James Vowles | The Future of F1

30:18That's what's happening. We are humans at the end of it. Are we going to get it right or wrong? We make some terrible mistakes, but it's in front of 70 million people and we have to deal with it. Simple as that. The main purpose for me is how do we move on and live from that and become a stronger entity as a result. That's Netflix. I think they've done a brilliant job. And obviously what happened in COVID was a time where the world thought it was going to end and shut down. You might as well watch Netflix on TV and Drive to Survival's there. And that really took off. We saw the figures go through the roof as a result of it.

30:49Next thing that then kicked in that helped is in that time, Formula One was, I think, the first or one of the first sports to return. Because fundamentally, if the drivers aren't isolated, we have a problem. They should be. in a helmet going on the track a few meters from each other. And so now you had a combination of the two that really created this drive that we have today. Next, our fan base sort of pre-2019 was aging by one year over year, so you get the idea. And most sports are, for that matter, predominantly male, predominantly in the 50s. Now, our fan base, the largest growing by a country mile, is women aged between 16 to 36.

31:30and women make up over 44 % of the viewing fan base now. So what it's done is create a connection to a different world. And I think it's brilliant. It means the sport that I love that's been kind to me has a future. And how... Well, there's two parts. How's fandom changing more broadly, I would ask. Perhaps could you explain a bit, beginning for me, about fandom in F1? because it's quite interesting the way that people follow teams over drivers and so on, which seems like sometimes a bit perplexing. But then actually, if you give the example of football or rugby or whatever, people don't follow players as much.

32:14Although I do feel that's changing ever so slightly in the kind of like football world. As it is in Formula One as well. So the best I could describe it to you now is when you walk into Silverstone, you're greeted by a thousand fans that have been there since 5 a.m. in the morning just to have the opportunity to say hello to you yeah and as you go through very typically there'll be something like a williams shirt and a mclaren cap or a ferrari cap and a mclaren shirt or you get the idea effectively it's a mix between an individual that i haven't seen previously it's becoming more and more apparent and when you speak to them you find out it's because for example they follow Carlos, but still like McLaren and what it stands for.

32:58Or they follow Williams, they like what I'm saying, what I stand for, as well as other things, but they like Lando. And they want to feel a connection to both as a result of it. So it's a very different approach to what was there previously. Personally, I think it's great. It's good to support it, but it has changed. Whereas previous to that, you're right, it was very much about the team. And that still is in some cases. I would say Ferrari is a religion in Italy more than anything else. And when you support Ferrari, you feel so connected to it that that's where your connection lies. It's irrespective which driver's in there.

33:31Then you've got icons like Lewis Hamilton, who has transcended the sport, gone into a different world, done things that are mind-blowing in terms of achievements, and that's where someone feels a dedication towards at the same time. You've got Mercedes that won eight championships on the dot, back to back to back to back and dominated the sport and people feel the connection to that for whatever reason. And then you've got Williams that's still the third most successful team in the sport that people feel a connection to and want it to be successful and like the pathway, like the challenger brand that we represent as a result of things.

34:06So different personality types connect to different aspects of things and a driver can attract them as well as a team ethos. And how does it, when somebody starts watching F1 and so on, like you almost get your, if you're watching sort of football or rugby, you almost get your team before you start watching. Like how do you understand those sort of different layers and so on? So I think here, again, it's changed. Previously, it would be a connection to something. So, uh, I mean, I'm sort of genderizing a bit, but a number of... I had on my wall at home posters of, I'm pretty sure it was a Ferrari when I was a kid, because it was an icon.

34:48I'll never be able to afford one of those, but wow, what a great car it was. I'm pretty sure it was a Testarossa as well. Um, and then, then I found someone with an F40, and that was just mind-blowing to me, just this icon of a car. So I created, this is when I was much, much younger, an attraction to it. and yet when I watched Formula One I was attracted to Williams because I loved the fact it was this independent organization that was fighting giants and winning as well as all of it so it's not a surprise to me that I'm back at Williams it's what I connected to when I was much younger and it's to your point it's a connection with a brand identity that people sort of work towards

35:34I haven't answered your question, so I'm now reflecting on it a little bit more.

