What Formula 1 Taught Me About the Future of Mobility

When we arrived at the Red Bull Racing factory in Milton Keynes, I wasn’t expecting much. I’m not a Formula 1 fan. I couldn’t tell you who’s leading the championship or explain the difference between hard and soft tires. So let’s just say my bar was low.

And yet, by the time Neil Martin wrapped up his talk, I was speechless.

Neil—former strategist for McLaren, Ferrari, and now founder of his own analytics company—didn’t give us a technical lecture. He gave us a story. A story of transformation, precision, failure, tragedy, and above all, relentless innovation. A story about how a sport many dismiss as elite and niche is actually a live test lab for the future of mobility, safety, and decision-making.

He described a world where milliseconds matter, where 36 synchronized actions are completed in a two-second pit stop, and where data moves faster than the cars themselves—100MB per second from track to ops room, analyzed and fed back in 30 milliseconds. A world where a driver can hit a barrier at 7G (seriously, 7!), sit in a fireball for 27 seconds, and walk away with minor burns.

But what stuck with me wasn’t just technology. It was the mindset: everything is a system. Every edge, every mistake, every unknown is modeled, tested, and optimized. Even chaos has a blueprint, if you look hard enough. As a scrum master you really have my attention if you put it like this.  

And that’s where the talk shifted from Formula 1 to something much bigger. Because Neil didn’t just talk about cars. He talked about how the same data that predicts gearbox failures also saved lives in a children’s hospital. How a simulation-driven culture accelerates innovation. And how, no matter the tech, humans remain the most powerful—and fragile—link in the system.

As we left the factory, I realized I hadn’t just gained a new respect for Formula 1. I’d glimpsed a model for how the world could run if we built it with the same obsessive care and fearless experimentation.

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Three Lessons for the Future of Mobility that I’m racing off with:

Safety doesn’t slow us down—it unlocks performance.  

In Formula 1, safety advancements didn’t make the sport dull, it made the sport faster and even more exhilarating. By reducing catastrophic risks, teams gained the freedom to push the limits of speed, design, and innovation. The same principle applies in business: psychological safety within teams, robust compliance systems, and thoughtful risk management aren’t bureaucratic roadblocks. They create the conditions for bolder bets, faster iteration, and more creative thinking.  

Human error isn’t failure—it’s a design challenge.  

In business, mistakes will happen; especially under pressure. The best organizations don’t just try to eliminate error but they design for recovery. It means cultivating a culture where identifying flaws is rewarded, not punished. In a world of increasing complexity, resilience beats perfection.

Data is only as powerful as your culture.  

Every company claims to be “data-driven”, but what Neil showed is that having data isn’t enough. You need alignment around purpose, clear decision-making processes, and people who understand how to ask the right questions.

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In F1, data drives every race strategy—but it’s trust, training, and clarity that turn those insights into wins. At work, this translates into investing not just in tools, but in people and practices: data literacy, cross-functional collaboration, and the humility to let evidence challenge assumptions.

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