eff won: Christian Horner Debrief

Welcome, welcome, welcome to F1 with DRS. This is a bonus episode on the armchair expert feed, uh, because we got an interview with an incredible team principal, this maybe second most winning this team principal in formula one, Christian Horner, and I wanted to share it on all the feeds. If you like it and you want to hear more F1 with DRS content, please go and follow that. Just search F1, E-F-F-W-O-N in any app you use and subscribe. And we'd love to have you along.

Yeah.

Yeah. So this is fantastic. I'm so grateful that you came. So we were just talking about Disneyland, which is important. So did you have a favorite ride?

I enjoyed the, we went on the race, you know, that is in cars.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, my God. Cars is incredible.

Yeah, the world and everything. And then, uh, suddenly you end up in a race, and my, my kids, got super excited about that. So I got excited about it.

Did you win or lose?

Unfortunately, we finished second.

Well, there's only two cars, so it's a euphemism to say. Yeah. I would say that one's top ride.

Star Wars stuff was cool.

That's incredible. When you walk in and they have the actual, you feel like you're on the deck.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

You know, it's old fashioned, but I really love it is, um, Indiana Jones. Did you do that one?

We did that. That was cool. Pirates of the Caribbean. I love you got to do that.

Jethro, who lives in England. He does. He's never been on Pirates of the Caribbean. I mean, you don't understand. This is the most important ride.

Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, wonderful. This is great. Cause. I tell people that they think I'm nuts, but I think Michael Jackson built one. Did you, have you ever heard this?

No, I didn't hear that.

I've heard it. Neverland, that ranch. Uh, he had Pirates of the Caribbean, but the person I was talking to didn't realize that the movie series had been based on the ride.

Yes. Yes. I went to Florida in 1983.. Okay. I went on Pirates of the Caribbean, there in Disney world.

Yeah. Yeah. And so you were what? Not 10,, 9, 10..

About 10.. Yeah. And so, uh, same age as my daughter now. Oh yeah. And so I was trying to explain that this was all pre the film.

Right. And there wasn't anything cool. So to see, just like the people, the women chasing the pirates with the broom in a circle, was like a big technological breakthrough. No. So yeah.

My, my six-year-old, flew the Millennium Falcon. That was his life is complete.

Yeah. And then you got to put them in a little boat and float by, by some, some bounty, some treasure.

Where we came face to face with, like a squad of stormtroopers. That was, it was like, daddy, can we, can we go now? Oh good.

He got scared.

He got probably scared when Kylo Ren came in as well. It was like, oh my God, now we're in trouble. Yeah, exactly.

And he's six.

He's six.

He has a January birthday.

He's a January birthday.

What day?

21st. Damn it.

I thought we'd be soulmates.

When are you?

I'm the second. Ah, it's the worst birthday in the world. Cause it's the day after new year's. Everyone's made resolutions. No one wants to drink at your party or eat, you know?

And do they always combine this as Christmas and a birthday present?

It's a fucking racket. Your aunts and uncles tell you like, oh, we got you something even bigger, but it's the same thing your brother got.

I'm in November. You see, I'm mid November. So I get it the other side. Yes. Although this year it's in Vegas for the race.

You'll be there on your birthday.

I'm going to be there. I'm going to be 50 in Vegas.

Oh my God. Are you planning something spectacular? Or is your wife planning?

The, uh, the race has been put on in honor of my birthday.

Oh my God. That makes so much sense. I think a lot of people are scratching their head of how this came together.

And now it's to celebrate my 50th.

That makes so much sense. So you're from the town you're from. I've never heard of, I'm embarrassed to say.

Which one, which one did you look at? Leamington Spa?

Exactly. Leamington Spa. How far out of London is that?

That's about an hour and a half North. So it's about as central UK as you can get. Think Shakespeare. That's the next town. Stratford.

Okay. So you and I share this in common, which is I grew up in Detroit. My whole family's automotive industry. My mother worked at General Motors at the Proving Grounds. Dad sold cars.

Okay. So he was in the motor industry. He started as a, as an apprentice.

No shit. In what year? Like 50s or?

No, my granddad was, that would have been pre-war. And then my father, he did his apprenticeship at Standard and he was in the automotive industry, but as a, it's like an agent working between suppliers and, and the industry. We used to go to Detroit because he had a couple of clients out there.

Oh, no kidding.

So we ended up going there to.

Not as fun as your trip to Disneyland.

No, not as fun. But we went up to the lakes and I went to Mackinac Island and everything. Yeah. That's a good memory. So we used to end up going up, going up there as kids.

The two claims of fame for Mackinac Island is it had the world's largest porch in the world at the Mackinac Hotel. And, uh, and then, yeah, you can ride a bike around it.

Yeah. And I remember driving. I hadn't got a lot in the, in the UK. You can't get a license until you're 17 and ended up driving a car in Detroit at 16 years of age, no license. Oh yeah, I was.

What do you remember? What car it was?

It was a Lincoln town car. Oh baby. It was like a boat. In what year? About 1990..

That's the apex year. Other than my 67 Lincoln Continental, you fast forward. That's the town car you can drive.

Yeah, yeah. It was a, that was like a boat to be in, though. It was unbelievable.

Yeah. Five liter V8, rear wheel drive. Yeah. So what age did you start in karting?

Well, I fell in love with speed cause I grew up watching, you know, things like the Fall Guy and the A-Team, and.

Let's talk about the Fall Guy for one second. Yeah. When's the last time you've watched videos on YouTube of the Fall Guy?

Oh crikey, it must be years and years.

I really encourage you to, because, as you probably saw when you walked in, I'm super into off-road racing. Yeah. And you know, the average suspension travel on like, like that Raptor out there. Yeah. It was like 18, 20 inches.

Absolutely.

You must go and watch it. Cause what you see is that when it lands, it just bounces for a long, long time.

