How do you takeover an F1 team?

0:28nd sprinting into this Q4, Dave. Do you know what? I'm pumped about Q4. It's often, it's an underrated, undervalued Q, I feel. I think it's a Q where you traditionally really come into your own. Certainly, certainly do. Yeah. When the nights get longer, then yeah, then that's really when I get into, come into my own, yeah. Yeah, yeah. As the old phrase goes. What's going on, David? What's new? What's new? Hmm. Well, we're not prepped for this question. No, not really. We're still in the afterglow of Leaders Week London, aren't we? Which we parked from podcast purposes last week. Just been through quite a big internal debrief process.

1:10I saw you in that. What about the sporting world? Let's not immediately think about ourselves, David. Let's think about, you know, the listener and the wider sporting world. Well, can I tell you? Major League Baseball Finals. Major League Baseball Finals. Yes. Playoffs. NBA season approaches. NBA season approaches. Yes. I'll stop repeating what you're saying and talk about, we're in an international break across the world in soccer, football. Men's soccer. Men's soccer. World Cup qualifiers. Going into one in women's soccer. And are you aware of the latest sort of interesting qualifiers for the 48-team World Cup in the US, Canada, and Mexico next year?

1:48The second smallest nation ever to qualify, I think, geographically. population wise maybe uh capa vergi capa vergi very nice very nice they're there for the first time and currently and i think about half the teams have qualified so far but three newcomers next year um those guys uzbekistan in for the first time great jordan in for the first time okay but it does make you wonder there's also been in the us in particular but across the host Nations, quite a lot of noise about the ticket pricing and the ballot that people are having to go into to sort of pay for their right to then buy tickets.

2:29And as we know, there are some enormous stadiums that need filling for the World Cup next year. And obviously, we have this expanded tournament, some would say sort of bloated format. You know, there is the possibility that, and I'm not sure whether this could happen from a seeding's point of view, but Uzbekistan-Jordan, for example, in a group stage match. How appealing is that likely to be to a US audience? And how many traveling fans would you expect from, for example, those two countries? Well, the thing you've got to remember about the US is the enormous diasporas from pretty much any country on the planet.

3:16So I think with a lot of these World Cup playing nations, I think they're going to be drawing a lot of support from domestic audiences. Even an Uzbekistan versus Jordan tie, for example. Yeah. Even, will they be in the same, there's 80 ,000 days, as of 2014, 11 years ago. and I presume this number would have gone up, there are 80 ,120 Jordanian Americans. Okay. Okay. You're pretty quiet on the Uzbeks. So we can fill one stadium with Jordanian Americans alone. Yeah. I'm just putting it out there as a bit of a question mark, more about the format than anything else as the World Cup approaches. And through these World Cup qualifiers, you know there's a lot of excitement around the world i mean the european section is perhaps not the most interesting do you want to guess on the aspects 10 000 so 2023 they actually seem to collect this figure 74 967 okay so there's a remarkably well balanced diaspora uh over there the aspects and it's funny you should pick those two nations david because they're very equally weighted yeah and you know about the size of your average nfl stadium as it turns out so perhaps i withdraw my point um but uh what we are going to see certainly over the next few months we heard it a bit at leaders week it's only going to happen and and it's it's the way that all things world cup men's world cup uh sucks the oxygen from the rest of the the sports industry and i think even through the world cup qualifiers as i say not necessarily in europe which perhaps isn't the most exciting bit but around the world there's huge excitement as uh as teams book their place or you know fall at the final hurdle um on their you know in their attempts to get to the the finals of the tournament and i think we're gonna see so much of you know all aspects of the world cup just you know suck the air out of the rest of the industry what was it the other day you were predicting that there's going to be a content format that you were predicting is going to sweep sport what was it was it the sort of coast coach trips so this yeah this was in the newsletter last week in our Worth Knowing newsletter, which you can subscribe to via the website.

