Future Talent and Technical Changes

Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of businessus wars ad free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app From Audible Originals, I'm David Brown and this is Business W Let's go back in time, shall we? It's august thirtieth, nineteen ninety eight And a nine year old is at home in the UK watching the Belgian Grand Prix on TV. He can see it's raining hard as the race begins Soon after the start There's a massive pile up with thirteen cars, parts flying everywhere. Here's the race commentator, Murray Walker. Race st by Eddie Irbide field up. Look at field up.ag at the wall. Who was that? T start? start in the wall stop the race. have theaceagerrible Oh This is quite appalling. This is the worst start for a braadbrey that I have ever seen in the whole of my life. The nine year old watching is thrilled by the drama of the crash Boy is Alex Jakes and at that moment, knew he had found his sport. It would take years, but eventually he'd become the voice of Formula One on F one TV and Channel four. And today Our guest, you might recognize his voice from the Netflix series Formula O Drive to Survive. He's also the author of Grid to Glory, seventy five milestone Formula One Moments explains how F one finally secured a solid foothold in the US. market during the pandemic. and how it's gaining on NASCAR, especially with younger fans. We'll also talk about the epic twenty twenty one F one season sixth season, of course, and Oh yeah, we'll talk about Max for stoppin All that's coming up This message comes from Betterment Dan Eaggan, VP of Behavioral Finance and Investing, explains how Betterman's tax impact preview tool can help you make smarter investment decisions A tax impact preview is a preview of what taxes you would owe if you sold out of a position today. Often, when individuals are investing, there's a disconnect between when they sell something and when they pay the taxes on He might sell it in February and the IRS comes calling in April What we wanted to do is make people aware of the consequences of their decisions before they made them people might forget that short term capital gains are taxed at a higher rate than long term capital gains. We wanted to make that information salient and give it to them at the point in time so they can make more informed decisions before they go through. Learn more about tax impmact preview and all the other helpful investment tools at betterment. com The Tax Impact Preview tool provides an estimate of tax implications, Betterment does not provide tax advice, Investing involves risk, performance not guaranteed With a Spark cash plus card from Capital One, you ear an unlimited two percent cash back on every purchase. And you get big purchasing power, so your business can spend more and earn more Steven, Brandon and Bruno, the business owners of SandCloud, reinvested their two percent cash back to help build the company's retail presence Capital one What's in your wallet Find out more at capital onene. com slash spark cash plus Terms apply Alex Jakes, welcome to Business Wars Thank you so much for having me. It's a real joy and honor. What is it about F one that makes you love it so much That nine year old watching the Grand Prix now as an adult, is that what it's all about There's definitely a connection. I think there's a simplicity to it that you just put elite athletes in wonderfully advanced technology and then you race them out on the track around the world. The cars are painted in vivid colours and it is just one of the most Exciting spectacles in sport and exciting spectacles full stop. I always say, you know, people go to air shows around the world and they're very exciting. Imagine them racing. That's basically what Formula One is. And I love it as much as I always have How did you become the voice of F one TV? Did you start in go karts work your way up through F three F two F one, like rookie drivers Nearly, very nearly. Yeah. I started working for the Formula one group in twenty fifteen on the third tier and the second tier, then called GP three and GP two, now called Formula three and Formula two to simplify it. but these are the junior ladders. These are the rungs on the ladder before we get to the top of Formula one. F two is like the college football if you like, or college basketball stage of the sport. The great advantage of that was that I met a lot of the drivers when they were in their really young formative years. I always liken it to seeing a band that goes on to be big in a pub. Yeah. But yeah, as a result, I got a lot of races in. These championships tend to have multiple races a weekend. Formula One just has the Grand Brix, the main event And as a result of that, I got lots of reps in, bu a reputation and relationships with the people who put on the main show. And eventually I got a tap on the shoulder and they said, do you want to have a go on Formula One? I was reading somewhere where Nielsen Sports was saying Formula One now has something like eight hundred million, what is it? eight hundred million people in their global fan base I guess some of those are probably US