Anyone who has been around the world of Formula 1 for a while will inevitably be impressed. From cars that are shaped with millimeter precision. Of the high-tech factories in which those cars are designed and built by the teams. And of the thousands of professionals who are responsible for this. The sport has never been as professional as it is today.
But if the level is so high among all teams, why do most of them never win a race? And why are it always the same large racing stables that win the prizes?
F1 journalists Stijn Keuris and Ivo Pakvis asked these questions. They wrote their recently published book there The Formula, The secret behind the most successful F1 teams about. For their research, they traveled the F1 circuits for three years, where they interviewed team members, drivers and ex-world champions such as Mika Häkkinen and Damon Hill, as well as a series of other insiders.
The core of Formula 1 is “the interplay between technology and people,” says Keuris on a terrace in Almere, where he and Pakvis sat down for an interview. The sport is about continuous innovation, trying to be smarter than the competition. Everything to make the car a tenth of a second faster every time. “You are aiming at a moving target. What was successful yesterday is no longer successful today.”
To come up with exactly that wing that perfectly balances the car’s handling, or to find that loophole in the technical rules that other teams overlook, you need “eureka moments”, says Keuris. “That is not one moment of clarity. The entire structure of the team must be focused on that. Everyone is thinking and working in the same direction. Then you can find such a moment. And you have to enjoy it, because tomorrow you could lose it again.”
There are all kinds of ways to make your F1 team world champion, Keuris and Pakvis say, as long as you meet two conditions. The most successful teams are always able to adapt quickly and operate autonomously, without too much outside interference.
These are two factors that are strongly related. “In Formula 1, everything is about speed, even off the track,” says Pakvis. “If your front wing is not working properly and you can say: we have a solution and we will use it at the next race, without having to go to a board of directors first, then you have an advantage over teams that cannot do that quickly.”
In Formula 1, the most important part of the competition takes place behind the hermetically closed doors of the teams’ factories. There, battalions of technicians are busy every day solving problems, designing new parts and refining existing ones. In the end, there is only a few tenths of a second per lap between the cars – and yet it is usually the same ones at the front.
Over the past quarter century, those cars have mostly been from Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes. Keuris and Pakvis focus on their success stories in their book. All three teams had good drivers, charismatic team bosses and brilliant designers – but the successes only came because all that talent could work together in the right structure and under the right guidance.
Take Ferrari, which was unstoppable in the early 2000s. With Michael Schumacher behind the wheel, Frenchman Jean Todt as team boss and the technical master duo Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne, the renowned Italian team won five Drivers’ Championships and six Constructors’ Championships in a row.
‘scheming’
Until the mid-1990s, Ferrari was still “all scheming”, says Pakvis. “One manager tried to get rid of the other. Everyone tried to cover up their mistakes.” At that time, Ferrari had top drivers such as Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Jean Alesi under contract. Nevertheless, the results were disappointing every year. Until mid-decade Schumacher, Todt, Brawn and Byrne arrived. Todt was given a free pass by Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo to do whatever was necessary. He used it to put an end to traditional, inefficient office politics.
“When Jean Todt started, he said: my office door is always open,” says Pakvis. “Whatever there is, for anyone. That was unprecedented. His Italian predecessors walked the factory floor in suits, if they even went there. And no way that the door was open for Piero who was tinkering with the engines. He had to keep his mouth shut and work hard.”
Although Red Bull and Mercedes each have a very different history and cultural background than the quintessential Italian Ferrari, the story of their years of success is broadly similar to that of Ferrari. A tight, independent organization with clear leaders and a corporate culture in which only the best is good enough, but making mistakes is nevertheless allowed.
At Mercedes (eight times constructors’ champion and seven times drivers’ champion since 2014), the triumphal procession began when Austrian investor and motorsport enthusiast Toto Wolff walked into the factory in Brackley, British, for the first time in 2013. Wolff was horrified to see empty coffee cups in the lobby, Keuris and Pakvis describe in their book. There was an old newspaper on a table. The wrong attitude, Wolff thought: if these kinds of small details were not right, then the really important processes would certainly not be in order either.