They must've gone through quite a few trucks.

I don't think any of the trucks made it through any of the jumps, much like the General Lee. Okay. So we were raised on the same shit.

So I grew up watching all that stuff and I was just obsessed with speed and I wanted to race and.

Cannonball runs?

And cannonball, oh my God. Yeah. The cannonball run, all that stuff. Oh, so. Um, so yeah, I, I, I wanted to, I was always fascinated by speed.

Right. But let's also say at 11, you're already five years behind.

Uh, at that stage, no. No. And the earliest you could race was 12 at that point.

Oh, okay. So yeah. I guess now, although our drivers, they.

Basically straight out of the womb. You're in a, you're able to drive a cart. Yeah.

I have a 10 year old daughter and I told her like, Hey, you're.

kind of four years behind the curve now. Yeah.

You're behind the curve. We gotta go hard now if we're going to do this.

So I started racing when I was 12 years of age, and it was just all I wanted to do. I, I had an engine in my bedroom, you know? Yeah, absolutely.

Were they two stroke 125s at that point?

Or they were smaller? No, they were two stroke 100 CC.

Okay. Right, right, right. And shifter or?

No, uh, centrifugal clutch and just the accelerator and brake. So, and it was fantastic.

Yes. And did you immediately have an aptitude or did you feel like you had to catch up to?

No, I, I, I got into it pretty quickly and I, just like, it was just suddenly my life was just obsessed with, with, with carting. And if I wasn't in a cart, I was drawing it or cleaning it, or, you know, the school at that point.

Were you small as a kid?

Yeah, I was pretty small.

So I imagine you looked small up there racing.

And I read this thing that the racing drivers were no, no, no higher than five foot eight, and so I had a chart on the wall. And I was willing myself to be short because my brother was quite tall. And I was thinking, I don't want to grow up like him. So I didn't want my feet to grow. I didn't, you know, I became obsessed about the age of 13, of not wanting to grow too quickly.

Okay. So that's when you get sponsored as a driver. This is a 91..

This is before 89 was the first year I got sponsored.

Yeah. Cause I did have a question. If dad was pushing you into it, or supportive or tolerant, like which of those three?

I would say between tolerant and supportive. So, uh, cause he was like, where's this going? But at the same time, you know, as parents, they always, they always encourage us, you know, you know, follow your dreams, go for what, go for what you want, and, and, and in racing, I had something that, you know, suddenly I had a connection with him. that he was, you know, he was, he must've.

loved it as well, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And, and so I raced in 1989 in the junior carting world championship and I raced against Max Verstappen's mom.

No, no way.

Absolutely.

She was a champion, right?

She was top 10 in the world at that point. She was incredible.

That's so cool.

And then drivers like Jan Magnuson, Kevin Magnuson's father and Fissing Keller and Jarno Trulli, and there was some, some really competitive guys. Dario Franchitti.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I love that you were against Max's mom. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How crazy that you're now working with her son. I mean, that must trip you out.

We met when we were 13.. I don't think any of us could have, could have predicted that.

No, completely unimaginable at that point. Yeah. Like, you know what? I bet, in 30 years, you'll have this boy. He'll be a phenom and I'm going to be his boss.

I got two brothers. Uh, I got, I'm, I'm the middle of three. So my older born is a sensor one. He's a lawyer.

Okay. He's smart.

And so he's, yeah, he, he, he was the golden child at school. You know, did all the exams properly and everything. I was the one that was, you know, school was like a social thing for me. Right. And then my younger brother was completely wild.

That is the, always the pattern with three boys now. Yeah. The baby brother is the scariest brother of all brothers.

He is. He's just moved to LA, so be careful. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And what does he do?

He runs a, uh, an events business. He's got a big events thing. So they do a lot of, actually doing a lot of work with McLaren at the moment, which is kind of, he's doing all their Las Vegas entertainment and everything. So. Yeah.

I don't know about that, but. I know.

Well, exactly. That's exactly what I told them.

Yeah. The house divided. Yeah. There must be a point that your parents go. Okay.

Oh, I went formula. Right. I want a scholarship. I want a scholarship where Renault said, we'll take the top three British karting guys and we'll give them a scholarship to move from karting into car racing. And that was when I was 18 years of age.

And I guess they're out of the picture at that point, but were they scared for you?

They were, uh, yeah, they were, they, they, they had their concerns.

Yeah. I mean, forget the actual physical threat. Yeah. Just the lifetime career anxiety.

Well, they, they did a deal with me. They said, look, take a, take a year out. Cause you could do that between school and university. So I said, take a year out and see where this goes, but you've got a place at university that you can go back to. That was, that was the deal.

Well, life's long. It's short and long. Yeah. You know, we don't know. Toto's sending lots of people to Harvard.

You never know. Well, the funny thing is that both my brothers went through universities and got degrees and so on. And then I get given an honorary doctorate from Cranford university in the UK. So you never did a day, you know, we worked our asses off in university and suddenly you've got a doctorate.

Yeah. I'm one of the few actors without a honorary doctorate degree and I've even given a commencement speech. So I don't know why I didn't, I must've shit the bed on it and then they didn't give it to me or something. Um, but I guess if we fast forward, you, you do climb the ladder of racing. You do well, your first season with Renault, you win a race.

I beat a guy, Pedro de la Rosa, that, uh, ended up in Formula one, I won my first race. And I suddenly that you start to get a bit of hype around you and I, this is the new kid and he's, you know, he's looking promising. So I got picked up by, uh, by Lotus at the time in the Formula one team. And, and my mom and dad were away somewhere. They put a contract in me for, it was like a five year contract to basically sign my life away.

You're going to be disappointed with my knowledge on this. Just, I want to be upfront about it. I'm one of the posers who fell in love with the sport with drive and survive. So you're, I'm slowly learning. Yeah, of course, I knew Senna, I knew Schumacher.

