmation that F1 has fully arrived as a destination for the same class of owner who already has a stake in the NFL, the Premier League, or the NBA.

Why This Matters To Us

We spend our time around cars with pedigree — machines built by people chasing performance for its own sake, not just a spec sheet. Aston Martin's road cars and its F1 program have always shared DNA: the same obsession with balance, the same British engineering pride, the same "form follows function, but make it beautiful" ethos that shows up whether you're looking at a Valkyrie or a current-spec AMR26 challenger.

When ownership groups like this one — deep-pocketed, sports-savvy, genuinely enthusiast-minded — attach themselves to a marque, it tends to ripple outward. Brand visibility goes up. Cultural relevance goes up. And for collectors, that kind of momentum has a way of showing up in what people are willing to pay for the cars that carry the badge, from a clean DB-series driver to a modern Vantage. Keep an eye on the Aston Martin market over the next year — this kind of headline has a way of finding its way into auction results.

And Yes, Football Is Almost Here

While all this shakes out on the F1 side, the sport Johnson actually owns a controlling stake in kicks off its own season in a matter of weeks. The 2026 NFL season opens Wednesday, September 9, with the defending Super Bowl LX champion Seattle Seahawks hosting the New England Patriots at Lumen Field. Mahomes and Kelce will be back under center and in the slot for the Chiefs long before anyone's thinking about the next Grand Prix — but don't be surprised if F1 talk creeps into a few press conferences this fall. When your quarterback and tight end own a piece of a Formula 1 team, and your owner just bought into a rival one, the line between the NFL and the paddock gets a little blurrier every season.

Two sports, one growing overlap in ownership, and a lot of very fast, very desirable machinery in the middle of it. That's exactly the kind of story we like to follow — and exactly the kind of world BIDR was built for.

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