Down to Business

I will be plugging in a back heating pad.

It's nassy.

I'm not trying to show off or anything.

You can't prepare.

My friend told me this weekend that the lower left part is where your emotional stress is. So I don't only feel like I'm like emotionally stress too much. All right, Tony Michael, I want my name on an F one car. Okay, And I know you're the person to talk to about this, and actually, let me rephrase. I want to put my face and my name because what good is it if you don't see the face? You know this? How much would that cost me? How long would it be on there?

In the same sentence, he said, I'm not picky, but I just want my face go.

Yeah, And if we happen to mention my TikTok handle, Michael Costa underscore that's not gonna hurt anybody. Okay, I'm not as happy as I can be in my life, and once this happens, that will fill the void. Help me? Can you help me with this.

Theoretically? Yes?

Great, I'm all about theory for my heart podcast one on one Studios and Sports Illustrated Studios.

This is choosing sides one.

Wow, Tony, what is the business model of F one? Is it even right to call it a business? If it's a business, then somebody has to own it. In basketball, nobody owns the NBA, per se. I mean, I think it's individual teams are privately owned and a franchise is collectively owned by all of them. I do remember season one, Lily told me about this one guy Bernie, former Formula one boss Bernie Echoson, has been given a seventeen month suspended jail sentence after pleading guilty to fraud. Who sold

No? Yes, these are some great questions, and I think this is where we're going to get into a lot of fun. Let's take these questions one by one, and today let's dive into Formula ones. Weird and quirky and at times feeling like a sport that's lost. Maybe it's moral compass, but we're going to look at the business model of Formula one and all the different layers into it.

I should understand that because my moral compass is longer. The following is disturbing.

Footage from Michael Costa's comedic archive.

Someone asked you for a favor, Say it with yes, with a smile on your face, and then absolutely botch the favor. Hey can you pick my kids up at daycare? I would love to do that for you. And then you just don't ever pick those kids up. They'll never ask you again.

There she is, Hello, Hello, lovely, how are you doing? I am good to help us with some insights into the business model of F one. I've asked Elizabeth Blackstock to join us.

Hi, Elizabeth, how would you describe yourself?

What's your job? And how does F one fit into your wonderful world?

It's such a big question. F one is everything I think.

I love that.

The motorsport journalist and a historian.

She's also the primary American contributor to Planet f one. She's written books about F one, and she's even starting her very own podcast, Deadly Passions and Terrible Joys, all about the weird scandals and dramas and the chronicles of motorsports.

There's no shortage of those.

And Elizabeth is a longtime Formula one fan herself.

When I think back to twenty fourteen, that was the first ever Formula One race, I went to the US Grand Prix I was. I was eighteen years old, like going having I thinking I'm going to get this out of my system, like I'm gonna watch race cars and be done. And that did not happen. But I can remember being at the track on race ding kind of having the run of the place. It was sparse, it wasn't super busy, there were no lines for things. There

How would you explain to a new fan how teams make money, how spumses make money. It definitely feels when you look got the sport that there's a lot of money being thrown at the sport, and there's a lot of money being invested in the sport. But how does anyone in this industry actually make money at the end of the day.

That is such a good question.

It's a big question.

It is it is not easy to make money in Formula one, no matter how many millions of dollars you're swimming around in it at all times. I think in this modern era we've seen a big jump in profitability for the sport overall as the company itself. In the past, Formula one was just kind of like a way for rich drivers to have fun. These were like kind of noble gentlemen who had the money in the access to get cars.

You might have to have a few, Bob, you didn't have to be super rich.

This is Matt Bishop, English journalist offer novelist and a true fixture of theform paddock.

You could buy a Maserati two fifty if one of the most beautiful full one cars there's ever been. But if you were someone like Horace Gould, who wasn't particularly quick but had a business, wasn't minted, but was just somebody who did quite well and had a bit of money and loved motor racing. So he bought a two fifty f Maza and he went racing in it, not very well, and he didn't have to do all the races.