So I'm throwing names at you that you have no idea who they are.

Right. But I did know some of the karting ones, so I am gathering it, but.

I just want to be very, he came over. He was pretty successful. He wanted the champ car series. And unfortunately he lost his legs in a horrible accident. Uh, at the loud switch ring, but, um, anyway, they were the drivers at the time and, uh, they, they enabled me to drive that car, that Formula one car, as a, as a test driver.

Well, that's what I was most curious about what your internal confidence was at that time. There's the presenting confidence. And then there's the home, at night, in bed, maybe, but you were at that stage. You thought I'm going to do this.

I lacked the presenting confidence, but I had this, I could just visualize my, I thought, yeah, I'm going to do it one day. I'm going to do it. And, but the problem is, the higher you rise, the harder it, the harder it gets, more competition and the cars get faster. And suddenly danger becomes prevalent, you know, and, and suddenly, racing, then end up in a Formula two cars. And having driven a Formula one car, I'm like, wow, this thing is like,

you could get in serious, serious.

You could seriously mess your hair up in this. Yeah. So, and I suppose there was something in me that then started to build in. A little bit of a little doubt, a bit of a doubt and a bit of a safety factor. Particularly in some of the high-speed corners, would it be fair to describe?

this as, or this would be my guess. I've only raced, like I raced the super Trofeo series, no real downforce. Right. So I've never experienced real downforce. My guess would be as you're ramping up in these cars and the downforce is getting more and more, it's almost like an exponential curve of commitment.

And getting brain and foot to connect. at that point, I had a damper in between. And, and in the slow speed corners, you could be as quick as anybody because there's less risk. But, you know, suddenly you're, you're harrying down a straight at over 200 miles an hour. And you're coming up to the corner that everybody's telling you that's, that's flat out.

Um, but my, it's a leap of faith, the car will stick.

Exactly. But my brain would often overrule my heart and say, come on, let's build a margin in here.

Yeah. Let's live to see tomorrow.

Yeah, exactly. And then you end up building up to it. and the really good guys, they've just got a natural, um, aptitude for it, a complete inner confidence in themselves, a feeling of the car, and they don't have to build up to it. They just go and do it. And that's something I've seen from when I was driving with a good guys as well, that they just go and do it and they don't need to build up.

Yes. Yes. I'm glad this story is true, because I was wondering if it was a.

Colombian super fast driver. And we were at Estoril before the season, I was tracking Portugal and Estoril is a long straight and the old school track used to have two very fast right-hand corners. And there'd be a barrier that was about 20 meters from the, from the track. Um, and they were sort of like a sixth gear corner. So we're talking 160, 170 miles an hour.

Yeah.

Um, and I'm coming out of the pit lane that filters onto the track and Montoya comes herring past and he commits to this right-hand turn. And I can just see the car is moving and dancing around. And the rim is trying to pop through the sidewall of the tire and he's on opposite lock. And he's got his right foot absolutely planted in the kitchen. And I just knew at that point, I can't do that.

At this point, you, you started the team that you're driving for Arden. That's right. Okay. So I want to spend two seconds on that decision, because you're saying it like it's, it was obvious to you in the moment and that you were able to accept that. But there wasn't like, that's a very hard, especially if you start at 12 or 11..

It was brutal, but it also, I had another route and having created this team because motor racing survives on sponsorship and as a young driver, coming up is dependent, uh, in many cases on the sponsorship that you can generate and you have to go to a team and you buy a ride and, uh, I had a certain amount of money not to go to a top team and I thought, I don't want to go to a shitty team, I may as well buy the car myself, employ an engineer and a couple of mechanics. And at least I got the car at the end of the year, rather than a set of overalls and some pictures. And so really starting the team was a means to an end for me to go racing.

You already started seeing the backup plan simultaneous to that.

Well, not at that point. When I started the team, it was like, okay, this is the most cost effective way for me to get to Formula Two. But then, having seen the Montoya effect, I'd like, okay, I need a plan B here. And, and the plan B would be, maybe I could build this team up and I could run this team and I can stay in the sport and rather than, and be honest with myself, and it was like, don't kid yourself, if I can't play at the highest level, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to play, I'm not going to, going to do something else.

Yeah. And at this point you're in Formula 3000..

Yeah, that's right.

Which was a league, as an answer to Formula Two, because Formula Two had become so expensive.

Yeah, Formula Two, I don't know what happened with the name, but they, they renamed it Formula 3000 at that point. And that was like the finishing school for Formula One. It was the, it was the understudy. It would follow the tour around on, at about eight or 10 tracks. Yeah.

I mean, obviously you reflect back at this age and go, had I stayed that course, I would have never actually been a champion. Yeah. And by some surrendering of this original goal, I become a champion six times over.

Yeah.

It's, it's kind of wild.

It is. But I, and in those early days with the team, you know, I had to take some massive, massive risks because, you know, suddenly you're responsible for employing people and, and that suddenly was like a big, you know, responsibility at 24, 25 years of age.

How about you out on the town trying to scrounge together money from sponsors? That's an entirely different skillset.

So you've got to hustle and you've got to sell yourself and you've got to, uh, you've got to raise the money. And suddenly, you know, you're, you have a responsibility to make sure every Friday, you know, the 10 guys that were in the team were all paid and their mortgages and their livelihood, you know, depended on me, and if I crashed the car, I could either afford to repair the car or pay the mechanics, but I couldn't do both. Right. Right. And so suddenly, you know, that responsibility became a, you know, a real burden.

How did you handle the pressure of that?

I think again, you build in another safety factor of. I cannot afford to crash. Uh, and so, uh, and so for me, it was very clear that I was going to need to stop it as, as well. that, uh, you know, when you're running a team in a small business like that was very hand to mouth, you know, I was living off credit cards. I was maxed out at the bank.

