Jean-Éric Vergne: How To Recover From Losing Your F1 Seat (Ep123)

0:00With Red Bull it's either you win or you disappear.

0:02Jean-Éric Vergne:You always have that pressure to perform and to win. It doesn't matter if it was your rookie year or not, you had to win. The first year I did with Red Bull was my worst year. I had any podiums and before the last race, Helmut Marko called me and said, if I was not going to do a podium, I was fired. He knew exactly what he was doing. Constantly under pressure. Even when you win, it was putting you under pressure. First year in Formula 1 was like$200 ,000 earnings. Then I had to pay my super license. I had to pay the fines. I ended up negative in the first year. It's not like I was in F1 in today's world.

0:30Jean-Éric Vergne:I mean, when I was in F1, actually, it was not a sport that many people was watching. Netflix didn't exist. Social media was just starting. I had maybe 4 ,000, 5 ,000 followers. I guess the image that I had in F1 didn't work out. No factories wanted me. And I came to the hard realization that I had to change something. I had to change my image. I had to do it all over again to convince people that I was actually good.

0:55Hello and welcome to The Business of Sport, the show that takes you behind the scenes with the industry's leading owners, operators and athletes. We're back to four wheels today as we welcome Jean-Erik Verne to the studio. Jev, as he is affectionately known in the world of motorsport, has seen it all in a career that has spanned F1, Formula E and Le Mans, to name but a few. He raced in 58 Grand Prix's as part of the Red Bull Racing family with Toro Rosso and is Formula E's only double world champion. Now, Jev is not known for being reserved with his opinions. His character is built on a refreshing directness you don't get as much of in sport these days.

1:30This comes through in a perfect balance of self-belief and honest reflection when assessing his time at Red Bull, coming to terms with decisions made that are out of your control and rebuilding a career and image that got him back to the elite end of motorsport. This is a real look at life as a driver behind the assumption I and I'm sure many of you have on the luxury of elite four-wheel performance. We're delighted to welcome Jev to the Business of Sport. The Business of Sport is supported by Airwallex, the intelligent financial platform used by more than 200 ,000 modern businesses, from SaaS and marketplaces to some of the most ambitious organizations in sport, including McLaren Racing, Arsenal and the San Francisco Giants.

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4:02Jean, it is so great to have you in the studio. Thank you so much for joining us today.

4:06Jean-Éric Vergne:Welcome. Thank you. Have you done many of these out of interest? Not many, no. I mean, you know, I think I haven't replied to you for one year and I really apologize. No, I don't do that many. I can count them on one hand. He hasn't replied to you for a year? I didn't actually think it was that long. Sure, that's savage. You know what you say? I've sent 52 messages, never give up. Yeah, I agree. Persistence. You go, bro. Because I was having a look beforehand. It's always interesting to see what kind of conversations have been had before. and I actually only saw one. I saw one that you had done, which to me is always great because we love to have the kind of conversations that maybe haven't been had a lot.

4:47And you have a, which is why we were first introduced, a really interesting career across motorsport, but then also doing stuff alongside it. But just from a motorsport perspective, can you give people like a quick overview of your journey around motorsport?

5:01Jean-Éric Vergne:Yeah, sure. I was sort of born on a karting track, literally speaking. my first babysit was a karting seat so coming back from school I had to do my homework but basically I was driving every night at my parents' go kart near Paris so done karting until I was 16 I was ok but not like very successful career in karting I didn't win any world championship or European championship the best I've done was French champion and vice European champion. Went to single sitter, did the Formula 4, French Formula 4, which I won thanks to that I got within the Red Bull family in the same time as Daniel Ricciardo.

5:47Jean-Éric Vergne:And then I did two years of Formula 1, two liters, one year of Formula 3, British Formula 3. That was my first year living in England. And then World Series and then Formula 1. So I won a lot of championships before F1, which was quite important because back in that i mean still now with red bull is uh either you win or you you disappear um so you always have that pressure to to perform and and to win doesn't matter if it was your rookie rookie or not you had to win so luckily i did i went to f1 with restore also did three years my first two was uh with ricardo as a teammate the third one was Kvyat and then that last year went pretty well on the sporting side I mean I beat Kvyat but didn't go very well politically speaking with Red Bull because they when Vettel left Red Bull Racing to go to Ferrari it was only logical that they would take the best driver in Tour also and they took Kvyat so yeah that didn't make much sense actually he didn't even do the full season he got demoted after only six months in Red Bull Racing.

