I'm Barry rid Holts and I'm Hannah Elliott, and this is Hot Pursuit. So today we have a special tree. Barry Redholts's back again to co host with me. Matt Miller, our usual co host, is out because his wife is having a baby this week. So I guess that takes precedence, and rightfully so, over recording a podcast. But we have a lot of really fun things to talk about. First up, Asen Martin owner Lawrence Stroll has sold a minority stake
in his Acid Martin Formula One team. Then we'll talk about the Formula One race in Las Vegas, which was a wonderful, glittering circus, so we can get into that that was fun. And then I want to talk about this Michael man Ferrari movie that we've been hearing about.
And then let's see I.
Drove the Audi Sq eight Etron last week. We could talk about that, and then what are you driving over the holiday? So let's get right to it. Barry, thank you so much for joining us. Let's talk about this Aston Martin sell off. Did you see the news and how did that strike you?
You know, it's not a wholesale transaction, it's a minority stake, suggests ay, you know, F one teams have gone up in value dramatically, partly due to drive to survive on Netflix. It looks like someone is taking a little profits off the top. I'm not reading more into that unless you're gonna break some news.
No, you know, it's really interesting.
I did talk with Lawrence Stroll in Las Vegas, and you know, you kind of hear things trickling through the grapevine. Oh, this is an indicator he's not committed. He's just trying to siphon off some of his shares. But you know, he really really tried to reiterate the fact that that is not the case. He's one hundred percent committed. He did say repeatedly that the racing team is profitable, so this wasn't about raising cash. This was more about trying
to leverage some of the other franchise. Is that this equity firm, it's called Arctos Partners based in Dallas, and they do on a lot of other properties, so it seems like this is more of a strategic thing. But Lawrence really did say, you know, Formula one has been He used the word transformational for Aston Martin's brand I think you're an Aston Martin fan. I think I seem to remember that Barry Well.
I'm a big fan of some of the older dB fives. The challenge with some of the newer cars is that they're festuned with a lot of two generational Mercedes technology, but they're still amongst the most beautiful cars on the road. And that's the car lover's dilemma. Do you go for the looks or do you go for the brains? And Aston Martin has fabulous looks but not necessarily great brains.
You know. Sometimes that's a dilemma, and more things besides the cars I seem to remember from my dating years. That's right, I mean we all can relate, right, Why does it have to be one or the other?
Yeah, you know, you know, if you look at the history of Aston Martin, this is a relatively new thing. That these teams are worth a billion dollars. The sport's been around for decades and it's been a wealthy person's hobby because it's so expensive and rarely profitable except for one or two of the teams. So I'm not surprised that somebody has been carrying a team for as long
as Aston Martin group has been carried by Stroll. For him to say, yeah, I'm gonna sell a little bit because it's worth twenty x what it was ten years ago. I don't have any problems with that.
Yeah, And Stroll did say, look, last year, more than half of the people who bought a new Aston Martin were new to the brand, and he attributes that rise basically solely to Formula one, which I thought was really interesting.
That's enormous. That's a tremendous you know. The old expression was when on Sunday sell on Monday. Sure, and that's why you have whether it's NASCAR or any else in the United States. Not a big surprise that when the team does well, hey they sell more cars. Not that the purchasers of the Aston Martin DBX suv is going to be you know, racing that, but the fact that you could go buy a seven hundred horsepower suv after watching the team do well on Formula one not completely unrelated,
So I'm not surprised. He mentioned the relationship between the team and Aston Martin proper.
Speaking of Formula one, did you watch the race at all? I did not.
I was at the race and it was a success, and we can get into that for a second. But unfortunately the TV time did make it a little bit hard for those of you on the East coast. I mean, the race started at ten Pacific, so that's a bit of a tricky time to watch. I think that time was linked to when European fans could watch on Sunday morning. I was there for four days, which is probably one day two long in Las Vegas. But the race itself
there were some hiccups. Of course, I'm sure you've heard about the manhole cover, yes, and I was actually physically trackside when that happened. That was unfortunate, But you know, from what I understand, that in itself wasn't a demerit on failure to plan on the part of Las Vegas. But what was kind of a demerit was the fact that they kept fans in the stands while they tried to fix the manhole cover until two thirty, almost three
o'clock in the morning. They resumed racing at three in the morning, but they kicked fans out at two because they didn't have enough staff to cover security. So people were kind of upset about that, which was unfortunate.
That's poor planning. How do you have contingencies for well, hey, it's not like there are races where there are I don't know, crashes and things go wrong. I mean, how this happens on a regular How how could they not be prepped for that?
And you'd think, out of any city in the city besides New York City, what city is a twenty four hour town that's Las Vegas. How can you not have another shift of guys you know coming on. It's kind of a head scratcher on that. But you know, the actual race itself turned out to be really exciting. Obviously we all knew Max Verstappan was going to win, but the race for second was really exciting. I thought, and you know who doesn't love a Sergio Perez Charles Leclerk standoff?
And I have to say, everybody was in a really good mood. People were happy.
The logistics were easy, there were signs everywhere.
I didn't have a trouble getting around.
I thought it might be a bit of a circus, but yeah, I mean, Barry, we got to get you out to Vegas.
I know you say you don't like it.
Well, I'm going to be in Vegas for the market. Council conference in December, and I actually have the better part of half a day free, and I'm looking for something away from the strip to keep me entertained. I don't know if I could do half day of driving school at Lamborghini, but that might be fun.
That would be so fun.