My guess is, you're good at managing stress, but even if you're good at it, does that time seem, well, obviously nostalgia helps, but is that, does that period seem wonderful in your mind? Or does it seem like, oh my God, I barely lived through that. That was so stressful.

I think it was a great education for me and it was for sure. It was stressful. And, you know, I was booking the hotels. I was doing the tax returns. I'm doing the payroll.

Buying used trailers off of Helmet Marco.

Yeah, exactly. And, and, you know, I was having to hustle to, to make this thing happen and get the money and, and, and so on.

And what was it like to be in your life at that time? If you were a girlfriend or a friend?

From a girlfriend point of view, I had a girlfriend at the time. And I remember her mother going, you need to be thinking of being with somebody else.

And I've just recently watched the Beckham documentary. Have you watched it?

Brilliant. I went to the premiere. Oh, you did? Whoa.

I gotta be, again, I don't, we don't know about football here. No. I don't know about Beckham. Yeah. I know he's gorgeous and super popular.

Oh, he's a legend.

Oh, what a fucking legend. Yeah. Also, I loved how honest he was. He's like, I got $50,000 from Adidas. I went immediately and bought an M3..

In a very, my first, I remember I got 60,000 pounds as a, as a, out of a deal. that when I stopped racing and the first thing I did was go and buy a car. And now, and that was, and that was when the girlfriend dumped me.

That's the money in the bank.

So put the, put the Dennis the Menace on your car. So I had Dennis the Menace on my car and they said, if the cake sales go okay, we can pay a little bit more money. And so anyway, they started selling the cakes. I remember getting a call and saying, look, the cake sales are going well, but wow, the gold cakes are flying. So, so we can, we can actually pay you a little bit more money.

Yeah. Another weird, like Max's mom moment. Yeah. Where you just don't know where all these threads are going to weave together. What skills are you picking up in that?

Yeah. Three years in a row. I won it three years in a row.

And you're not, you cannot be the most well-funded team.

No, we weren't. We weren't. And, and 2002 I was, we were properly on the limit, but I thought, do you know what, if it's shit or bust, I got to put a driver that can be capable of winning it. And of course, the good guys never have any money. So I took this driver out of Formula One, a Czech guy, and he won the championship that year, he beat a driver, Sebastian Bordet, that came over here.

Yeah. On what drug?

Oh, marijuana. Oh, really? Yeah.

Yeah. Which is so ironic. Cause that isn't going to help anybody drive a car fast. No, they should. In fact, you should get more points if you're bound to be heavily.

It was the first ever drugs case in, in, in motorsport. And so anyway, I managed to.

I was expecting you to, as soon as I read that, I was like, I can't wait to find out what drug he was on. He must've been on speed or he was.

I, it was a guy, it was a guy from the Czech Republic. I spoke to his, his manager. I said, look, we've got a bit of a problem. He's tested positive for a drugs test. And his manager said, well, he must've inhaled it.

And he was kind of Bill Clinton style.

And so, anyway, he made three of his employees sit in a room, while three others sort of blew, smoke at them and, and then go and get tested. And this was like part of his plan. And other than having sore eyes, they didn't even register. So then it turned out that the guy had been, um, taking a medication for some back spasms from a big crash that he had in Japan. And he had a Czech trainer that was just given him these pills.

Fucking great. He'd be uninjured and sharp.

And then I got him a drive with Newman Hass. Okay. And, um, as soon as the drug thing came up, bang, they pulled everything. They did. And they gave it to the other guy.

So, in that period, what had you figured out? you were great at? What was the thing you were doing that you could recognize in yourself? You have to explain this underdog story of three years in a row. There must be something you tell yourself like, okay, this is what I, this is my knack.

Well, I think it was a few things. One was, having been in the cockpit, was understanding some of the motions that a driver goes through. So being able, in a small way, to be able to relate to the drivers, to, to get the most out of them, to give an arm around the shoulder and driving like in any sport, it's all about confidence as well. And when you're, when you sat in the car, it can be a very lonely place. And when you're looking out, you want to know that the people around you, that they believe in you, that they're, you know, they're not just going through the motions.

A lot of what you do, as I was thinking about talking to you, really, really parallels directors of movies. And so often the great directors are the ones who've acted themselves. They understand the insecurity of doing a job where a hundred people look at you and you fail at the job 12 times in a row before you get it right. That's like an important experience to have. So imagine being a driver helps enormously.

Yeah. So it gave me a great education in that. And then, in terms of even with a Formula 3000 team, even though there's only 20 people in that team, it was about getting the best engineers, but also sometimes the best guys are some kind of awkward in some way, the engineers, you know, uh,

most of the great, slightly autistic in some respect.

So it was learning how to get a diverse group of people to work together as, as one team. And, and that's what we managed to do. And I felt that, you know, that was a skillset I had was in recognizing people's strengths and weaknesses and being able to, to, to, to, really hopefully get the best out of them.

It's such a mental experience, isn't it?

Yeah. It's totally, it's all of it.

I'm trying to think like, if tennis always appears to me to be like maybe apex mental, you watch some of these players just like break down at some point or lose the momentum, and it's just tangible. Yeah. Would we say driving that on that same level or a little less, or?

Yeah, you can say it's on that. I mean, we've got exactly that going on at the moment, which I know.

You know, and it's such a heartbreaking thing. Yeah.

And we all want to see him, you know, do the best that he can. But I think since Miami, it's been a, been tough for him because he started the year so well.

Yeah, he won two races.

He won two races. He's right there in the championship. We go to Miami, he gets an open goal because Max got a penalty, not penalty, but he, uh, red flags and different situations meant that he was outside the top 10 in qualifying. And at that point would have been an open goal for Checo and by the 12th lap or something, you know, Max is ahead of him.

And I think that's a demoralizing experience.

I think that then created the questions. Yeah. And then we went to Monaco. He tried too hard. He crashed in practice.