6:58Jean-Éric Vergne:But that was, unfortunately, that was the end for me of my career in Formula 1. So it was a rather short and not very successful one. And this is when I joined Formula E, so now 10 years ago. And I won two championships in Formula E. It's been a pretty good run so far. That's the best summary. You know, there's two sports that we come across where there's a really interesting trajectory at the earliest stage. It's tennis and Formula 1. and what i mean by that is what it actually takes for you to be able to make it to the top generally in those sports seems to be hugely dependent on financial exposure as well being able to support a career to even get the chance to sit in that seat what was your journey like well in cutting i'd say we we it was okay because uh my parents having a cutting track um i was uh associated with with sodicart um which were the partner with with my with my parents family but even that it was I had to earn my place to be in the top team and to have the season paid by the factory and once I almost got demoted and it was quite I remember my parents being quite stressed obviously you know when you're 14, 15 years old you have absolutely no idea of the money being put behind you and how much it costs to do a full season in go-kart Can I ask on that we had tennis players say it takes a million dollars to get someone to be a professional tennis player in training when you look at your parents having a karting track and the money that goes behind those early stages is racing a accessible sport if you don't have money no it's not it's not it's very difficult and i think uh i mean everybody knows it's it's too expensive we're all trying to to make efforts to change the the rules there are new championships now in go kart where is the same engine same go-kart for everybody so that it reduces the price but it's still very expensive and now the seasons in karting are completely out out of hand i mean i've heard like some kids the parents of you know spending more than half a million in just one season in go-kart it's absolutely mental well we um spoke to claire williams uh she talked to us about you know that period of formula one let's say from i don't know 2010 to before liberty era you know She was talking to us about running Williams and being in a situation where you had to sell if you want race seats.

9:21So when you're a driver fighting for those 20 positions, is that quite a difficult thing when you're kind of coming through and aspiring to that, knowing that your talent may not be the thing that gets you in that seat?

9:29Jean-Éric Vergne:Well, in that sense, I got very lucky to be coming in the Red Bull junior team because Red Bull never cared about money. The only thing they cared was they wanted the future talent, the future Sebastian Vettel, the future Max Verstappen. And in that sense, it was good. I mean, all I had to do was to deliver to win championships. And I knew already when I signed with them that if I delivered, I was going to go to Formula 1. That had nothing to do with money. But Red Bull didn't make life easy because, let's say, the season in Formula 3 was, I don't remember the deals they had because we never knew how much they were paying.

10:06Jean-Éric Vergne:but let's say it was 800 ,000 they made sure that my parents through my sponsors always paid a part so they didn't want to make my life my family life easy so my parents I mean we still had to to pay like 100 ,000 a year which I mean was difficult I mean was not impossible it's always easier to find 100 ,000 through sponsorship than it was to find a million but they never wanted to make my life easy what's the red bull family like as a racing entity uh ruthless i mean many people are gonna talk bad about red bull about the way they handle their drivers and everything yeah for sure it's not easy but let me give you an example um the first year i did with red bull was my my worst year i think it was i was teammate with ricardo it was my very first chain in single sitter i mean in proper single sitter it was ricardo's second year and of course he completely destroyed me that year I hadn't had any podiums and before the last race, Helmut Marko called me and said, if I was not going to do a podium, I was fired.