35:43What's going to be interesting to me is where the sport moves forward from here.

35:50So individuals, how to get into it. What we're sometimes seeing, and this happens quite a bit when you meet people at the track, is they're not connected to any one team. and perhaps most of those actually will be wearing a Formula One cap so completely independent from any team they just love the fact that there's 20 drivers that are all world champions in their own right fighting for a championship they don't feel affiliated to any one individual or team I think answering your question how do people get into it in that way I think they get attracted to the sport first and foremost and then from there find a piece of their personality that connects to any one of the teams in their regard maybe it's McLaren at the moment because you like the winning nature of it.

36:31Maybe it's Williams because you like the heritage nature of it. Maybe it's, as I say, attracted to the fiery characters that are in the sport. It doesn't matter. You find your connection that way. But I think that's probably how I describe it. You affiliate yourself with Formula One, which means you're very neutral to it. But what I'm seeing is it doesn't stay there long. It does navigate towards, I'm going to follow X, Y, and Z for this reason. Interesting. And so what do other brands get out of it? Because obviously that's one of the sort of big kind of like associations and has been for a very long time.

37:05F1 has been all the kind of different brands and so on. You can see on the car all sorts of different ones here. Like it's very cool. But how do you sort of like, yeah, what sort of pitch to brands, et cetera? I'll be fascinated with mobile. So this is the Williams story. I don't believe in the word sponsorship. I believe in the word partnership. If you look at Atlassian, which is not on this car, so sorry, this is a 24 car, but Atlassian is a challenger brand in its own right. Sounds strange. It's a multi-billion dollar brand, but it's a challenger brand because actually in their space, there's Microsoft and large elements that are bigger than them.

37:46And what we connected on is we are going to be led by technology as our differentiator to everyone else. And that's what Atlassian very much stands for. It's a technology company at its core. it's about communication, it's about teamwork. And actually, when we started talking in about 10 minutes, the overlap and synergy was enormous. And their products are a part of our 25 portfolio of elements that we're using to make the car quicker. So already in a space of six to eight months, we've already integrated quite a bit of their product line. And so that's why I call it a proper partnership. Same with Komatsu.

38:20With Komatsu, we formed, we believe in graduates, early careers, proper STEM programs, they do as well. And so we formed the Komatsu

38:31effectively academy, but we will take on STEM individuals from different disciplines, bring them in and train them up to a level when they go through university still connected to us. In fact, to that point, in Singapore, in just two weeks time, we've got the finals that allow us to then choose the final candidates. And we'll bring on board around about six to eight of those to be a part of that academy and will help them, guide them and support them through that journey. That connected the two of us together. Also, it seems strange, Komatsu are, if you look at it on the outside, you go, there's nothing in connection to those two companies.

39:02And again, quite true, what's really interesting about them is they are starting to automate a huge amount of their truck movements using various technology systems, which have an interesting overlap with us at the same time as well. I can go through the rest of them, but fundamentally, if you look at most of the ones we have signed certainly in the last eight months they're technology brands working in different spaces and they have real application to what we're doing they're mostly as well what i would consider challenger brands they're not necessarily the biggest in the space but they have aspirations to get there and a real pipeline to get there as well at the same time it bonds us together um and how has sort of netflix drive to survive changed your life and sort of the the fame that's probably come with it, I imagine.

39:50So I don't believe we're famous. And the reason why I state that is today, yes, first of all, outside of a Formula One weekend, you can walk around the streets, you can enjoy yourself. It's really not that. There's no issues at all. And anyone that comes and approaches you is fantastic. They're just in support of what's going on at that point. Inside of race weekend, wearing the shirt, yeah, you get recognized a lot. But that's what I mean. it's not really fame. It's fame attached with a particular environment and sport. And if I wasn't in Williams tomorrow and went and did my own thing, it would drop off a cliff as it should do and someone else would replace me and so be it, off they go.

