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The High Performance Podcast
The Secret to a Perfect F1 Driver-Engineer Partnership | Rob Smedley on Massa, Lewis & Ferrari (E393)
01:45:22
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- [00:02]
Rob Smedley
He's Lewis Hamilton. But it's, it's still very, very different. It must be uncomfortable, right? Your boss has basically come out and told you to shut up in public. Felipe, Fernando is faster than you. It's one of those that you look back and just wish that we had all done it differently on that Saturday night. You know, we don't really know whether he's gonna make it.
- [00:23]
Jake Humphrey
My goodness.
- [00:27]
Rob Smedley
Sorry.
- [00:30]
Jake Humphrey
You're listening to High Performance. Thanks to everyone who's already subscribed. If you've not, right now is the time because you'll get new episodes the moment they drop. And your support helps us bring more world class guests onto the show. Tap subscribe right now and keep growing with High Performance. Rob, welcome to High Performance. It's nice to see you again.
- [00:53]
Rob Smedley
It is lovely to see you, Jake, and thank you very much for having me.
- [00:56]
Jake Humphrey
Thank you for coming on. Not only is it nice to see an old friend who I used to spend a lot of time with, but. But I can't wait for people to hear this conversation because you were central to one of the most dramatic ends to a Formula title race ever. You've got a firsthand experience of working with Michael Schumacher, firsthand experience of working alongside Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen. You've suffered heartbreak in your personal life and in your professional life. You've had the greatest of highs. You've helped to transform Williams in the last few years. I. And I want to talk about all of it. Does that sound good?
- [01:28]
Rob Smedley
That sounds great. Let's do it.
- [01:30]
Jake Humphrey
But I want to start by rewinding the clock right back to 2006 where you had not spent any time, I don't think, with Felipe Massa and you get a call from someone at Ferrari asking you to go and meet him. Take us to that moment.
- [01:43]
Rob Smedley
So Felipe joined us. I kind of knew Felipe. I'd watched him come on the scene and I met him In I think 2001. 2000. 2001, when he was just. He hadn't quite graduated to Formula one. So I kind of knew him to say hello to. And then he came to Ferrari and he did, I think the first four, five races with very competent engineer who'd had a really good run with Rubens Barrichello called Gabrielli Delicoli, who's a mate of mine, very good engineer, had a great career in Formula one. But it felt like they weren't gelling. You have a great relationship and a great working partnership with one driver. It doesn't mean to say it's going to work with another driver. So Ross Braun, who was my boss, we both still lived predominantly in the uk and we used to get the Monday morning flight back. So this was after the fifth race of Imola, and Felipe had had four, five really bad races. And Ross was giving me a lift back from Bologna airport. So Ross always used to park his car there. So he was driving me from Bologna airport to the factory in Maranello. And we just used to chit chat, mostly about work, but sometimes it would be about other stuff. And then he said to me, like, what do you think of Felipe? And I said, well, you know, I think he's struggling, but whatever. And he said to me, he just come out and he said, well, we want you to be his race engineer. And I said, okay. Like, this is like fairly. It feels. It feels like a natural conversation in the car. But he's. And I thought, well, is he telling me or is he asking me? And it felt more like he was telling me, but he was very honest about it. He said, we think Felipe is very talented. Michael had already started talking internally about whether or not he was going to retire within the next year, two years, three years, or whatever. So they, you know, they had to start succession planning. We think Felipe is very talented from what we've seen up to now, but if he carries on like this, he's not going to make the end of the year. So he said to me, so he kind of arrived in Barnelli. He said, just have a think about it anyway. And then literally about half an hour later, he called me and said, well, have you thought about it? Okay, I guess you're telling me. So I said, well, yeah, I said, I'll do it. I said, it's a little bit in at the deep end. When do we start? He said, well, go home and get your passport because we're going to Nurburgring this afternoon for the Formula one race. So that's kind of how it came about. And I kind of had the plane journey over there to think about it, which is all like two hours, and think about how I was gonna approach it. I didn't really have any idea about how this would go. So I. They'd already told Gabrielli that he wasn't gonna be the race engineer anymore and that I was gonna get drafted in, which I felt bad about. Right. That's like kind of I'm in a situation that I didn't ask to be in, and this is a guy that sits like, in the same office as me. Anyway, I arrive At Nurburgring. And then Felipe arrives. This was the Wednesday. And then Felipe arrives and I went to see him in the motorhome and I found this, you know, the little bit that I knew him, he was like a little bit I knew of him up to that point. He was like this cheeky chappie, right? He was like, happy go lucky. And we didn't have that version of Felipe. We had a really, like, uptight and nervous version of Felipe and we just had a really honest conversation. Right?
- [05:30]
Jake Humphrey
How were those nerves, like, showing themselves to you?
- [05:32]
Rob Smedley
Oh, he was like all over the place. He couldn't smile. He was like his foot was tapping. He was like, not in. In. In a very good place. And I said to him, look, like, what do you want to get out of this? Like, what are you trying to get out of it? Let's start from that. Like, like, what's the target here? And he said to me, well, I want to beat Michael. I said, okay, that's an interesting. That's an interesting target to have. You know, you got a seven time world champion, a guy who's like, I guess Michael was like 35, 37, something like that at the time, like massively experienced, de facto best driver in the world at that point in time. I said, okay, you've just like kind of, you've gone from Sauber to Ferrari test team, back to Sauber, and now you've kind of gone from, you know, in Formula one, in motorsport, there is Formula one and everything else, and in Formula one, in terms of the expectations, there's Ferrari and everything else. You know, Ferrari is like a religion if when you work for Ferrari or you drive for Ferrari, you're playing for the national team. So I was like, mate, you've got to like, we need to bring this down a notch or two because I think if that's your expectations right now, here today, this weekend, you know, we're not going to get very far. This is like, I think we got to go back to basics. And that was it. We went back to basics. I said, look, I believe in you. I think you are really, from what I've observed from the outside, I think you're a really quick driver. And, you know, I'd been doing Formula One for nigh on 10 years at that point, so I guess I knew a little bit about Formula one. I wasn't by no means an expert. And I said to him, as long as the speed's there, we can work with you, right? We can do everything else, but you're nowhere Near a complete driver, you know, you haven't got any of the attributes that you need.
- [07:26]
Jake Humphrey
And what were they that you didn't have in your. In your eyes?
- [07:29]
Rob Smedley
He couldn't put a race together. He was no good around the in and out laps. He couldn't read a race. You know, he couldn't look at a race and, you know, think, you know, I need to extend the tyres a little bit or I need to, you know, I need to push this set. You know, he had no idea about how to use the tyres. I mean, he'll probably listen to this and hate me for it, but, you know, he's like a little brother to me. So I'm gonna be really honest. He just didn't have all of this, you know, and all this stuff outside the car as well. Like, I talk about pressure, there's a massive amount of pressure in Ferrari to deliver outside of the car. You know, you are a national hero, right? And that brings with it a weight. So I was like, look, we can. We can do all of that as, like, engineers as your support team around you. We can do all of that as long as the talent is there. But let's get back to basics and let's start to do things in a really structured way. And that was it. We just added structure and. And gave. You know, the world didn't really operate around targets and KPIs and stuff like that back then, you know, we were less objectively driven, but we just put targets in place of what we wanted to do, race by race. And I think having someone believe in him and tell him that it was gonna be okay, I think just brought the whole thing down and allowed him to perform. And I said, look, we just need to get through the weekend. Let's get through the weekend. We've got no time to prepare for this, but this is what we need to do during this weekend. And in fact, it's. He became very, very good at execution. Like, he became unbelievably good at execution. We used to call him the mechanical monkey because, you know, you'd ask him to do something. You know, fast forward two years from that point, you'd ask him to do something, and he was good as Michael at doing it. Right?
- [09:11]
Jake Humphrey
An example.
- [09:12]
Rob Smedley
An example is like, you know, a switch sequence in the car. So you're doing 200 mile an hour and upshifting and downshifting, and you've got to do a certain switch sequence, and you've got to do certain things with the car. And he could do it all. He could memorize it all, you know, much better than an average human being like me. He could do it at the level of what Michael could do. And he started to get, you know, much more into the detail and understand much more about what was going to make him a complete driver. And actually, that weekend, that first weekend in Nurburgring, we went through the program. I don't think he'd been. You know, he hadn't approached the weekend programmatically before. So we went through the program, and he actually finished third. So it was his first podium in Formula one. I think Michael won it. I can't remember who was second, and he finished third. And what I can remember very clearly about that result was that Kimi Raikkonen, who was in the McLaren, had caught him and was much faster than him at the end. And we just talked him through those final 10 laps, and you could see him starting to make mistakes, and then it was, like, starting to talk him through it and starting to get him, you know, telling him to breathe and tell him it was, you know, where he needed to push the car, where he could, like, conserve the tires. And he got through it and finished on the podium. And I remember it was really quite a proud moment for me, you know, and the team that had, like, kind of all come, like, you know, there's not just a race engineer on the car, there's a whole team behind that you have to manage. So it was. It was nice. And then we just started to build.
- [10:39]
Jake Humphrey
From there, and I'm really interested in that final few laps, because you've only really had, what, 48 hours of intense time with Felipe, yet you've somehow worked out that what he actually needs you to be saying with a few laps to go, is, right, just take a breath. I mean, I assume these are the kind of things you're saying. Take a breath. Just stay calm. We've got three laps to go. You know, you broke a bit early into this corner, last lap, so just think about that. Where did you get the thought from that that was what he needed? Or was this you operating on instinct, do you think?
- [11:08]
Rob Smedley
Instinct. It's pure instinct at that point, right? You don't know the guy, but you can see what he needs. You know, you can kind of see from the body language of how he responds. And I still, you know, do that with people now. You see very quickly how they respond. I think any kind of leadership involves, you know, you've got the. The old adage that you've got two ears, one mouth, right? Listen, to people, but not only listen to them, like really listen to them. You know, 80% of communication is listening and watching their body language to how they react to what you say. And you could see already, like what worked and what he needed. But yeah, it's instinct, I think. You know, I didn't know the guy from Adam at that point. It's instinct and it's kind of seeing how he reacts. Like when you tell him something, when he's in the car and he's got all of that press, how does he react to how you're talking to him? Yeah, and it was just guiding him through it. And then we became quite. We were a partnership that I would say was quite verbose. You know, we talked a lot on the radio. It was thankfully back in the day when the radio wasn't played out every two minutes like it is now. So you could have much more frank conversations. But we did talk a lot. I talked to him, like, probably more than I talked to any driver before or since. And he needed that. He needed a lot of coaching and enjoyed a lot of coaching and I think it really helped him.
- [12:35]
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- [13:12]
Rob Smedley
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- [14:22]
Jake Humphrey
And little did you or Felipe know at that moment that this was the beginning of two people that would end up in Brazil in 2008 as central players to one of the most remarkable Formula one stories of all time. When Lewis Hamilton wins the world title on the final corner of the final lap of the final race of the season. Yeah, but if we go back three or four days when you're making your way to Brazil, which of course is also Felipe Massa's home race, what was the mood inside the Ferrari camp like? You were behind in the world title. So did you turn up believing that you could be World Champions that weekend?