11:10Jean-Éric Vergne:Luckily, I did a podium. The year after was okay, I think I won the championship. The year after, I was in British Formula 3 and this is when things started to get quite serious. You know, faster car, you're getting closer to Formula 1, you're starting to be a reserve driver for the F1 team. and that year I was in many corps I was on pole, I stole not once but twice so first race, I don't know I finished second race, I started on pole, I stole, I came back second but I didn't win the race and I remember all my life on the way back home and the guy called me, I was on loudspeaker, he destroyed me there was no tomorrow like you're a piece of shit i expected better from you this is unacceptable coming from you uh i don't accept this anymore and i was leading the championship already uh the race after the weekend after was in okkenheim i did the two polls i won the two races by a huge margin like 40 seconds it was a lot and he calls me and uh he didn't say congratulations or anything i said uh why you didn't have faster slap i was like i didn't have time to explain he said i'm disappointed i still expect better from you and he hung up i didn't have time to explain that the fastest lap was done by a guy that broke his front wing pete put new tires and did it on the last lap with low fuel didn't even have time but he didn't care i knew exactly what he was doing like constantly under pressure even when you win he was putting you under pressure and for some driver it's bad because it can really break you but for some driver it can literally make you because when you arrive to Formula 1 for sure the pressure is going to be way higher than it is in Formula 3 and he wants to prepare you so I kind of understood that oh yeah I got fired also by him once this is the most exclusive sport if you're looking at the number of seats available let's just say to compete in it we're guilty in modern sport now a little bit I think of you know sometimes being over sensitive and protecting some of the talent but the reality is it's going to be hugely competitive as you've said and if it's too much for a driver then they're probably not going to be right for that environment yeah but i mean that's red bull way red bull's way but it doesn't necessarily mean that it will work for all the drivers and there are some drivers that were in the rebel family that could have been world champion but that didn't it didn't work through the the system because when i look at for example kimmy antonelli if he was in the red bull family he would have never made it to formula one or he would he would have been gone after one year i mean in formula two he hasn't won anything in the first year in f1 it was not that great but the way mercedes and total wolf were with him was maximum support maximum love everything that red bull would have never given you and it turned out to work out pretty well i mean he's doing an amazing season so far like really impressive but if he was with red bull i don't think he would have he would have been where he today can i ask when you chart the kind of years in your career and scaling up to formula one what was the first big year financially for you like when does the money start to hit it never really hit it i mean the first year in formula one was like two hundred thousand dollars earnings yeah for the first year yeah for the first year and then i had to pay my super license uh i had to pay the fines i i ended up negative in the first year wow what yeah no i mean i mean yeah with red bull it was also ruthless on the end and um it was uh yeah some drivers don't make a lot of money in f1 so i didn't make a lot honestly i didn't do across all the years in formula i did only three years in formula one yeah so but all three that's still quite good though right three years it's over 50 races yeah yeah i did more than 50 races but i didn't it was not it was it was honestly the same contract for all the drivers for the first three years it was like 200 500 700 dollars wow and so that was your trajectory across yeah wow was there commercial uplift on the side opportunities no because i mean on top of it it's not like i was in f1 in in today's world i mean when i was in f1 actually it was not a sport that many people was watching i mean netflix did not exist yet i mean the next week show was was not existing social media was just starting i had maybe 4 000 5 000 followers as an f1 drivers so yeah i was not in f1 in the in the good time that's for sure when you made it into the toro rosso seat is it very much a come in here perform in here red bull is the destination yeah so if you then don't achieve that it's over wow i mean which which was my case in the end I didn't go to Red Bull Racing and that was the end well as you saw in the one that you did do and you were talking about the mentality of finishing in different places in the grid but actually you wish you had been happier with finishing in 6th or in 8th position and understanding what success could have looked like in the cars that you were driving why do you think you weren't able to recognize that when you were in the car?

16:18Jean-Éric Vergne:it comes from your background when you used to win a lot of races a lot of championships and finishing 2nd was a disaster when you have that mentality for so many years and you come in F1 and you finish 8th and the whole team is clapping and happy and say, am I in a madhouse? Why are those guys happy about it? Just that I wish I had a better understanding back then that being 8th in a team like Toro also was actually a great result and that it should have been celebrated more. It also gave me that sticker of the French guy never being happy. which in the end I was not happy to finish 8th but I had a teammate next to me that was smiling no matter what, if he was being beaten if he was crashing or if he was finishing 8th and I think people liked him way more for that reason than me.

17:12He lives a way nicer life doesn't he? Sorry? Beaten getting crashed he's always smiling I'm just like that's a nice life to live isn't it? Oh yeah but again that's your difference in personalities 100 % But then, you know, you mentioned it's not what Formula One is now. I mean, yeah, it was a massively different environment for you. One thing Drive Survive did amazingly well, I always say, it also gave a really interesting, like, view into the team principal side, like the relationships in the garage. And from, you know, your perspective, when you're in there in a Red Bull family, what was that kind of like from the operating side and the relationships that you had with a team principal?