5:39Maybe. Drop us a line. We'll tell you how. Give us a call. Give us an old fashioned call. It's out every week. And I spotted a fantastic live stream that NASCAR were running on their website and on various social channels, definitely on YouTube. And it was essentially a dash cam, forward-facing dash cam on a NASCAR hauler traveling from, I think it was from Charlotte, from a team base in Charlotte to Las Vegas, to the racetrack in Las Vegas for the following weekend's race. And that was it. And you loved it. Tuned in for hours. Tuned in for a little bit to see what it was like. And it was everything you can imagine.

6:26But I do think it is an idea that you could apply quite easily by sticking a GoPro or a dash cam or whatever on the front of a team bus traveling from a hotel to a stadium. And it will be something that can be easily branded up as a bit of sponsor activation for certain types of partners. You're not revealing anything about what's going on in the bus itself. The other end of the coach. Exactly. But you are putting fans on the journey with the team to wherever. I just see a lot of scope in that format for the World Cup itself, the largest ever World Cup geographically, as well as a number of competing teams and some iconic journeys across the Americas.

7:13They were discussing this on a football podcast that I was listening to the other day. What's going to be the shorthand name for this tournament for World Cup 2026? The bid was United 26 originally. Yeah, but people aren't going to say. No, nobody said it for years. But that was how it was framed up in the bidding phase. I think the way it's going to be tagged is the US World Cup, honestly. Do you think it's going to be US 26? Because it's always the name of the country, then 26. Even when there was two countries, Japan and Korea, it was Japan and Korea. Yep. 22. Yeah, I don't know. Or 2002. too.

7:51I know somebody who will, Gianni Infantino. Do you think he's on top of that? I am very impressed as I always am by the contents of his Instagram account. And he, every time a nation qualifies for the World Cup, is doing quite a lengthy to camera video. I really want to know, it seems too quickly produced to be him just dropping everything. You think he's done one? Well, I'm wondering how many he has recorded for how many nations. to cover all the venture parties. Was he just doing a quick sort of summary of national qualities and welcome Uzbekistan? Congratulations, often in the local language.

8:29Oh, wow. Yeah, it's really quite something. But if he, you know - Is it Jenny or is it Jan AI? Good question. But I suspect there's a lot of those that will never see the light of day for people who haven't qualified. But it's quite the thing. And as always, do give him a follow. Well, no, without question. Well, very good. Very good. The America's 26, maybe. Oh, you're still thinking about that. I am still thinking. It does need a good question. It does need a catchy name. As far as I can see, there currently isn't one. And as you say, the oxygen is about to get sucked that way. And we are going to need to have a term for it, I think, collectively.

9:08Mike Pompeo, the former US Secretary of State. I saw him at the IMG summit not too long ago. and he was talking about the World Cup and kind of diplomacy, political diplomacy through sport. And he, I mean, he's that kind of guy, but he's sort of answering a question about the World Cup around, you know, the way that the nation's this fragile political sort of state between the host nations at the moment, Mexico, US and Canada. And he was asked a question about that. And he was pretty blunt about, well, we all know it's a US World Cup and the others are hosting a couple of games uh and which he wouldn't get away with uh if he was uh well maybe he would he's one of yeah trump's guys isn't he yes you certainly don't hear much about the canada and mexico no involvement in this um don't know victor montagliani the other day at leaders talking up canada no of course but in in global terms it's very much being seen as you know booking your booking a trip to the US.

10:12You've got something to present for us on this episode, David. Not a presentation, but a little conversation that you've had. I have knocked up a few slides. Please go ahead. No, no, no. We'll save those. Yes, I have had a chat with Stefano Battiston, who is the chief commercial officer of the Sauber F1 team currently and will be the chief commercial officer for the Audi F1 team, which is what the Sauber team will turn into next season as Audi makes its debut, its much anticipated debut in Formula One as a fully fledged manufacturer and engine supplier. Really interesting one this and wanted to speak to him to get a sense of how those preparations were going for the big rebrand, what exactly is involved.

