Seven tenths of a second, p.17
Seven Tenths of a Second, page 17
Maybe people will tell you now that they always knew we’d win in 2024, but don’t believe any of them. Except a few of our people at McLaren, and specifically our head of aerodynamics, Pete Prodromou. He thought we’d do it.
We don’t normally talk like that inside McLaren. We’re focused on one race at a time. Even midway through the 2025 season, when we notch up a couple of 1-2 finishes and people are saying to us, ‘Championship’s over, look at your lead,’ we don’t want to hear it.
I don’t listen to it, I don’t talk about it, I dismiss it. Do we all feel pretty good about ourselves? Of course, but we don’t talk about it. We’re very much one race at a time.
So I come into 2024 with a view of ‘let’s just get Lando his first win’. We’re all getting kind of tired of hearing about the fact that he’s had so many near misses. That’s my mindset. If we can get a win, get more podiums and top three in the championship, which means we beat one of the other biggies, that’s where I am in my thinking.
Just let me throw things forward for a minute because I want to give an example of how I think and how we don’t rest and how we don’t get complacent and how we are always trying to learn and push forward and get closer and closer to our goal.
I am a tough leader but I think I am a fair leader. I ask a lot from people but I ask nicely. I treat people with respect as long as they treat me with respect. If someone tries to dupe me, if someone tries to disguise their attitude or feed me false information, that’s not going to end well.
If you want to draw it down to basics, I’m an arm-around-the-shoulder boss not a boot-up-the-ass boss. I prefer to talk things out. I will only kick someone in the ass if I really need to. And that’s very rarely. That’s not just with drivers. That’s with any employee.
It’s more impactful if you don’t do it often. If you do it all the time, it loses its impact. It’s like the barking dog: eventually, you just ignore it. I’m very demanding but I don’t feel the need to be unpleasant about it.
That’s the way I negotiate, too. I don’t think you have to be an asshole to be a tough negotiator. I don’t think you have to be an asshole to get your message across. So I’m much more transparent in negotiations. I’m upfront with people about where I’m coming from.
I think it helps. I don’t need to play poker. If you’ve got a strong hand and a clear rationale, just lay it out there. Tell people, ‘Look, I need this and here’s why.’ Get straight to it. Also, it’s very important to understand what your counterpart’s needs and requirements are. I’ve never gone for the last dollar; I’ve always played the long game.
I’ve always told the sales team that the best way to sell is to be mega-transparent. You’ve got nothing to hide. And I think it puts you in a much better position.
I’m also very aware of timing. I don’t tackle issues in the moment unless I can fix them in the moment. I’ve seen many things go wrong when teams are racing and emotion levels are raised and things are mishandled in the heat of the moment.
To illustrate that, I’ll give you an example of what happens at the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix. I’m not there. I’m away in the States on other business. I’m watching from afar. It’s tough to overtake at Suzuka and Max Verstappen has started from pole and is leading.
One opinion, among commentators and analysts, is that with overtaking so difficult, McLaren’s one chance to beat Max is by stopping Lando for fresh tyres before Max.
But we do not choose that strategy and once Verstappen wins the sprint out of the pits, when he and Lando stop on the same lap, Max just has to avoid mistakes. We are always right behind him but he doesn’t make any mistakes and he wins the race.
In the media, they say there are questions as to why we pit Oscar first, when it might have made sense to attack Verstappen by Lando making an earlier pit stop. We point out we have to pit Oscar first because he’s at risk of being undercut by the Mercedes of George Russell.
I’ve got people texting me in the aftermath of the race saying, ‘What the hell are you doing? You shouldn’t have done that.’ My phone’s getting lit up.
So, look, I have some questions over our decisions that weekend. But the race is over now. Whether I ask my questions on Sunday night or Monday or Tuesday, it doesn’t really matter. The race is over. It’s gone.
I’m experienced enough to know that, actually, I might not have all the facts here. I also know my guys are going to come off pit wall and might be grumpy and that now is not the time for me to start laying into them without information. So I wait a couple of days. I let things settle. I’m not accusatory because I wasn’t at the race. I know there’ll be information I don’t have. You’ve got to be careful. That’s when things get said that you can’t unsay. It can turn into a chain reaction. Somebody else might give an emotional reaction that they probably don’t mean.
It’s taken time for me to respond like this. Ten or twenty years ago, I would’ve been the first guy saying, ‘What the hell?’ But now, it’s more, ‘Let me get my facts, let me understand what pit wall was thinking.’
And, you know what, maybe it’s the right decision. Maybe there’s other stuff going on that I’m not aware of. And whatever the information, let’s learn from it. You know this already, that it’s one of my mantras. If there’s a mistake, learn from it. Niki Lauda once said he learned more from losing than winning, and that’s an attitude that helps you to move forward.
Let’s understand what happened. Let’s have a conversation about it. I can’t change it. It’s better doing that versus what I see some people doing, storming around on Sunday during or after the race, throwing their arms up and shouting and drawing attention to themselves.