17:48Who was the boss and how did that kind of work across almost having two bosses? If you have one that is a destination for you, but one's a reality right now, you in conversation continually with a christian horner are you are you are you speaking purely on toro rosso standards like no i mean the the big boss at the end of the day was helmut marco it was the one making the shots no one else really yeah and even so even at the level of drivers it's like the owner of a football club picking a team yeah he was the he was the shot

18:13Jean-Éric Vergne:maker yeah 100 he wasn't christian he was on france dust he was him that is the one that gave me the call to tell me uh basically uh fuck off when he said basically fuck off what did he actually say like how did he do it i've you know like elmuth marco stivert is very cold so jeff we're not going to continue with you next year i cannot do the austrian accent i'm sorry i tried but i'm bad um yeah we're not continuing we need to make way for for young drivers and And I was like, okay. I kind of, I mean, I understood, you know, the reasoning behind it. But I, what I got very angry is I asked him a very clear question.

18:55Jean-Éric Vergne:I said, okay, look, I'm doing a good season. If I keep doing a good season and if Vettel is leaving, am I going to go to Red Bull? He said, Vettel is not going away. I said, but if Vettel is going away, I mean, is it me or Kvyat that you're going to put in the Red Bull car? He said, I'm going to put the best driver. So, I mean, the driver that has the most point, the most experience so yeah it's gonna be you okay so i kind of went in the second half of the season knowing that there was still this this opportunity and in the in japan during the grand prix when vettel announced on on friday night that he was leaving to ferrari i was like okay then i have a good opportunity um i came back from very strong races in singapore and everything um so i was like okay tomorrow we're gonna have interesting conversation and i woke up in the morning with the news that kivya was signed by by red bull and this is when i lost it with them it's like doesn't make any sense what why and some people within the red bull um team like higher people never understood that choice a lot of people in the paddock as well so do you know why it was i have to this day i have no absolute i mean i have no but i don't know why and i don't care frankly i mean it's not going to change anything understanding why yeah the young driver that you gave way for would end up being a young Max Verstappen.

20:12Yeah, yeah.

20:13Jean-Éric Vergne:Honestly, I have no problem that I give away for him. I would have had a problem that I give away for a young driver that would have done one year, be bad and disappear. Had you seen him much, you know, in the... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was he so obviously good so early? Yeah, he was, yeah. So, like, you have that conversation. I'd imagine when you're growing up, reaching Formula One as an absolute pinnacle, that was, like, the dream and the ambition. and obviously staying there and progressing in the sport. So if you then find out that you're not going to continue in Red Bull, what starts to happen?

20:48How do you look at opportunities that could be on the table for you? Yeah, obviously.

20:51Jean-Éric Vergne:I mean, the other difficult thing with Red Bull is that when you sign a contract, you have no rights of having a manager. So I never had a manager. It was always Red Bull. What? Yeah. You don't have a manager? No, I didn't have a manager. It was when I signed my contract with the Red Bull Junior team, I didn't have the right to have a manager. So obviously when you do your whole life with Red Bull, you don't really get to speak to any other teams, to any other managers. So you don't really know what's going on outside this Red Bull world. So I remember speaking to Alain Proz, to Checo Perez, and there was this manager called Julian Jacobi, um who i've heard but i never really spoken to so i spoke to him during the second part of the season to sign deal with him to to help me out to find a new drive so i signed with him i'm actually i'm actually still with him more than 10 years down the line but there was no seat available in f1 there was nothing there was a seat in rano uh but i needed to bring like 15 or 20 millions okay so that's it wow so yeah so i was there was a seat in rano so i was i was i was very good uh in their eyes for 20 millions yeah wow was that common the unfortunately yeah back back then it was i mean the teams were struggling financially not all the teams had a lot of money and sometimes i mean like claire williams must have told you i mean it was also difficult for williams i mean they benefited from uh paying driver for many years for a lot of cash how do you look at that whole um development of the sport because in 10 years it's ridiculous it's only i mean i can't believe it's been 10 years but then on the same time you look at how far it's come and you go that has happened in such a short space of time they've done a brilliant job i mean no nothing bad to say on what they've done i mean it's frankly amazing i mean the value of the teams have i don't know quadruple quantity club 10x i don't know but i went went through the roof no more paying drivers all the teams I don't know if all the teams are making money but all the teams are able to get pretty good sponsorship pretty good visibility so yeah it's a completely different world now and so then we have to move to Formula E talk us through that decision how you thought about it and the entrance there because you also own part of team yeah so Formula E was a difficult choice because it was a completely new championship.