11:03This has been a phased takeover over several years. It's been well signposted that Audi were coming in in 2026, which is a year of big change in Formula One generally, big changes to the technical regulations. I have a question at this point, if it's okay. Are Audi coming in and taking the license of Sauber or is Sauber becoming Audi? Sauber is becoming Audi. So they have bought the team And there's a bit of investment from the Qatari QSI organization as well. But Audi are the majority owners of the team and they'll be taking over the headquarters. In fact, they already have done. The team is just still known as Sauber for this season.

11:48The rebrand will happen in 2026 when they will not only be designing the car and taking over the Sauber team, but they'll be producing their own engine as well, which has been in development for many years. 2026, this big moment of change for F1, as it periodically does, big changes to technical regulations, sweeping changes to, in fact, all new engine regulations as well, which has spurred a lot of change in the ranks and a lot of suggestions that it could spice up, shake up the competitive order. We'll see what happens there, but often these big rule changes do. probably the last big big one was at the end of 2013 into 2014 when you might remember that was the period when Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes dominance began but also when F1 switched to hybrid engines and Bernie Ecclestone was complaining about the lack of noise from the engines a lot has changed in F1 since then but you're seeing these new alliances form in 2026 amongst the existing teams.

12:54So you have Mercedes and Ferrari, of course. You've got Red Bull building their own engine for 2026. They're going to have a bit of help from Ford. You've got Aston Martin, who have brought Honda back in as an engine manufacturer. And Aston Martin have Adrian Newey designing as well. So everybody's been building up to 2026 and focusing from a design point of view, making the most of these new regulations. Drivers have been positioning themselves around what is their best bet in terms of giving them the best chance of being competitive in 2026. So when this happens, fundamental rule changes to the design of the car, basically, or what is legal in the design of the car, this is essentially a periodical reset moment, right?

13:42It can be. Where this is sort of an equalizing measure. Theoretically, it can be. you will certainly still have teams who are better funded than other teams and probably more able to throw resources within all the rules around how you you know what you can do and when the what rule changes often also do is uh you will find a team has found something that no other team has done and so therefore becomes dominant and i think that's from an f1 point to you probably a bit of a risk here um what they don't want of course is one team one engine manufacturer to completely dominate over all the others so that is definitely not over a period of time but i remember that season where there were big changes and brawn 2009 yeah 2009 and brawn had a better design than everyone else and but it took half a season for the rest to catch up and you know they were equalized from that point yeah correct um so that's what that's a great example of a set of rule changes where it really did shake things up completely for a bit and then it will sort of level out and you come to this season and the end of a rule cycle and the order is incredibly close the differences between the 20 cars incredibly tight you know one one and a half seconds because they're basically the same design everybody's concertine it up because they reach the reach the sort of uh the optimum level of these of what these regulations will allow you to do.

15:07So big reset moment. There's also a 12th team coming in in Cadillac. So you can see how these new rules, these new engine rules has attracted manufacturers to come back in. It's the reason Audi are coming in at this point as both a car manufacturer and an engine manufacturer as well. And Stefano is really interesting in terms of changing the mindset at the Sauber team. So Sauber came into F1 in 1993, perennial midfielders based in Switzerland, so slightly isolated from the other teams, most of whom are based in the UK, a couple in Italy. It's had various ownerships and various phases since then, being known as Sauber.

15:53And then there was a little period where BMW owned the team. And that's when they won their only race in their history in 2008 with Robert Kubica. They've been known as Alfa Romeo for a few years since then. now Sauber again but this switch to Audi comes with it a need to change the mindset the team is growing more people are coming in but they're trying to instill a winning mentality Audi are not playing around they want to come in and ultimately be challenging for for wins and championships almost certainly won't happen next season but that's the the pathway that they're on in Stefano's role he is responsible for looking after the commercial activities of the team and building out that offering and positioning, helping to oversee how Audi shows up in Formula One and the sort of character of the team.

16:44And he's really interesting on whether it's about changing the brand perception of Audi or reinforcing the brand perception of Audi. And he's also been right at the heart of this title sponsorship deal that Audi has done with Revolut, the finance app for next season. Cool banking meets cool new F1 brand. Well, hopefully there's a synergy there. He's really good talking about the length of time that took to bring to life what's involved and also how he spends time and focus on identifying new categories, interesting categories and brands that might have marketing dollars to spend, because he's in a very competitive environment.