But that wasn't really enough to sustain a massive growth of the sport, and especially when smaller manufacturers became interested in competing kind of you know these backyard teams that had sprung up, especially in England, it was like, oh, we can't afford this because we're not independently wealthy. What do we do now? And now it's currently profitable because of some very aggressive TV deals that were struck by Bernie Eckelstown, who is certainly a man.

We always say like love him. I hate him. He's definitely changed the sport.

When I was at school in the seventies, I was the only one who liked Formula one. I loved football as well, but my mates only liked football. But they're like cricket and rugby and other things snooker, believe it or not, but not Formula one. It was only me and you couldn't find it written about on the newspapers,

I think honestly, most of Eclestone's career was this kind of slow build that was developing profitability for Formula one. So he tried his hand at racing when he was young, realized he wasn't good at it, and then was like, actually I can wheel and deal pretty well. Let me do that. I don't know if anyone if you've ever seen this photo that goes around occasionally in the late

Name of the game. I'm curious what was that first sponsorship deal they got, Like, who is it with?

Lotus got the Gold Leaf Embassy sponsorship. The tobacco company really made everyone upset because they thought it was cheapening the sport by you know, promoting a tobacco brand and advice on their cars, instead of it being this noble pursuit that formula one supposedly should have.

Been remember about.

Well, well, well the table today one other well we can't really call this on a fun fact, but it's actually very sad fact.

The normal continuum of human events as a beginning and an end.

Jochen Rint is dead.

Soon after securing that first ever F one sponsorship deal. Johann Hint actually crashed and died in the practice session in the Monsa Circuit in Italy.

Jeez.

His good friend and biggest rival, Sir Jackie Stewart, a man who we will definitely come back to in several times during this season, was, as you can imagine, absolutely heartbroken.

Yochen was perhaps my greatest friend and motor racing I perhaps feel this sadder at this.

Moment than either we were done before any race.

Ryan was actually leading the Driver's Championship when he was killed, and this was towards the end of the season, so even though he passed away before the season concluded, he actually went on to take the championship. So this makes him not only the first driver to secure a spot, but also the only driver in Formula One history to be posthumously awarded the Formula One Drivers Championship.

He will have won the world championship.

The manner of his winning it illustrates the randomness of human experience.

Okay, dark interlude here back, sorry to do this, but back to the business model. So Lotus gets that first sponsorship from a tobacco company. What's next?

I think the next step. Honestly, Bernie Echostone went bigger. He bought the Brave and Formula one team, invested so much into making that a world championship team, but in the meantime was also establishing something called the Formula One Constructors Association, which is essentially what the Formula One group became, and it was through that association that he did battle with the FIA to establish these incredible forms of revenue sharing for the teams.

Back in the day, when we had qualifying session, it wasn't actually just qualifying to know if you were going to start P six, P seven, p twenty on the grid. It was actually to know if you could qualify and were fast enough to actually go racing on Sunday because we had a lot more teams and a lot more drivers because it didn't cost as much as it does today. And the other thing that you would happen is people would just be like, I'm not going to show up

It seems like a no brainer show up to work, show up to work. But as someone who just lived through six months of a writer strike, if people don't get paid they don't show up to work, great, you know what I mean. You got to show up, and so there needs to be rules in place to make sure work happens.

Exactly, Bernie, there you go. Not something you'll hear often these things.

It was a genie's move. I think that was really the big like kind of trajectory that time period from the late nineteen sixties into the eighties where we really kind of started to see this massive influx of cash and having this standardization and regular income becoming prioritized because no one was just independently rich anymore. He wanted that money to actually develop a team.

Okay, hold on, before we move forward, I think we need to take a little step back and explain the trifecta of the sport that I think is really important to start after the three biggest, most influential bodies the interplay with each other, which would be the FIA, Liberty Media, and FOAM, and they each play very separate but equally important roles within the ecosystem of Formula one. FIA stands fortomobile, which is think.

