Crypto - Racing Into the Future Web3 and the Evolving F1 Business Landscape

foreign [Music] normally should be a panel but unfortunately hydar is not here today hi there traffic is the Global Marketing Chief marketing officer of all cakes so I apologize for that we will have a fireside chat with SEC welcome to Abu Dhabi there's a full house there is it's great to be here this is a spectacular final race of the year and has been for many years how do you feel being in Abu Dhabi I mean there's a race and there's a finance week it's a crypto day and which one is following which one is the if race is following the financial markets or vice versa Well we'd like to think the Money Follows formula ones so uh no you know it's it's great uh when we're around the world uh there's quite often uh conferences that coincide uh with the Grand Prix I think a lot of that is the the Grand Prix um bringing quite a lot of Executives a lot of corporate wealth a lot of government wealth a lot of individual wealth so it uh clearly is a good forum to uh bringing together a lot of people that have common business interests okay one of the most commercial successful F1 teams and why did you choose a crypto partner as the primary sponsor when you can choose so many different categories and also you partner with okxy or cakes you know we're we're in the technology business okx and in crypto is a technology business I remember the first time I saw the internet in the early 90s uh was in Detroit in IndyCar race and this gentleman showed me the the internet on the computer and I thought yeah you're crazy this thing's never going to take off so I'm not going to make that mistake again and recognize that especially with technology how quickly uh Industries emerge um you know the Ubers of the world I remember the first time I came across Google was actually at a an event like this and was you know who's Google and uh so I think the crypto industry is huge it's it's new it's young it's emerging and so ultimately why we picked okay X is I think like when the internet came everyone got in the internet business and some people made it uh some people didn't and then companies like Amazon emerged out of the internet and so we we felt we were deliberate with as many crypto Partners as there are in Formula One that we wanted to like with our other companies were associated with the Googles the Goldman Sachs the Dells that were affiliated with who we believe are the leaders in the industry and so ultimately we selected uh okx because we had quite a few approaches and at the same time okx was was deliberate in their entry into uh formula one they're kind of our partnership is uh one of the more recent ones to to join because you know everyone wanted to get comfortable with each other do their homework and it's been an absolute great partnership this year and many more years to come since you said you are interested in crypto I want to ask I mean there's too much volatility in crypto industry and also I'm coming from banking background I was a fund manager if there is volatility financial markets and successful job but your job is also stressful I mean managing the cars and is there a similarity between these markets and your job managing the stress the education and I think as we all know the world is a pretty uh volatile place at the moment picking industry um whether it's the financial markets or crypto or the tech space and uh yeah Formula One is a high performance culture uh if you sit still you're going backwards so you need to you know be a an aggressive um in how you uh you tackle challenges it's a it's a lot of fun because it is a it's a competition at the end of the day no different than in in business everyone's trying to beat their uh their competitors and you know I think the key is getting individuals and people that Embrace a pace of change Embrace stress and use it as a as a motivator so you know I think you'll find in the racing industry it's a very high performance culture it's a can be very stressful you have hundreds of millions of people that are watching you perform uh you know every every week or every other week and uh that has to be something that you're a person where that motivates you for success there are lots of different parts there is the technology there's the pilot sponsor team I mean and when you think about these ingredients which one is more important or do you make a mix of them it's it's all important and I think that's what makes uh Formula One teams and sporting teams uh successful in in companies for that matter everything's important and everything's about incremental gains as soon as you get into a mindset that something's not that important then that kind of becomes the culture that you create which is some things are important some things aren't when you're trying to beat the competition everyone in their role we have a thousand people in our Formula One Team all thousand people need to beat their counterpart at the other racing team and then you have a very high performing culture so uh it's very important it's very important the technology you use but it's very important the people and that you have the right structure and the right goals that are set out and uh you know in in racing you lose more than you win so losing also has to be something that motivates you because there's been one guy who's won the majority of the races this year so the rest of the field for the most part has lost more than they've won and that has to be something that drives you forward uh to to get that thrill of victory I want to speak to talk about a bit about the future in Future Let's do Forward Thinking will the avatars race will be raising metaverse what do you think about future Formula One I think the future formula one has never been stronger we have uh more countries than one of those race than there are weekends in a in a calendar we're now going to be going to 24 races next year we could do 27 or 28 we won't but we have demand for that which is a great place to be we have new television and media contracts uh things like Netflix have been fantastic sponsorship in our sport has never been uh stronger every race is sold out so kind of every metric of Formula One is very strong and I think it's only going to get stronger because we have things like Las Vegas coming that's going to create a ton of excitement for the sport we have new television contract in in North America uh new sponsors coming in very frequently at this point so I think there's a lot of a lot of reason to be very optimistic for the future of Formula One when I read your career and your background from racing how does it help your current career I mean coming from racing and your day-to-day business is it easy job um I think having once raced as a racing driver you learn how to give instruction give give feedback you learn how to take instruction from from engineers and teams and listen you have to be a very good communicator you have to drive by Instinct you drive by data um you have to surround yourself with a great team it's a thousand people that produce the race car and and inform the One You're only as good as your race car and I think if you look at what a CEO does the same exact qualities you need to be good at given instruction you need to be good at receiving feedback you need to make data-driven decisions but you do need to make decisions you need to know when to take risk and not hesitate and kind of go for it you need to not be afraid of taking risk so I think there's a lot of similarities from being a racing driver to uh to a CEO as far as you know how you conduct yourself a personal question I'm from Turkey so will Istanbul be again in the racing team do you like going to Istanbul and also crypto is very big in Turkey I mean what's your opinion about this I'd love to go back to Turkey that was uh we we had great history there then when um then the race went away then when kovid uh happened there was one of the circuits we went back to it was a great race last time around uh the drivers really liked the track in particular it's a driver's track I think it's a great Market it's very important for a lot of our partners okx uh very very much so so I'd love to go back there and that be I think we need to get to a point where our calendar we're racing 24 times a year but maybe we're in 30 markets and you kind of have 18 races that are permanent and then you rotate through others things like the World Cup the Olympics they don't happen on an annual basis so I'd love to see us in 30 markets but 24 times a year and get into some sort of rotational system last question is always about Abu Dhabi Andres FTV cameras your expectation shall we see McLaren at the top again in future I'm definitely going to see McLaren on top again in the future it's going to take a little bit a little bit more time we have a new driver lineup or a new driver next year in Oscar piastri we have some technology infrastructure we're still getting built specifically a new wind tunnel and a new simulator so I think we're a couple years away before we're challenging for the championship again we we won Italy last year so we are progressing nicely but it's a tough competition out there and takes a bit of time to to catch up I think this weekend will be a super exciting race last year was maybe a little too exciting for a certain a couple teams out there there's a big battle for second in the drivers Championship so I think that'll be something to look at and then anytime kind of everyone has nothing to lose means everyone will drive very aggressively so I'm anticipating an exciting race this weekend okay you want to say good luck to you and we'll follow McLaren thank you