23:31Jean-Éric Vergne:I mean, you know, you're in F1, you see yourself in the best category. You don't even look what's done, you know. So one of my managers called me and said, it was after Abu Dhabi. Obviously, there is no seats in F1 for next year. I'm sorry. I was like, okay, so what's next? He said, there is this championship Formula E. I can maybe get you a seat in. I was like, okay, why not? I mean, I had nothing else to do. so i was like okay let's uh let's do it and say i was able to negotiate a contract for one race uh with andredy um i was like okay how much they're paying they're paying for your flights that's it it's like only for one race yes and i was like you know what i got nothing else to lose i mean i've lost everything already obviously with the f1 years it's not like i had a lot of cash next i mean i had nothing so um i was like okay let's do it so i said one is the race you have to leave tomorrow to to Punta del Este I was like okay fine so no simulator no testing the car nothing at all okay let's go see how it works and honestly I arrived there and it was such a nice atmosphere like drivers I knew like very good drivers good teams and it was fuzzing like there was parties also going on during the race weekend with they were mental like I'd never seen that in motorsport I was like, wow, that's pretty cool.

24:55Jean-Éric Vergne:I mean, I like Formula E. It's nice. And Michael Andretti, I will always remember, before the qualifying, I said, Jeff, if you're doing the top 10, I'm going to sign you for the rest of the season. So good luck for quality. And we speak after. So okay, fine. I did quality. I did the poll by three tenths. Obviously, I was not expecting that. And this is when my manager started. I started to see the effect that my manager could have. Obviously, he signed a pretty good deal for the rest of the season, thanks to that poll that I did. I could have won the race, but the suspension broke in the last lap.

25:32Jean-Éric Vergne:But anyway, my first impressions were made in FE, and I was off to a good start. What was the money comparison to F1? The deal I had was already more than the first year I had in F1. Wow, for the rest of the season. Yeah. He must have been a big name for them. So that's a really good scoop for Formula E as it starts out, right? be able to bring a formula one driver and fine as you said you didn't have a seat and actually i think formulae helped uh to bring formula one drivers to to the championship financially to the teams so i think there was an incentive to to get a no noun no names in in the in the championship yeah i mean you you kind of just glossed over the fact that you just walked out formula one and then got a pole in formula e but i'd imagine like the cars are pretty different yeah completely different so very weird very weird and i remember actually there was helmut mark on that race and i saw him after i did the pole and uh and yeah i mean i'm not gonna say what he told me and i'm not gonna say what i've told him back but since that day it's fair to say that uh he didn't like me very much but you go from full combustion to electric right and now that was very weird i mean the first time i go out of the pit like not hearing hearing the the noise of the the wind for the first time it's very weird it's like a buzz it's so weird then you have a staying wheel two pedals but it's battery it's power it's you know that yeah i mean just to drive the car faster one lap it's very similar it doesn't matter what you put in the car obviously you're still gonna have some differences but not that that many the biggest difference were in the race obviously having to to save energy and recover the energy that was that's the biggest difference that you can have to to formula one or to any other series am i right in saying that you also did some um test driving for ferrari yes so i trade that same weekend i got the call from ferrari saying that i was going to be the the result driver um so that was that was nice I did two years with Ferrari, but frankly, to go to almost all the Formula One weekends, drinking coffee, knowing that you're never going to drive back.