Speaking of Lamborghini, our tribal Ferrari, I did watch that movie when I was in Vegas. I bet you they'll have screenings when you go to Vegas, maybe of the Frari.
What'd you think of it?
Well, by the way, you lost me at Michael Mann's Ferrari. You lost me at the first two words.
You're not a Michael Man fan.
I could watch the first Transformers movie if I have to.
Well, the verdict on Ferrari for me was Penelope Cruz was the only thing that kept me in the theater. Let's say that she's always great. She's incredible. She's incredible both her acting and her character. She plays the wife of Enzo Ferrari, Laura, who actually is really an equal partner with him. She sort of runs the books and keeps the house in order as best she can. In terms of the racing team, and I think Adam Driver
did a good job too with the acting. But this CGI effects of several different crashes in the film, which takes place just during nineteen fifty seven, just the one year where they're really trying to win the Millimilia race in Italy, some of the crashes just looked ridiculous.
Oh really, it just.
Was so fake and kind of gratuitous.
I don't know, do you. Are you a fan of car movies?
Bary?
Of course, of course. I watched a YouTube documentary on the making of the Fast and Furious films, of which I am not a giant fan. However, one of the things that was so fascinating is they used as little CGI as possible. When you see these cars flip and smash, or or when that Honda goes under the tractor trailer and that very famous scene. Yeah, those are real drivers
doing those actual stunts. There's very little green screen. In fact, they won an Academy Award for creating this new type of rig that allows the actor to sit in what looks much more like a real car than just the usual you know, the projected screen behind you, and you're actually out there doing the stunts as they're filming. It's really quite fascinating approach. Sometimes you have to forego the technology and actually get a couple of cars out on the road and see what's gonna happen.
I totally totally agree. There's nothing that can really be actual driving. I mean even the shifting, you know, the gated shifting in the Ferraris, It just seemed.
A little off to me. Yeah, I don't know. Did you see Ford versus Ferrari?
Oh God, I love that movie. That Yeah, that was great as a car movie, but it was also a great movie and if you can check both of those boxes, yeah, that's a winner. And I'm obviously not the only one who thinks that way. It did great at the box office. I haven't rewatched it. I wanted to let enough time go buy so it was fresh again. But that's in my list of films to see again soon.
Yeah.
Okay, so let's talk about what we're driving over the holiday. I just drove the Audi SQ eight E Tron, that is their luxury electric big suv. I liked it, surprisingly agile. Have you driven any of the Audi E Trons Berry.
I have not. I've driven the Takehand from Porsche, which is the same platform. Yeah, just tuned to be pure sport as opposed to more functional, but it's a very worthwhile platform and it delivers a pretty robust performance. What was your impression of the big Audi.
I have to say I liked it.
And the interesting thing, it's interesting that you mentioned Porsche because Audi's going to be building a lot of their upcoming evs on the same Ppe platform that Porscha developed, So I mean we are talking very very close siblings here.
Anyway.
In terms of the SQ eight E Tron, I have to say I drove a sportback version, which basically just means the roofline is a little bit more aggressively sloped. No difference in the in the performance, but I really liked it. Ultra ultra quiet inside, like as quiet as an A eight sedan, and very surprisingly nimble for a
six thousand pound suv. Audi's nice because if you don't like all of the screens that you're going to find in a Mercedes and you want something that's a little more intuitive and less crazy inside than some of what BMW's doing, out as kind of a nice in between.
To me, I totally get that. Yeah, you look at how funkified, if that's a word. The things you see from Hyundai and Kia on their EV side and the whole BMWi line of evs. They all have like this attempt to be a little different and set aside from what the internal combustion cars look like. I'm not the biggest fan of that the audies unless you know exactly what you're looking at and say, I know this is an EV they don't look all that different from the rest of the AUTI line.
Yeah, and which is good to me. I agree.
I don't think that just because you want an electric platform doesn't mean suddenly you've given up everything you know and love about automobiles and the way lines should be in the way a car should be designed. And I'm with you. When I first saw that the EQS screens on the interior that are the size of a small movie theater, it's like, Wow, that's really technologically impressive. And then it's like, hey, wait, everything goes through the screen. Can I just raise the volume of the radio or
lower the fan on the heat? Do I have to always go through a screen? So I'm hoping people find a happy medium in terms of usability and ergonomics. It looks like Audi seems to have gotten there first.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Are you driving a Mercedes over the holiday?
Well, first of all, I'm driving a seven thirty seven to Chicago, Okay, God, but when I'm there. My brother in law has had a series of very interesting cars. I used to enjoy his Camaro Z twenty eight back in the day. The problem is, if you're in Chicago in late November, those sticky summer performance tires turn into hard,
useless rocks. I'll be in a cls AMG version, which is it is the beautiful older model that he can't bear to part with because the new one is a jellybean and the previous generation has just lovely lines and a serious bit of horsepower under the hood. He was looking at a take hand and what prevented him from pulling the trigger on that is you can't put two golf bags in the trunk, And apparently this is a big issue for a lot of buyers. Can a golf
bag fit into the trunk? Yes, which it supposedly can do in the new Corvette. I never would have even thought to ask about.
So that's it for this week. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Hannah Elliott. You can find all of my work on Bloomberg dot com or on Instagram at Hannah Elliott XO.
That's two h's, two l's, and two teeth.
I'm Barry Ridolts. Check out Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio, and be sure and check out our new podcast, At the Money. That's on Apple Podcasts and it will soon be everywhere.
Matt will be back next week. Thank you so much for Barry riddholds my special cos today and really the best friend of the pod.
I'm Hannah Elliott and this is Bloomberg