Latest / Technology Now / What organizations can learn from Formula E: Part 1
Transcript
- Aubrey Lovell (00:09): Hello friends and welcome back to Technology Now, a weekly show from Hewlett Packard Enterprise where we take what's happening in the world and explore how it's changing the way organizations are using technology. I'm one of your hosts Aubrey Lovell, and I'm holding down the fort alone in the studio today because Michael has been out and about doing something pretty special. He's been track-side at the London E-Prix, the final race of the 2023 Formula E Championship. Super jealous. He's been spending time with the Maserati MSG racing team, interviewing driver, Edo Mortara, and team principal James Rossiter. (00:46): If you're the kind of person who needs to know why what's going on in the world matters to your organization, this podcast is for you. And if you haven't yet, subscribe to your podcast app of choice so you don't miss out. Alrighty, to London. Michael Bird (01:07): Well, hello Aubrey, and I'm coming to you from the XL Conference Center in London where just over a month ago where I'm standing right now, was hosting a tech conference today. Can you believe it? The arena has been transformed into a racetrack for the London E-Prix, rounds 15 and 16 of the ninth season of Formula E, the world's first fully electric racing series. A little bit more than that later. (01:32): So the start finish pits and a few of the corners of the circuit run right through this massive indoor convention hall where I'm standing right now, and then blasts out into the daylight for the rest of the course around the Royal Victoria Docks. Honestly, it is a site to behold. (01:48): So today we're here to talk about the racing, the technology, the competition, what it all represents, and what we can learn to take back to our organizations. I'll throw some stats at you, but first off, just listen to this noise. (02:09): So Formula E, the series started in 2014 and now they are in their ninth season. This year has had 16 races across 11 cities, and by the time you listen to this, the season will have concluded right here in London. (02:24): Now, Formula E is a spec series, which means all 11 teams and 22 drivers use essentially the same cars now in their third generation and featuring 350 kilowatt powertrains and reaching top speeds of up to 200 miles per hour. Now there's relatively little, technologically speaking, between them, so it's mostly down to set up, skill, teamwork, strategy to gain your competitive advantage, and that is where our guests come in today. Earlier on I spoke to Maserati MSG's driver, Edo Mortara, and team principal James Rossiter. (03:02): Who are you? What do you do? Who do you work for? Edo Mortara (03:04): So my name is Edo Mortara. I'm one of the two racing drivers for the Maserati MSG racing team. I've been racing for the team since season four, so the last six years, achieving some more or less good reserves. James Rossiter (03:21): I'm James Rossiter, I'm the team principal of Maserati MSG Racing Formula E team. So I've been team principal for 10 months now. Michael Bird (03:28): How have you found it so far? James Rossiter (03:29): Baptism of fire, in all honesty. I mean, to give a little bit of a background on myself, I was a racing driver for 20 years and my goal was always to become a team principal and to be able to give back to the sport that's given me my entire career and my life, and be able to do it with passion, enthusiasm, and excitement. So to be here as a team principal is a huge achievement for me in my career. (03:53): There was definitely a lot of things that I wasn't really expecting to be so challenging that turned out to be extraordinarily challenging. There were also some things that turn out to be much easier. So it was about finding this balance between using the experience I had and then using the opportunity to learn through new challenges, and really changing my mindset a bit to embrace the unknown and put myself in difficult situations and force myself to evolve and learn and grow. Michael Bird (04:20): So it's been a bit of a year of changes, new car, new title sponsor, new team principle. How have you found all the changes? How have you been adapting to those changes? Edo Mortara (04:30): It's been extremely complicated. It's not been an easy year for me. As you said, many things changed and I was coming from a situation that I kind of knew, and with a car that we did race with the Gen 2 car for the last four years. And a lot of things changed since the beginning of the season. We had to adapt quite a lot. But thanks to the team and thanks to the engineers, we managed to do quite some work and managed actually to... We're starting to turn things around quite nicely now. Michael Bird (05:05): What's been the biggest lesson that you've learned this year? Edo Mortara (05:08): Yeah, the biggest change that we had was changing from the Gen 2 car to the Gen 3 car. So completely different car, different philosophy. The car is lighter, more powerful. We have different tires. Different tires means that as drivers we need to have also different driving styles, and that is working more or less good with the driving style that you were having in the past years. I had to adapt quite a lot because my one was probably not fitting so well to the car that we were having at the beginning of the year, but as I said, we did a lot of progress and starting to feel actually pretty comfortable and confident for the future. James