We'd say like, he's just, he's just on tilt. now. He's like, he's driving on tilt and it's kind of obvious, and it's, it's truly heartbreaking. I think. if there's any driver, well, there's two drivers, everyone roots for.

My kids love Yuki. I mean, yeah, unbelievable.

I think he should be in movies when this is all over. I mean, he's so likable.

He came, he came over to the UK to learn English and drive an English team that was based on the outskirts of London. And they are something like out of a movie from snatch, or like, okay. Like a Guy Ritchie movie. So, you know, this little Japanese guy, um, thought that. Motherfucker, or the word fuck was part of just part of the English language, part of the English vocabulary.

Oh, it is wonderful. What seems obvious about you and what is appealing about you, or at least what it seems like in drive to survive, is you love these dudes. You do. I mean, I think, the testament to that, and I'm the only person I'm really friends with in Formula One is Daniel. We're buddies.

Daniel. I mean, look, Daniel's, a great guy, very badly advised in his earlier career. And so everybody fucks up at some point. And I think, I think he recognized that he made a mistake. Yeah.

And, uh, it's like when you break up with a girl and you're like, fuck me. Yeah. Bad dudes with her. Exactly. Yeah.

So, and it was horrible to see it just get worse and worse and worse. And it was actually this time last year in Mexico that I sat down with him in, in, uh, my hotel room and I said, look, you need a complete reset, you know, take a year out, come, come back to us. We've got a bunch of sponsors and a lot of marketing stuff.

Which, by the way, he's such a win for you guys. Like I look at, you know, he went over to Dearborn and he was hanging out with, um, with Jim Farley, and then I know Jim Farley, and then Jim's like, Oh my God. That Ricardo guy is the greatest. And I'm like, he's the dream. Send him anywhere.

And he's another confidence driver. When he's got his mojo, he is one of the fastest guys on the grid.

He's lethal. He has the magic thing that people have, or they don't have, in my opinion, which is there are winners and there's not winners. I don't know what that is. Yeah. Jordan was one.

And he came to us. I mean, he was one of the juniors. I remember going to watch him in formula three and so on. He really stood out and very smooth, very, you know, just great. You have an elegant drive, almost like a, uh, a Roger Federer kind of style behind the wheel.

Yeah. Light touch, light touch.

Great, great, great skill. And then he came, he came through the system. We had Sebastian Vettel, uh, full-time world champion beast.

Yeah.

Mark Webber retired. We talked Daniel as the junior with no expectation on him. And he started getting on the podium and he was coming out. He won three races in 2014 when we didn't have far had far from the best engine. Yeah.

See, this is the thing. Or even his, his time at McLaren, it sucked for him, but also he's the only one that won a race in McLaren, and for a long time now.

And, and Renault, he put in some great performances and I think he's, again, he's another confidence guy. He's got to feel, he's got to feel a love. He's got to feel comfortable in the environment that he's in. And some of his races for us were, were absolutely outstanding.

It's really interesting for me to go back now and watch that first season of Drive to Survive. Cause. that's at the apex of the Max Daniel stuff, right?

That's right.

And it's not obvious at that moment. I don't know how you know this stuff. Yeah. It's not. at that point, if you're asked, a thousand people are asked to judge who's a faster driver, who knows?

No, and it was obvious at that stage he was coming. Yeah. And he was so young and so young, and you could see just the raw talent. It just needed polishing a bit. Yeah.

Money's also on the table too.

Money was also on the table. And I remember I spoke to, to our owner, Dietrich Malaschitz, before the Austrian Grand Prix. And I said, look, he's, he's looking a bit marginal with Daniel. Will. you, can you just show him some, some love, because, you know, obviously very pro Max, but I think if you could just balance things out, just, just let him know that you want him.

To the point where you're saying you get nervous?

Shit, what happened?

Yeah, this should have been a 15 minute pep talk.

Exactly. And then they reemerge, they, they reappear, both with smiles on their faces. And Dietrich comes up to me, I said, well, how, how did it go? And he said, yeah, no problem. It's not even a, it's not even a question.

You had the rotors. Yeah.

And the engine kept letting him down, letting him down. And then from there we went to Hungary and we got all the paperwork sorted out, and this and the other. And then his manager came to me and said, look, Daniel's really nervous about the engine situation. Cause we're going to change to Honda. He'll do one year.

Yeah.

Um, and then he was doing a test for us after the Hungarian race. And it was like, okay, uh, Daniel will sign the paperwork on, uh, you know, Monday, and suddenly Monday goes and he's in the car on Tuesday. And I'm saying that I'm starting to smell a little bit of a rat here, because this is an enormous dip. You'd have thought he'd have been in a rush to sign this, this contract. And he didn't sign it before.

You know, you're about to get broken up. If your girlfriend didn't show up to lunch, then dinner.

And then she's, yeah, you go. I know it's. so he brings me and I was in the car. I had, I was, Jerry was in the car with me and he said, look, I've just got off the plane. Uh, I've arrived in LA.

The manufacturers of the motor.

I hate the engine. That's just let him down for the last two years. And I'm like, I was convinced. I was convinced he, cause Daniel, you know, he's got a sense of humor. He's taking the piss here.

I was like, cause. it is kind of a punchline. after the season. You had the notion that you would go to rentals.

It's like, there's no way you're going to run it. Stop fucking about. Just tell me you're signing the contract.

And there's a team is not going to be running a rental motor next year. It's right.

And so, after about 10 minutes, he finally persuaded me that he had gone to, he was going to go to Renault. And it's like, you know, it was disappointing.

Um, but again, I want to, I want to applaud you. A lot of people that go through that exact experience go, all right, fuck you. Yeah. You know, and there was an element of luck and I'm going to enjoy when this doesn't work out for you, and that's not you.

