00:04:40 · John Collison, Toto Wolff
[00:04:40] S1: How did you decide that you weren't good enough to be a professional driver on this topic of talent identification. I mean, that's [00:04:49] S0: Talking about decision. Talking about humiliation and trauma as ingredients for later success. When I was a child or a teenager, there wasn't really anything differentiating me or outstanding, be it academically or in sports or socially. [00:05:08] S1: Mhmm. [00:05:09] S0: And when I was 18, by sheer coincidence, I ended up on a on a... With friends on a racetrack watching an f three race, which is a junior formula. And when I stepped into this paddock, it's like I've I've gotten my identity. Mhmm. This is what what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a racing driver. Someone that is able to tame this machine. And this is when I started, you know, basically my my career as a driver. But I came too late to the party, you know. I didn't have all of this karting background that teaches you the fundamentals of the physics Yeah. Of how to position your car in the race. But I became I became a pro. I went through the various stages of junior formula racing into what we call GT cars Mhmm. Touring cars or sports cars with a certain amount of success. And it is, you know, like you do about your business, I guess. And what I'm doing today is, you know, I woke up with that desire and I went to bed with that desire. And that lasted for for quite some few few... A few years. The
00:05:09 · Toto Wolff, John Collison
[00:05:09] S0: And when I was 18, by sheer coincidence, I ended up on a on a... With friends on a racetrack watching an f three race, which is a junior formula. And when I stepped into this paddock, it's like I've I've gotten my identity. Mhmm. This is what what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a racing driver. Someone that is able to tame this machine. And this is when I started, you know, basically my my career as a driver. But I came too late to the party, you know. I didn't have all of this karting background that teaches you the fundamentals of the physics Yeah. Of how to position your car in the race. But I became I became a pro. I went through the various stages of junior formula racing into what we call GT cars Mhmm. Touring cars or sports cars with a certain amount of success. And it is, you know, like you do about your business, I guess. And what I'm doing today is, you know, I woke up with that desire and I went to bed with that desire. And that lasted for for quite some few few... A few years. The [00:06:19] S1: the other maybe less talked about part, you know, obviously, there's a huge amount of fixation on driver selection and who'll get the next seat and everything like that. Presumably, a lot of what you spend time on is recruiting the right engineers and aerodynamicists and things like that. How does spotting that kind of talent work? Are you trying to pull people from other Formula one teams or from other industries and outside? And how are you... Just what have
00:06:41 · Toto Wolff
[00:06:41] S0: you learned about talent outside of drivers? So when you when you look at the Formula one team from outside as a fan, you see two drivers. You see then a guy like me who is sitting in front of a screen, and then you see the mechanics. Mhmm. And sometimes the engineers on the pit wall. This is what you expect to be the racing team. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. It's about a 150 people that go to the tracks, including marketing. Mhmm. So it's 90 technical operational people. But we are two and a half thousand. You know, here in The UK, we have two hubs. One that is... Does the engine. The other one, what we call the chassis. That is the works team. And we are 2,500 people in an in an organization that is quite vast if you if you look at the two cars. And for me, the selection process of the people that I want to work with is the same or is similar in terms of the pattern than for racing drivers. And I always say, there is not two superstars in the team. There's two and a half thousand. And I treat all of them equally. And we've learned from the old blacks ten or more years earlier, and they have a saying, which is on their training ground, that says no And we have we have continued to run that motto. The extraordinary scientist or engineer that isn't... Hasn't got the right values of humility, integrity, honesty, enthusiasm will have no future in the organization. We're trying to filter that out pretty early. Sometimes you find out later, but no place for the, genius asshole. You're describing a lot
00:08:36 · John Collison, Toto Wolff
[00:08:36] S1: the need for people to collaborate within the organization and the the the teamwork. But what's interesting is you have these different domains where you have aerodynamics, and you have the battery systems, and you have the internal combustion powertrain and, traction and everything. So the r and d almost entirely goes towards cars where you know the rules. There isn't much room for general r and d because you just don't know... Like, you're not gonna work on batteries before you know what exactly will be permitted when it comes to batteries and things like that. You have to know the target that you're designing. [00:09:05] S0: We did it Again. Long time ago, but Formula One introduced the cost cap a few years ago. Yep. So every resource that you deploy into engineering Yes. Is being counted for in the cost cap, which is 200 and a bit million dollars a year. And therefore, long term r and d work, lab work Yes. Is actually, unfortunately, very limited because you need to decide between deploying compute power Yeah. Yeah. In a front wing that you might have in three months against some long term. [00:09:37] S1: So for all f one teams, one thing is the cost cap changed is speculative r and d just had to go because, ultimately, you have fixed dollars, and you have to put absolutely everything you can towards this season and next season.
00:09:37 · John Collison, Toto Wolff
[00:09:37] S1: So for all f one teams, one thing is the cost cap changed is speculative r and d just had to go because, ultimately, you have fixed dollars, and you have to put absolutely everything you can towards this season and next season. [00:09:48] S0: I wouldn't say all of it had to go. Yeah. You still need to make the... You know, find the right balance between what you think future cars Mhmm. Are are going to benefit from Yes. Value the lap time effect it can have versus the current cars. And and, unfortunately, that percentage of r and d development of science and lab work, which I love, has a more limited Yes. [00:10:16] S1: Scope. You have not only the overall cost cap, but you have things like limits on the number of wind tunnel runs and CFD simulations. Isn't that a bit weird? Thus, you can spend your r and d budgets exactly as you want to? [00:10:30] S0: So there's two sides of that coin. The first one is to say Formula One was all... Always unlimited budget and therefore ultra sophisticated machinery Mhmm. Which led to a situation that the big teams, Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, were leapfrogging all of the other teams. Because for us, we had those big mother ships Mhmm. Behind us that benefited from either shareholder that was extremely keen like Red Bull or Mercedes that said this is a huge branding exercise for us, and the spending is relatively low in comparison to all of our marketing. So what happened is only these three teams actually won races. [00:11:15] S1: So
00:11:15 · John Collison, Toto Wolff
[00:11:15] S1: So [00:11:15] S0: Formula One said we want everybody to compete on the same budgets. Mhmm. And that was the reason why it was introduced. Now you can see that limited very much, you know, the kind of science aspect of Formula One, but it brought also more competition. And that's one of the positive effects. The other one is that Formula one back in the day, Chase Carrick, who was the CEO, said, we need to protect you from yourselves. Because obviously, I was against the cost cap. Because I knew that Mercedes, we had might. And that probably the worst case scenario was to lose against the Ferrari or against the Red Bull, but not against the McLaren or Williams or anybody else. So he said that to me. Eventually, it was a take it or leave it. [00:11:58] S1: Mhmm. You're investing, trying to eke out tiny advantages in the car. And one of the things that's interesting is this, there are the rules. There are things that are clearly against the rules. There are things that are permitted. And then there's a spectrum between those of the gray areas. And when the challenge is is, like, you defend something that you think is great and clearly allowed, but then it's banned midseason or it's, you know, banned in the next season. And so was it really worth all that effort, you know, to get, like, a, you know, trivial advantage? Maybe, maybe not. [00:12:29] S0: And I think the lesson we've learned is that it needs the dialogue with the governing body. If you feel you have an innovation that passed the first red face test within the organization [00:12:42] S1: Yes.