27:44Jean-Éric Vergne:And I could see that I had some, obviously, you were in the paddock, so I was able to talk to some of the teams. There was some interest, but the interest fades away after a certain time. So staying in the F1 paddock just to watch, you know, your friends race and you drink coffee all day long, I didn't want to continue doing this. so I stopped after two years the Ferrari and and I wanted to do also endurance racing what was that like um as a team when you get inside it and you started to see how Ferrari operated compared to what you'd lived in for so many years in Red Bull uh quite different quite different but in a way not so different because Red Bull is a British team but I was with the Italian team uh Toro also so to go from Toro also to Ferrari was actually quite similar I mean it was the factory was very clothes one was maranello the other one finds eyes like a few i don't know less than 100 kilometers away um more or less the same people i saw a lot of people in ferrari that went also back then it's just the political pressure that there is in the ferrari team that is pretty heavy you feel that even as a test driver oh yeah yeah yeah how's that kind of how does that show is that in meetings is that in it shows in meeting it shows when the big boss is coming to the team uh to the race uh people panic i don't know why but they were panicking back then you can do both that's quite interesting so you could you could do that with ferrari but you could also then compete in yes and i and i wanted to go um to endurance racing 24 hours of le mans i did the test with with toyota they it's fair to say they didn't like me very much why sorry why i don't know for I guess the image that I had in F1 and it didn't work out so I came to the realization after F1 one year down Formula E so the first race went pretty well but after doing two years I haven't won a single race in Formula E I didn't have a contract in Hypercar back then it was LMP1 no factories wanted me and I came to the hard realization that I had to change something, I had to change my image I had to do it all over again to convince people that i was actually good because the image of a formula one driver wanting to prove himself in endurance racing not being really a team player wanting everything for himself do you think that was a fair image yeah it was a i mean it was a fair image yes and no i mean i understand the image but it's not necessarily what i want it to be but i can understand that for example toyota had that image of me but when you look back now would you have done anything differently to not have that image no no no no i mean yeah in f1 i would have done things differently and maybe i would still be in f1 uh but the two years after my exit in f1 were pretty hard i think i touched the bottom rock solid i so two things happened the first one was decided to go to lmp2 so where the young drivers and pay drivers where i went to a small team where I actually needed to pay for the travels and everything so you know when you come from F1 that you go to an MP2 and you pay for yourself you know for the travels that I didn't have a sponsor it was like of my my own pocket I was like you know what I'm gonna do it I'm gonna show the world of endurance that I can be a team player that I can be performing well in in in those cars and prototype cars that I'm not gonna crash during a course of 24 hours race or during the other endurance racing then I got to be friend with Russian driver Roman Rusinov who had the best team in LMP2 was called G Drive and that guy hated me for reason I don't know because I never spoke to him but in Japan we had dinner together and after the dinner actually Jeff is a pretty cool guy and then we started discussing and then he offered me a contract for for the year after we won the we won the championship we won the 24 hours of lamar together in lmp2 and i did two three years um with him we were very successful i think my image completely changed also in the paddock and this is when i i got the contract in hypercar with with peugeot so it was a difficult moment that i needed to yeah to pass by and to basically go down to hearth and uh start working again was it learning to play the game there's a political element to these organizations right and maybe if you go in as the fiery character or have a particular like um way of being that doesn't fit with the organization's way yeah that in endurance it was the case but in formulae was not the case formulae i did something completely uh i mean dramatically different i went to that team virgin virgin racing so the second year formula i mean that could have gone any more wrong i mean i had a massive fight with with the the team principal team owner he wanted to put me out of a car because i was sick and wanted to use a another driver i mean it was i'm not going to go into details i mean it's my in its own it could be a one-hour show just explaining what happened but i'm not going to go into it but bottom line halfway in the season i realized okay uh it didn't work out with the first team it's not it's clearly not working out with that team my image is going through a sink like no one think i can win a championship in in in formulae you know one thing i can win a race i have to do something about it and this is when i talked to one of my long-term um sponsor i told him we have to buy a formula team i said we're gonna do it our own team our own way i knew exactly what was wrong in in that particular team i knew that there was a deal to be done with talentis with ds where i could bring ds in the team as a manufacturer to get their power train and we were able to do that with a team that was called Aguri.

33:35Jean-Éric Vergne:It was back then the worst team on the grid. We worked out through everything. So this is when I became a partner with the Chinese, with CMC and Seca Sports. How much did it cost to buy the team? Back then it was not much and it was a good deal. But I was not doing it for the money. I was doing it for controlling which people I was going to put in the team. I wanted a good team non political only result driven and no politically driven which was the case in all the teams I had been with and which was frankly a nightmare so I remember in the contract that I had with the with the Chinese I had a hand so they had a hand on the marketing and on the business side I didn't want to hear about it I said I want only to control the technical side of things and the first meeting we had was like okay we have a million for for marketing for doing activation on the races and everything i said hold on that million you don't use it for marketing you give it to us for the engineering side they accepted and for the first year we haven't done anything but it was all going into hiring good engineers into having a good simulator and the team we build around ourself was the best team i've ever been with so we won our first race the first year and then we won three championships in a row.