You’re not helping the situation now. You can’t fix it. So all you’re doing is creating ill-will, and someone’s going to say something they don’t mean because they’re upset and you’re going to damage relationships.
In that scenario, everyone’s cooled down by Tuesday but no one forgets the row you had on Sunday night. It can leave a scar.
When a little time has passed after the race, we have the discussion together in the debrief and we come to the conclusion that maybe we are too risk averse. It’s understandable to be risk averse, but sometimes in Formula 1 it does require total offence. Sometimes, whether it’s business or racing, you need to know when to play offence and when to play defence.
We worried about a safety car; we worried that if we pit Lando first, he could get stuck in traffic. But sometimes, you’ve just got to go for it. If you pit him first, maybe you force Verstappen’s hand to come in and sit in the same traffic.
We talk about it and it feels like what we should have maybe done was split strategies. We should have tried to undercut with Lando and overcut with Oscar. And I think we had a big enough lead over the rest of the field that if it didn’t work – and I’m not sure it would’ve worked – we still would’ve ended up second and third.
It’s easy to say it now, obviously. We will never know how it would have played out if we had done things differently, but it is all part of the idea that you have to keep learning. It’s part of the process and it’s what makes you better next time.
We all accept in the end that our risk appetite needs to be dialled up and we feed that learning into how we approach the rest of the season. We learn more from that defeat than from many of our victories.
Some people say to me that things might have been different if I was at the track. But they wouldn’t have been different. I might have asked Andrea a question about the strategy but I wouldn’t have made the decision. It’s not my job to call the race.
I can’t step in and out. That creates confusion. That disrupts the authority chain. Had I been there, I would’ve radioed to Andrea and asked, ‘You think we should do this?’ I wouldn’t have told him.
Andrea may ask the question to make sure everybody’s thinking about it on pit wall. For sure, they would’ve been thinking about it because they are very smart people, and there wouldn’t have been a different decision.
As I’ve said before, I am the CEO, not the team principal. I don’t want to pretend that I have a role I don’t have. I’m also very comfortable with my authority and comfortable delegating; comfortable knowing that pit wall knows more than I’ll ever know about the race strategy.
It doesn’t mean that there might not be an occasion where I think we should have done something different, but if I start jumping in and saying that, then I might as well run the team and I’m not qualified to run the racing team.
Andrea and his team lead the debriefs and ask what we would do differently next time. Did we make the right decisions? They get the team to think about that, analyse that, ask ourselves if we would do the same thing again, or do it differently.
I am acutely aware that Andrea is a brilliant, accomplished and inspiring leader. I’ve learned a lot from him. He is intent on keeping everyone’s feet on the ground, especially when we are doing well. He wants to celebrate a win when we’ve all done our jobs but he is always looking for more.
My relationship with Andrea is the most enjoyable, worthy relationship I have had with someone in motor racing. His work ethic is the same as mine. And I don’t say that lightly because I think one of my greatest strengths is my work ethic.
His persona is the opposite of mine – he’s not a loud American, and that makes us a great team. He has this ability to communicate, both listening and speaking, he is articulate, thoughtful, firm. He is a world-class leader.
The racing team loves him. He has a great ability, when he is getting feedback from people, to understand the perspective they’re coming from. He’s very technical, so there’s nothing in a race team that he doesn’t know. You can’t bullshit him.
He leads by example. He has a soft spot for people’s wellbeing but drives them very hard. He strikes a good balance. He teaches me to stay calm. I can be a very passionate and excitable person. And the way Andrea carries himself, especially under pressure, is extremely impressive. The loyalty and trust between the two of us is impeccable.
If you look at some other teams, sometimes you see a lack of cohesion between the leadership. Our organization sees how well Andrea and I work together.
Andrea does a team huddle after every race and he goes through things that could have gone wrong. It might be that we double-stacked in the pit stop. Was that necessary? Did we put too much pressure on our pit crew? Could we have had a different strategy which didn’t put the pressure on the pit crew? That’s your final point of failure so we gave ourselves no margin of error.
He is telling everyone, ‘Don’t think we’re perfect because we are not.’ He focuses everyone on what we could do better and he doesn’t do it in a demoralizing way. It’s not like, ‘Wow, is this guy never happy?’ It’s not like that. It’s more that he emphasizes there is always room for improvement.
So we are not blind to how well we’re doing in the good times at the end of 2024, and in 2025, but we’re not taking the bait. We’re not getting complacent. That’s the worst thing you can do.
In 2024, I don’t even think about the possibility of winning the constructors’ championship until the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest when Oscar wins and Lando finishes second and we rack up forty-three points and I say to myself, ‘Shit, this thing’s not out of the question.’
As I say, I know things are moving forward. Andrea makes further changes to the team’s technical structure before the start of the season, trying to make it more collaborative and with a better division of duties across design, aerodynamics and performance. He says later he feels that’s crucial to our evolution.
Other moments are important. There’s something symbolic about Lando getting his first win, at the Miami Grand Prix in May, where he beats Max to the top step of the podium. At that time Lando has the most podium finishes in Grand Prix history of any driver who has not taken the chequered flag. It puts all that ‘Lando No-Wins’ bullshit to bed.
