00:19:09 · John Collison, Toto Wolff
[00:19:09] S1: Can you prevent people from changing team within a season? [00:19:12] S0: So there is the, you know, regulatory environment of every country. How long can you actually prohibit someone to work for [00:19:19] S1: Yeah. [00:19:19] S0: For another team? With our contract... Contractual frameworks. And in The UK, can do it up to twelve months. [00:19:25] S1: Okay. [00:19:25] S0: But there are countries like Switzerland, for example, where it's three months. Okay. So... [00:19:30] S1: So you gotta be careful who you hire in Switzerland. [00:19:32] S0: Yeah. We haven't got a Audi's in Switzerland, for example. You gotta be half... Careful who you hire hire elsewhere. Yes. But you always need to account for the fact that the people may change teams because of personal reasons. Absolutely, you know, fair arguments. Yes. And that's why how can you make sure that things are not leaking too easily, but they will eventually always come out. [00:19:51] S1: Yes. If you could write the rules, how would you change them?
00:19:51 · John Collison, Toto Wolff
[00:19:51] S1: Yes. If you could write the rules, how would you change them? [00:19:54] S0: Well, I'm in two minds. You know, the innovation part in me and listening to my engineers is free rein. Mhmm. We have a budget cap Yes. That is 200,000,000 and then make it as open as you want. Yes. Because that would be magnificent Yes. From a magnificent from a scientific standpoint, an engineering standpoint. But it would... What what would happen is the the best engineers in the... With the most, you know, capability also in terms of infrastructure will come out with a car that is much superior than some of the other teams. And it would create a a field where the leading car could be five seconds quicker than the next one. And that is not what Formula One wants. Mhmm. So it's becoming more and more restrictive. Yes. Is that good or bad? You know, I think it needs to be it needs to be sensible because this is still the fastest laboratory in the world. That is in our DNA. And I think it's, that is still happening. Yeah. Obviously, engineers will always say, well, it's not as much fun as it was in the in the past, but it's still a lot of fun.
00:20:56 · John Collison
[00:20:56] S1: Yeah. Yeah. You were describing one set of risks in developing new technical changes, which is the the regulatory risk. You know, the risk, will you be allowed to have us even for one season or or certainly multiple? But the other risks is just technical risks. You know? Will it work? And And I think in any r and d organization... You know, we have this at Stripe where we only have so much time. We only have so much money. We have only so much engineers, and we need to put them on the very... You know, towards the projects that are most likely to work. You And don't know upfront what's gonna work. And so part of the special sauce is that ability to predict this product direction is a good one versus this one is just... I mean, it's not awful. It's just not the not the best. And you're fundamentally playing this game of where you spread the poker chips. How do you manage technical risk? How do you think about allocating those very precious chips? And, again, they're even more precious now in the new cost capital.
00:21:51 · Toto Wolff
[00:21:51] S0: So the unfortunate part of it is that your business is far more complex, in my opinion. Why? Because you deal with the end customer or whoever the customer is, an organization, an entity, or or a or a person. Because are you... You know, you can define technical specifications that you believe make the process better or more efficient or successful. But there is someone at the end that actually needs to buy your product, and that person or that organization is gonna measure whether the humans that are actually his customers or her customers Yes. Are gonna like it. Yep. How how can you predict that part? With us, it's all data and the simulation. It's much more measurable. It's much more measurable. That at a very early stage, we will define what is the lifetime contribution that we that we imagine of that part. Yes. And that all starts in the virtual world. It's all simulation, whether it is CFD Yes. Or whether it's the wind tunnel in the way we we measure it or we attribute downforce and drag, or whether it is mathematical models that we have. And all along the process, you continue to correlate with your expectations. And there are rare occasions where you believe that something eventually when it ends up in the car is gonna be a tenth of a second in average overlap quicker, and you realize it's not. Or you realize that the driver doesn't feel comfortable with it and isn't feeling, you know, isn't feeling Yep. Safe enough to Yep. To drive it. So we need to consider also if the end customer, which we know exactly Mhmm. You maybe not, will be able to extract from that virtual, let's say, theoretical lap time benefit. But it's much more measurable.
00:23:41 · John Collison, Toto Wolff
[00:23:41] S1: Engineers like to fall in love with their ideas, and I just need one more simulation run, or I just need one more, you know... We don't have that. So... But do you have to kill people's ideas because they're [00:23:51] S0: they're in love with them, but they're just not gonna work, [00:23:53] S1: or you just don't have the resources to staff it? [00:23:55] S0: I think we have we have people like this who, if they are also forceful, they might put the organization under pressure to actually continue with the experiment beyond the, you know, reasonable point. But they are not part of the organization anymore. This is this is one of the personality traits that that we hold dear [00:24:13] S1: Mhmm. [00:24:14] S0: That you need... It needs to fundamentally contribute to the overall target of lap time Yes. Rather than what we discussed before to the department's target. So there will be a decision within the group and then in the wider technical management to say, we're stopping this now. So so if I was to talk to [00:24:34] S1: an engineer at Mercedes, I would find them surprisingly dispassionate and analytical where they're not falling in love with a particular technical approach or they're not falling in love with their idea. Yeah. It's either it works or it doesn't.
00:24:34 · John Collison, Toto Wolff
[00:24:34] S1: an engineer at Mercedes, I would find them surprisingly dispassionate and analytical where they're not falling in love with a particular technical approach or they're not falling in love with their idea. Yeah. It's either it works or it doesn't. [00:24:46] S0: Exactly. You fall in love with the result. Yeah. It's that these extreme emotions and gratifications that you feel when you win a race Mhmm. Or a championship. And therefore, the kind of rational part of the engineers, I would hope is superior against, like, let's say, an emotional falling in love with your development part. I wanna ask a bit about [00:25:13] S1: your investing background because, obviously, that is how you ended up in the position that you're in in racing. First off, were you a private equity or venture capital investor? I've heard it described as both in accounts. [00:25:27] S0: None of that, [00:25:28] S1: I would Because [00:25:31] S0: how it all started is that when I decided to stop my racing, I had a short period of time where I was an employee in a in a in a steel manufacturing company, didn't like that. And then ended up reading about Internet companies in The US. And I know you had Marc Andreessen here. So one of the first companies that I got interested in was Netscape. Mhmm. And then you had Yahoo! [00:26:00] S1: AOL. And these were the star companies