40:29So in that way, for me personally, I think it is all just a part of what we do, but hasn't changed my life. Maybe it will if in time, but it really hasn't changed my life for today. I actually quite enjoy the fact that you see kids that were as young as I was when I was thinking through what to do with my life. And you can see the glint in their eye and what it means to them. I like the fact that Netflix has brought us closer together as a result of things. I like the fact that it's showed our world to other individuals. Yeah. But generally speaking, it isn't a hindrance. It's just what's required for us, Williams, to be out front and center and grow.

41:13How do you assess talent? We've talked about it quite a bit in this interview about how you fast track people and so on. What are the ingredients you're looking for? So the half, if we take performance reviews, it's a good way of describing it, and drivers, they fall into the same category. Might sound odd, but they do. Half of what you assess them on is technical ability. So half of their grade for the year will be based on, your job is to do this, we'll put a set of objectives relative to it, you have to hit that. And it could be, you need to be developing an X-rate difference, you need to be adding this performance to the car, you need to be improving these processes, all those sorts of in-the-middle items.

41:53Half of the grade is behaviors and values, and that's really important to me. So effectively, for us anyway, in terms of our values, we're looking for how you work within a team. And what that's looking for is, do you actually empower those? Do you give them the ability to talk? Do you give best ideas, the ability to float up to the surface? Do you bring people together when things become tough, or do you push them away? Resilience, which Williams has in spades, but it's fundamentally when things get tough, what happens as a result of things? Do you use that pressure as a strength, which you should do on the backside of innovation?

42:29Are we really pushing the boundaries of what we're doing? Or are we playing safe within our small remit here? Do you encourage others to push the boundaries? Do you support them in that facet? And otherwise, I'm not going to fire through all of our values, but it is really about how

42:46that individual portrays them and do they role model the remainder of the team? Because that's culture. fundamentally once you have the right values which are really just guidelines they are what creates high performance culture yeah and that's why it's half the grade for it and how how do you let people have a remit when it comes to changing and can you give some examples of where you've got that people have come up with suggestions to improve the car etc how and how that sort of actually works. Sounds like an HR question.

43:24So I'm going to give you some anecdotes and I'll lead into that. When I joined Williams in 23, what I almost found was a team that was surviving. Not almost, a team was surviving. They were just literally trying to live hand to mouth to do what they could. There was no future car. We couldn't think six months ahead. The car was very safe. It was very overweight. It was designed effectively, if you were a designer, it was probably sensible. You're not going to lose your job if you've designed your bits, but heavy, but you've done it in a way that's not going to break. And one of the things I put forward is challenge the ethos whereby when we found people that had failed, not through incompetence, but by pushing the boundaries of innovation and all of the aspects to it, and it's failed, and they've taken that learning and pushed it back into the business, you push them up into a pedestal and say, this barb over here, there wasn't really a bub over here.

44:15This is what happened. This is the failure we went through. But here's what we can all learn from it as the result of it. And suddenly that created a driving force that individuals realized that the ones that we're actually going to put forward are the ones that are failing. Yeah, fail fast. Going back to your point, how can I give you an example? There's quite a few. The bit that's probably been the most uncomfortable is letting the current projects fail in front of them, because they have to, to focus on the long term. So, the best examples I can provide are...

44:57We've mentioned here, I'm going to be very unspecific, because I want to protect some of the IP we've done, but lead times on certain components have dropped by a factor of five. So, the world of Formula One is such that you really want to be getting an idea from someone's head, normally in the aerodynamics world, but doesn't have to be, to the track in sub-eight weeks. If you're really good, four weeks. If it's a small part, maybe three weeks or two weeks, fundamentally. That continuous evolution is where you need to be. When you're surviving, though, you can't think that far ahead to even give yourself the space not to do it.

45:35So one of the things that we've ended up doing is we used to just rush components to the track because it was felt as though they're the most important aspects in the world. And you literally just stopped them. If that hasn't been through X, Y, and Z process, you can send it not being fitted to the car. It doesn't matter if anyone thinks this is the most critical element that has to be there. We are not fitting it to the car. It will be returned and we'll do the process properly. And very quickly, that created a cultural change where we had to use process, structure, and system. Now, on us, on me, we didn't create enough, and still today, it's still not where it needs to be, of system.