There was an element of that at the time, thinking, you know what? Okay. Go and suck on the lemon for a bit. Um, and then actually, it was during the pandemic. He, I remember he called me and he said, Christian, I hate to say this to you, but you were absolutely right.

The other thing that's relevant. Obviously, there's so many rumors about, like, what will happen in Checo, who comes to Red Bull, blah, blah, blah. And when we're all talking about it on the show, it's like, I don't even wish that role for anyone. If I love a driver, let's say Charles. I love Charles.

Well, it's just like driving next to Terminator.

I mean, it's, it's just, it's a very, it's a thankless job.

He is, he is a generational talent.

And then some, right? It's crazy. You've had two of those drivers. Because Vettel will also go down in the history books, right?

Sebastian was a wonderful driver and, and yeah, we're very lucky to have had two guys in, in that category, but I think Max even takes it to another dimension.

I think so. I think, like what's ahead, is still going to be.

I mean, he's quite stunning. what he's done and is doing. And, and look, to be his teammate is the hardest job in the pit lane.

Completely. Yes. The person that you're competing against is the fastest guy to do it for 30 years or whatever we want to say. So even if you're driving at your apex, you're going to be 0.3 behind him.

And his soul destroying on, he broke the young teammates that he had come in. And we talked to Checo, cause he's got that bit of experience. He's got, he's a pretty rounded individual, but.

And is it fair to say, I think, like, say, 2021, Checo had such a role. Yeah. The car wasn't as good as Mercedes. No. And he got to help Max.

It's tough. And it's such a judgmental sport that you're as good as your last race in, in so many respects. And I think that, you know, Checo bought a bunch of experience. And he said, look, he's a tough, tough operator. He's, he's got mental resilience that.

He's a last person other than Max. I want to try to pass.

Yeah. He's a racer.

Yes. He will die. He will fucking die.

He's not a qualifier, but he's an absolute racer.

I totally agree. He's so fun to watch battle. He's fearless. Yeah. So he has an identity that's still great.

Absolutely. And I think that, uh, you know, Checo has done a, done a great job next to Max during the last three years, because when you're looking at the data of what Max is doing, and you've only got to, if you look at a race like Japan, the very first lap that Max does out of the pits is two seconds quicker than the rest of the field. And you're looking at that data and you're thinking, how has he done that? How has he done that? And so often, you know, that will happen.

Absolutely. But you look at, or again, I don't know the guy, but what appeared to be how much Botas was enjoying that role, it was terrible on him. Yeah. It was not fun for him to be racing with Lewis in that car.

No. Or if you go back against, you know, Senna or his teammates or Schumacher. Yeah.

It's demoralizing. Yeah.

You know, you can, you can see, there's a bit, there's a pattern with those guys that have just destroyed their teammates, you know, teammates that are all very capable drivers. Yes.

Yeah. The person that comes in, they have to enter, I think.

Yeah.

Wanting to retire, having finished second, many, many years in a row.

You see, Checo was out, uh, you know, 2020..

He was done. Yeah.

And I remember we were struggling at the time with, uh, with, with Alex Alborn, because he'd come in too soon. Yeah. And, and we just needed somebody.

Can I just say none of my business? Yeah. He's the guy I would want in the second seat.

Yeah. He's brilliant. He's so good. He's fantastic.

And he deserves to be flying.

And he did a fantastic job for us. when he stepped down as to be test driver. He never complained. He never moaned. He put in the hours and I was really happy.

And he was, he overdrives that car every week.

He's demonstrating what is, you know, he's found his form. He's got the experience now. Yeah. He's toughened, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. It wasn't obvious to me when you guys hired him, but as I watched him race and I realized, oh, this is the ideal teammate for Max, how do you, again, you take Vettel, you've now got to be the boss of, again, two of the greatest drivers to ever drive. I presume their personalities are different.

Totally diametrically opposite.

Okay, great. In which way?

Well, Sebastian is very much, uh, the analytical German into every single detail would be at the track until 11 o'clock at night, challenging data. His, his after race debrief, it'd take him half an hour just to do the formation lap before the race has even started. Uh, he was just driven.

And he had a very good mechanical mind.

Perfection. And, you know, very Germanic in the way that he went about organizing his life, and he'd read the Michael Schumacher school of motor racing. And that was how he was going to live, live his life. Yeah. And, and Max is just different.

I can feel I'm in perfect concert with this thing and I can tell you what feels wrong to me.

That's what I need. Just sort that out and I'll go quicker. Sort that problem out. And he does go quicker. And you know, when you strap him in, you're going to get 110%.

I think you guys are great partners.

So, so yeah, just. But then, when he takes the helmet off, he's the nicest young guy you could ever meet, very unassuming. Doesn't want to, he's shy. He's naturally shy. He doesn't want to be, fame sits uncomfortably with him.

And it's interesting, as I've met the other drivers and I of course gather gossip about all of them. And every time I hear these stories, the kind of resounding unanimous feedback is like, everyone loves Max. Everyone tells me, Max is actually the sweetest guy off the track and shy and nice.

He's just a good guy and he's a fun guy and he's old school as well. And, uh, you know, he won the championship in Qatar and I said, okay, let's, let's get the whole team together. We'll just have a couple of drinks. It's not every day you win a world championship, and it was unusual to win it on a Saturday. Right.

Listen to me, listen to me and you don't have to comment on this, but many times over the years I've been watching, I was like, Max might do better, hung over. This is now another challenge he can overcome.

So he, um, yeah, he, he, he trains hard. He takes it all very, very seriously, but he's just got such huge ability, such huge, I've never met a driver with as much self-confidence or self-belief.

Um, you know, it's infectious. when you're watching him and you see him, go for something, you just believe. you believe, as the, you're almost not even afraid for him. You're like, oh, it's infectious. I, he can do anything.

He's like a dog with a bone and you see his helmet in the mirror. You know, he's going to have a go. You just know he's coming.