fans, but I'm curious why you think it took so long for F one to break into the US market to begin with It's an interesting one. Formula One used to be run really by one man. It was one group and it was a sporting body, but realistically a chack called Bernie Eccleston called the Shots And he had a very key ethos that he would keep all the Formula One footage under lock and key Ill give you a great example of this because it makes no sense in the era that we're now in. But the biggest chat show in the UK is the Graham Norton show. So whenever you'd have a British driver on the Graham Norton show, An other sportspon would have a clip to share. Bernie Ecclston would charge an enormous amount of money for said clips. So you can even show it to promote an appearance on a chat show. Amazing. It shows you how underlocking key it was. It shows you that he had an idea Oh Who should be watching and who shouldn't be watching? and he very much had it in his head. that this was an exclusive product meant for a defined audience and not a mass market sports leeague Let's dig a little deeper into Eccleston here. You think there's any sort of parallel between the hold he had on F one and The France fam's control of the NASCAR brand. I mean, you have individuals trying to control this product that so many people have a real personal attachment to, you know what I mean It's interesting. When people love something and I think you always have to remember was sport This is people's weekends. this is what people look for to do for a really long time. So when you have one individual controlling things That's a lightning rod, whether It's Good Bad or indifferent, whether it's the Dallas Cowboys, whether it's Rcar, whether it's Formula One in the old days. You know for all of the change that Formula One has gone through, it is essentially still a huge sport for enthusiasts and for people who you can love Formula One for a number of different reasons You can love it for the drivers, you can love it for the tech. you can love it for the jetet lifestyle around the world. There are so many different ways in. so that when one person's at the wheel, that person becomes a target and it's very easy to be partisan for or against them. Hey, make the case here. Why do you love F one? What is it about F one that appeals to you so much now. I love sport in general But the thing that has always elevated Formula One for me is the fact that we have these young athletes who have devoted years of their life to getting where we are. So many try for decades to get close. We don't hear their name. If you're a good football player, you've got a big chance of making it. There are twenty two Formula O drivers It is such a rare thing to get there. So when you get there, you are guaranteed to be the very best of the best. And I just think it's the greatest combination of sport that we have. We have a thousand people working for each team. We have these drivers who are at the spearhead of it. and ultimately, it just comes down to that raw instinct to race There are lots of very exciting things in sport For me, the most exciting thing you can have is a chase for the lead late on in a race that means something that is high stakes and I love that as much as I did when I was a kid Yeah, you know, see, this is the gospel of F one You know, it just for years wouldn't catch on in the US. And yet something happened in the business world long around twenty eighteen or so. Wasn't that about the time that Liberty Media Corporation acquired Formula One Group Yeah, it was a sea change in the way that the owners saw it. Eccleston had had a lot of sway for a long time and had basically been fully in charge since the late eighties, early nineties Yeah But there were so many Undeveloped pathways The digital channels basically didn't exist. It's unthinkable now. They weren't utilizing social media, they weren't utilizing digital media, they weren't putting race highlights out in an accessible way. So there was only one way to watch it. That was through traditional linear television The nice thing about the current role is that, you know, we're the voices and my colleagues that I broadcast with, we're the voices on Social media so you can discover us in ten second clips and then you can watch the YouTube highlights and see us in eight minute highlights and then you can see slightly more in the featured highlights and then you can maybe take out a subscription to the streaming service and you can watch the whole thing live. and that progression just wasn't there. The ability to get this brilliant sport in front of eyeballs just wasn't there That was one part of it The other part of it drive to survive to survive. Yeah, this was the Netflix series you're talking about Yeah, the Netflix series that just hit perfectly It was a phenomenally fortuitous piece of timing that They had already decided to film behind the scenes in Formula One. a senior executive called Sean Bratches. He had decided that Formula One needed a behind the scenes documentary. And all the big teams in Formula one decided that they wanted nothing to do with it. I was gonna to say, aren't they