- [14:57]
Rob Smedley
Well, I think we went into the penultimate race with the hope that we could kind of close the gap. And I don't think we did close the gap. I don't think that. I can't remember exactly what happened, but we ended up with a reasonable gap. I don't know what it would be in today's money, but it was like a 15 point gap that we went in today's money that we went into the. Into the final round with. There's a few things leading up to that point which had meant that we'd had a good season, but we had another perfect season. I think that overall he had performed very, very well. He'd performed like a World champion. From that Nurburgring story in 2006 to the end of 2008, we're talking about three years and we had a complete driver on our hands. And so we went into that final race, I think seven points behind. Seven points behind. Right. So seven points in a period where.
- [15:47]
Jake Humphrey
You got 10 for the.
- [15:48]
Rob Smedley
Well, you got 10 for the win. That's right. So. So I think we had to finish Felipe to win and Lewis had to finish sixth or worse. So if he finished fifth, he was World Champion. So obviously that's a massively tall order. Right. Because even if Felipe wins by country mile, Lewis is probably just going to canter in behind him in second and get, you know, two point deficit back in. Back in those days. And what I saw was that, you know, of the team that worked on Felipe's car, there was despondency. And I thought that it was my job to kind of lift the team back up and give them confidence.
- [16:29]
Jake Humphrey
When did you see that despondency we.
- [16:31]
Rob Smedley
Were on a roll and things were going okay, but the gap was just too big, you know. And I saw it, like, probably a couple of weeks before we actually flew out to Brazil. So what I did was I took all of the guys out. I used to do this quite often, so the engineers, the mechanics, technicians on the car, stuff like that. So we all went out and we had a really good night. We had dinner and a really good night, and we got very drunk on Lambrusco. But part of that was to tell everybody, look, we can do this, right? It's not impossible. It's like he only has to finish sixth, like anything can happen. We'll go there, right? We're going to go there. We're going to treat it like any other race, but we're going to win, and we are going to go there with, you know, outward confidence that we can do this, and we all have to believe that we can do this. And then what McLaren do, we can't control. But if we go there and we're very confident and we start to, you know, have a really good weekend from. From the get go on Friday, that starts to put, you know, it's McLaren's to lose at this point. And actually the weekend, like, unfolded like that. You know, we. He had. I would say that was literally one of the most perfect weekends I've ever done in any team in Formula one. We were fastest in all the practice sessions. The car setup was, like, almost perfect. We didn't have to choose anything. He qualified on pole. I think Lewis had qualified. He didn't have a great qualifying. He was fifth or seventh. And again, that was. Why was that? That was down to pressure, right? You know, there's no way that car should have qualified seventh. And this was his first world championship, let's not forget. So he had a lot of pressure on himself. And then the race was one of those races where you have to be. You have to have such, like, fast footwork. It was wet, dry. It was horrible. It was all over the place. And between Felipe and the team, we never really put a foot wrong, you know, when we had the right tyres on, made the pit stops at the right time. He was constant, constantly in front. And then you've got those final few laps when it started to rain again. And Lewis, I think at that point, he spun on the first lap, I think, and that put him on the back foot. Then he made his way up. Then there was more problems and everything. We were just kind of going away at a canter.
- [18:49]
Jake Humphrey
Was there A moment in that race where you thought, oh, my goodness, we're going to do this.
- [18:54]
Rob Smedley
No, I never allowed myself to think that because I think that means that you've taken. You've lost focus on the job at hand. My job was to help Felipe win that race dominantly. And the more dominant we were and the more out of reach we were. The only tool we had in our armory against our rival at that point was what we had control of, which was winning and how much pressure that could put them under. And they didn't have a great race. I can remember that and I can remember just being fully focused and people kept talking to me on the pit wall about it and I kept.
- [19:35]
Jake Humphrey
What sort of stuff were they saying?
- [19:36]
Rob Smedley
Ah, like, you know, oh, exactly that. Like, oh, we could do this, we might do this. And I kept politely, in northern vernacular, telling them to fuck off. Fuck off? Yeah, shut the fuck up. Like, I'm doing my job. Thanks for allowing me to say that.
- [19:53]
Jake Humphrey
So your message to Felipe before the race was also like, don't think about McLaren, don't think about Lewis, don't worry about it.
- [19:59]
Rob Smedley
Don't worry about it. Act like they're not there because it's, you know, act like they don't exist. Right.
- [20:03]
Jake Humphrey
Did you not see a moment where you looked at Felipe in the build up and thought, man, he is also feeling the pressure here big time?
- [20:09]
Rob Smedley
No, never. That was, that was the thing with him in Brazil. He was so comfortable, right? He was. He was so comfortable from the very first second of free practice one. He was so calm. He was. That's what I talk about. We had the complete driver, we had the complete package. By that point on the grid, it looked like he was going out for a Sunday drive. You know, you could see everybody else on the grid, like, you know, the closest rivals, they were feeling the pressure. And we were walking around with smiles on our faces. We were like, well, we're here to lose, right? We're gonna lose the World Championship. Like, we're just gonna have a good time, you know, outbound. That was the outward message. Obviously by that point in the weekend, everyone was like, we might do this. We could possibly. And there was just a self belief, you know, that he had not. It was never. It was a confidence, never arrogance, right? There's two, there's two. You know, arrogance comes with like, there's usually no foundation. It's a superficial thing. Confidence is because, you know, there's solid foundations. I can be confident in what I'm doing. And he had that Even on the, you know, like I said on the grid, like, it was like a football stadium. I honestly, Sao Paulo in Talagos, that. That weekend was like a football stadium. They were just singing and cheering his name, you know, for hours on end. Literally hours. I got there at, say, like, 8 o' clock in the morning. The grandstands were already full, and they just sung his name for hours and hours and hours on end right throughout. It's literally like being at a football.
- [21:38]
Jake Humphrey
Match that would break some people, that would break some drivers.
- [21:42]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, he. But. But he. He got, like, power from it, a motivation from it. You know, he. He felt like that, that lifted him, right, because. Because he's always. He's a very proud Brazilian, like a very proud, like, countryman. And we couldn't have done really any more. I always look back on that and say, like. And people say, oh, you lost the World Championship. I said, well, yeah, but we didn't lose it in that race. That race was the most perfectly executed weekend that I've ever been involved in, in any, you know, and seeing Michael win World Championships. We used to, like, you know, back in the, like, you know, 2003, 2004, those years we were knocking World Championships out like candy, right? We were wrapping the World Championship up by. By the summer break, but this was just really perfectly executed under pressure. And then you got those final few laps and the disarray of, like, you know, the rain coming down. And then, like, you know, Lewis was on the right tyres and he came through and beat Timo. What I can remember about those final laps is that Felipe crossed the line and at that point, around turn 11, Lewis was still behind Glock. And at that point, the team started to go mental.
- [22:54]
Jake Humphrey
Right, there's those iconic images in the garage, isn't there?
- [22:57]
Rob Smedley
Yeah.
- [22:57]
Jake Humphrey
Felipe's dad and the team celebrating the.
- [23:00]
Rob Smedley
World title and they were all going mental. And it was very dark. I can remember that. I distinctly remember it was very dark. And I could feel the flashbulbs behind me, you know, like, popping off. And, you know, there was a lot of, like, melee. And I was still trying to focus on these final few moments because I could. I knew that Lewis was on the right tire compared to Glock. And I'm still trying to focus. And what happened was people jumped on me and kind of like, pulled me off the pit wall, but I still had my headsets on and my cans and everything. And I was. And I was going, get the fuck off me. Like, I'm still working, like, get off.
- [23:38]
Jake Humphrey
Get off because they thought they'd won the world title because they were trying to celebrate.
- [23:41]
Rob Smedley
And I was what? And I was trying watch the GPS of, like, where the two dots of between Lewis and Timo were. And they pulled me so far back that, you know, in Tagus is like, where if you kind of look to your right, you can see the pit entry as they come up the hill to the start finish line. And they pulled me back and I kind of look down the pit lane and I thought, right, I can't see the TV anymore. Cause they've like, ripped me away from the pit wall. But I thought, I can look down the pit lane. And I was. And I was looking and I thought, I just need to see which car's in front. Because probably whatever car's in front is gonna, you know, is whether we've won the World Championship or not. And I saw the silver car come past first and then Timo behind, and I was like, we haven't won it. And people were still, oh, we won, we won, we won. And I was going, no, we haven't. And then everybody realized. And then kind of the mood changes in a split second. And then I kind of climbed back up on my perch and I started talking around the in lap.
- [24:39]
Jake Humphrey
What did you say?
- [24:40]
Rob Smedley
Well, then I just said to him, you know, we've done like, you know, the message. The synopsis of the message was paraphrasing. The message was, look, we couldn't have done any more right in this event, we've done everything we possibly can. You should be, like, extremely proud of yourself. We are extremely proud of you. It wasn't that one race. And whether or not you've got another World Championship trophy or your first World Championship trophy in. And in his case, I guess in the annals of time, it becomes a bit meaningless. It was the journey for me. And I talk about this a lot now, even to the guys that I work with now. Like, enjoy the journey. Right? You've got to enjoy the journey. If it's all about the destination, you'll be miserable. And actually enjoying the journey usually gets you to the destination. So we talked about that. And then I think the way that what always struck me and told me that we did have a complete driver and an elite athlete at that point was the way that he reacted afterwards. You know, if you look at him on the podium and, you know, the humility that he showed when he was crying. Yeah.
- [25:52]
Jake Humphrey
Touching his heart, thanking the Brazilian fans.
- [25:54]
Rob Smedley
Yeah.
- [25:55]
Jake Humphrey
And I suppose I watched that at the time, thinking, I mean, I Knew I was coming into the sport, didn't I, the next season. So this was me watching it, thinking I'm going to, I need to know what's happening here. Cause I'll be talking about this with people like you in a few months time. But I remember watching that, thinking, that's the public display. What happens when the silence arrives and the door closes and the two of you are sitting there in a quiet driver's room and the actual dawning realization that you were seconds away from a world title actually appears?
- [26:26]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, well, I didn't see him for quite a long, like relatively quite a long time afterwards that, that afternoon. And what I found, because he had.
- [26:39]
Jake Humphrey
Lots of media commitments and things.