One of my other preoccupations with Max is watching all of the OCD things he does, which is very fascinating. I watch him put his gloves on the thing and he's got to adjust those three times when he takes his helmet, he's got to do that. There was the tear off strip just stuck to the front of the car and he could not let it go. He had to fucking pull it off while he was driving. That stuff interests me so much, but we have all have those things.

I mean, I've had that since I was driving. I mean, I have a lucky toilet at each track. I'll always approach the drivers from the right hand side. I'll always stand in the garage for the start of a Grand Prix. Um, you know, so there's little things that I think, I don't so much think they're superstitions, as they're just ways of getting you into your.

I've heard a lot of athletes tell me you control all the things you can control before you get to the thing you ultimately can't control. That's kind of what's driving it. It's like, I'm sure there's a lot of, yeah, it's like every, I'm going to control every element until the uncontrollable starts. What have you learned over the, how long have you guys been together now?

Seven years since max, since 2016, seven years.

How have you adjusted how you communicate with him and, and help him? Have you figured some stuff out along the way?

He's evolved so much. Cause when he came to us, he was a teenager. I mean, he's like 17 years of age and saying he had a dream debut. He won on his debut and fucking unreal bang. And you know, he's arrived.

He's, he's the only one with you.

He's the only one with you. He's in the car. He, he can see how hard you're pushing the throttle, the brakes. He's seeing all that. He can even sense your mood by what he's seeing in the, in the data.

Okay.

And then Sebastian left and he ended up as Danny Kiviat's for a year, and then Max joined. And that relationship has just developed and developed a bit like a marriage.

It's becoming very fun to listen to on the telecast, to the point that it's like he's thrown some jabs back occasionally when he can feel it's the right time.

And you'll probably only get in half of it. So this is going on constantly between the two of them, where they're jabbing at each other, even in the garage, and on the stuff that you can't hear. that's on our closed, closed circuit. And, and there's just this banter, or this total trust as well between the two of them, I remember Silverstone this year, Max drove out of the pit lane and he clipped the pit wall and he damaged the front wing. Yeah.

The only incident all year.

And they had to pull him back in there, back in the grid. And his engineer said, Max, what happened there? And I lent to him on the pit. I said, look, GP, he's just hit the, he's just hit the pit wall. And he came back to me and he said, yeah, I know.

The flawless person is flawed.

So, uh, they've got that kind of, you know, banter and, uh, and respect is the most important thing. There's a big respect between the two of them.

You personally, ultimately, it's all rolling downhill from you. Yeah. Let me also say to you, I thought Austin was a really beautiful display of the team. So often it's Max, you know, like Max gets so much credit. We know that car's great.

No, absolutely. And I think, as a race team, we've always been an attacking race team. We've always, you know, we've pitted from the leads to take better tires, make sure that, rather than having a protecting track position, we're on the right tires at the right time. And I think, as a race team, our mantra has always been, you know, no risk, no fun.

You also have maintained this underdog thing, which is crazy.

Exactly. Even though we're winning, winning a chunk of races, you know, that's the way we've always gone racing. And that's something that, uh, we've embodied with throughout, throughout the team is, come on, we can take this on. We can do this. We can achieve this.

Who should we credit for that strat? Who's, who, who deserves the credit for the impeccable strategy all season?

Oracle.

Wonderful.

So, so no, we get some great software, but it's as good as the numbers you put into it. And, and it's something that's, uh, you know, Hannah gets a lot of credit, but she's just one of a team and, and, you know, we'll Courtney, her boss, and, and the other strategists, Steve knows, and so on, you know, everybody works as a team and, and they'll put options in front of me and, and then.

How involved are you in those?

Oh, very much involved. I want, I'm, I'm, if you like, we have a chain of command and, and the strategists will, I'm working most with a strategist through the race. So they will present options to me at any point in time. If a safety car comes out now, what are we going to do? Are we going to split the cars?

And it's, and sometimes these decisions have to be made in about eight seconds. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and I'm constantly challenging them. What if, what, if, what, if, uh, and they're constantly coming up with, uh, scenarios in front of me. So it's very much a team effort.

If you had to give a percentage to how confident you are, let's say, Austin, when you make the decision for the two stop, are we at 60% confident? Are we at 51%?

I think, in terms of confidence of running our fastest race, we're at 90%.

Okay. When you make those decisions, you're not like super stressed that.

No. So, so in Austin, we're 90% confident. That's our best race. What we don't know. what's going to happen is how are the others going to react?

Well, they reacted poorly. This is just.

Exactly. And so Mercedes sort of set off on another journey, and then they bought it. And then that immediately puts them in, in sort of no man's land. Yeah. And, and so they ended up on a better tire at the end of the race, but they hadn't, they hadn't got the track position at that point in time.

Listen, you're reluctant to own your own gifts, but I'm going to keep pushing. So another thing I'm curious is how you kept your optimism between you went, you guys win four as a team, and then you just watched Mercedes win for eight fucking years.

That was tough.

How do you stay optimistic, hungry, and focused in that much defeat?

Well, I felt a responsibility and I had a belief that we just needed to address the elements that were causing the issue. And we went from winning, you know, 10,, 11, 12, 13,, four on the bounce, and then a massive regulation changed the engine and our engine supply completely missed the target. And at that point, you know, Vettel leaves because of the engine. Adrian came very close to leaving. He was within about half an hour of signing.

Well, I've been told he kind of just went on a soft retirement. He stayed, but he started working on cars and stuff.

No, he, uh, Ferrari came hard for him and he was, and they promised him the world. You can have a Hollywood lifestyle, fly into the factory for Monaco every day and not pay any tax. And, um, you can design a road car, and this, that, and the other. And I managed to persuade him to stay by saying, look, we'll do a road car. If you want to do a road car, we'll do a road car.