Rossiter (05:48): I've got a bit of a unique insight into the car because I actually did all the initial development as a driver on the Gen 3 car. Michael Bird (05:55): Oh, really? James Rossiter (05:55): Yes, for Stellantis, for Maserati. So I was the first person to ever drive the Gen 3 car for them. I've driven the Gen 1 car, the Gen 2 car, and the Gen 3 car. So having that insight into what was required from the car, the team, things like that over the process of the development of the car allowed me, I think, to help integrate with the engineering staff. With this side of the business, it was very easy. More complicated to adapt to the marketing side and things like that, which I'd been open to as a driver, but not really understanding the full gravity of the situation inside the commercial department, the communications department, what goes on behind the scenes. So there was a lot of unknowns, I'd say coming into this Gen 3 era, but it's been a very exciting time and exciting to see the development of new technology really being pushed hard in Formula E. Michael Bird (06:45): Because we've gone from a... It's a much more powerful powertrain, isn't it? James Rossiter (06:48): Much more powerful powertrain. However, that's not been the biggest complexity. I'd say the biggest complexity is the addition of the FPK, which is the front powertrain having four wheel braking, which is completely controlled by the software, where you really need some very smart people working on the software in the background. We have an amazing relationship with HPE, that really contribute actively to that. The amount of data that needs to be processed quickly over a race weekend as well, this has just gone up exponentially over the last couple of years. So having all of that behind the scenes really allows us to perform on track. Michael Bird (07:24): What would you say has been the quickest lesson that you've had to learn in the last 10 months? James Rossiter (07:30): I would say I understand from my career how I deal with difficulties. Understanding how every individual in a team deals with their difficulties, how in the face of adversity, everyone needs a different level of support. Some people can deal with it very well, some people can't. And as a leader of a team, you really need to have that human touch, that slight delicacy to how you manage everyone, and just jumping in and making sure that every single person is okay with what they're going through. And everyone's experiencing life differently. And how to pull everyone together and really empower the team, making sure that you're empowering every single individual in the team is really what gives you success. Michael Bird (08:13): In a field where the cars are quite similar, how do you find your competitive advantage? How do you make sure you're faster than the other teams? Edo Mortara (08:21): So I would say that the cars are looking similar, but they are actually very different. We as teams and manufacturers, we have our own, let's say, concepts that we are developing for softwares and hardwares. And effectively, even if the cars are actually looking quite similar, there are actually quite a lot of differences in terms of efficiency and how you operate the cars. (08:43): And as a team and as a driver, in order to have a competitive advantage compared to the others, a competitive edge, let's say, it's very important to master the little details. Everything is about details in Motorsport, especially in Formula E. When you can do that, normally you are probably more competitive than the others. James Rossiter (09:04): Understanding how to improve efficiency over a 45, 50 minute race where you're looking for tenths of a second per lap and your software can actually give you a huge amount. This is one thing that we realized in the past informally, but it's become more and more and more the focus of a competitive advantage, and that's really where the direct relationship with Hewlett Packard Enterprise brings us a real performance. (09:30): I mean, we have our data center back at our offices and our factory in Monaco that allows us to process huge amounts of data quickly, allows us to send information back from the racetrack, real time, have the guys in the remote room also analyzing it, and give us real performance advantages on track over the course of the race weekend. That's where the competitive advantage lies, and that's where your partners are so important and critical to your success. Michael Bird (09:59): Absolutely incredible. We're going to throw it back to Aubrey in the studio in a little bit, but first I just wanted to give you a sense of what it sounds like round here. Aubrey Lovell (10:17): That's fantastic. Sounds like so much fun. Thanks so much, Michael. We'll come back to you in a moment, so don't go anywhere, and enjoy the racing. (10:27): Next up, it's down to you, our audience. We open the floor for you to give your recommendations on books which have changed the way you look at the world, life and business in the last 12 months. They could be technology-based, they could have changed the way you work, or they could have just made you look at the world in a totally different way. And as usual, if you want to share your recommendations, there's a link in the podcast description. Just record a voice note on your phone and send it over. Colin Eby (10:52): I'm Colin Eby. I am a volunteer at the National Museum of Computing. I'll be honest and say that I love reading for just escape. The best book I've read in