- [26:40]
Rob Smedley
Well, yeah, he had tons of. He was on the podium and then he was here, there, everywhere. I started to feel like really emotional, which I hadn't really done at work before. I'm not really a person that gets particularly emotional. But then what I found was that I kind of went and sat somewhere and I cried for about an hour. Literally cried for about an hour, you know, and it was just a weird feeling. You know, I called my wife and I talked to her and you know, I called my dad and I talked to him and I literally couldn't stop crying. What I realized a long time afterwards, you know, when I was a little bit more self aware, was that when you're in a dogfight like that, and it's only sports where this is relevant, I don't think it's relevant in the business world. I think sport is a crucible of pressure, like elite sports is a crucible of pressure. And I think you can't allow, when you are trying to perform at the very highest level, you can't allow emotion to come into it. You can't allow emotion to be part of your decision making. You know, you have to, of course, you have to like be empathetic and you know, all of those things, but you can't allow emotion to come into it. So I, and I think it was just pent up, you know, 10 months of a world Championship, pent up emotion. We knew we went into that World Championship with a good chance of winning and therefore from the get go, from the time, you know, the lights went out in Australia at the start of the season, 18, 20 races later, whatever it was, there's just a huge amount of emotion and it all come out in that hour. And then I was fine. I think I can't remember what we did afterwards. I went to see him and he was, I think Again, the overriding sense for him on that afternoon was he was just incredibly proud, right, of what he'd been able to do himself. And why I love Felipe and why we've remained such close friends all this time afterwards was that even then, at that point, he was well regarded to be one of the top drivers in Formula One. But hubris never crept in. You know, there was never any hubris. There was always a humility about him. There was always this, you know, what all elite sportsmen need is this confidence, but with a nagging self doubt, you know, the imposter syndrome that we all have. And, you know, that's what he kind of, he maintained that from, from, from that day onwards. And I think, you know, the. Again, like his, his emotions were, of course, he was, you know, very emotional and, you know, I would, you know, I comforted him. When I finally got. Got to see him, he was crying.
- [29:20]
Jake Humphrey
As well, I guess.
- [29:20]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, same. Probably the same thing as me. You know, he'd carried that, you know, buried those emotions for 10 months because you can't allow them to come out. You can't, you know, whatever. It's not a weakness. That would be absolutely the wrong way to describe it, but it can cloud your judgment. So, you know, and he was, you know, in quite a bad state. But then we went out and got pissed and it was fine. You know, we took the team out, we all had a few beers and, you know, same thing as you would after any kind of celebration. There was a lot to celebrate. There was more to celebrate. And I think this is about enjoying the journey. There's often more to celebrate than there is not to celebrate, you know, and if you don't celebrate moments like that in your life, you know, coming within one point of a World Championship with a driver that three years previous, his employer was considering whether or not to keep him employed when there was people in the paddock that give this guy no hope whatsoever. You know, there was a journalist who to me off camera once described him as a rock ape and said he wouldn't win a Grand Prix back in, in very early 2006. And I said, we'll see, you know, that's. We'll see whether that's true or not. This guy, you know, but for, you know, a couple of meters, more or less in a race, would have been a world champion. So, you know, that was, that was just a. Yeah, it was a proud moment of what we were able to do.
- [30:57]
Jake Humphrey
And I hope you don't mind Me mentioning at this point, your daughter Minnie, who you'd lost in 2007.
- [31:03]
Rob Smedley
Yes.
- [31:03]
Jake Humphrey
And since then, obviously, your wife, Lucy, and you have done a lot of work to raise awareness and funds for stillborn children. I wonder the impact that had on you in this moment, because it probably provided a reminder that there are much bigger things in life anyway than winning and losing World Championships.
- [31:23]
Rob Smedley
I think you're absolutely right, Jake. I think that's what we were. I think, you know, you kind of grow up, you go to school, you go to university, or you go to work, whatever it is. You meet someone, you get married until. And this probably sounds. I don't want to sound pious here, but until you have kids, you know, yourself, you kind of just. That kind of flips the switch for me for when you grow up, because all of a sudden, now you've got dependence and responsibilities and all the rest of it. And I think going through that tragedy and losing Minnie really brought, like, a kind of focus but also a kind of calm to my life. It put things in perspective that, you know, up until that point had been Formula one, Formula one, Formula one, and, like, you know, everything was gonna, like, just in the wake of. Everything just got, like, you know, wrapped up in this wake of Formula one. Yeah, like, that happened, and I had to take some time away, obviously. And I have to say, like, I still, to this day, like, have to thank Ferrari for how they handle that as well. You know, Ferrari were unbelievable about it. And that's when you see, you know, talk about, like, Ferrari as a family and family, family, family and all of that. Right. Which sometimes it's true. A lot of the times it isn't true. In moments like that, there was a real empathy and a real circling of the wagons to look after me and Lucy. But it did put things in perspective. You're right. It did change me as a person. It 100% changed me as a person. It made me grow up overnight, and it made me much more, like I said, have perspective on things. Because at the end of the day, okay, we're living and breathing Ferrari. It's World Championships. We're working or playing for the national team or whatever way you want to look at it. We're in this privileged position. There's 20 drivers, there's 20 race engineers. I've got one of those spots. But at the end of the day, you know, it's not as important as those things, you know, as. As kids and family and life and death. It's none of those things. And I think that did help me. It did help me to be. It definitely helped me to be better at my job because it took a lot of pressure off me because up until that point, I'd kind of lived with a lot of pressure. And the pressure went away like that.
- [33:59]
Jake Humphrey
Why?
- [33:59]
Rob Smedley
Because I just put it in perspective and I could also start to quieten out the noise. You know, any high performing team or business, it will operate at its peak under pressure, but it also has to be a psychologically safe space. And I think a psychologically safe space is created by the culture in a business, but it's also created by yourself as well. I think you can create your own psychologically safe space. And in Ferrari, in Formula one in general, or in any elite sports team, it can be very needly, right? You know, you're always on display. People are always looking to, you know, if you're on a pedestal to knock you off it, somebody younger, more intelligent, better looking, whatever, is going to come and take your place. And kind of all of that just went away, or the majority of it went away. I would say. I wouldn't say all of it went away, but the majority of it went away. I was just like, you know, if I can in terms of like all of that noise, I don't give a anymore, right? Just gonna be good at my job, right? And there's gonna be noise. Noise will always like disruptive noise is always going to be there, kind of reacting to it and being, you know, you know, psychologically reactive and cognizant of it and it affecting your decisions and what you do and how people view you is a really, really unhealthy way to try and be good at what you're doing, right? Because you spend 50% of your time thinking about that and 50% of your time trying to be actually good at your job. So, yeah, it just put things in perspective where I cared deeply about my job and I cared deeply about performing and I cared deeply about the people that worked for me, and I cared deeply about results and winning races and pole positions and winning world championships, but I didn't care anymore what people thought. It just kind of went away. It just literally went away. And then like, you know, it tended to zero over the next few years. I think there was another, you know, few years where pressure was still on at Ferrari and all the rest of it. And I think what that does is, is it also like. So there's a whole cycle here where, you know, that happened with Mini, that happened to my psychology and the way that I approach things and then what I started to notice was people, like, kind of looked at me and they were like, oh, you're in this really important position, but you appear from the outside that, like, you're like, again, use the vernacular, you don't give a fuck. And I was like, no, you're very wrong. I just don't care about the things that are unimportant. And then you kind of have to also, like, I don't know, temper your behavior, but temper your external brand, if you like, because people start to look at you and think, is this bloke serious about what he's doing? But I was just enjoying it. I enjoyed all of my time in Formula one until the point that I didn't enjoy it anymore. And then I stopped. You know, it was clear to me. And I always used to talk about people that, you know, I see, I used to work with people and see that the amount of pressure that they used to put on themselves. You know, you talk about the pressure of Formula one and the external pressure and, you know, the pressure from the team and all the rest of it. It's like, that doesn't touch the sides for, like, elite, like, for, like, people who work in elite sports teams, that doesn't touch the sides of the pressure that you put on yourself. Right? But the pressure that I put on myself can be a positive pressure, right? I'm not going to put negative pressure on myself. You know, there's the niggling self doubt and the imposter syndrome and all that shit that everybody has, right? It's so well documented. All of that's just, I think in small doses is healthy. Yeah, but the positive pressure that you put on yourself is way, way higher than what anybody else could put. So it's like, don't bother putting pressure on me. Don't bother coming with any negativity because it doesn't matter, right? I can do this myself.
- [37:55]
Jake Humphrey
The reason why I thought it was very important, actually, was because also when you lost your daughter, you were engineering Felipe at the time, so he would have been on the phone to you, wanting to know about your family news, what's going on? Has your daughter been born? Is she healthy? What's her name? And the news you had to give him was, we've lost her. Like, she's, you know, she's not with us. So I think that's a reminder of the fact that actually the relationship between anyone, actually, but I think particularly in your sport, was an emotional one rather than a physical one. I think your job and the Job of an engineer for a Formula one driver is to be psychologically there for them as much as from a strategic perspective. Where would you put the balance of how much of your. To be a great race engineer, how much is about working on the brain of a driver and how much is working on the technical skills of a driver?
- [38:46]
Rob Smedley
I think it's honestly 50, 50. And I think it's, like, from a little bit that I know the inner workings of other sports, football, rugby, whatever. I think it's always 50, 50. When you work with the athletes themselves. You know, what is a race engineer in a Formula one team, effectively, for that driver? He's like the head coach, right? So you can't come and have no idea about the technical aspect of the job. That's really, really important that you understand how the car works, how that driver interacts with the vehicle, how do you optimize that whole package? You've got to know all of that. But if you come and you don't understand that you have, you know, a human being in the car and an athlete with all of the foibles that, you know, all of us mere mortals have, then it's never gonna work. You have to work on both, and they have to work on both concurrently, and they both have to work in harmony as well. We can't be just off doing, like, the driver psychology or the athlete psychology bit and the other bit, like, we've forgotten about, and actually the car's quite slow, but we're telling him he's great and, like, he can win races or, you know, we've completely messed up the strategy or whatever it is, equally. You can't be fully focused on just that technical side and forgetting about the athlete themselves, I guess, honestly, with, you know, I talked about 50, 50. It might even be slightly higher in Formula 1 on the psychology side. On the psychology side, because don't forget, the big difference in Formula One compared to, say, a team sport, is that you've got another 10 or 14 players, whatever your sport is on the field, who are all there. You're there to work as a team, right? As in the athletes, you know, the front of house athlete, team. With a Formula one driver, there's one of you, right? And when that driver go, when the visor goes down, there's an inordinate amount of pressure on that single athlete. You know, it's up to him to deliver as a Formula one driver. At that point, the team is behind them. They will support them, but that's the end of the chain where they need to deliver. You know, there's a whole, like, raft, you know, myriad of work of a thousand women and men that go into that. But for those two hours on a Sunday afternoon, the crucible is fairly in their hands and they have to deliver. So I think, you know, there's times when you have to really ramp up the, you know, how. How you support psychologically, you know, the athlete in that moment. And definitely I was always a race engineer that talked and talked and talked. We talked about this before with Felipe, you know, I would talk him around the lap, almost even in qualifying.
- [41:37]
Jake Humphrey
What sort of stuff would you be saying?
- [41:38]
Rob Smedley
Oh, we talk about everything, like, you know, everything. We're talking, like, stuff relevant to the, to the, to the race, obviously. But there would be very technical stuff. I would be telling him, like, where he was compared to, you know, the plan, if you like. I would be telling him how he needed to manage the tyres. I would be telling him, you know, how he needed to manage certain corners, whether or not he was braking too early, too late, where to carry more speed, how to extract more performance from the tyres, how to save the tyres more, you know, where we were on that particular stint, you know, how Frank.