Similar to your relationship with Ford. Now, when I interviewed Jim, he's like, I looked around, I was like, we need Arrow bad for this electric movement.

Yeah.

How do I get Arrow?

Yeah, exactly. And, and I think we, you know, it was able to, it enabled Adrian to fulfill his ambition and it kept him in the team. Um, and it was not losing sight of guys, you know, we just need to sort out, if we can sort the engine issue out, you know, we can, we'll be back in a winning.

position, and maybe it was helpful that it was so obvious what your shortcoming was.

It was, but it wasn't obvious the way out, right?

The way out wasn't obvious, but at least maybe you could hold onto some confidence going. Well, that's the thing. It's not a mystery what we have to solve.

But the problem was, everybody got used to winning and suddenly you're not winning and nobody likes that. Yeah. So whether it was in the team, suddenly the questions we'd lost Vettel, even the owners were saying, maybe we'll sell the team. Right. We'll sell the Audi, you know, morale is just in the toilet.

Oh, wow.

Um, and then Honda came along and it was a bit of a risk, but it was a calculated risk because we did a season with Toro Rosso, what is Alfa Tauri? first. I could see the engine was getting better and better and that the Honda guys, they had as much invested as we did for it to work, and we could see the product was, was coming, their heritage in the sport was fantastic and we decided to go for it. Yeah. And it, and it all came good.

How scary is that decision?

Well, it was sort of nothing to lose really. Cause the engine was no worse than the Renault and they got a lot more commitment that they were prepared to make. So the safe option would have been to stay with what we knew, with the Renault guys promising us every year is going to be better, and they're still in the same situation now, whereas Honda, you know, they backed it up by investing, by investing, and they knew, when they got Red Bull as a partner, that the expectation was, was sky high.

It's championships.

And then suddenly, you know, they came back in a Formula One, they never scored a podium. First race we were on the podium. By race nine, we're winning. Right. You know, we won in Austria, uh, and we went on to win three races for them that year.

Yeah. Is it challenging to have the role you have with, say, Max's dad so close in the scene?

Uh, well, he's not actually that close.

He's not, he's just there.

He's visual. Okay. But in terms of, it was very clear from the work go that the contract was with Max, you know, and, and he was welcome to, to, to be a supportive dad and, to be honest, we've never, ever had an issue.

He's never advised like with him.

I'm sure he's advised his Max, you know, behind the scenes and so on, but he's been very supportive of Max. He's been, yeah. You know, compared to some of the motor racing dads that we've had over the years, he's actually been very, very good to deal with and very easy to have around. Yeah.

None of the smiliest guy.

Oh, he's a pretty scary looking guy. Especially if you're Sergio Perez and you've just won in Azerbaijan.

What's the drive to survive? impact on your life? And I'm particularly interested again, I'm in a relationship where we're both recognized, her more than me. Yeah. She's far more famous.

Yeah, for sure.

And then the show comes along and I got to imagine you're traveling around the world and all of a sudden, like normal people know you, not just race junkies.

It's not. So, yeah, I mean, before drive, survive, anybody that followed formula one, yes, you're a name, but you were a name in that paddock. and then you leave the paddock and you, you go back into a anonymity and you leave the bubble, you're big in the bubble, but outside the bubble, you know, perfect. Yeah, it was absolutely perfect. And of course my wife, uh, you know, being in the biggest girl band of all time has grown up under the media spotlight, with people going through our bins and, you know, all the stuff that you're not aware of.

It's like five X in the U S.

It's unbelievable.

Yeah. You, if you think of Austin, what was it? This, this last race was like 420,000 fans five years ago. It was 90,000 or 105,000, enormous.

Exactly.

I've never seen a show that's more powerful to us.

It's transformed the sport. It's transformed the sport. It's transformed the business. Yeah. We've got so many American partners now.

Oh, fucking, Ryan Reynolds buying Oracle 24% would not be in.

formula one without drive to survive.

Totally. Do you have a good deal of gratitude for it? There's some purists that I don't think love the arrival of me.

So I have a huge amount of gratitude for it's changed it around, but also a responsibility that we bought all this new fan base in a young fan base, a female fan base. They love the driver. So suddenly, like my 17 year old daughter is, it's suddenly I've gone up in the cool scale, you know, so, um, and she's following all the drivers, Yuki or Charles Leclerc or Max, or, you know, Alex or whoever. Um, and suddenly formula one is, uh, you know, it's cool.

Yes.

Um, and it's bought this whole new following in. And of course it sits uncomfortably with some, but you, what you've got to remember is that drive to survive is a documentary and it's a bit like the Kardashians on wheels, you know, it's giving you a glimpse behind the scenes, into some of the personalities and the struggles, and it's, it's not just about the engineering and the, and the sport, it's, it's about life, you know, lifestyle. And, and so I was giving, it's just opening that, you know, lead into the world of formula one.

You know what I think they've done a great job doing is showing all the drama that happens from third place to 20th. Like that's to me, the thing that they shone a light on where you're like, Oh, this is heartbreaking. Yeah. The stakes to get seventh are huge for many teams to get a 10th. That's everything.

And suddenly you meet characters like Gunter Steiner.

Oh, yes.

I mean, how scary is he? I mean, he used to work for us. I had to fire him. Um, I mean, how scary was that? Sure.

Did you have any judgment of your wife for how she handled the attention that now that you've had the attention, you've had to reformulate what your judgment was?

No, absolutely. Because, you know, she'd grown up in that spotlight and so she was very protective of private time and so on. And, you know, particularly family time and so on, and suddenly bang, you know, this thing turns up and it changes diametrically, it changes everything. Yeah.

And, um, you started appreciating her boundaries.

Absolutely. You suddenly appreciate, okay, there's a bit of a, uh, you know, a cape that you, that you have to put on a security cape to, to, to, just, just to protect the people that you love. Yeah.