17:27The sports environment, the F1 environment, absolutely buzzing with partnership, corporate conversations. At the moment, there's competition between the teams. There's, I think, a little bit of increased competition from F1 centrally as it becomes more commercially active and carves out all sorts of little sort of nooks and crannies of new inventory. So there's a lot packed in here, but yeah, he's good value and good to get a, good to get a sense of where this project is at, because I think it's going to be one to watch. For sure. And just listening to you talk there, it does strike me that Formula One has come so far in really a relatively short period of time in terms of what the overall proposition means.

18:11And I'd be fascinated to find out how people running teams on behalf of manufacturers now think about their presence in Formula One. Whereas before, obviously there is a sort of brand equity element. There's the idea of participating in a glamorous sport, but predominantly it's about sort of a demonstration or it used to be about a demonstration of technical excellence at the highest level and hopefully cascade that down into sales of your communal garden vehicles. I don't think it's about that anymore. I've got a hunch that Formula One's sort of deliberate positioning at the heart of a kind of cultural palimpsest, you know, music, lifestyle, etc, etc, has probably shifted the equation a bit for people who run teams as well.

19:06Yeah, I think to a point, I think ultimately with all manufacturer involvement in F1, there is a... Car sales. Yeah. You are reporting up and you're reporting up usually to boards who are ultimately there to make some kind of judgment, strategic judgment about whether it is having an impact. Now, how you define that impact, how you measure that impact, I think becomes more complicated. But it is interesting if you take the example of Alpine, which is Renault's sort of sporty brand. As all these manufacturers are coming in to the sport for 2026, the Renault-owned Alpine team will continue. But Renault is not investing any longer in an engine program.

19:54So the Renault-owned Alpine team will use Mercedes engines on a customer basis next year as they shut down their longstanding engine unit. And at some level, there's clearly a the investment isn't matching the results here conversation. Sure. And obviously, that is a big reduction in investment, right, if you're not providing the engines. Let's hear from Stefano himself, if you'd like to bring him on, Dave. Well, here he is. It's the chief commercial officer of the Audi F1 team, Stefano Battiston. Stefano Battistan is with us now live and direct I would assume Stefano looking at your background there from Sauber Team HQ in the heart of Switzerland yeah hello everyone great to be here exactly sitting in cloudy Hinwil at the moment which is around about 25-30 minutes from Zurich where we have our headquarters, where we're building the car, where we're building the future Audi F1 team.

20:59This is where I'm sitting in our commercial office and I'm looking forward to this talk. Absolutely. Give us a little bit of insight, if you would, as to your own role at the moment at the team, because you've got this interesting position as a team where you are competing in the world championship this year as Sauber. But the bigger picture, the future project is coming around really quickly. This long anticipated move to become the Audi F1 team. Give us a sense of the mood within the organization and where your role sits, sort of working on both sides, I guess. Indeed, indeed. I think the mood is described easily because it's excitement.

21:47and so everybody's super excited. I mean, we have a great season currently with the current team, with the stake of one team Kik Sauber. At the same time, we are all having this once in a generation opportunity where we can bring the four rings into Formula One, which I think is exciting enough so that we all work towards that target and we all work towards this. And you can feel that momentum in Hinwil and how everybody is working hard to just get ready for that. While, as you said, keeping the actual season running, going and making it a successful one, because what we do today is the foundation of what we have tomorrow.

22:30So this is what we're currently doing. Myself, I'm in the commercial department, so I'm the chief commercial officer of the team. This means my responsibility, it's marketing and brand, everything around life marketing experiences, such as hospitality, brand activations. Then we have partnerships, which plays a big role in our sports, acquiring, getting new partners on board, but also then making sure we can activate them and we can deliver everything that they want us to do together. and last but not least also to make sure that we are fit for purpose in the sense of from a full commercial perspective also working closely with our communications department to make sure our channels are up and running and that this is that this is engaging and connecting with our audience we're going to get on to all of that over the next few minutes but give us an insight into a chief commercial officer's role at an F1 team.