46:11So individuals were, and I feel for the real individuals on our shop floor, they were almost having to fill the same data into three or four different systems in order to get this working. It's temporary. Today, that's gone. But I can see why there was concerns. is because we've made our life awfully sticky with red tape. That's not the intention behind it. The intention behind it is we have to start populating systems to get data. But what it allowed us to suddenly do is, before, I had no idea how much a front-wing cost or how long it took to make or how many components it made up. Now, today, all of that data now exists in that form.

46:44Because as soon as you process and structure it, you have all that information and data. You also know now what to prioritize within the business in what time frame. But it's a huge cultural change because it feels uncomfortable to that individual, they have let the team down by not having the bit that goes to the track that stops the car from running. And then pretty much that happened. But by doing it the right way, allows us to do so much more kind of it. So it's probably the best example I can give you in that way, but there is literally thousands. The way to think about it is as soon as you move to the long-term or the mid to long-term, all of the short-term things will fail.

47:20And how, I mean, And how is AI going to change it, do you think? What are your sort of predictions on this? Obviously, AI has built a lot of kind of like public available systems, but the whole point of what you guys are doing, right, is you're protecting that IP, et cetera. So the good news in the public systems is even with chat GTP or otherwise, so we use a company called ARIA, and the benefit of ARIA, so it's one of our partners, is actually your IP remains your IP. and they very cleverly use a mixture of, could be OpenAI, Gemini. You don't really know behind the scenes. They use the best one for that purpose, but not using the IP to learn from it.

48:02So there's ways of protecting yourself, which is what we're doing within ours. So it's a good question. First of all, I've said this publicly and I'll maintain it. Formula One teams are nowhere near the leading edge of AI. Nowhere near. There are much more advanced companies than we are in this world. And we have to play catch up quickly as a result of it. What we are using today in the case of Atlassian tools is all of the meetings are recorded within their platform and scraped automatically for key items. And it is a fantastic improvement. So immediately you have an hour-long meeting, straight at the end of it, it'll provide two paragraphs of what we're summarized in the meeting, all the action points it will pick up automatically from an associate.

48:43That just means that before when you had someone typing away in a meeting, which happened quite frequently, in fact if you looked around you'd probably have a whole team of people typing around here. That all goes. Now your focus is on the meeting more than anything else at this point. Now, I know this is a benign use of AI. Benign, not true. A simple use of AI. But my point behind it is at the moment, what I'm seeing is AI helping across a thousand different projects and making everything just much better. It's not one big solution that you glue it all together with. It's just making our lives more efficient in every regard.

49:15Yeah. It's also creating our institutional memory as well, right? Correct. Exactly. But if you now start thinking about what we've just done, what we've just done is digitized every word that comes out of every mouth. Because the really interesting conversations weren't necessarily captured in that form beforehand. And then it forms a part of our data. Because ultimately, here's what's happening. And it doesn't matter whether it's your world, my world, or any other company. Data's growing near enough exponentially across the world at the moment. And human beings can't keep up with it. So the only thing that can is automated systems.

49:47they are um what have you used it for kind of in your personal sort of life etc um i'm a lot more structured and organized with my information and data now um i mean everyone i think everyone anyway i certainly use it for this was a really good example um it's just fun example i had data that was uh from my motorbike uh but anyway it's an compressed binary format and I just needed to decode it. And I could have manually gone through that process and it would have taken me about two weeks to do. I dumped it into a chat to UP with some guidelines as to what was in there, some information that was in there, and then got it to produce some Python code on the back end, which I had to tune a little bit.

50:28But I used it to effectively do something that was, I enjoy it because it's a fun experiment and it's got data at the end of it. So it's got all of my boxes ticked. But I used it to fundamentally write code because that's what I testing with it. How good can you write automated code off a process of a set of command pops? The second we used it for is Rachel, my partner, is doing a really interesting defill at Oxford University at the moment. She's a surgeon by trade. She's doing a defill in elements fundamentally of breast cancer. I won't go into too much detail here, but we used it to do a deep research paper on several of the other key items before it.