I'll say it, and now let me ask it again. What does it stand for?

Federation Inational of Autos as basically.

Wow, of all the autos of Federation Liberty Media. That sounds very broad, very general. That sounds like the name of a media company in a horror film.

Yeah, if you want to.

In FOAM, which is fear of missing out, fear of.

Missing out, that's what standsible. It's Formula one management, so basically.

A lot of governing bodies.

So let's start with the FI.

The FIA is the kind of international nonprofit organization that sanctions Formula one race is to make sure that they are all run in the same rule set and to make sure that every team is operating in the same way.

You don't hear nonprofit a lot no in f one, in fact, that seems to violate everything the foundation of F one. Yes, yeah, interesting.

I just wanted to pull up this quote I found online from this official F one document.

Okay, yep.

F one mission statement to leave a legacy of positive change wherever we race, enriching local communities and economies and supporting the natural environment.

I think that's lovely inspiring.

So yeah, this is this is not about money, Michael. It's about making the world a better place.

One of my favorite parts of F one is how profit and capitalistic it all feels. It's okay, like we're branding, We're going, We're fast. It's not exactly exactly.

It's an outside source. It doesn't just sanction F one. It sanctions i think, over four hundred different series around the world to greater or lesser levels of importance than F one.

You will always hear the fans getting really angry with the FIA because they're constantly changing the rules. The way they regulate is constantly shifting. The fans are always unhappy with the fines that they give the drivers.

Can we get your reaction to the reprimand and the fine that you received from the stewarts this morning?

You might have remember hearing Max Verstappen jokingly saying once he got a fine, Well, I hope the FIA enjoys a nice dinner and drinks on me.

Hope they have a nice dinner and a lot of wine.

So the FI is heavily responsible for drafting, regulating and enforcing the rules and the regulations. That's why the fans always get angry on them. But their whole thing is also safety and security. So when you look at how the sport has evolved over the years in terms of safety and security for the drivers, the FIA is at the pinnacle of pushing for that.

People can die in the sport. Yes, that changes everything.

It changes everything. So Jackie Stewart was one of the drivers that has often pushed for that. He also pushed for a union of drivers, which is important to note in the evolution of Formula one. He still remembers the days when he would travel with the sport and he would always bring a black Tux with him because you never knew whose funerals you would attend, which is bleak and I'm delighted to say that that is no longer the case these days. It's still a danger.

Sport also, do you wear tuxedos to a funeral?

I don't know, Maybe a black suit? Yes, did I say tuxedo?

You said tuxedo. But I don't know if it's like in different countries.

Maybe you want I think you wear a black suit?

Yeah?

Can I ask a bit of a controversial question here? It is there like an inverse relationship between how safe it is and how interesting the sport is. It's too dark?

No, it's not too dark. I think it's an excellent question.

I don't know. I have a weird thing with this. So I think as humans we just enjoying people hurting themselves is just something that I struggle with. But I think the crashes in Formula one are so for lack of a better word, explosive and in your face and shocking that it does draw you in.

It's an integral part of the sport. Come on, you can't deny that, Okay. I think this is a good time to take a short break. Listeners. You can use this as an opportunity, as companies are pushing their products on you, to contemplate your own mortality and appreciate the fleeting miracle that is life. That's what I do typically during commercial breaks.

Think you've just summed up F one in a sentence there, Michael, I'm brilliant.

Okay, we're back, and now let's talk a little bit about foam, should we.

Yeah, because if we don't, I'm going to have foam.

MO.

Wasn't sure you guys heard my joke the first time.

FOM is Formula One Management. Formula One Management is essentially the company that distributes those marketing and world feed rights for Formula one. So that's the one that kind of goes out and sells different aspects of the company to people and manages all of the media rights.