a little sniffy about this stuff? Everyone in Formula one is sniffy unless they've seen results, but initially this first series had only got the buy in from the midfield teams that wouldn't always get the same amount of airtime suddenly spied, yeah, I fancy a documentary camera pointing at all of my sponsor logos As a result, the midfield is just full of characters. You've got to be so good to make it in this game, but you've also got to have street smarts and the personality that I feel broke it open, a person that I don't think many would have known the name of if it had not been for this documentary, Gunter Steiner, a racer through and through, unbelievably charismatic Italian, even though it sounds like he's got an Austrian accent And he was so honest and open in a way that because of Eccleston, keeping it under lock and key, because of that restrictive hand on the rights not only had New audiences not seen that before Traditional audiences hadn't seen that before. so suddenly here was this brand new side of things that had not been available to Formula One fans. and it It created a completely different genre of sports documentary Yeah, much more of the human side of the sport that I think for some reason is always felt like it was behind a glass wall for a lot of fans. Yeah. the cars were always front and center the personalities at the front were front and center, but the human being, the backstory, the journeys that they'd been on, the fact that they are essentially ordinary people Stuck on a conveyor belt very, very early in life And that just had to be put in front of new audiences. For the reasons that you've heard me get excited about this earlier, it's an incredibly compelling product. The full extent of the story had just never been told. And the great thing about having ten episodes was at a time where the world had shut down for the pandemic, everyone was binging as much as they possibly could was this incredibly visceral, exciting multif faceted sport where the drivers were charismatic, incredibly talented and the team bosses were downright mean to each other You know, this is I think what you're referring to and correct me if I'm wrong, but in your book, Gid to Glory, you talk about how drive to survive was a your drama with an emphasis on the drama. Was there a specific story that comes to mind from the series that kind of gets at that I think there's just lots of honesty that you would normally get brushed up by the PR departments in the past, for example Liam Lawson, really solid Pro behind the wheel gets this unbelievable chance to drive for the championship winning Red Ball team. Yeah. He then gets demoted after two weeks in the job Two race weekends and they sack him and they send him back to the junior team. They promote Yuki Snoda, very, very popular driver It doesn't work out for either of them, but you know, you ask anyone in any form of like, how good were you two weeks into your big promotion. R? I don't think anyone's doing their finest work fifteen days into the job. So to be able to show the brutality of if you do not perform, you are out. And yet here was the show displaying that front and center that that was actually true in Formal one This gets to how dririve to sururvive has grown the Formula O audience. We can take a lot more of this stuff For granted, I think DTS has a cumulative audience of around what is it eight hundred million viewers across its seasons Interestingly enough, it's not just brought in a lot of younger viewers The audience is diversified. I'm really stunned by how many women watching F one has grown. Does it feel that way to you on your side of the microphone? It does. And it's the biggest change since I started attending Grand Prix as press I started covering the support races in twenty fifteen, but I've been on site for a lot of races in the last decade or so And the composition of who's sitting in the grandstand has changed. and to reach an entirely new demographic with the sport is Pretty rare, let's be honest, very few sports leagues or sports in general get a chance to reinvent. Formula one always reinentss. That's part of the DNA. They're changing the cars all the time, they're changing the power units all the time, but the chance to bring in a new demographic that is so rare and it's given the sport so much more energy And I'm delighted it's had that effect. You know, I can remember, I'm in Austin, Texas and we have a big F one track here But I can remember right around, I don't know, must have been twenty ten or so, maybe twenty eleven, there was a lot of talk and a little bit of excitement. I was talking with friends and I was of the opinion that we'd never see it happen, that we'd never actually get enough one track But then when it started to come together, began to hear a lot more people really, really excited and enthusiastic about it. And I guess there have been several new tracks that sort of reflect this interest and that has sort of fueled the monster, hasn't it It has indeed. I mean, if you look at America's Formula One history and there have been more venues for Formula One Grand Brix in the United States than any