- [42:13]
Jake Humphrey
Would you be with him if he's not delivering?
- [42:15]
Rob Smedley
Oh, like black and white.
- [42:17]
Jake Humphrey
Like an example. Like, what would you say? He's put about, he's done a bad lap, he's under pressure, and you would.
- [42:23]
Rob Smedley
Say, well, I mean, it depends. Like, are we at the start of. Or do we know each other? If we.
- [42:27]
Jake Humphrey
If this is when you're fully, fully in bed with each other, you know each other inside out.
- [42:31]
Rob Smedley
I would, I would. You've already sworn, so I'm not going to ask you if I can, but I just say, you, what the fuck are you doing? Like, put your head in order. Like, that's not good enough. Like, and here's what you need to do the next lap. And he would turn it on and do it.
- [42:45]
Jake Humphrey
See, because I think we don't know this dynamic, right, between driver and race engineer, because we don't get to see it. Therefore, what we do see, we then, we think we almost make the wrong interpretation. I think of Max Verstappen and Giampiero Lambiase. The number of times I've seen people say, oh, they obviously hate each other. Oh, they obviously don't get on because they're so frank on the radio, particularly Max. Back to the team. What do you think when you see those type of radio calls from Max?
- [43:12]
Rob Smedley
I think that Max and gp, who are Both people that I dearly like, I think they have a great relationship. I think that is the one relationship that I see. It's kind of like an old fashioned relationship. But don't forget they've been at it for quite a while now. Is it nearly 10 years?
- [43:30]
Jake Humphrey
Yeah, it would be.
- [43:31]
Rob Smedley
So it's quite an old fashioned race engineer and driver relationship. If the perception is that they don't get on, I think the way that they can be that frank and honest with each other tells you exactly the opposite. They get on really, really well. And I think that Max knows that GP has been a big part of his success. Of course he's never going to get the accolades that Max does. You know, they wouldn't have stuck together for nine years. What's, you know, you're going to be in a ball ache of a relationship, like a professional relationship for nine years and carry on. Of course you're not. They get on like a house on fire. And I think you've got to be able to speak frankly to each other. I think if you don't have honesty, especially in the very, very high pressure situations like that, whether it's sport or business or whatever it is, and you're kind of fannying round like trying to say something but not really saying it, it's just not gonna work. It really won't work. And I see this now, like when I listen to, you know, when I watch Formula one races and I listen to some of the engineers and their drivers talking together. You know, the engineer can be, it's almost like it's too subservient. It's like, get on the front foot, tell them what you want. You know, I don't hear the whole conversation. So I'm kind of like, you know, listening to this as a fan from the outside, it's like, tell them what you need. Like, they're in a very, very high pressure situation. Like, okay, this is like a superstar. They're paid tens of millions of dollars a year, they're an elite athlete, they're one of 20 in the world. And, and, and, but now you're at work and you need to deliver for them just as much as they need to deliver for you. And for, for, for an engineer to deliver for the driver, you have to be frank, you have to be honest, you have to be open. And, and I think if you don't have that, you know, even out of the car, you know, Felipe and I, I would be like very, very frank with him. You know, when he up, I'd tell Him, he up, like, he's not good enough, Right? What are we doing? And he would do the same with me. And sometimes on the radio, like, I said, like, thank God, like, not all radio was played like back then. But, you know, he would quite often, like, tell me to shut up and I would say, no, you shut up. We get this argument, like, it's like, tete a te.
- [45:38]
Jake Humphrey
So when you watch a race and you hear, you know, and Max is the one that everyone talks about when it comes to modern drivers and being blunt on the radio, when you hear him swearing, telling the team it wasn't good enough, questioning the team, you actually look at that and think that's the sign of a healthy relationship between driver and engineer and driver and team.
- [45:55]
Rob Smedley
Totally, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look like it's in the heat of the moment. He's driving a car at 200 mile an hour. Giampiero sat on the pit wall, usually air conditioned nowadays. So, of course, Max is a winning machine, right. So of course he's going to kind of sometimes overstep the mark. But I know that, you know, I would suspect, because this happened with me at times, I would suspect that he later on that day when he's out of the car and acting more like a normal human being, they would also be, look, you know, sorry about that, like, perhaps overstepped the market.
- [46:29]
Jake Humphrey
Healthy as well.
- [46:30]
Rob Smedley
Yeah. And that's the end of it. That's the end of it. That's the end of it. You know what I mean? You're not going to sit there and bear a grudge, like, you know, I never did that, you know, and Felipe sometimes, you know, overstepped the mark and I did it with him. Right? We just say, yeah, sorry about that, I was a bit of an ass. But, like, whatever, let's just get on with it. And I think that is the sign that you can have an open and honest and really healthy relationship. And you should have that. Whether or not, you know, it's a race engineer and a Formula one driver or a head coach and, and a centre forward or whether or not it's CEO and their cfo. Right? You need to have that with the team around you. Otherwise, what are you doing if you're not honest with each other, if there's always like a little bit of honesty kept back because you don't want to hurt each other's feelings or anything. I'm a great one for frank talking and I think you have to be frank and open and honest in those situations.
- [47:26]
Jake Humphrey
And as someone who knows Lewis Hamilton well, because you battled against him in the peak of his powers, and as someone who knows Ferrari inside out and arguably from a race engineer perspective, probably better than anyone else on the planet at the moment, when you see Lewis's struggles, and I thought particularly that radio called, you remember when he said they were trying to work out what to do and Lewis said, oh, maybe have a cup of tea while you're at it. Remember how much do you read there into what that, what that tells us about what was going on behind the scenes? And obviously Ricardo Matti, his race engineer, has now, you know, stepped away.
- [47:56]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, I think, you know, just as we talked about, like Max and gp, if you look at Lewis this year, Lewis is very new to the team. The relationship with his engineer is very fledgling. So if you're having those type of comments on the radio, I guess the relationship is not quite fully formed and that's where it can, like, you know, be not healthy. This is a very clear presentation that his frustrations are boiling over. I do think it's the job of the race engineer, by the way, when the driver asks a question, you need to know enough about the car and be, you know, some level of expertise in all areas and be across your job enough that when the driver asks a question, you know, again, they're in the car on their own, they're driving the car at 200 mile an hour. When they ask you a question, answer it quickly. It really pains me when I hear, you know, we'll get back to you and all the rest of it. Mate, it's not a call center, you know, the guy's trying to perform at 10/10 of their performance. Like, answer him, like, give him confidence. Let them know that you know what you're doing, you know, otherwise it's like, I'll get back to you, I need to go and ask an adult. And at that point it's kind of like these are the tiny things that erode confidence and trust, you know, and that's when the relationship starts to become more touchy and more difficult. And how do you get back from that? You know, we're talking about, you know, the guy at Ferrari who's had a very long career in Formula one, very.
- [49:33]
Jake Humphrey
Successful, recommended to Lewis by Sebastian Vettel, wasn't he?
- [49:38]
Rob Smedley
There you go. Great. You know, relationship and career with, with Sebastian, they won lots of things together. But it's like the Felipe story in 2006, when it doesn't work and it doesn't gel, it doesn't work.
- [49:48]
Jake Humphrey
And when it doesn't work, why doesn't it work?
- [49:51]
Rob Smedley
I have a very clear theory on this. I think it's up to the race engineer to adapt their approach and their personality to suit the athlete. I don't think it's the other way around. I think if it's the other way around, the race engineer is they haven't really got the meaning of their job or even life, because it's kind of like, come like, you're the engineer, you're the one who gels the whole thing together, right? You've got this athlete, this driver in the car who has all the foibles that we have as. As, you know, all, as, like mere mortals have. But they are focused on doing their bit. You have the bandwidth to, you know, they're focused on delivering driving. You have the bandwidth to kind of step back and understand what it is that they need, you know, what is their psychologically safe space. Psychological safe space. How do you create that for them? How do you create a comfortable area, a comfortable zone for them to work in? I think that's the job of the race engineer. So I think when it doesn't work, it's because the race engineer either hasn't recognized it and can't make it work, or they're not prepared to compromise, you know, that far. And just sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.
- [51:06]
Jake Humphrey
Would it have pained Ferrari to have gone, look, we've spent a hell of a lot of money on Lewis hamilton. I mean, 60 million a year is what they're talking about. Would it have hurt them to go and spend another 3 or 4 million and also hire Pete Bonnington, who was Lewis's race engineer at Mercedes? And they knew each other inside out, upside down.
- [51:23]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, I don't know the inside story there. And they might have tried to do that, right? I honestly don't know the inside story. They might have tried to hire Pete and then Mercedes might have given him a counteroffer, I don't know.
- [51:36]
Jake Humphrey
But he got a promotion right when Lewis left. So that makes you wonder whether maybe that did happen.
- [51:41]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, there was probably a little bit of that going on and then Mercedes probably put it to bed, you know, does Pete want to follow Lewis and then be attached to Lewis? Because there is a risk of doing that with a driver because, you know, the driver's tenure in a team can be much more transient than an engineer's. So do you want to wedge yourself to a driver even with that relationship, you know, that longevity of relationship and success that they had. Do you want to do that? And then if Lewis leaves after one or two years, you are part of Lewis's team, and you're probably not, you know, you're being brought in by the driver. And that's a. That's something. It's kind of. It's a little bit like nepotism. Right. Fortunately, I've never had to deal with that, but I watch people deal with it, you know, and through no fault of their own at times. You know, if Peter had have followed Lewis to Ferrari, that would have been done purely on merit. Right. But there would be a lot of people there that would have thought, and the outside world that would have thought, well, this is kind of just another form of nepotism. And do you want to live with that? You know, is that something that you want, or do you want to have the headspace just to do, like, a great job? It wouldn't be something that I. Even though I know you're gonna ask me about this, probably it wouldn't be something that I want to do, which is to follow a driver.
- [53:01]
Jake Humphrey
Would you not?
- [53:02]
Rob Smedley
No, not really. Not really. I don't think so. I mean, a lot of people think that I followed Felipe to Williams.
- [53:09]
Jake Humphrey
I was about to say, but didn't you go to Williams because Felipe went there. That was what I assumed had happened.
- [53:13]
Rob Smedley
No. So what happened was I'd been talking to Williams for about 12 months, and then I finally decided that I wanted to do it. There was a few things that happened that kind of made my mind up, like on the. On the. On. On the positive side, on William's side, I said, money.
- [53:34]
Jake Humphrey
There you missed me saying, oh, money, money.
- [53:38]
Rob Smedley
I mean, that always helps, right? Like, we shouldn't shy away from the fact that that always helped. So that was helpful. And there was a few other things, and I thought, okay, the timing is right. It was tight. It was right for me personally as well, at that, you know, from a family point of view. And so I signed a contract with them. But part of signing the contract with them was that we needed better drivers than what they had. And of course, my recommendation, knowing that he was going to be able to contract the year after, was Felipe Massa. So I actually took. I actually introduced Felipe. There you go, Claire.
- [54:15]
Jake Humphrey
He followed you to Williams. You didn't follow him?