the last couple of years and stays with me and I occasionally reread it, it's Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice. It's basically a mystery novel set in 1970, and it's just a haze of semi-coherent plot twists and evocations at the time, made into a particularly good movie by Paul Thomas Anderson as well. That's a fun escape. (11:28): On a totally different strand, I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but it's by Professor Mick Aston, famous from Time Team, looking at the archeological history of a village and giving you a perspective of how human history is compiled in time into the landscape and into the sort of invisible fabric around us. Aubrey Lovell (11:52): Thanks for that. Right. Now it's time to head back to London where we rejoin Michael interviewing Maserati MSGs driver Edo Mortara, and team principal James Rossiter. But before we do, Michael, I know you're a huge racing fan. What is it about Formula E that gets you excited? Michael Bird (12:10): Well, for me, Aubrey, firstly, it's the exciting elbows-out racing. That's a polite way of saying there's a bit of knocking and parching. The cars are so closely matched and the courses are so tight that sometimes a little nudge gets you that advantage, which is great fun. Last season, some of the teams kept having their nose cameras knocked off due to the robust racing. Plus, particularly in this enclosed space, the noise is incredible. (12:34): Okay, so time to head back to my interview from earlier with James and Edo. I wanted to ask them about what they're going to be doing next. How has your season been so far? Edo Mortara (12:48): My season has not been good. A lot of things happened. But I'm going to say that if I look back to where we were and to where we are now, we still made quite some significant steps forward. Unfortunately now we are at the end of the season, but I hope to have the chance to be racing again with the team on a fresh new year because I believe that this season has taught us so many things and we will be able to use it to be a lot better next year. Michael Bird (13:19): How are you going to be using the off season? Edo Mortara (13:21): I think that it's going to be important for everyone to kind of take a break, have a little bit of vacations, and then go back to what happened this year in order to try to spot what we have to do better for next year. Michael Bird (13:34): For the next few months before we move into season 10, do you go back, analyze the data, make changes to the way that you do things as a team? James Rossiter (13:43): This year we've made a lot of adaptations as a team to try and find a performance that was missing from the beginning of the season. I think we scored something like three points in the first six races, and then we've scored like a hundred points in the last six races. So we've certainly managed to analyze everything, turn it around. We've made changes. There's been changes made in the structure of the engineering team. There have been changes made in all areas, really of the team because this Gen 3 had different requirements, to be honest, in the past. (14:13): One of the big things that we've already started on the management side is going through positives and negatives, what we can do better in the future, facing the reality of the situations, how we can really build ourselves into champions. That's the goal here. So what changes will need to be made in the preseason to make sure that we hit the ground running in October for the preseason test, and then we have a couple of months to get ready for Mexico next January. Michael Bird (14:43): Wow, what a brilliant interview. And I just wanted to say a huge thanks to the team for helping us put this episode together. Next week we are going to be heading back to the track to speak to Harry Richards, commercial director at MSG Maserati, to hear how they as a business and sports are tackling sustainability. So that's it for me for now. Time to head back to Aubrey in the studio. Aubrey Lovell (15:05): Right. Well, we're getting towards the end of the show, which means it's time for This Week in History, a look at monumental events in the world of business and technology, which has changed our lives. The clue last week was, it's 1898, let's get this party motoring. It was of course, and highly and appropriately, the invention of the internal combustion engine, patented this week in 1898 by Rudolph Diesel. (15:32): After a decade or so of design efforts to create an engine capable of replacing steam, Diesel built and tested his device and the patent was granted allowing him to go into worldwide production. The rest, as they say is history. And today we've been looking at the future. Next week the clue is happy birthday to us. We should get cupcakes. (15:54): That brings us to the end of Technology Now for this week. Keep those suggestions for life-changing books coming, using the link in the podcast description. And in the meantime, thank you to our guest, Maserati MSG driver Edo Mortara, and team principal James Rossiter. And to our listeners, thank you all so much for joining us. (16:13): Technology Now is hosted by Michael Bird and myself, Aubrey Lovell. This episode was produced by Sam Data Pollen and Zoe Anderson with production support from Harry Morton, Alicia Kempson, Alison Paisley, Camilla Patel, Alyssa Mitri, and Alex Podmore. Technology Now is a Lower Street Production for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. We'll see you next week. Cheers.