They're also the owner of the name and the rights of Formula One. They own the name for Formula one and name the right. Their objective is essentially to drive commercial success.

They wanted American audiences.

They got it.

They wanted it, and they got it. And maybe you don't just mess with unregulated capitalism because here it comes.

Here it comes.

Other countries always think they want to dip their toe in American capitalism. It is a beast. It is a beast, and it's coming for you.

I'll spit you out when it's done with it. And that's where Liberty Media comes in.

Liberty Media is the American company that purchased essentially the FOM and those management rights from Bernie Eclestone, who had previously been in charge of that company.

Every one of my companies has used that leverage to boost up equity returns.

That is John Malone, chairman and largest shareholder of Liberty Media.

It doesn't mean that that's obeyed strategy, particularly if you've been able to lock in long fixed rates. I'd be a little freaked out if Viacom CBS owned the NHL.

I mean, I just want to drive this home to all of the American fans. You've just been played and manipulated by a corporate American company yet again.

Yet again.

You know, YOHI walk outside right now, there's somebody wearing a fucking Jack Daniel's hat, or a Dilly Dilly T shirt or a Yankees bag. We were all being played all the time, understanding you're being played and choosing what game you're playing in. I'm okay with that, amen.

Liberty Media did want to tap into the American market. I think it really understood that Formula one was closed off in Bernie Eclestone's era. Eclestone had a tight rain on all of the ways that Formula One was perceived, which included a lot of things, you know, even banning

Let me get this straight. An American media company owns F one, but the FIA and the FOAM are other governing bodies that really can control things as well.

Yes, it's a web of wildness all around.

Why would I expect it to be simple?

It's not a simple Yeah, no, inform one anyway?

Yeah, who makes money here? Is it a company? Is it the driver? Is it the principle? Is that what they call them? And can you make money an F one or is it like buying a vineyard? You make great wine, but you lose a lot of money and you got something cool they show your friends.

It's a great question.

I ask great questions.

I know you do. That's why that's good questions.

There's this saying in motorsport that it takes two million dollars to make a million dollars, So everything you kind of put in you almost expect that you're going to lose money. It makes sense for like a Mercedes to take out a challenge in Formula one to raise their cars to be really fast. Because Mercedes sells road cars. It looks great for them to have, you know, successful cars, it looks great for that. It looks great for them to have technology that they can say was developed in

So as an American Michael, you might have heard about Andretti as a name. Yeah, So Andretti are one of those teams that has been really interested in joining the GRIT. So there's an opportunity in twenty twenty six to add more teams to Formula one. Now the FIA says that you can have up to thirteen teams in Formula one, which means twenty six drivers on the GRIT. The reason why we haven't had more than ten teams up until now is a. As we've been talking about, it's really expensive.

Business is on fire. The sport's never been in a better place, and I believe if it ain't broken, on need to fix it. So I'm a strong believer that it's working really well with ten teams right now and believe that's the way it should stay.

There's just a concern from the teams that an eleventh team will cut into their profits because price money is distributed from a pot, so everyone takes out of this pot based on their performance. If you have an eleventh team that starts scoring points, that's per You know the teams are seeing it is they've taken points away from us. So now all these teams are saying, hey, I don't I don't want to have anyone in here. It's bad for the bottom line.

Yeah, and there's more people on the.

Track, more people on the track.

What's unique about this sport is there's literally only so much space on the track to add another car, another person to crash into. If you can add another team to the NHL that doesn't mean there's ten more people on the ice.

That's actually I again, yeah, that's what I'm.

Here for, these fucking and brilliant statements, but that I would not want if I'm driving, I don't want more people on the street that I'm working on. Yeah, exactly.

So that's the tension that we're in right now, is it's good for the sport to be seen adding more teams. It's good for it to showcase that, hey, this sport doesn't cost that much money, it's not that complicated. You can actually join the party quote unquote. But at the same time you've got attention from the teams, and so

Jeez, you gonna have a billion? Yeah, here comes to the South East.