- [54:17]
Rob Smedley
He followed me to Williams. Williams desperate to keep the. The. The. The partnership alive. I would say no, but he followed me. So I. I can definitely say I've never followed a driver.
- [54:29]
Jake Humphrey
And on the subject of him Changing teams. I'm very interested in the fact that we, we don't really understand quite what it would have been like for Lewis to have gone to Ferrari this season. Why can someone who is a seven time Formula one World champion, eight time World Champion in some people's eyes, why would it be such a struggle for him? Aside from what we've spoken about, which is that new relationship with his race engineer, why is it so hard to change teams and drive a different Formula one car?
- [54:56]
Rob Smedley
Well, I think there's two things going on there from what I can see from the outer side and maybe just talking to people as well. Since the hybrid era started, Lewis has been less comfortable with the cars and you've seen his teammates get a lot closer to him. So, you know, it's still the hybrid era now with this. You know, when he went from Mercedes to Ferrari, it was still the same generation of cars. So I think Lewis was less comfortable than he's been when he won all of those world titles. And then the other thing is, it is a big change in environment. You know, I don't know Mercedes well. I know Ferrari very well and I know other teams very well. And the environment within Ferrari is very, very different. So there will be for sure technical differences, right? The way they approach a weekend, the way that they set the car up. So, so straight away you've got something that you are, you know, Mercedes and Lewis were, you know, Mercedes fit Lewis like a, like a pair of old slippers, right? He knew it, it was his team. Everything had been molded around him. Then you go into this team that has this hundred and odd year history where everything hasn't been molded around you. And in fact there's a very particular way of doing things. So like all of that suddenly feels uncomfortable. Then there is the inordinate amount of pressure that you get, right? You know, it's a great. So I.
- [56:26]
Jake Humphrey
He's Lewis Hamilton.
- [56:28]
Rob Smedley
He's Lewis Hamilton. But it's still very, very different. It is very different to the pressure that he will have felt in any other team. And I can say that because I've lived it. I lived and breathed the pressure of Ferrari. And like we talked about before, when I first went there and in those first years I felt the pressure a lot. It was, it was overpowering at times. And you see like, there's very few people who have longevity of career in Ferrari in senior positions because of that, because of the pressure, you see that they just cave. And then we had, you know, like my personal circumstances with like losing Minnie and it all changed for me. And that's how I think that made me survive there for so long. I don't know how Lewis has reacted to that pressure. And it's not only the pressure. It's not just the pressure, because, of course, he's an international sports person, as you've just said, he's got more accolades than most other drivers could ever dream of, and having lived through pressure and all the rest of it, but it's also the different way of doing things. And how does he communicate with the team? What sort of relationship has he got with the very senior management in the team? The relationship between him and Toto is well documented. Right. But what's his relationship now? Now he's got to build a relationship. You know, you're going from something where everything is very comfortable. You don't even have to. I was talking to an old colleague of mine last night on the pub, actually, about this when it's been really good in Formula one. You don't communicate, right? There's no, you don't have to communicate. Sounds weird. You don't communicate. Communication is like the key to success. You don't have to communicate about the small stuff. Of course, you communicate about the bigger stuff. But you know what somebody else is going to think, you know how somebody else is going to react, you know what they're doing, what they're thinking of. When there's a group of, you know, 10 to 20 of you that are the architects of, like, you know, the real success in a team. Lewis was part of that at Mercedes. He's now gone into something where he doesn't know any of that. So it's a destabilizing environment, and then there's different ways of doing things and different relationships. As I said, he was uncomfortable. He's been less comfortable with the hybrid. You know, that's documented. You can see it from the results, the hybrid cars.
- [58:52]
Jake Humphrey
I also think, you know, when the chairman came out and said, our drivers need to talk less, I remember seeing that and thinking, ron Dennis is never saying that about Lewis Hamilton. Toto Wolff is never saying that about Lewis Hamilton. I think that's the first time in his career a senior leader in the team he's driving for has come out and been critical of him.
- [59:10]
Rob Smedley
Yeah. And it's destabilizing. Right. So you can live with all the pressure in the world up to that point, but until that happens for the first time, it's a great point, Jake. It's the first time. Right, so. And the first time for Everything is, you gotta learn how to cope with things. And how did he cope with that? I don't know, but it must be uncomfortable, right? Your boss has basically come out and told you to shut up in public. It was pretty clear that was the message.
- [59:38]
Jake Humphrey
The problem with that team at the moment, I don't, I thought this anyway, I don't think it's the drivers. I think you need to look at the car, you know what I mean?
- [59:45]
Rob Smedley
Got two very good drivers.
- [59:46]
Jake Humphrey
You haven't got the fastest car on the grid.
- [59:48]
Rob Smedley
No, that's right. They haven't got the fastest car on the grid. And of course that brings more and more pressure. So how do you deal with that? How do you like keep the team focused and not focused on the negatives? And there's execution mistakes, you know, it's well documented. You can, it's not for me to say, I watch it on a Sunday afternoon. I see it. They're improving in certain areas, other areas less so. So that whole thing creates this environment, especially in Ferrari, where the pressure like grows and grows and grows. It's difficult to describe what it's like when you're inside of it. You know, I've seen, I have seen people, very, very good people, really good engineers, very, very competent, being broken by it. I guess Lewis isn't impervious to that. But the car needs to improve as well. You're right, the car and the team needs to improve. They have got two really good peddlers there. You know, Charles is a superstar, he's always been a superstar. Lewis needs no introduction. He's got, you know, he's a seven star general. There's a lot of work to do there and I don't think the drivers would be the first place that I was looking if I was running the team.
- [60:50]
Jake Humphrey
Before we go back to you and your career, if I could give you one Formula one driver on the grid today to race engineer, who would you choose? Oh, that was a quick. Why?
- [61:00]
Rob Smedley
Because he's just, he's my type of driver and he's just a competitor. That's what you, he, he is running my own business now. Like, and I like, you know when you interview people and you know, how much of a self starter are you? You know what a ridiculous question, like who's gonna answer and say I'm not a self starter, right. I can't do anything. You're gonna have to tell me what to do. Like 24 hours a day. Max is the epitome of somebody who brings his own motivation and drive Every hour of every day, right? He's so motivated. He is a winning machine. He wants to win. He is so competitive, right? So there's never any doubt about that, right? Of course every driver wants to win, but how much can they bring it of every hour of every day, how much can they be motivated to be the best? Not only to be the best, but to put a big gap between me and the next best. Right? Because that's what he wants to do. That's his. Somehow he finds that motivation from somewhere like the gap to the next best driver on the grid isn't big enough. I need it to be bigger and I need to outperform myself and I need to drag the team along. And that is, that is a powerful drug. When you have somebody on your side like that, you know, who is so self motivated, you have to have all the competency and, you know, all the ability and all of that, that's kind of a given, right? Formula One driver, But having that extra edge of, you know, self belief and being able to motivate yourself and being able to motivate those people around you, you know, that, that, that to me is, is, is what a complete driver is.
- [62:32]
Jake Humphrey
Look how he ended 20, 25. I mean, like just metronomic everything. Complete pressure.
- [62:38]
Rob Smedley
Yeah.
- [62:38]
Jake Humphrey
And he shows no signs also of letting up on his desire to be successful, does he?
- [62:42]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, that's it, right? He still wants it. He still wants it 110%. He wants it more than anyone else. It's clear he wants it more than anybody else. You know, as much as it'll probably pain the other 19 to hear this, that's why he's so successful, because he gets up every morning and he brings it, right? And he is motivated and you know, you give him, he's the classic driver that you give him an inch and he'll take a lot more from you. Right? And what does that do to all his other competitors? That sets them even further back, right? Because he just keeps going and going and going. I'm sure most of them are looking at him thinking, come on, Max, just have a day off, right? Just one day, please just have a weekend off so we can all do this. But he doesn't because it's not enough to beat people almost to the point where he wants to humiliate people. And I don't mean that in a negative way, I don't mean that in a nasty way, but that's what goes through his mind. He is the ultimate competitor. The question was, which driver would I want as a race engineer. It's him. Because that's what I want. Because that's how I feel at work. You know, I wanna like to the point of being unhealthy at times in my life. I've had to like check myself. I am so unbelievably competitive. You know, everything is a race. Even now, like, you know, as a, you know, in my middle age, right, I'm still like, everything is still like a little competition.
- [64:09]
Jake Humphrey
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- [66:23]
Jake Humphrey
I think even the great Max Verstappen, the way that his form dipped and the team's form dipped in the middle of the 2025 season, after, you know, the departure of people like Jonathan Wheatley and Adrian Newey and all of the social media and media conversations around Christian Horner and Christian leaving, it shows you how important environment is for results.
- [66:43]
Rob Smedley
100%, you can be at the absolute top of your game. You can be the best in the world at whatever your chosen thing is. If you don't have a psychologically safe space and you don't have honesty and you can't work as a team, you won't perform, Forget it. Forget it. Whatever your chosen field is, whether you are a Formula One driver, Premier League footballer, whether you're CEO of a FTSE 100 company, a Fortune 500 company, if you don't have all of those things right, you're not going to perform, forget it. Especially the honesty bit, right? And was with the whole way that that team was shaping up in the middle of the year and everything that happened the year before, were they all being honest with each other or were the factions. There's clear factions. They've come out and said it, right? If one thing Helmet is, is. Is. Is. If he's good for one thing, he's good for honesty, right? And he's come out and told the world about the factions within that team. How can you perform at the highest level when all of that is going on? And of course, even somebody as great as Max Verstappen, he's not able to do it. You know, teamwork, honesty, psychological, safe space.
- [67:55]
Jake Humphrey
Let's go back to your career. So 2008 comes to a kind of brilliant but also disappointing end. Hugely emotional for you, hugely emotional for Felipe and the whole team. 2009 starts and I remember, you know, that was my first season hosting F1 for the BBC and I remember seeing an unreliable Ferrari that was slow and weird things were happening. Like, I remember there was a moment where you thought you were low on fuel, so slowed the car down, right, and then realized that you weren't actually having an issue with fuel and ended up speeding up towards the end of the race. Do you remember that?
- [68:26]
Rob Smedley
I can't remember.
- [68:27]
Jake Humphrey
All sorts of stuff was going on. And against that backdrop, we have Hungary 2009. And you've seen this as well. And I was very early in my Formula one career, but the paddock is busy and it's buzzy. I mean, even more so now. But even back then it was busy, but loads going on. And as a member of the media, we were like searching for places to watch the coverage, which is a weird thing to say, isn't it? But you don't. You can either go back to the production office, which is, you know, where all the producers and everyone were, and watch your own coverage on the television, or you can go into a team motorhome, or you can often stand the paddock with your own monitor and just watch the sessions. And crashes happen regularly. Yeah, and sometimes a crash happens where like a silence, I think, almost comes from the crowd. Right. They. They realize it's not a normal accident and that filters towards the paddock. And I remember this moment actually in Hungary was my first ever experience where David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan, I was working with at the time, and some of the producers and production team had been in Formulon for a long time. I saw, was suddenly acting really different, like we were almost getting ready to go back on air, even though we were in the middle of a session. And I'm saying to the guys, there's like half an hour left of this session, and they're like, no, we might be coming back any minute. And I'm thinking, what's happening? Something strange has happened here. That was my first realization that Felipe being in the tyres wasn't a normal incident.