other. The problem is none of them ever stuck until we got to Austin It's just an incredible thing to see the popularity explode. And I think the interest has grown with Formul onene growing the calendar. If you were skeptical about getting a race in Austin, you can only imagine how people felt about racing down the strip in Vegas and the skepticism that abounded with that. and yet logistically, that was an amazing feat for them to pull off. Miami too, right? Yeah, one of the, you know, just cinematic backdrops for Formula One That's very emblematic, isn't it? To go for three races in the states when for so many years there wasn't any US Grand Prix. It just shows where the attention is, market wise and those are three great events on the Forma O calendar Nxt We're talking with Alex Jakes and when we come back, we're going to be talking about the epic twenty twenty one F one season touch that dial. There's a whole lot more business wars just ahead. Stay with us Whether you're exploring your current fascinations or discovering new ones, Audible has all the stories that'll introduce you to your most fascinating self. Tap into a whole new world of heated conversations with a Sucy romantasy series. Become your friend group's sci fi expert on the latest blockbuster book to screen adaptation Or find unexpected reveals through the exclusive episodes of a viral true crime podcast. 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However you choose to listen, Audible keeps you fascinated, so you can be just as fascinating. All in one easy app, with plans now starting at eight doll ninety nine cents, you'll get access to over one million audioob books and podcasts, including trending bestsellers Hottest new releases and exclusive podcasts you won't find anywhere else. Sign up now to become a member and get any audio book every month plus exclusive podcasts. Plans now start at eight dollars ninety nineents Be fascinated, be fascinating. Hey, welcome back to Business Wars We're talking with Alex Jakes, F one TV commentator, known far and wide, Alex. You call the twenty twenty one F one season the Gadiator season Can you set that up for us? Why was it so epic? You had a young prettender in Max Verstappen who had been waiting for his chance up against the statistical greatest driver in Formula O history, Lewis Hamilton, most wins, most pole positions, most podiums And you very rarely get an opportunity to see A future great up against the current great, and yet in twenty twenty one, right off the back of the pandemic, when so many fans had discovered Formula One through the digital channels and through Drive to survive, suddenly the second shoe drops and one of the greatest seasons that Formula One has ever seen. It was gladiorial It was physically painful for both drivers. It was aggressive. They were constantly side by side, wheel to wheel on the edge for the entire season, not just a phase, not just a race, not just a moment nine months around the world highigh speed And these are the two of the greatest to ever do it fighting for the titles. It just it happens so rarely and it happens straight after tryve to survive the court fire Good Lord. And you are in the driver's seat in a sense for British TV, right? This is your first season calling it for British TV. Is that right? Yeah, channel four do the network program. So there is a live program on Skyports, which is your ESPN. And then in the network program air slightly later, but full highlights of the race. That's a coveted job in British sport and it's the one I'd always wanted to do And so did you find yourself taking aside This would be really hard to maintain a kind of neutrality, I would think You've got to maintain a neutrality. That's the gig. Your job as lead commentator is to tell everyone The stakes. And the order and the importance and the details. And then I have racing drivers next to me that year. Mark Weber, David Culthard, they've been there. they've done it. They've risked their necks. My ethos in the commentary box is always If you haven't risked your neck, you're not giving an opinion. That's not how it works. And that was the season to test the neutrality because It was partisan in a way that Formula One rarely is The lovely thing about going around the world is that there is great respect for everyone risking their life out there for our entertainment. But because it was such a combative season, because these two were so good, this championship meant more. And as a result, it just got dialed up and up and up, there was a lot of buzz How did Max Verstappen come onto the scene in that twenty twenty one F one season? Did he surprise everyone He was a prodigy and There was a arms race to sign him. Ferrari wanted him, Mercedes wanted him, but Red Bull had a Trump card that no one else had. They had two teams. in Formula One. Formula was not always the popular product that it is today and at one point, Red Bull were invited to buy a second team basically to prop up numbers on the grid. and they kept it to train up their junior drivers. It meant that when Ferrari offered a seat in Formula two And Mercedes offered a CD in Formula