23:33I mean, take this week. So what are the main meetings? Is it internal meetings? Is it external meetings? What does your diary look like? Give us a flavor. Yeah, it's a good mix. It's a good mix of both. So most of the weeks we meet externally with potential partners or existing partners. As said, we're currently running the stake F1 team Kickstarter, so making sure that everything, all the activations are on track. Normally, we plan the race weekend well ahead of time, so to make sure that everything is up and running, which lies in the live marketing department. Then we travel a lot, so we often go and visit our potential partners as well as our existing partners, because I think in this industry, or in all industries, it's still people business, so we need to see each other, we need to connect with each other and we need to work on future projects as well as existing existing projects.

24:27A lot of time goes into planning and kind of steering. So making sure we're on track, making sure we have all information together, making sure the projects are on track. And then also, I think, especially in this phase where we are right now, where we run towards the end of the current season but we are ramp up the next season um lots of meetings where we literally sit together and brainstorm of what we can do bringing the plans together bringing the budgets together to make sure we're we're ready for when the season starts um and as we have this unique opportunity to bring a complete new team to life um i've just been um to visit adidas to see the collection to see already the 2027 collection, if I can give a little glimpse into that.

25:17So we're living already a year ahead. Yeah, but that's mainly it. And then from a corporate perspective, management meetings, aligning with the technical team to see where the car development is, when we can do filming days, when we can launch certain assets for the next season, align with Jonathan on what the next activations are so quite busy quite diverse i would say quite interesting and often also there is a surprise or two during the day which then we need to solve as well you mentioned jonathan wheatley there the the team principal uh at uh will be the team principal at audi and currently at sauber tell us a little bit more about this this audi f1 project because we've we've been hearing about it for years it's been it's been very well signposted there's been this phased transition in terms of ownership of the team.

26:14And now the final buildup really, because in 2026, everything switches visibly to Audi. You've lived quite a lot of that process, having joined the team in 2021. It's obviously an enormous change, both, I guess, in terms of you know the practical stuff but in terms of probably culture and you know maybe the status of the team as well with with a manufacturer of the might of Audi coming into F1 for the first time what has it been like on the inside and what stage are you at now in the in the process yeah luckily I've been part as you said almost from day zero onwards and I got the task to build the commercial landscape around the team.

27:04So to make sure that we can build the brand, the team basically, and also to ramp up because as Sauber, we've been a very good privateer team that is existing over 30 years in Formula One. So I think we have the biggest respect to Peter Sauber and to the whole Sauber family of what has been done over the recent years here in Hinwil with some limited resources from time to time as well. And now with the Audi project, we have a complete new scope. So from one day to the other, we become a factory team and we want to compete with the best ones of these worlds. We want to win world championship titles.

27:49So as you said, this brings a lot of change with it. This brings a ramp-up plan with it. So we had to ramp up people. We had to make the organization fit for purpose, or we have to make the organization fit for purpose. And it's also a lot about culture. It's a cultural change. It's installing this winning mentality, getting, I would say, we almost doubled the workforce here. We have the power of a champion behind us. audi wherever they entered into motorsports they won the series that they've entered over the time i think we we are committed to write the next chapter and to to continue that legacy and and hence the culture the culture needs to change or there is a cultural change as well within the company just also believe in it and to have the structures and the processes ready to be able to deliver i think this is what we're doing in terms of where we are today you've seen a year ago with uh we've started with mattia binotto that joined the project that i think was an important milestone for everybody because he really brought them speed into the organization and making sure we're fit where we are and then jonathan joined recently and i often say in sports the results are kind of the result of what you do and how you work and as you as you can see right now the results are getting better and we're doing a step forward So I think we're on the right track, but I think the direction is the right one.