51:05And fundamentally, it's how do you introduce technology into surgery? That's the real element behind it all. But the deep research element of it was fascinating. In a second, you can pretty much rip through other research papers all across the world, doesn't matter what the language is, and really start to find what has been tapped into, what hasn't as a result of it. So that's where it starts to become powerful. It does work that you can't do in about, in this case, about half an hour, and summarizes it in a way that's beautiful. That is really interesting. So are you a big bike then as well?

51:39One of my questions is going to be, what car do you drive? So I answer to all of these. So I was, we put it on social anyway, so I can talk about it now. But I was driving a McLaren GT3 car in Spain last week. So I still enjoy racing. But this isn't racing, it's testing at the point in time. But I really enjoy driving a car, a racing car that's pretty quick in a fun way. My road car is, we've got two. I've got a Mercedes. I think I just enjoy a Mercedes anyway. And they were kind and helped me out. And then I have a Porsche Taycan just because it's a really nice way of having a 900 horsepower car that no one realizes 900 horsepower.

52:23So that's why I quite enjoy that car. And actually, for all of the negatives around electric cars, it is great not to go to a fuel station all the time. So just charge at home or at work. those are the road cars we have a sort of family car which is a big Mercedes and a Porsche taken and a motorbike so that's all electric? no the Mercedes is not the Mercedes no no no the Porsche yeah the Porsche is all electric yeah so I mean talks about it on the podcast I was Persenogy one of our kind of big partners and I've just been using their EV for the last six weeks and I found it like so enjoyable. It's strange, isn't it?

53:05It's quiet. As I said, this particular one I have is the top of the line. It's very quick. And I really like the practicality of when I wake up in the morning, the car's ready to go. It's filled up. I don't have to worry about ever, ever. And so I know it's not for everyone. For me personally, it makes my life easier. I've got so obsessed with the energy prices on it because like when it's Lindy and Sonny. I'm like, because I'm not really technical by this at all, but I would like obsess over it. I find it, I find it like, yeah, it's been an amazing kind of experience. One final area I want to talk to you about.

53:44You're always asked about sort of different drivers and the different driver traits. We've obviously talked about pretty much every other job in the team. It's what, yeah, what other kind of like reflections do you have on sort of what makes a great driver? Because you've worked with some of the best, right, in terms of like Schumacher, Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and so on. Is there anything that unites them all or are they all completely... No. Like any human beings I've met, each one is different to the next. And in fact, what it really showed me is there's no one mould you have to fit into, for the most part.

54:21The one trait that they do have in common is the driving for them is very natural. So when they're driving, they're not using their brain capacity to perform at the limit. Their brain's now being used on, how do I optimize that front right tire? That car has just made a small lockup into turn three. That tells me that their front tires are on the limit there. I might be able to attack them and pressure them more here. Where's that wind come? Okay, the wind's coming from a southwest direction. That means turn four, six, let's take care. I can feel it's picked up. Their brain is doing the live optimization of the entire lap in real time.

54:55That's number one. And so the driving aspect, one that would saturate near enough everyone else at the limit of a Formula 1 car, that for them is just natural. And that's the real champions because they're fining for the edge all the time on top of it at the same time. That's number one trait. Number two trait, I won't go through all of them, but these are two fascinating ones. When they make a mistake, they can compartmentalize it almost instantaneously. So what I mean by that is they've gone through a turn, carried a little bit too much speed in, had a slide. What they then go through is, okay, I'm going to adjust my speed through turn three as the result of it.

55:31And the next lap I go through here, let's adjust that through there. That's it. It's done. I'm not going to think about it anymore. Whereas those that aren't quite at that level are still, as they go through the next corner, going, what happened through there? I probably need to make up my lap time. I'm too tense down. Let's try and carry a bit more through turn six, seven now. So effectively, you're now continuously trying to make time up in places that you can't as a result of what happened. and invariably one mistake leads to two, leads to three. Yeah. So the world championship mentality is one of resetting almost instantaneously and accepting mistakes and mistake.