34:58Jean-Éric Vergne:And you won two, right? Yes. The only driver to win multiple, is that right? Yes. And I went to hire the driver that actually beat me, Antonio Felix da Costa.

35:10Jean-Éric Vergne:But yeah, I mean, it was, for me, it was a way to get back to who I wanted to be in that championship. And I don't think I could have done it differently in a different team. Was there a conflict ever being a team owner, part team owner and a driver? No, never. Actually, it worked out pretty on the opposite side because for once, the team principal had the driver that knew the interest. And I also knew what a team wanted from a driver. So it actually gave me a different perspective as to what a driver has to bring to a team. It's not only on the sporting side, it's also on the people side. and it's all about people it's like how much they're willing to work for you how much they they're willing to sacrifice because it's not easy for them as well you know we're traveling the world they will have family they don't see their kids and it's not easy to go from testing to simulator to racing and always give their best how do you look at the growth of formulary it's been what are we in the 12 13 12 season 12 season now it's had not a huge amount of time to establish itself but it's done well in that time but it's also got some challenges right and trying to scale and grow so where do you view the sport today um i'd say the first five years were at the growth trajectory that was pretty phenomenal um then kovid happened and the years following kovid has been pretty rough for the for the championship um they brought a car the gen 3 that i don't think was a good car.

36:46Jean-Éric Vergne:I've always been quite outspoken about that car. It was not very good looking, performance-wise not very good. And I think people could not really get interested into that kind of racing that we're having with this car. But now they changed a lot. They bring in the Gen 4, a completely different car, which is a beast. I mean, I've driven, I've tested it. It's a completely different ballpark and it's going to bring the championship into a different different dimension i'm pretty convinced of that and just to answer a very quick question let's say if it's formulae was a listed a company i would be buying a lot of stock right now because i think the the next few years are going to be amazing for for the championship do you think formula one shifting to hybrid and leveraging more electric is a good thing for formula e or do you think it makes no difference I think it's a good thing for Formula E.

37:43Jean-Éric Vergne:I think it's a good thing because at least Formula E, the fans and the sponsors involved with us, they know what we're here for. You know, it's a 100 % electric championship. And Formula 1, there is no clear message. Why do they go 50 % electric? Why do they have the super clipping down the straight line? Why do we have these kind of overtakings? The fans of Formula 1 understand. The fans of formula watching formula one understand uh but as i actually with all the drivers talking about formula as ariana it's like a formula on steroid like oh it just people talk more about the championship about formula um so i actually i think it was pretty a positive um positive thing when you are a world champion do you get a bonus yeah yeah you get like prize money yeah yeah and so there is like financial incentives at the top which are really meaningful because i'm just looking at this respectfully going where's the money 200 500 700 i mean it's like for formula one and then like formula e how does it work for drivers to make enough to travel the world live a good life it's it's just hard to get your head around so like has that changed as well a formula e put drivers paid a lot more now i'm so sorry for being no no no no no problem i mean i think it's uh it's public knowledge what the the formula e drivers earn for sure not as much as formula one i mean the top drivers are between one to three one to three million when you're taking consideration the bonuses and everything and then the formulae drivers also have can do another championship like the the andurian championship some drivers also have reserved reserve or simulator roles with some f1 teams um so i don't know for sure but i would say like top earners yeah within formulae outside of f1 are between one two three three point five and then do they have brand deals in the same way?

39:35Are there big brands wanting to partner with you and you can do sponsorships?

39:39Jean-Éric Vergne:It's more difficult in FE. And I'm not going to lie, I think the visibility of the championship has not been where it should have been the last few years. But I'm very hopeful that in the coming year with the new cars, the new regulation. Is that purely because of the cars or is it a packaging problem? I've never seen it on any platform. Maybe I'm not in the right platforms, but it ain't on my socials. it's not in short form done well maybe it's not packaged right um i think it's a bit of both uh but the fixing both issue the the product is is fixed with the new car next year and on the packaging also is going to be fixed i mean we have i mean i've known how pretty much all the people working at formulae there are amazing people coming actually from f1 from liberty and don't forget that the owners are also liberty so they've done it with f1 they know what they've done good and they know they can do it also with Formula E.