29:22So in terms of where we are in the project, I think we're still building up. I think we have to be or we want to be humble. We want to take it step by step because we know it's a long journey. You don't win overnight. It's a journey that we're on. But I'd say we're climbing up. We're climbing up. We have a clear vision. We have a clear target that we all follow. and we're climbing up that mountain and making sure we gain ground step by step. Audi is going to be effectively one twelfth of Formula One next year with Cadillac coming in as a completely new startup team, very different type of organization type of approach.

30:03Each team has its own style, has its own personality, has its own approach. What do you think Audis will be? what do you want Audis to be? Yeah, now you tap into one of my passions here. Well, I think the opportunity we have is unique. It's something, so being able to bring the four rings to Formula One, the power of that brand, the charisma of that brand of these four rings, these iconic four rings is something that is an opportunity that you have once in a life. When we looked at what we want to achieve or how do we want to be positioned, obviously Audi stands for Vorsprung durch Technik, which is progress through technology.

30:42So innovation is something we want to stand for. We want to be an innovation hub for our partners where we can co-create products, where we can co-create technologies. I think that's super important for us. We want to be perceived as a premium team. I think that is very relevant to Audi. And having the opportunity to start from a blank sheet of paper with all the expertise we had, with all the experiences we had, I think brings us in a unique position where we can build up a team in the way of which we've always would have dreamt it to be. Formula One has changed over the recent years. So there's a new audience joining.

31:21Netflix obviously played a big role in it. We're becoming more and more female in the sense of the audience becomes more and more female. So these are all audiences. We have the opportunity as we have zero historical constraints of how we look partners we have on board so we had the opportunity to do it from zero so we want to position ourselves as a premium team i think we want to have that clear look and feel on track we want to be we want to represent audi we want to feel like audi we want to be unmistakably audi but also create a multi-brand powerhouse where our partners together with us can literally create and amplify the partnership they have with us.

32:07Because I think this is a bit the beauty that we have today with the blank sheet of paper that you can just build together and that you're on a journey together. So who else can say that they've been part from race one onwards? And once we win races and championships, this is a nice story to tell. Yeah. So we really see ourselves as an innovation hub, as a premium team and we want to resonate beyond motorsports so whatever we talk and discuss it's not only about motorsports motorsports is an important part but it's also about the beyond how can we bring f1 to the people and how can we engage with with the wider community the fan base question i guess is quite interesting in part of this in the way that you know the the circumstances that you're in, rebranding an existing team.

32:54And obviously an F1 fan base is to some extent are dictated by the nationality of drivers you have in your team. I imagine you've got a lot more Brazilian fans this year than you have had in previous years. We even have our social media channel in Portuguese right now. Yeah, exactly. With Gabriel Bortoleto. How much do you know about your fans currently? And actually, are you expecting quite a big turnover or churn in yourself as an opportunity to gain new fans? But are you expecting much movement in terms of the fan base, either retaining fans or attracting new fans as the Audi era begins? Yeah, we know our audience quite well.

33:34We run lots of analysis and we have lots of tools in place where we can really identify who our audience is and to whom we talk to. because I think especially these days, everybody gets so much of content that he's looking at. So I think it's important that we create relevant content for our audience. And to do that, we need to understand our audience and we need to know what they want and what they want to see. In terms of what we will or how many fans will we retain when we move from stake F1 Team KickSauber to Audi, I think we're having here, again, the beauty of the power of Audi. So Audi is one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world, sells millions of cars every year.

34:25So obviously our ambition is that every Audi car owner or customers becomes a fan. So this gives us already a very strong baseline. Then I think F1, the F1 fans, the F1 community, We see, luckily, in all the announcements we do, in all the press releases we put out, that there is a lot of interest into the team, about the team, what we're doing. So I think we start from zero. As I said, we start from a blank sheet of paper. We will launch our channels soon. And then we will see how the audience comes together. But with the partners we have on board, Revolut, BP Castrol, Adidas, as well as Audi, I think we will hopefully grow quite quick, build a big audience, and then need to be ready to create meaningful content for that audience and let the community grow by delivering engaging and outstanding stories which they can resonate with and where they can live it as well.