56:05And you can see how that forms into my ethos, into the business as well at the same time. Actually, your failures can teach you far more if you accept them. Yeah. Rather than use them to punish yourself. And how does that almost telepathy between the sort of comms of the driver and some work, right? Like that is such an interesting... It's not always telepathy. I'd actually say across my career, I've seen it mostly dysfunctional. So, but there's some really, there's some great race engineers that have worked with the driver for long enough to know their state of mind, almost like a marriage. Because you know the stresses they're going through, what they're feeling, how they're talking about it.

56:50And that's often why your race engineering pairing with the driver is a very key one. You need to have personalities that fit together and build together really well. There's no point having a really data-driven engineer without a driver that's data-driven in the same way. The clash will just not happen. It just won't work as a result of it. So you have to find the right bounding of individuals and then form that relationship over time. but to your point what we have as our advantage is the car's producing about 50 000 channels of data live each car so we can on the screen of front of us if you now look when you see it on tv in the garage we're not looking at 50 000 we're probably looking at 500 channels the core channels yeah we can see everything they're doing in the car though oh they've adjusted the steering world by this oh they've made a small correction last corner the differential opened in a slightly different way out there they applied the throttle a little bit late and so instinctively you can automatically look at the data and go okay i think they're uncertain about this car on the high speed let's have a chat to them about that and say we would recommend you go up on the diff high speed one through that corner so that's why it might feel instinctive because a lot of the time we have a data-based background that allows us to understand what they're doing in the car and the mental capacity of drivers mental health etc how much has that sort of changed over the last 10-15 years, society has generally become a lot more aware of this.

58:08Yeah, there's a lot more work that now takes place with psychologists and coaches that enable them. So it's a really interesting field because 15 years ago, even today, taking every single driver that's near enough in Formula 1, I think this applies to all of them, they are multiple world champions before they've gone there. That can be multiple European world champions in karting, then going through to effectively Formula 4, which takes place across multiple continents these days. They normally have to have won that. They have to have won Formula 3. They have to have won Formula 2. That's what gives you the right to go into Formula 1.

58:45It's not quite true. Sometimes they may have finished second. But when you've done that, because you're a multiple world champion, you've kind of created, as you imagine you go up, your structure around you that enables you to feel your strength. And if you haven't done that whilst working with a psychologist or psychiatrist or coach in that regard, you become very structured in your way of working, and it's very difficult to move away from that going forward in the future. And sometimes that foundation is strong enough that you can take anything that comes at you. Sometimes it's less so, and you do need the help and support of others.

59:18So about 15 years ago, 20 years ago, the race engineer was almost a psychologist and psychiatrist at the same time. Really fascinating. No formal training whatsoever ever at all, I can assure you we were useless at it, but we did our best in that regard. So you'd have these professional athletes and you'd be guiding them and helping them. You'd be in some pretty tricky conversations where they are really pulling their heart out and you're doing the best to help. Now, whilst that created a strength and that bond that we were talking about between the race engineer and the driver, that's not really the right way of doing it.

59:50The right way of doing it is there are experts in this field that can give you structures and flows that allow you to understand what happens. And here's to the next bit of it. And it's, to be really clear, I'm an amateur driver, race driver, but you go through the same emotions. And I talked to the drivers about it and said, is this what you feel? And I'm like, yep, that's what you feel. You feel, at times, incredibly alone in the car, incredibly alone. And the only connection you have is a voice that appears every now and again, maybe once a lap, that gives you other support or information as a result.

1:00:20That's your connection to the real world. You can only see a kilometre ahead of you and about 200 metres, if you're lucky, behind you, depending on what car you're in. That's your world that you live in. Next, you doubt yourself. And it's a really fascinating experience that you go through, but you really do doubt yourself. And the positive spiral that you get yourself up on is either through doing a good job or lap times, or just you build yourself up. But the same way you build yourself up, you can spiral yourself back down again. If you make a mistake, have a crash, have an accident, it doesn't matter what it may be, you can spiral down very quickly as a result of it as well.