- [69:52]
Rob Smedley
Yeah.
- [69:54]
Jake Humphrey
What was your first understanding that something abnormal had happened.
- [69:58]
Rob Smedley
We just started the lap, well documented. He was following Rubens up the hill. Rubens was in the brawn car. And in fact, we were like, as much as we were having, like, as much as the car was an absolute dog, I think for me, the team, like, in terms of operations, had taken another little notch upwards from 2008. He'd taken another little notch upwards from. From 2008. He was consistently performing and performing really well. And I think that was a race definitely, which probably suited the car. And I thought that we would probably get a decent qualifying out of it, you know, even though the car was awful in real terms, he was always inside, like the top 10 in qualifying. So we just started the lap, I think it was qualifying two. He just started the lap. He's going up the hill to turn five. And then it looks to me, because I'm. I watch the squiggly lines, right? I watch the tv, but a lot of the time he's not on the tv. Most of the times I'm watching the squiggly lines, like the telemetry. So I'm watching The telemetry and I see him like start to slow down. It's not an accident, it's kind of like slowing down. And I'm like, oh, the engine's broken or gearbox broken. It's a classic. Like the car just like coming to a stop but a little bit faster. So I'm looking and as he's slowing down, I jump on a radio and go, mate, like, what's happened? There's no response. So then I immediately think he's pissed off, he didn't want to talk. Like he's in the middle of qualifying, gearbox is broke, engines broke, something like that, right? And then I kind of see him like come to an abrupt halt. Like, you know, the line goes down. So I'm like, oh, he's crashed. Actually, he wasn't just slowing the car down. Now he's crashed, but he's kind of slowing down. Then he crashes. I'm like, all right, this is weird. So I was like, what happened? No response. Then I'm asking the guys back in the garage, I'm saying, hang on, what's happened here? And one of them says to me, well, going up the hill, he's kind of like started to press the brake and started to press the accelerator at the same time. But he's like hard down on the brake and the accelerator. I'm like, oh, this is weird, right? I'm now like, this is a completely new situation. You're not understanding anything. And then it shows the in car camera of him. It flashes to that. Still haven't heard from him. And it shows the in car camera. And he's got his hands on the wheel, right? He's got his hands on the wheel, but he starts to veer over to the left hand side of the road. Then he goes over the curbs, then he goes over the, like from one side of the track to the other, bounces across the gravel into the tire wall. I'm like, he's just driven it into the wall, right? His hands are still on the wheel, which is really weird to watch anyway. When you see a driver going to the wall, you'll always see at the very last minute they'll take the hands off. So we're still like in this state where I've got no idea what's going on. Total confusion, right? Confusion from the garage, confusion from me. Nobody knows what's going on. And then at that point his radio opens and there was this like awful like guttural moaning, you know what I mean? Somebody in a lot of pain, like a Lot of pain.
- [73:14]
Jake Humphrey
Has he had to press the button for the radio to come open at that point?
- [73:17]
Rob Smedley
I don't know. I don't think he's in any fit state. I think he's been fumbling round. He's come to. He's been fumbling round and somehow he's just out of instinct, has pressed that button and he's opened it. He hasn't saying anything. He is. There's just an awful guttural moaning. And there was this sudden realization that this is. This is not normal. And thankfully, what I could do is I could turn his radio off, which going back to lighter times, like when he sometimes used to annoy me on the radio, I got the radio guys to set it up so I could turn his radio off if he was talking too much. So I turned it off.
- [73:58]
Jake Humphrey
Sort of. To protect him?
- [73:59]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, to protect him. Also the team, because the team could all hear it as well. And everybody was like, you know, what the fuck is going on here? Believe it or not, I watched the image like so many times and I just didn't see the spring, right? I just couldn't see it. And then it was literally like a couple of minutes later that Flavio Briatore come along the pit wall and he had an image, a still image. And you could just see this blurry thing like the in car camera. So up here on the roll hoop, he's driving along and you could just see this like black image. You couldn't. It was so blurry. And we thought it was a bird. And we were like, oh, my God, he's had a bird strike, right? And you start to think, well, it's knocked him out, right? A bird would knock him out, like, because a bird is, you know, it can be a reasonably sized thing and, you know, but it. But thankfully it's kind of made of cells and flesh and stuff like that. So he's gonna kind of make a mess of his helmet and be a big impact and knock him out. And then it started emerging that maybe something had come off Ruben's car. And then it came out that, you know, all of this is going on. That actually it was a. It was the third spring off the rear suspension. 800 grams, a kilogram, something like that. Oh, my God. And then, and then the image came out. There's a very famous image of when he gets out the car and his helmet is like completely destroyed down this left hand side visors up. And you can see like his art is incomplete.
- [75:38]
Jake Humphrey
And do you. Did you see that image then? At the time that it was happening?
- [75:41]
Rob Smedley
No, no, no, we couldn't see anything. They, they put the.
- [75:44]
Jake Humphrey
So you're still really unawares?
- [75:46]
Rob Smedley
Yeah.
- [75:46]
Jake Humphrey
Whilst they're working on him and the medics are with him.
- [75:48]
Rob Smedley
No idea.
- [75:48]
Jake Humphrey
You've had no information?
- [75:50]
Rob Smedley
No idea whatsoever. He got taken to the medical center, they sedated him, they give him a tracheotomy, like all of that type of stuff. And they airlifted him out. And we really had no idea. Absolutely no idea. And then like me and like the performance engineer on his car were not really in any fit state to work, so they took us to the hospital. But there wasn't really a great deal you could do. You could just sit and wait. And he was being operated on. It was the spring, it come through the helmet, like this big, big thing, like huge thing.
- [76:27]
Jake Humphrey
And had you been told anything about his condition? Because I think the worst thing in this situation is and this, the wildfire that spreads in the paddock. I mean, we were told on the BBC, don't repeat this please to the public, but that his life is really in danger here. This is a life threatening accident.
- [76:43]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, yeah, it was, it was. So we got there and thankfully by some stroke of like luck, there's a military hospital in Budapest and it has some of like the world's leading technology and doctors for head trauma. And so he got this guy who was amazing. But on that Saturday night it was, you know, he's in theater and you know, we don't really know whether he's gonna make it.
- [77:19]
Jake Humphrey
My goodness.
- [77:24]
Rob Smedley
Sorry. They put him in an induced coma. And then I think by the Sunday night things were, you know, he was a lot more stable, but it was still, you know, he's still kind of touch and go. I went to the track on the Sunday, probably shouldn't have done cause I wasn't very present, but I went there to support the team. And then he slowly started to emerge and, and I think at that point if you've, if you've been through stuff like that, there's always a lot of noise about, you know, will he ever get back in a car? And you're kind of like, well, that's not important right now, right? His wife was pregnant with little Felipe and it's like, is he gonna make it? And then it's kind of like you start to think like a long, long way down the line, like, you know, will he get back in a car? And like, is it important anymore? And all the rest of it. The funny, thankfully part of the story was I went back to work. They flew. So Montezmelo. Luca Demonte. Emilio was the chairman of the team at the time. Came over on the Sunday night. And then we spent the Sunday night in the hospital, and then the Monday, and it looked like, you know, things were. He was more stable. He was critical, but stable.
- [78:52]
Jake Humphrey
But you still couldn't have spoken to him after.
- [78:54]
Rob Smedley
No, no, no. He was in an induced coma. So we flew back to Bologna, and then I went to work. Fairly difficult week at work. And then the following weekend, they flew me back out to Budapest. And when I went in the room. So I went in the room. And by that point we knew he was out of the coma and he was, like, recovering. And I went in the room, and it was quite shocking, to the point that it was funny. Cause his head was literally about twice the size of what it normally would be. And it was all black and blue. Like, literally his whole head was like, black and blue. And he first started talking Portuguese to me. Then he didn't know I was. Then he thought he drove for McLaren. And then I think the next race was, like, in two weeks at that point. Cause it was the first of the summer break. So it was in two weeks. And then when he kind of worked out who I was and who he drove for, he kept saying to me, tell John I'll be back in the car. Or Stefano. I think Stefano is in charge at that point. Give Stefano a ring and tell him I'll be back in the car next week. I can come testing on Monday. I'm feeling a lot better now. We were like, okay. So we look back on that with fond amusement. But at the time, horrendous. And thankfully for me, what happened was there was the summer break, and actually I went with my family. I didn't want to travel. I was so tired of traveling. So we just went down to Dorset, and it was a typical summer holiday on a Dorset beach. Like, sat in your ski gear, laid on the beach. And I remember thinking to myself, I don't know whether I want to do this anymore. Really? Yeah. It was quite an emotional time for me. And I just thought, I don't know whether I want to do it anymore. Because, you know, just as I'd gone through with Minnie, you know, this is a guy that I'd got very close to. We had and still have, like, you know, almost like a family bond. And we're just at work doing our job. And then you think, you know, do you want to be involved in something where that can happen? And I come to the conclusion that I did want to do it. I wanted to carry on, and I'm glad I did, because I. I thoroughly enjoyed, like, you know, the remainder of my time in Formula one. But it was. It was. There was a lot of soul searching and a lot of talking, you know, and I was very clear with. With Ferrari as well. I said, I don't know whether I want to do it anymore.
- [81:31]
Jake Humphrey
And I guess what you're saying is, as any parent does before their child is born, you've already given them your heart and your love. Right. Your heart was broken when your daughter passed away. You then give your heart and your love to the driver because you didn't have a normal driver engineer relationship. And again, the fear was your heart could have been broken if you'd have lost Felipe, and this was just a price. Too much.
- [81:54]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, yeah, totally. Like, nothing's worth that, right? And that was kind of how I approached it. I didn't. I didn't really, like, you don't want to go to work with the chance that, you know, you can lose a colleague. You know, of course, that's just. Can be life. Like, you know, your colleague goes under a bus. But, like, what's the heightened probability of this happening? Well, you know, it's much higher in Formula 1. And am I ready to accept that? Is it worth that? And I come to the conclusion that I did want to carry on, and it was important to me. And. And. And as much as it was important to me, I also knew that he would want to come back, because I just know that the person that he is. And he did. And we carried on emotional. Very, very. Yeah. Tough.
- [82:48]
Jake Humphrey
Yeah. And what was it like when he. When he made the decision to come back? Because obviously, you don't know if you're gonna have the same racing driver. He doesn't know if he's gonna be the same racing driver. The team don't know either. How did your relationship as engineer, driver change at that moment?
- [83:03]
Rob Smedley
Well, I think. I think the big unknown at that point is, is he, like, how much is. Has it affected him?
- [83:08]
Jake Humphrey
Yeah.