It’s humid that day when Lando wins at the Hard Rock Stadium. We get a bit of luck when the safety car comes out and allows him to pit and retain the lead, but we have included an upgrade on the car and it’s clear that it has worked really well. It shows we’re now capable of taking the fight to Red Bull.
My mindset’s still more ‘thank God we got Lando his win’ than ‘now let’s go win the constructors’’. We’re still ninety-nine points off Red Bull in Miami. It’s a big ask. We’re third. We’re not even the main challengers at that point. And you know what, sometimes it’s nicer being the hunter rather than the hunted. Being in the lead puts a different kind of pressure on you, so I’m happy being the underdog.
But from Miami onwards, we’re a serious threat. Lando finishes second at the next race in Imola, where he hunts down Verstappen in the closing stages but can’t quite take him. Oscar qualifies second in Monaco and Lando finishes second in Canada and Spain.
Andrea says later that the Miami upgrade ‘takes us to being the best car in some conditions, at some tracks – not in all conditions and all tracks’. Red Bull still has Max driving well; Ferrari and Mercedes find peaks of performance. It never quite feels that we are the best car on the grid. But we’re close.
By the summer break, the idea of contending for both championships is becoming realistic. Lando’s closer to Max in the drivers’ fight and they race wheel-to-wheel in Austria and collide. Oscar wins in Hungary, after Lando moves aside to respect team orders, and that feels big to me.
It feels big because it’s before the summer break and Oscar’s now a winner, too, and we’re chipping away and chipping away at Red Bull’s lead in the constructors’ championship.
People start asking if we should be doing something different now we’re in with a chance of the title and it’s like, ‘No, no, no, we’ve got to keep doing what got us where we are.’
The minute you think you’ve got to start doing something differently is when you get yourself into trouble. Just keep doing what you’re doing. But the pressure’s greater because there’s more at stake. So there’s kind of nothing you can do about it other than do your best to ignore it.
When Oscar wins the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku in the middle of September and Max finishes fifth, we move into the lead in the constructors’ championship for the first time that season. We’ve erased a 115-point deficit to Red Bull in just 133 days. It’s the first time we’ve led the constructors’ race for more than ten years.
We handle things well in the heat of the fight. The team’s not used to this kind of pressure after so long in the wilderness, but we keep to our one-race-at-a-time philosophy. We don’t think too big. We keep learning. We keep improving. We get closer.
We get criticism for imposing team orders in Hungary. We get criticism for not imposing team orders at Monza, where Lando and Oscar are contesting the lead on the first lap and their struggle allows Ferrari to snatch a victory that should have been ours. It comes with the territory.
The end of the season is tight. Lando wins in Singapore, Max wins the US Grand Prix in Austin and Lando only finishes third, Carlos Sainz wins in Mexico and Ferrari moves ahead of Red Bull to become the closest challengers to us in the constructors’ title race.
Max wins a chaotic Brazilian Grand Prix in São Paulo and goes into the Las Vegas Grand Prix knowing that if he outscores Lando, he will win a fourth successive drivers’ title. He finishes fifth; Lando finishes sixth. Our lead over Ferrari in the constructors’ is cut to twenty-four points.
We stick to our mantra. One race at a time. Do not do things differently. If we make mistakes, learn from them. In Qatar, we finish one and two in the Sprint Race, but in the Grand Prix Oscar finishes third and Lando can only manage tenth.
We head to Abu Dhabi for the final race. Our lead over Ferrari is cut to twenty-one points. We know that so many of our hopes and dreams are on the line. We know that this is going to be decided by fine margins. We don’t know, yet, that it will come down to seven tenths of a second.
Triple Crown
There is a thought that comes to me every day: it’s not if we stop winning, it’s when, right? This is sport. No one wins forever. So I wake up every day and I set myself the task of making sure we are still doing everything that we’ve done to get us where we are right now.
Everyone in the team is doing that. I focus on that. We all focus on that. We are delaying the inevitability of the day when we are no longer winning races and performance takes a dip. I am not looking forward to that day but I know it is coming.
I also know that the more we bust our butts, the greater the chance that day is coming later rather than sooner. And that’s where I’m at. I like this feeling of winning and I want to keep feeling it because losing sucks.
And the minute we lose our intensity, the minute that winning loses its excitement or motivation drops…we’ll do everything we can to stop that happening. We have to keep the level of energy and intensity we have now so we can sustain this success for as long as possible.
I don’t enjoy success enough. It’s a fault of mine and I’m trying to get better at it. Tracy’s trying to help me get better. But I’m always worried about tomorrow.
It might seem I’m constantly unhappy and unsatisfied. I guess that sounds awful, and obviously I am not talking about my family life when I say that. I’m not even delving into my childhood issues.
What I’m talking about is that I carry a tremendous amount of stress around with me and that makes me restless.
So when I’m on pit wall and we’re one and two and we’re kicking these guys’ asses and it’s clear to everyone we’re going to win the race, I’m not sitting there going, ‘We’re kicking these guys’ asses, we’re going to win this thing.’
