A deal is close for Racing Point owner Lawrence Stroll to secure a major stake in Aston Martin, reports claim.

Late last year, AutoCar and RaceFans first revealed the billionaire Canadian entrepreneur was interested in pumping a much-needed £200m investment into the struggling iconic British carmaker.

Since then, Aston announced a major drop in profits for last year, a cash balance of just £107m and debt nearing £1bn, seeing its stock price drop sharply again with the losses now at 60% in the past 12 months.

Stroll's investment, according to Bloomberg, would see him gain just under a 20% stake in the company, while talks are also taking place with Chinese automaker Geely, who owns a minor share in Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes.

“We remain in discussion with potential strategic investors in relation to building longer-term relationships which may or may not involve an equity investment,” Aston Martin said in a statement.

At the same time, Stroll's investment would allow him to rebrand the Silverstone-based Formula 1 outfit he took over in the summer of 2018 after an attempt to revive the Lola name failed last year.

To do that would require some delicate talks with Red Bull, however, when Aston is the current title sponsor of the F1 team and has forged a technical partnership on the Valkyrie hypercar.