- [83:09]
Rob Smedley
How much has this put him on the back foot? Up until that moment in qualifying in Budapest, we had had the complete driver. So what. What's going to change when he comes back? And the reality was, you know, there was a lot of trepidation around that, and we set up some private tests for him. We did a private test at Fiorano, then we did a private test at Barcelona. And I can remember, you know, talking to Stefano Domenicali, who was the team principal at that point, and him saying to me, you know, what do you think? And, like, you know, like, keep me informed and like, you know, if you see anything different, because it's really important that we're honest about the situation, you know, for him and for the team and all the rest of it. And I can remember very distinctly he went out on his first run and I remember watching the telemetry and we were, you know, I can't remember who the reference lap was, but there was some, like, fairly handy test driver. And I remember just watching him against the reference. I remember Stefano calling me during that, that very first run. I don't think he knew, like, where we'd be on the program, but we were actually in the middle of the first run and Filipe hadn't even come back in. And he said to me, oh, what do you think? What do you think? Have you. Have you seen anything? And I said, no change. He's exactly, in terms of speed, he's exactly the same driver that he was. And he was. And it was kind of like, I think that then the environment that he came back into in 2000, you know, it was a team that, you know, Kimmy had left, Fernando had come in. It was less of an environment that was molded around him as it was at the end of or in the middle of 09, at the end of, like, 08. And I think that he perhaps struggled with that more than anything, but as a driver, as purability, he was. There was no difference between the guy that, you know before and after the accident.
- [85:03]
Jake Humphrey
Wow. I mean, was there a moment where physically he was able to do it again, but psychologically that was. That was a barrier.
- [85:11]
Rob Smedley
I think the psychology came into it, Jake, but not because of the accident. I think the psychology came into it because the team at that point was very much focused on Fernando. That was just like how we were. And Fernando was a machine. Like Fernando at that point was like having Max in the car. So of course they're going to focus on that.
- [85:31]
Jake Humphrey
Of course, all this had happened while Filippo was away. Like, Jimmy left and Fernando arrived whilst Felipe's recuperating and suddenly things are different, right?
- [85:40]
Rob Smedley
Things are different. You come into a different environment. It's exactly what we just talked about with Lewis. So you walk into a different environment, you come out with something that was very comfortable, that he had built around himself, and the team had obviously migrated towards him because he was the guy that was delivering. And then you come back into a Very different environment. And you're like, oh, this feels different, and that relationship feels different. And, like, the focus is less. It's not 80% on me anymore. It's now it's even swayed the other way, and all of those things are destabilizing. And that was probably the first time as a top driver that he'd had to go through that. And, you know, we spent a lot of time. And that was a difficult period for him, you know, that 10 and 11 season, you know, trying to get back on terms. And Fernando is a driver that again, you know, he's a guy that I've got a huge amount of respect for. You know, as a competitor. He's very much like Max. He just brings it every single day. He never has a day off. So coming in into a different environment with a very, very fierce competitor, I think that's where the psychology played against Felipe in that period.
- [86:49]
Jake Humphrey
When you talk about Fernando being a fierce competitor, paint a picture around that for us. What does that look like in real terms that people like me and our audience could understand?
- [87:00]
Rob Smedley
You are fully focused on your mission of winning. You know, that Fernando Alonso wins the race. You know, Fernando comes into every single race weekend 100% focused on that mission, right? And 100% focused on the bigger prize as well, the World championship. You have an inordinate amount of confidence, right? Not arrogance, confidence, because it's founded, in fact, you know, it's not a superficial thing. You just are very, very good at your job. It's that motivation and focus on. On beating everybody, which, you know, unfortunately for Felipe, also meant his teammate. It was very much trying to beat, you know, Seb and the Red Bulls at that point, but it was, you know, included everybody else. And, you know, he was. He found himself that the team, like, rallied around him very quickly, and he found himself in an environment that really suited him. You know, he speaks perfect Italian, as does Felipe, by the way, but everything kind of worked around him. And then that, you know, little bit of success at the start of that. Of that trajectory. It's like we talked about before, like Nurburgring 06. It creates more success and it creates more momentum, and momentum is a drug and all the rest of it. And you just keep going and going and going until you've got this guy who, like Max Verstappen, you know, in 2025, is just a beast, right? He's just a winning machine. They never have a day off, right? They never give their competitors, you know, the tiniest of millimeters because they're just too strong, you know. And even if they do have, even if there is are a few chinks in their armor like that, because they're humans, at the end of the day, it's such a fleeting moment that, you know, everybody kind of rubs their hands together and say, oh, that's it, you know, now we're going to see the downward turn and then the next, you know, the very next session or next race or next event or whatever, they're back. And then you're like, oh, when's this guy gonna have a day off?
- [88:59]
Jake Humphrey
Was there a behavior or a moment from Fernando that you saw when you thought, okay, that is an example of pure brilliance.
- [89:07]
Rob Smedley
2012 Silverstone we had a bit of a dog of a car or it certainly wasn't the best car. It was a decent car, but not the best. It was damp, so, you know, tricky, changeable conditions. Start of the race, it was damp. He got away and he got in front. Right. Which we shouldn't have been in front. I can't remember where we qualified, but it wasn't anywhere near the front. And we had kind of, on paper, no chance of winning the race. I remember around that first lap just listening to some of the talk on the pit wall about, not like negative talk, but pragmatic talk about once the Red Bulls got in front and how we could like stay close to the Red Bulls. And I can remember kind of half listening to this, but watching him go around the lap and looking at his mini sectors and looking like, you know, because he was his telemetry up as well as Felipe's telemetry and comparing them and thinking, I think this guy's going to run away with the race, I don't think you need to worry about when the Red Bulls get in front. And of course he did it. He just, the car was probably, if it was anything, it was good enough for third and he ran away and won the race at the canter, you know, like easily. He just dominated that day. And I think there's moments like that when you see just pure brilliance, you know, when the driver outperforms the car and that's. I think we don't see enough of those moments in Formula one because usually it's the car that is all dominant. Right. You know, Lewis won a lot of world championships. He was in the best car at the time. That's not to take anything away from Lewis. He's, you know, one of the all time greats. When you see a season like what Max has just done, where he's consistently outperforming the car. That's when you just see pure brilliance of these athletes. And that's what Formula one fans want, right? And me, like, I could almost watch that race, even though I was watching it from the Ferrari pit wall, you know, that's when you kind of know you feel like a fan again because you're just watching pure brilliance unfold in front of you. Yeah. And he won the race. There's probably tons of incidents like that, but that was a big standout one.
- [91:16]
Jake Humphrey
And the most famous incident involving you, Felipe and Fernando, you know what that is, don't you?
- [91:21]
Rob Smedley
I can't remember. Jake, are you gonna tell me?
- [91:23]
Jake Humphrey
Well, I'm hoping you tell me. Cause it'll be great. In the trailer, the radio call, the.
- [91:28]
Rob Smedley
Famous radio call, which was, felipe, Fernando is faster than you. And a lot of people have that on their ringtones. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially when I'm at races, people go listen to my ringtone.
- [91:42]
Jake Humphrey
So this was at a time, though, when team orders weren't allowed, right?
- [91:44]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [91:45]
Jake Humphrey
So when someone says to you on the team, oh, by the way, can you tell your driver to drop behind Fernando before you deliver that very famous radio message? I could be one of the most famous ever in the sport. Are you not having a battle on the pit wall to say no, that's.
- [91:58]
Rob Smedley
That.
- [91:59]
Jake Humphrey
That actually can't happen because it's against the rules, or I refuse to do it because it's against sporting integrity, or it doesn't feel right because I have a bond with the driver. You're asking. This is going to break him.
- [92:09]
Rob Smedley
Yeah. I mean, first of all, I mean, our mutual mate DC has, David Coulthard for the non F1 fans, has a very clear view on this, which I agree with. I don't think that should ever be delivered to by the race engineer. Right. I think that the race engineer's job there is to maximize the performance of their driver. Right. And you can't ask them to do that for six days a week and then ask them to, like, deliver real bad news messages. That, by the way, isn't like, my decision on the seventh day of the week. So first of all, I would make that statement. I do agree with David on that in that particular moment. Look, I think that we all work for, like, when we all get paid, including the two drivers at the end of the month, it says Scuderia Ferrari on top of the paycheck. That's a very clear covenant that we work for Ferrari. So it's not about Like Felipe Massa. It's not about Fernando Alonso, it's not about Rob Smedley, it's not about anybody else. It's about Ferrari. But where I don't think we were very clear on that day was that that was going to happen. Right. And why that needed to happen. And I think that's where the conversation that was more what the conversation was based around on the pit wall.
- [93:23]
Jake Humphrey
What were you saying to them?
- [93:24]
Rob Smedley
Well, I was asking why we needed to do that because, you know, at that point it was like, oh, he's, he's. He's a lot faster. So, you know, and then, like, I asked Felipe if he had any more pace and he delivered a bit more pace, and I was like, it doesn't look like he's a lot faster. It just looks like Felipe's controlling the race at the front. And so this was like the conversation that was going on. And then in the end, you know, we decided that this was the message that had to be given. So I gave the message. You know, Felipe was very upset about it.
- [93:57]
Jake Humphrey
What did he say to you?
- [94:00]
Rob Smedley
We had some choice words. I mean, he was super upset with everybody.
- [94:06]
Jake Humphrey
Was he upset with you?
- [94:08]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, he was. Because, like, I'd had to deliver the message. I was part of the team that had done that. And that's where the bit. I think that's the bit that I probably would disagree with. Then you go back and say, well, we were delivering at that point a message that perhaps wasn't within the sporting regulations. It just played out in a bad way. It's one of those incidents that when I look back on it, you know, there's a lot of things that, you know, I look back and I am human. I've been in high pressure situations, even not high pressure situations. And as a human, I've up right many times. Right. And I look back on that and I go, that was great. Because that was learning and I wouldn't change a thing. Right. Even the pain that I went through at the time, I think at that time, it's one of those that you look back and just wish that we had all done it differently. You know, that us as a team and the way the drivers were and the way that Felipe was and the way that I was and everything like that is the one time, the one professional time in life that you kind of look back and say, yeah, I wish we'd been able to do that one differently.
- [95:14]
Jake Humphrey
Would you do it again if you were put in that situation now? Would you just refuse to deliver the news.
- [95:20]
Rob Smedley
I think if there was perfect sliding doors, we would have talked about it. We would have all understood what the situation was. That that's actually, you know, the outcome of the race. The outcome. Outcome that we wanted, as, you know, the company wanted. And at that point, when it's all clear and it's all communicated, there's. What recourse is there, you know, let's just get on with it. Let's just deliver the plan. Whether or not that's Felipe wins or Fernando wins doesn't really matter. And we all know and we all go into it with our eyes wide open. I think that's what I would. Would like to change. When you go back and then me delivering the message and executing the plan is much easier at that point. There's much less emotion to it. There's much less confusion to it.
- [95:57]
Jake Humphrey
And what about Fernando behind closed doors after that moment? Because that's also a fascinating insight into the mindset of a world champion.