So, Michael, this is Tony of the Future interjecting in here because oh, because we just got an update that the Indretti bid was in fact dumtum dum.

They are not deemed fit to join the grid in commercial terms by the sports commercial rights holder rejected. We do not believe that the applicant would be a competitive participant.

They will not be a part of the F one grid until at least twenty twenty eight.

Oh wow, that's a long way away.

This does put the FIA absolutely the regulator is absolutely head to head with Formula one Management and Liberty Media, the financial rights holders. Because FIA said yes, one.

Have said no, Okay, you can go back to the present now.

Tony of the future. So how do these teams make money?

So, as we've discussed, it's the F one prize money, it's also the sponsorship, and i'd say that sponsorship it's give and take. It depends on different teams, but probably accounts for about fifty percent of the money that they make. And then if you're also a car manufacturer, you will also make money from selling your engines to other teams. But also maybe the applied science is what teams are able to create and innovate behind closed doors they can then sell.

So they're coming up with ideas and solutions and selling them to their competitors.

Yes, so, for example, Ferrari is a works team that sells their engine, also to Alpha Romeo. Mercedes is a works team that develop an engine and a power unit and sell it to Williams. And then you've got teams also like Alpine whose engine is a Honel engine, but they're not selling it to anyone else, so no one wants to buy their engine, which we can go back to Andretti Andretti's and talks of potentially buying their engine, which they would love because it's another revenue stream for them.

I see, interesting, makes sense their side hustle, it's selling them, it's.

Side us, yes, Michael. So the other way to look at it is if you look at the ten teams we have on the grid, there's maybe different buckets. There's the buckets of teams who are Calm manufacturers as well, so McLaren Mercedes, Ferrari and you can kind of wrap your head around why they would want to be informal one. Obviously a Ferrari in the championship do very well. There's a fair pretty straightforward line that says that they're probably

Interesting.

It's like a little bit of a bonus bonus for being there since day one. And I say a little bit of bonus, it's something like, you know, ten to twenty million that they get at the start of the.

Right there is only really one brand that transcends Formula one is and is in this sense, perhaps you could argue as big as or bigger than Formula one, and that therefore it's removal from Formula one would cause a seismic problem, a very serious problem. I mean other teams having departed from the sport, such as Lotus, great pity, Brabham, great pity, br In, great pity, Maserati, great pity. But Ferrari is Ferrari. Ferrari is special.

I mean in tennis, you know, the top players get appearance fees, whereas me and you wouldn't. I shouldn't speak on your behalf. You might be an excellentennis but you might deserve it an appearance fee. But you know, it's kind of like, hey, Ferrari and Williams, you've been here and there are huge names in the sports. So here's a couple bucks, here's a couple It would piss me off if I was a competitor, because of course that money goes to helping you.

But that's interesting you bring that up, Michael, because essentially all the teams are doing exactly that. With Hundrettick, which we've been here for the last thirty forty years. You don't get to just come in and take part of the prize money. So it's interesting because it's that same mentality that's still there because again there's so much money that's being poured into it. There's a fourth bucket, which.

I think is you could a bucket.

There's so many buckets, but it's the last one, I promise, which is more of like a marketing marketing stunt, though stunt doesn't feel big enough. But you think of someone like Red Bull and you go, why does a fizzy drinks company pour a lot of their marketing budget into this Formula one.

Team delivering their livery for the US Grand Prix this year via helicopter? Who else is doing that? Who else is thinking of like depositing their car into the middle of Austin via helicopter just because it's cool? Red Bull is because Red Bull's genius at marketing.

I don't know if you've seen these, Michael, these vox pops of people in the street showing the ten logos of the ten F one teams. The one that everyone always recognizes is Red Bull. They're just like, oh, I know what that is. And it's so funny that it's not one of the Formula one teams, but the red Bull brand is so strong outside of the sport that it actually has helped them a fair amount.