two, Rebel could go, you know what? good enough. It doesn't matter if when we sign him he's sixteen years of age and he's had one season in a single seated car in Formula three, let's just stick him in Formula one And so he was the chosen one to reach the front from the youngest age anyone has ever been allowed in Formula One to the point where they changed the license rules to try and stop anyone coming through that young at all. They changed the dimensions of the cars, to try and make them more difficult to drive. That is how unusual a talent like Verstappen being allowed in so young was So the fact he eventually made his way to the front to be a championship contender, not a surprise at all because Red Bull went all in. The people in charge of the team at the time, Helmut Marco and Christian Horet staked their reputations on it. If he'd been dangerous and crashed in to people time and time again, it would have been an enormous embarrassment. they put a lot of faith in and he was downright sensational, basically from the word go So you have this generational And then turn over to the rival, right? Verstopen's rival in that twenty twenty one F one season. The British driver Lewis Hamilton Many people consider Hamilton the goat, I suppose He and Verstopppen, as you were describing, just fought wheel to wheel, collllided on more than one occasion. I think Verstappin's car actually ended up on top of Hamilton's car in one of those wipeouts. As those two went tire to tire in twenty twenty one Was a fight friendly? How would you describe it No, I would describe it as the most intense title battle I've ever seen. I didn't really think it could get ratcheted up to the level that it was. Really? Yeah, it went way beyond any expectation. And, you know, these are some of the fastest ever cars in the history of the sport And they they were brawling. Isn't this beneath F one to be brawling like this? Was there some feeling that, oh, this isn't civil or were just people all in on this? got intense, but it got intense in a way that people will be talking about twenty twenty one in fifty years, one hundred years from now. It is the benchmark of Formula One seasons. It just always will be. And it was thrilling. you know, there's so much respect for the drivers, but I think Max understood that if you're going to take down a driver that many people believe to be the go. You have got to give it everything and he chose very aggressive tactics. Hamilton responded, And it's just that marvelous thing where you think or they can't possibly improve upon that I remember thinking in the commentary box in twenty twenty one, we're looking at the two best drivers in the world and they are miles ahead of the other best drivers in the world. This is This is something special. and yet, they pushed each other to the edge And what can you ask for more in sport than that? And it kept delivering too. I mean, because over the season, you had Hamilton and Verstopin flip flopping for championship points and then they tied and it all comes down to the last race in Abu Dhabi What was that like? I said on the last lap you'll never hear the end of this. And I think it's one of the more prescient things I've ever said. Everyone had pushed themselves to a point of performance and exhaustion that meant that it was always going to be controversial and that the way that last lap restart unfolded will be debated forever. You had seasoned professionals who'd been there for thirty years in disbelief at the whole season The performance from both drivers, the performance from both teams I've covered a lot of sport, I've attended a lot of sport. It's the strangest atmosphere after the race that I can ever remember. There was disbelief peopleople had watched And we were on air for the post show standing live on TV, not knowing the steward still had to rule on a couple of things. The race result was still in the air. And then you know, the final clarification came through that Verstappen who'd won with a pass on the last lap would keep the title, the Mercedes protests had been thrown out. And yeah, then it turned into traditional celebration, but that hour after the race is unlike anything I've ever seen Yeah, and this wasn't just between the drivers, obviously. We're talking about a battle of teams here, Verstopen and Red Bull versus Hamilton and Mercedes and a ton of money at stake. Let's talk about the numbers What's the average value of an F one team in this league It's gone up Sificantly. you're looking at around three and a half billion doars to four billion for a team That's the average. You've got Ferrari orworth the most. They are the most famous name. They are forormuls most famous team. That will never change You had Formula One teams being sold Very, very recently around the end of twenty early twenty twenty one being sold for one hundred twenty million dollars and now I guess there's a new team on the block Cadillac I guess it speaks to the American audience too. I mean, just to have the name mentioned alongside Ferrari is got to mean a lot to, you know, brand like Cadillac. Indeed. And I think that's why they wanted to be there. and