40:34Jean-Éric Vergne:How have you as a driver approached that kind of like marginal gains mentality? When we spoke to Nico Rosberg and he talked about trying to shave every second off to the extent where he changed the color of the paint on his helmet because I think black paint was 80 grams lighter than the metallic paint just to get those extra seconds. When you're competing right at the top and you're looking at every single element of your performance, how deep did you go and have you gone across all of the racing disciplines that you've been in i wouldn't say to that extent because that's pretty much in your head the 80 grams is not going to make a single difference like everything you can do mentally speaking i mean in in your head is it's going to have a much bigger impact and if for some drivers like nico knowing that 80 grams was going to make like a thousand or two thousand of a second difference and that it helps him then he for sure he was ready to do it i know i'm not one i'm i'm not wired that way what did you do to retain coolness focus and just stay in your own head and not get lost in the madness of it all you're sitting in the car it's still it's about to be raised time like what do you tell yourself actually nothing it's weird it's it's not long ago I've had that question many times and I never know what to answer and once I was on the grid and I remember that question said okay what am I thinking now dude make it up say I think my wife and kids how much I love them how special they are you say you want a brand image rehabilitation thing okay I'm yeah I'm gonna thinking when you're yeah yeah thank you very much you mentioned endurance racing le mans dumb whack like it this is the side of motorsport maybe that people aren't as familiar with like le mans is an insane event can you just tell tell people a little bit about what it's like when you compete on those disciplines compared to the ones we talked about well le mans is to me the best race in the world number one first it's history the track itself the fighting that we have over the course of that race the amount of fans watching the race coming to the race it's just so special have you ever been to Le Mans no no okay if if you go I mean if you have the chance to go you you will not ask the question why you will know you will feel it it's insane it's hard to describe honestly to tell you you know about Le Mans and so it was six or seven years ago when I wanted to take over that Formula E team the first thing I did was to partner with Stellantis and DS because I wanted to be part of that family because I knew they had a program coming three or four years down the line to come to hypercar with Peugeot and I had this in the back of my mind for a very long time to be able to race for Stellantis brands before it was DS now I'm racing for Citroën but still it's for Stellantis to be in the best Formula E team and to be also in the best hypercar team with Peugeot and I hope that next year with the new Formula E and the updates that we're bringing with the Peugeot I'm going to be in the situation where I can both win the world championship in FE and the 24 hours of Le Mans in Peugeot that's been my dream ever since I left F1 that was my my my target I tried to do everything um I tried to direct everything in career choice to be in that situation and for this to happen one day so to be in the Le Mans situation to be in in the situation where I can win for Stellantis both in Formula E and in Le Mans yeah well you mentioned like you know you go in Le Mans and there's like fighting in the team and mentioned there's the team dynamic you don't get elsewhere again for people who may not understand like explain what happens in those in those moments because it is so different to other motorsport so first of all your three drivers um per car um your three drivers um compared to formula one are not drivers that you need to kill you know because when your teammate in f1 you need to to kill your teammates that's either him or you anyway uh but in endurance is different like you need to help them you don't want one lagging like you want three killers with you and uh your best friends and that you know you're gonna go until the end of the night together fighting protecting your car and helping each others and that's something you don't really have in motorsport you know to be with teammates that you actually want to help or that you actually want to be super performant together because the stronger you two other teammates are the stronger you're going to be as a team so that is the first thing that is completely different from many other categories and then it's all the preparation all the work it's a lot more going on in Le Mans I mean in that championship and in F1 the amount of endurance testing that we do during the winter you know when it's freezing cold you're alone on the track driving for three hours in a row like you know the pain and suffering that we are going through mechanics engineers drivers I I mean, let's be honest, driving at night in Pol Ricard in the winter alone in the fog or rain is not fun.

46:08Jean-Éric Vergne:But we're doing this for one race and, you know, one purpose only. So when you arrive to that race, we all know all the difficult moments that we've had to get to where we are on the grid. So it's like you're super pumped up before the race. It's like you have so much emotion coming and you can feel it in the garage. through the team principal engineers mechanics um and um it's pretty special is it difficult to share from that individual mentality to the team mentality um not for me i mean maybe for some drivers it is but i actually never found it difficult so cool do you know three drivers no because at the end of the day like we i want to win yeah and you understand really quickly that if you want to win in that kind of championship, you need to have two strong teammates and to help one another.