Red Bull is going to sell you drinks because you're going to look at that and be like, oh my god, that's insane.

So Red Bull is selling enough little energy drinks to make a rocket ship with wheels on it that keeps winning.

Just crunching the numbers here a little bit for you guys. So the budget for running the team is one hundred and fifty million, which maybe, yeah, maybe Tony can explain has to do with the budget cap, the cost cap. So you can buy about seventy five million Red Bull cans with that, and last year they sold somewhere in the area of eleven point five billion cans.

I mean, isn't anything. This just says that as a civilization, we're very tired. We're just drinking such crap. I swear to god, if people just drank more water, we would be such a better place. Yeah, happier skin would be better, stronger tea.

You've got a kind of red Ball in my bag. I bought it so much that the team at red Bull. Fun fact, now give me a crate. I love it, which great, Just keep mine I don't drink coffee, so I do drink red Bull and have since I was thirteen, bizarrely, which was a fluke from my dad. He thought it was fizzy water.

Well, you're dad, let's not let's not get in him, let's.

Not bring him into that. No, but the thing I didn't want to say about the market.

Right, Actually, maybe we could posia for a second. So you've been drinking red Bull.

He's worried about my health. Yes, yeah today.

I mean we haven't gone there yet, but I'm starting to understand why you're a MAX for Stappen fan.

But I'm not a Max with Stappen fan.

You were saying good things are more of a defender of him, exactly. I think red Bull found a market share that didn't exist, breaking ground. The next one is liquid death. It's water, but it's marketed water, and that's that might be the next one. For years, a bunch of marketing fuck boys have tricked you into thinking that water is just some girly.

Tricks for yoga ooms.

Just look at all the cute brand names and thank you bottles.

Well, can we get here?

What's this cost capting you keep bringing up? Is that like salary cap.

No, but that has been a conversation. Should you cap the driver's salary, which I am fervently against.

Okay, the Formula one cost cap is an artificial limit on how much every form Milue one team is allowed to spend on certain things like the development of their car and the salaries of some personnel. Previously, Mercedes was spending over four hundred million dollars to win the World Championship, while you had a team like Williams that was like maybe ten million dollars. You know, they just didn't have

However, you know, certainly not aware of any see the accounts or submitted way back in March. So it's been a long process with the FIA.

You can. We saw that with Red Bull they were accused of exceeding the cost cap.

That's complete rubbish. I mean we heard from the FIA ten days ago asking some questions for clarifications as you would do in a standard All.

They claimed it was through catering.

So it's just some really fancy sandwiches.

Yeah, just really really expensive little finger sandwiches.

That's it.

Who's checking all this.

The FIA is looking into all of those finances to make sure that everything is kosher. But you don't go like, you don't get in a Formula one team if you don't find loopholes in everything that you do. And so you know, we had teams like Red Bull that perhaps spent a little bit more money than they were supposed to, got away with it with nothing more than a slap on the wrists and having to pay a certain large fine for the pleasure. Because spending money is obviously the answer to spending money.

Think about rich people with taxes. Think about I mean is they're experts at cheating.

If you want to be in Formula one, you probably want to cheat a little bit. Fudge the rules, find the loopholes.

One thing is certain, Unlimited budgets does not guarantee victory. We look at the New York Yankees like, yeah, they buy everybody.

But.

Huge budgets definitely put you in a better chance for success. So I like this cost cap a lot. Just think, Tony, what about my original question, which was sponsorships in particular, how can I get my face on the has or Alpine car?

Don't you worry. I haven't forgotten. We are going to get into this very important topic. But just after a short break we better.

So what about sponsorships? You know, how much is it going to set me back to put my face on the Alpine car or the Hoss car or the Mercedes car.