it's the best place obviously by most metrics at the moment when it comes to motor racing to have your brand. And I think the idea of General Motors joining Formula one evenven five years ago would have been laughable. So the idea that they badly want in now shows you again, it's just another metric of where brands want to be and the health of Formula One at the moment. How much do drivers make for getting behind the wheel? Well, again, to go back to the rather morbid point, this is serious entertainment, but it's also a serious risk. You can get hurt doing this. And Formula one, thankfully has not had a fatality for a while now And safety is improved all the time. But as a result, if you're going to go out there, the top drivers are going to command a serious amount of money. The exact details are never known, but Max erstappen gets talked about around the seventy five million dollars a year mark. And if you look at what he's done for Red Bull, you could say he's worth every penny. Formula one's momentum in the US obviously continued with Apple's release of F one, the movie back in Guess it was june twenty twenty five, Brad Pitt in the lead role. Lewis Hamilton part of the team that made the film What reception did the real F one drivers get when they went to screenings of the film? Did you catch that I felt very lucky that we were invited to the driververs seeing the film for the first time. They invited a select group of people to a there and the drivers were in there, they hadn't seen it. It was very strange. It had the feeling of a school trip, to be honest. Everyone had their popcord. and the nice thing about it was we got to see what the drivers rated and what the drivers didn't rate. You got to remember, they've been doing this their whole life. Their attention to detail is unbelievable There are things that you know, I've been watching Formula One, as we've discussed since I was a kid. There are things that I didn't mention that they picked up. The thing is the overriding emotion coming out of there was like, that's a Hollywood blockbuster about Formula One That's unbelievable. And it goes on to win an Oscar for Best Sound and it goes on unbelievably to be Brad Pitt's most successful film. I didn't realize that. That's crazy, really? In terms of box offffice Rurn, it is Brad Pitt's most successful film. Hey it's time for a pit stop. and when we come back, we're going to chat with Alex about the new F one season. There's a wave of new talent. and some major changes to the cars. Stay with us There are people you're told to trust laawyers, teachers, especially doctors What happens when you put your life in someone's hands and they betray you The hit podcast Doror Death is back And this season is unlike any other. doror Death, the cowboy, is the story of a charming neurosurgeon who rode into western towns selling a persona of confidence and care He wore cowboy boots in the operating room and became sought after by patients He promised to heal them. Instead, he left a trail of broken bodies This season is about a doctor who was never truly held accountable for the patients whose lives he ruined A story of greed, betrayal, and a fight for justice that will leave you questioning who to trust Listen to Dr. Death, the cowboy, wherever you get your podcasts or binge the entire series right now, only with Audible. I'm Leon Nefak, best known as the co creator of Slowburn and Fiasco. I had of course heard of O fans, but always with a distant and quiet skepticism A silent judgment, you might say Who is actually using this platform? U I am Hi, I'm Oly Fans creator and comedian, Gracie Kanan. I work from home now I'm on Oly Fans and In case you guys don't know what Only Fans is, ask your husband. My journalistic curiosity got the best of me when I found out that my own sister had started an OnlyFans account. I'm not a sister, just to clarify. It turns out a lot of what I thought I knew about Only Fans was wrong I felt like I wasted three point five years for something that wasn't real What happens when connection comes with a price tag? Listen to Only Fantasy wherever you get your podcasts, or binge all episodes of Only Fantasy ad free right now, only on Audible. Start your Audible subscription in the Audible app or on Apple podcasts Hey, welcome back to Business Wars. My guest is the F one expert and channel for commentator Alex Jakes. And Alex, there's a lot of new talent out there as of last season. Why do you think there's so many Young guys driving F one right now. I mean, some of them barely have driver's licenses That's absolutely true. Kiby Antonlli was a Formula One driver before he'd passed his road driver's license test last year, which is's dft, isn't it? Let's be honest, that's absolutely crazy that he can drive at two hundred and twenty miles an hour before he could get an Italian driver's license But yes, an exciting group of young drivers. eventually, what happens is is that one team take the plunge with a new name and like anything You know, someone turns along with something new and shiny, the others, it's a traveling circus, right? So everyone else looks around and, Oh, you've