1:00:52And so it really is about understanding where they are and what you have around you as a support structure. But it was fascinating to me. It's part of the reason why I enjoy driving. It's because you get a connection with those individuals in that way. No, I can imagine that gives a unique aspect. We've got a few quick fires to finish with. What's your favourite track? for the actual track Suzuka why? you make a mistake you're heavily punished you will crash it's grass or gravel on the outside of it very high speed the S is the car's never really pointing straight it's always going basically at your angle left or right and it's a real challenge hardest track still Suzuka in that circumstance Singapore as well is quite hard Singapore because it's that's not true so i'll change it it's not suzuka probably hardest is moniker apologies just because you again no room for error but you're pushing the barrier out with your wheel that's how close they're getting to the wall pushing millimeters of it fascinates me that they can lap after lap get themselves out that's the hardest track yeah there are some great memes aren't there where it's uh it's there what was the first car you owned it was a renault clio uh but it was a renault clio williams i should say I loved it to bits.

1:02:18And there was, again, if you go now back to what I said, which was I loved Williams. I wanted a connection with it. When that car came out, I scrimped and saved and bought a second-hand one. Loved it. If the Ashes 2005 is the greatest cricket test series ever, what's the greatest F1 race ever? Oh, just, I mean, race, single race? Race or season. I mean, season... I'm very biased. But it was 2009. 2009, I was a part of BornGP, and we had nothing. We really did. We built the chassis. We cut the back of it off to fit a Mercedes on. Half the team knew they were losing their job at some point, and they worked every hour of the day to get us where we were.

1:03:07It was just a fairy tale. I mean, we could do a whole podcast just about that year. So that would be it for me, 2009.

1:03:17and what's an underrated job in F1? Really good question I think for me a number one mechanic so it's the mechanic you see standing at the front foot on the jack effectively releasing the car I think people see it but don't realise that they are doing that job they're normally a gunman on the pit crew as well at the same time So the responsibility is enormous. And by the way, they do pit stops whether it's their car or the other car. It is unique between the two. They work incredibly long hours, bring the team together at the same time. Their job is to basically corral that team of individuals, 10, 12, point them in the right direction.

1:03:58And it doesn't matter whether the car's coming in with two wheels hanging off the side of it. They will get it built up to an absolutely perfect specification in two and a half hours. And if you stood at the back, it's like a ballet. It's like a symphony. everyone is just coordinated around each other and that's the number one responsibility to just bring that all into her it's the conductor and I think the world probably doesn't realise how multi-dimensional that singular job is Did you watch F1 the movie? What were your thoughts? I watched it it's not a documentary it wasn't intended to be a documentary I think they did a really good job of capturing though that it's a team sport that it's not just about the driver in this circumstance, that it's...

1:04:43I felt highs and lows during it, as you would during a course of a season as well. And it was there to do what its intention is, which is to attract people to our sport by saying, listen, watch a real F1 race. There's some bits in this that are quite exciting, and that's how a sport is. Which city could next host F1? Is there a way that London could ever do it? I don't think in the near future, five to ten years, it's a huge enterprise to shut down the roads of London for that period of time.

1:05:19Somewhere like Monaco, it comes to a standstill as a result of it, and that's Monaco. It'd be hard to shut down the entirety of London for it. Next cities, though, what I can say is this. The interest in Formula 1 is through the roof. There are one nine different countries currently bidding to see if they can get the calendar problem is we're already at pretty much saturation of 24 so it's how do we make that work going forward yeah

1:05:47um okay um who's a underrated driver at the mecca i would have said alex until this year but i think everyone can see what I can see in Alex, which is he's outstanding and strong at what he does. I mean, Carlos is pretty quick, and Alex has shown himself relative to that, but can he hold his own? So, I'll have to think for a bit. I think Oli Beerman is very talented. I know we had contact with him in Monza, but he's very talented. A great future. If you could do one other job, in the team for a day, what would it be? What's your sort of kind of favorite one?

1:06:38Good question. I'd quite enjoy it. I'd be terrible at it, but I quite enjoy being in the aero dev group, the aerodynamic development group. I know I'd make the car slower, but I'd have a hell of a lot of fun switching on the wind tunnel and watching it go. That'll be it. James thanks very much for coming on Jimmy's Jobs of the Future it's been brilliant thank you so much thank you