Wolff had just become a shareholder of the team at the time and would soon become team boss. In that role he put an end to all the disorder and directionlessness he encountered. He even appointed someone to travel to every race to ensure that the toilets in the team quarters looked immaculate. Wolff also wanted team members to dare to be vulnerable and not to blame each other when something went wrong. He and the other managers set a good example: during the debriefing after each race, they always mentioned the mistakes they had made themselves.
At Red Bull Racing (eight drivers’ titles and six constructors’ championships), the management was also virtually given carte blanche by owner Dietrich Mateschitz. Under team boss Christian Horner, the team took a serious yet playful, swaggering approach. “Red Bull dares to innovate radically,” says Keuris. With technical concepts, with their driver selection. “If they know that this choice could make us first, but perhaps also last, then they will take the gamble.” Adrian Newey, who is considered one of the best designers ever, delivered one top car after another, while advisor and talent scout Helmut Marko brought in future world champions such as Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen.
Kick the back
Having the right people in leadership roles has always been important for F1 teams, but the demands placed on them today are very different than in the past. If there was a problem with the car thirty years ago, “you gave it a kick in the back, so to speak, and it was fine again,” says Keuris. “Now everything is so refined, with data and computer simulations.”
On the one hand, there are the mathematicians, aerodynamicists and engine experts who mainly sit behind the computer and devise and further develop the complex F1 cars. And if you walk behind the pit boxes on the circuit, “you see all kinds of tattooed mechanics there,” says Keuris. They are the ones with the oil on their hands. “As a team boss you have to get those layers together.
Tight, inspiring leadership, a healthy workplace culture and a clear vision are prerequisites for success: seen in this way, Formula 1 is a somewhat noisier version of business. Yet there is a big difference, says Keuris: “With normal companies, the results are visible much less quickly. In Formula 1 you have a test moment every two weeks.” A company that makes a mess of things can still tell the outside world a nice story and hope that no one reads the annual report properly. “But in Formula 1 you immediately look like a fool to the whole world.”
Precisely because failures in Formula 1 are so visible, you would expect teams to learn from them and not repeat them. The truth is different. Recent F1 history has seen plenty of teams flop despite their high ambitions and budgets – money is important for success, but never enough on its own. Take Toyota (2002-2009), which spent the most of anyone but never won a race. Or the current Alpine, Renault’s factory team, which has been struggling for years with hardly any notable results.
It is not without reason that teams that fail to succeed for a long time are often part of a large group. “Car manufacturers that enter Formula 1 are large organizations with a certain reporting structure, where the management ultimately decides,” says Keuris. And the management’s urge to continue to exercise control over its multimillion-dollar investment is often uncontrollable. “Because if the team makes a complete mess of it, it reflects on the entire brand.”
Renault’s own F1 history is an example of what can happen when the parent company loosens the reins. In the mid-2000s, Fernando Alonso became champion twice for the team, where the equally flamboyant and controversial Italian Flavio Briatore then enjoyed a considerable amount of autonomy as team boss. A few years later, however, Briatore became the center of a huge scandal. He had instructed one of the Renault drivers to crash on purpose to influence the course of a race, from which the other driver could benefit. Keuris: “That is the risk with a figure like Briatore.”
A major brand with an F1 team might prefer a more regular management structure, with somewhat grayer types at the helm. However, the balance quickly tips towards too much control from the head office and all the cumbersome bureaucracy that entails. This also happened at Renault/Alpine – although Briatore has been working there again as team boss for a year.
All three Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull ended up in a difficult period after their triumphant years. At Ferrari, which has had no title for almost two decades, the rigid structure of the past seems to have partly crept in again. “Just look up the organizational chart,” says Keuris: team boss Fred Vasseur is just one man in a whole group of sub-directors who have to listen to president John Elkann. And at Red Bull, of all the leaders from the successful years, after a years-long exodus, virtually only Verstappen remains.
It is inevitable that the success formula will eventually wear off, say Keuris and Pakvis. There are plenty of causes for this decline. Due to a technical rule change, a completely new car has to be made, which turns out not to be that good. Critical staff members are leaving.
“And it is also very difficult to change when you are at the top,” says Keuris. “Because what is the need? Even if you feel that your approach is starting to work out – it still works. So are you going to change things while you’re winning?”