gone for a young driver. We'll go for a young driver. Before you know it, you have a section of the grid that are very, very young indeed. They all shone last year. All of the rookies had great moments. Everyone had a great weekend where they were the standout And it's really good to have that generational shift as well because it makes the slightly older drivers, you know sit up and prove their worth again curious about this and maybe you can clarify, do you get a sense that the teams are looking for personalities as much as good drivers or is it all about their skill behind the wheel It's definitely about the two The one thing that I always hear from team principals in modern times is adaptability And so if you think about adaptability, that's a lot of technique behind the wheel. being able to drive a car that's maybe not working as well, can you be adaptable? If you can only drive one way That's going to be a problem. But of course, mentality comes into that as well because you have to work your way through a weekend. If it's not started well and you throw all your toys out the bram, that's not going to work for the people that are traveling with the driver. If the driver's throwing things about and doesn't have the mentality to improve the car No team is going to be interested in them and there's always someone who's nearly as quick around or trying to get into Formula One. So yeah, it is a mentality game as well as outright speed and it's another fascinating aspect of Formula one You mentioned something about the safety when we were talking earlier and how Formula One hasn't had a deadly crash in a while. but I know when you were commentating for Formula two, Re recalling a race in which a young driver was killed during the I think it was the twenty nineteen Belgian Grand Prix weeekend, do you recall that that was the That was the darkest day for a very long time. It was a horrific thing to be part of because Formula O safety and therefore Formula two, forormula three, just generally, the FIA have done amazing work in the last thirty years to just improve safety all the time, to not wait for a big incident to try and change things to innovate when it comes to safety and For that era to then present us with a horrendous crash liive on TV You knew it was incredibly serious immediately And this incredibly intelligent, kind, smart guy was lost at the age of twenty and it was a very, very cruel thing to witness happening to his family. And it was a very, very brutal reminder that this thing that we all love and that drivers try for from the age of you know five years of age in a go cart I think everyone had put the danger to their the limit of their peripheral vision. Yeah, it was a very, very dark weekend that and a stark reminder of fact that this is a sport for the brave. I mean, that must be though the nightmare scenario enough one that you have something catastrophic happen while you're going at speeds of over two hundred miles an hour And I hear you saying that safety seems to be baked into the sport You sound really confident. I'm curious as to why? because you see these cars going around the track so fast, it' It's hard to imagine sometimes people surviving if things were to go sideways It will forever be risky The confidence that it is in a better place than it has ever been is because the safety aspect of it has been deliberate, it has been methodical and there have been some brilliant minds working on it. It's a safety push that started with the great Sir Jackie Stewart When it was downright ridiculous. They could hit trees, you know, there weren't barriers. And then Sid Watkins, who was the Formula One doctor for a long time, who implemented so many safety changes when we lost the Great Aton Centa. The loss of Senna live on TV in nineteen ninety four was a catalyst to formula Ogoing We've got a choice to make here We can either be an extreme sport that's a niche or if we're going to continue to run live into people's living rooms on Sunday afternoons and Sunday mornings, we're going to have to make this safe. because if you think of all the reasons that we've talked about The humanity and the characters and the personality shining through, we can't lose the people. And Formula One was in an existential crisis in nineteen ninety four. They made safety front and center And a lot of very, very talented engineers and doctors and medical professionals improve standards and you can never make it fully safe, but it has been done through three decades of really strong advancement of safety because that was pushed for in the aftermath of Et and Center passing away no no for. You say this You know, they're still driving in the wet, for example For instance, there was what was it march twenty twenty five, Australian Grand Prix. It wasn't just that the track was awful You know, There were a lot of experienced drivers spinning out. and on the Mercedes team, you had an eighteen year old making a debut, Kimmy Antonelli, I believe. conditions being what that is, it seems to me a little amazing that you have a team like Mercedes taking a chance on such a young driver Why would a top team do that