- [96:05]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, I think, I think Fernando, at that point, I remember talking to him very briefly, you know, afterwards, like after the race and then after. And then I think wherever the next race was, we were chatting and I think he even came to the factory. We were chatting about it as well. Fernando is very good at. Like I talked about before, when you have, like, you know, kind of releasing that pressure of that negative pressure. At least Fernando is impervious to that as. As an athlete, he never feels that. Right. As long as he's got the people around him that he needs, which doesn't always have to include the team, by the way. From what I've observed, he's totally impervious to it. So Fernando was like, you know, to him, it was like, I don't even know what we're talking about. Like, what are we even discussing? Like, did that happen? He's just onto the next thing. He just wants to win.
- [96:54]
Jake Humphrey
So he wasn't like, apologetic or anything like, oh, I'm really sorry this had to happen?
- [96:59]
Rob Smedley
No. As far as he was concerned, the team had made a decision and he was, you know, he was a part of that execution. Like, you know, everybody else was part of the execution of, of. Of that plan, and he just did his part and Felipe did his part and I did my part and, like, what are we even talking about? Let's focus on winning the next race.
- [97:20]
Jake Humphrey
It'd be very different if it had been Felipe overtaking Fernando. I bet you.
- [97:25]
Rob Smedley
I think so.
- [97:27]
Jake Humphrey
And was he a contracted number one driver, Fernando at Ferrari?
- [97:30]
Rob Smedley
Oh, I couldn't Tell you that?
- [97:33]
Jake Humphrey
I bet you could if you wanted. No, I bet you asked the question, though.
- [97:37]
Rob Smedley
Of course I asked the question, and the answer that I always got very, very clearly was, no, he's not. Like, we've got two equal drivers. Like, everything is equal between the drivers. But whether or not the contract said something different, you know, I don't know that because I never saw them.
- [97:52]
Jake Humphrey
What do you suspect?
- [97:54]
Rob Smedley
I suspect that we did actually have two contracts that were fair to both drivers. I suspect that. But I suspect also that Fernando, given his brilliance, there was a natural tendency to want to get him as many points as possible, knowing that we probably didn't have the fastest car to give ourselves the best chance of winning the World Championship. And I think that then puts the team in a very difficult situation, because how do you keep your other driver motivated knowing that every point on the table has to go to the other guy, regardless of whether you're having a great day or not, and regardless of whether it's race one or, you know, race 18, we're kind of going into this season knowing that, you know, we've got to back one of you because we don't have the car that we can just let it battle out like McLaren did in 25. And the one that we've chosen is Fernando. So I suspect that's probably how it went down, but I don't know because, you know, I was too busy doing my job to kind of worry about that from that point on.
- [98:55]
Jake Humphrey
And, of course, correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression that Felipe would have thought, hold on. I've nearly delivered you a world title, did everything I could have done. I've almost died in the car to be successful for Ferrari. I've gone away, done everything I can to get back to being the best Formula one driver I can, and now I've come into a team where I'm being treated in a different way. Is that a good summation of what Felipe's mindset would have been at that time?
- [99:19]
Rob Smedley
That is a good summation of what his mindset was, definitely.
- [99:23]
Jake Humphrey
So what did you then do to keep him operating at the very best that he could?
- [99:28]
Rob Smedley
We kind of went back to basics because what started to happen to Felipe in that moment was he started to overdrive. He started to overthink. He started to try and rail against rage, against the machine, if you like. And it was kind of like taking it back to basics with him again. It was almost like an 06 moment where, let's get it back to Basics. Let's start to deliver on what we can deliver and let's start to build this back up to something that, you know, is going to be where we can get you back on, on a much more even keel. It's about, a lot of times in life, it's about, you know, not trying to control the things that you can't control. If everybody is, you know, you know, it's. It's the most popular kid at school, right? You can't control that everybody else, you know, thinks the most popular kid at school is the most popular kid at school, as all you can do is do your best. Right. Or the kid who, you know at school who gets all the favors off the teachers, right? You can't control that. You can't control, like, what they're doing. You can only control what you're doing. And it was a lot of talking with him professionally and as a friend about that type of stuff and also, like, technically, like bringing it back to basics. Right? Okay, let's stop over trying here. Let's. Because, you know, the more, you know, we're already trying at 120% and it's not working. And so now you're going to try 125% and it's going to work even less. Let's just try and get it back to working at 10. 10. So, yeah, there was a lot of that that went on and it's moments like that, like we talked about before, like, you know, what's the psychology between the technical coaching and the psychological coaching? Definitely in moments like that, you're almost 80% psychology, 80, 90% some days, 100%, you know, because you know that the biggest, your biggest performance center at that point is the driver. And if you can get the driver back on track, you know, whether the car's like 1 or 2/10 faster or whether or not he's optimized with that car and blah, blah, blah, that's like much less important to where the driver's at right now.
- [101:27]
Jake Humphrey
I can't let you go without talking about two things. The first one is you. Then after leaving Ferrari, went to Williams and the team was struggling regularly, finishing 10th in the championship battle. You go, and suddenly you're right at the centre, if not the front of the midfield, just behind the biggest teams. What did you see at Williams when you arrived? And I know this is tricky in a couple of minutes, but the sort of the message you gave them that you think made the biggest difference. And maybe we should do part two of this podcast at Some point and go a bit deeper on this.
- [102:01]
Rob Smedley
Yeah, I'd be up for that. So what I saw, the biggest thing that I saw is that they weren't being honest with you themselves. You know, the, the, the bit that I wanted to get sorted as soon as possible was how we operated at the track. And I saw that it was a team that was not particularly honest with themselves, you know, and the most stark presentation of that to me was my second race, which was the Chinese Grand Prix, and we did a 60 second pit stop. And I always flippantly describe it as like watching morris dancing. I mean, it was awful. It was awful. And I remember sitting on the pit stop thinking, what the fuck have I done here? Right? You gone from Ferrari where like, you know, that you might not have the capability within the car, but every year there's an expectation you win the world championship to a team that had finished 10th and 11th and 11th or something in the past three years. And now I'm looking at this pit stop thinking, oh, my God. And what I found from that, that was really like a catalyst for me because I started to talk to all the individual stakeholders in the factory and in the race team and say, like, why do you think we did a 60 second pit stop? And all of them were very clear that the bit that they were responsible for was great, right? But there was something else somewhere else in the ether where it hadn't worked. And that's why we've done a 60 second pit stop. And you go back to basics and just pare it back and say, guys, what are we trying to achieve here? Are we trying to achieve our individual targets, that I've designed the best wheel nut or, you know, I've delivered the best wheel gun or something? Or are we trying to do the fastest pit stop? Because that's what's important here. And if we want to do that, we've got to be really honest with ourselves that we're just a bit shit, right? And that's not to say that, you know, that that's a really flippant comment. We're a bit shit, but we're certainly not at the level of where the top teams are. And then, you know, that was kind of a microcosm, I think, of how we operated as a team. And it was like, let's just be honest with each other. It's fine that we make mistakes, right? This is a really high pressure environment, but let's create a psychologically safe environment where we will be, you know, we will be praised as individuals for holding our hand up and go, oh, I made a mistake here. Please note that down because we don't want to do that again. And that's what we did. We just started to work for, from, you know, on. On the technical delivery of the weekend of the team itself. We started to be very open and honest with each other. Like when we made mistakes, like, you know, it was almost a culture, like six months in where people were like, you know, couldn't wait to like, be the one that were. Well, I made the biggest mistake, you know, I made the biggest fuck up during the weekend. And by the way, like, when there's a mistake like that, you always get the poor woman or man holding the hot potato, right? But there's always a chain of like 100 events that's brought them to, like, this person holding the hot potato. And that could have started like four weeks ago. So that was another, like, you know, let's start attacking the source problem, not, like blaming the guy who's holding the hot potato. So it was just a lot of, like, creating, like, trying to gel the team, trying to bring, like, more technology and, and more technical excellence, but creating that culture that we got to be honest with each other, right. If we're not honest, we're never going to, like, move out of where we are. So that was a really interesting couple of years. And, yeah, we had some good results, certainly, I think, and I'm sure James will be upset with me saying this, but James Vowel, who's current team principal, the most successful period in Williams since 97. So there you go.
- [105:38]
Jake Humphrey
You did okay. And your focus now, for people who are thinking, I'd love to see Rob Smedley back in Formula one, either on a pit wall or in some kind of leadership role. What fills your time now is based around what you learned and what you gathered in Formula one. But I think from the time that we spent together today fulfills you in a different way maybe to how Formula one did.
- [106:01]
Rob Smedley
I knew that it was time for me to step back from Formula one. I didn't know whether I wanted to retire from it fully, but I knew it was time to step back because I wasn't. I wasn't as motivated by it as I had been. And that was around, like, 2018, 2017, 2018. And I thought, to be fair to my employers and everybody else, it's time to step back. I don't. I'm not coming to make up the numbers. I'm not coming to do Formula one. It doesn't interest me. So I stepped back. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but what I had been, like, incredibly fortunate from the background, from where I'm from, I'd been, like, really fortunate to have this amazing career and I wanted to find some way to give back. And that's where the whole karting league started, and to bring that level of, you know, everything that we've talked about in this podcast, all of that focus, all of that continuous improvement, that culture of excellence that exists in Formula One, how do you bring that down to the grassroots? How do you change it? How do I go from, like, a thousand kids involved in karting because it's so expensive? How do I change the system to get literally hundreds of thousands of kids involved, which we've got now? And that's what I'm focused on. So, you know, fat Karting League, which is. I run it in collaboration with business partner Ferdi Porsche of the Porsche family. It's a fun thing to do. It's a fun thing to get kids into the sport, but I think I'm taking everything that Formula One has taught me over a long career in Formula One and applying it down at the grassroots. And that's not normal, right? People don't step out of Formula One and go, well, I'll go and do, like, I'll go back to the very beginning, the very lowest tier of motorsport, but for me, it's, like, super fulfilling. Like, will I come back to Formula One? I think I will at some point. I think I'm a little bit too old now to do the old race engineer, chief engineer, head of performance bit. I think that I would come back, you know, has to be on my terms and I don't want to sound like a twat by saying that. I don't mean to sound like a twat, but it. But it needs to be on my terms. It needs to be a project that I'm interested in and I need to have some ownership as well. You know, I can't just come and work with somebody, not after working for myself for five years. I'm unemployable.
- [108:14]
Jake Humphrey
Well, join the club. It's been great to sit down and chat. I've got such fond memories of our time together and, you know, thank you so much for being so honest, so open and giving us such amazing value. It was fantastic.
- [108:26]
Rob Smedley
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
- [108:28]
Jake Humphrey
I've loved it. Top man Rob. Thank you, mate. If you enjoyed this conversation, there are so many great Formula One chats. That you can find Carlos Sainz, Fernando Alonso, David Coulthard, Jensen Button, Christian Horner, Toto Wolff, Susie Wolff, Lando Norris, and so many more. If I read them all out, we'd be listening to this for another week. Don't forget we release new conversations every Monday. You can also watch these episodes on YouTube. But please, if you love this YouTube hit, follow and maybe pass this episode to someone that you think would love it as well. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.
- [109:23]
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Jake Humphrey
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