Well, if you wanted to put your name in your face on a Formula One car, I would recommend starting the bottom of the grid and working your way up because your numbers will get larger as you move up to the more expensive and better performing teams. So if you were to bring yourself to Williams and say I would love my name and face on the car, what

Pay up for that. So there's two things here. There's name title sponsors, so it's in the name. So for example, it's Aston Martin, Ramco, Cognisant Formula one. That's the that's a mouthful, that's the full length of their actual name. So as a title sponsor, they have Cognisant and a Ramco.

That's why they're not winning. All those letters are weighing them down.

It's funny you bring that up because, and I'm just going to weave this in here, one of the tensions between the marketing team and the development team in and Formula one car is the marketing team has promised and sold all of this sponsorship, which we'll get back to in a second, and they now have to slap all of these logos on the car, and the mechanics are saying, WHOA, WHOA hold them minute. That's weighing us down. So can we scrapp all of this paint off. So again it's another one of.

Those use a fourteen fon just like we gotta use a six five.

Every little ounce of page matters. So that's the first thing to know about title sponsors. So the title sponsors pay an absolute fortune. That's how the team. And you look at some teams like there's a team like McClaren that I think have over forty partners and sponsors.

Who is sponsoring? Who are these companies? Anybody? What about the bodega down there, which I do not recommend.

Okay, good to know almost anyone can sponsor a Formula one team or a Formula one carney. Money that's the big thing. And we've had wild stories of quite literally Nigerian princes coming in slapping their name on the We've had you heard the story of Rich Energy last year. We've had people with products that don't exist in the sports that have promised money. Whether the money is there or not, there is a whole thing. There's a couple I think of categories that are banned. Big tobacco is

It's never it's never like super healthy stuff, you know, it's never like carrots. You know, it's always something nefarious. But I guess that says more about our culture and what we spend money on. I mean, wouldn't it be cool though, if alfa Romeo had like a bunch of carrots on its side.

So let's get started for this absolutely delicious salad.

I wouldn't put it past them, you know, or has We're missing a whole avocado thing. Yeah, the best two vegetables avocado and hero right, the haas avocado.

So what I'm hearing from you, Michael, is you just want to sally Now. I always recommend has avocados, but you can go ahead.

I'm thinking maybe my face now that we're talking this out, chewing a carrot on an Alpha Romeo on the nose. That could be tricky because the carrot. But anyways, I'll check with my branding committee, my social media team, and we'll get back to you on that. I like him, great, I'm fucking starving.

That was a lot.

There's a lot. There's a lot in this episode on how to make money.

So worth saying that we just this was the tip of the iceberg, and there's probably a lot of things that we've missed, and there's probably a lot more detail that we can go into. But I'm curious after listening to all of this and getting most, hopefully most of your questions answered, do you think the business side of Formula one is exciting? Do you think you could get into it more?

Yeah?

I do. I mean what I love about the competitive arena is that people are driven to six seed and our creative, aggressive, persistent, and that definitely is being showcased here from even just the way they manipulate the logo or change it because they need the money to selling power units to competitors. That's fascinating to me. So they're willing to do whatever is needed to make money and that definitely goes in line with my American capitalism upbringing.

I like that.

This has been choosing sides, fection of Sports Illustrated Studios, iHeart podcast and one oh one Studio Podcasts. The show is hosted by Michael Costa and Tony Cowan Brown. This episode was edited, scored, and sound designed by Senior producer Jojai may Thadle. Scott Stone is the executive producer and head of Audio, and Daniel Wexman is Director of Podcast

So you might think that Formula one is a race and it's all about the speed and the money, but the reality is Formula one is a lot like a game of chess. So next week we're going in a completely different direction and we're going to talk all things game theory and strategy and explain why before the race, each team comes up with a plan a b C D.

E.

In case you are wondering, Michael, Plan E apparently stood for engine failure. A few laps after the team radio, Carlo signs engine burst into flames.

No no, no no.

So now we know what plan E stands for. Let's talk about what all the other plans mean for next week, Darling.

We'll see