Claire Williams OBE

Often perceived as a male-dominated sport, Formula One has invested heavily in gender diversity, also generating equal opportunities and inclusion for anyone from an under-represented group or background. That journey began over 20 years ago with initiatives including F1 In Schools and Formula Student seeking to motivate children of school age as well as undergraduates from every background to consider a career in Formula One.
The Formula 1 Academy , launched in 2023, is developing female talent across the sport, whether as future F1 drivers, engineers or management, The sport’s governing body, the FIA, operates the FIA Girls on Track programme, again providing young women and girls from around the world with opportunities across motorsport. Individual Formula 1 team are also running important, game-changing initiatives, including Mercedes F1’s ‘Accelerate ‘25’ programme which aims to ensure that 25% of all new employees are selected from under-represented cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.
Seven times World Champion Lewis Hamilton, the first black driver to compete in Formula 1, has worked with Mercedes to creative mentorship and educational programmes for girls’ schools in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. Hamilton’s Mission 44 organization has set about driving structural change with motorsport to ensure that anyone of colour can develop career opportunities in Formula 1. Meanwhile Race Pride charity has attracted widespread support from Formula 1 and its constituent teams, supporting the LGBTQIA+ community across the industry.

The requirements of Formula One’s team leaders have changed significantly in recently years as teams have become larger, more complex, and the business model to which the sport operates has been transformed.  The leaders in F1 today are responsible for leading up to 1800 full time employees, creating a high-performance organisation which is fully aligned behind a strategy aimed at achieving a set of well defined, ambitious goals.
Competitive team leaders create a culture in which team personnel take responsibility and are happy to be held accountable for their performance.  Developing a high degree of psychological safety is key, requiring staff to speak up and speak out, with strong cross functional communications.  A relentless focus on continuous improvement is part of the F1 leaders mindset, and teams take a data-driven approach to measuring performance, highlighting issues and analysing developments. But whilst F1 is a technocentric sport, the successful leaders recognise that it is the people who make a difference. This is why so much effort is deployed to create an environment within which employees thrive, using their combined talents to problem solve and create highly innovative solutions in order to drive competitive advantage.

Competitive Formula One teams comprise 1800 staff, less than 10% of whom attend the race events, so teamwork requires complete alignment, shared purpose and close collaboration across the business.  The world championship includes 24 Grands Prix and these represent a series of non-negotiable deadlines which the entire organisation has to meet in terms of car development, hardware and software upgrades.  The ultimate, public example of high-performance teamwork comes in the form of the mandatory pit stops which have to be performed during a race – the record now stands at 1.8 seconds during which 22 staff carry out 36 tasks under extreme pressure. Alignment behind the team’s strategies and ambitious goals is vital, so too having the agility to flex the strategy in the face of constant changes in technology and the performance of competitors.

Formula One motor racing has placed safety at the centre of its regulatory, technical and operational focus for over 30 years, but it has been the cultural shift among these high performing teams of men and women competing at the forefront of the world championship which has had the greatest impact on the sport’s safety revolution.
Given the importance of human factors and behaviours in managing risk, ensuring safety and guaranteeing positive outcomes, F1 has also broadened the scope of its safety programmes to include the health, wellbeing and psychological safety of team members, giving everyone a voice. F1 teams recognise that mental health, physical fitness and overall wellness are key to ensuring the best outcomes are achieved and sustained.

Safety is a first order priority in Formula One and the last 30 years have seen a profound change to the way in which the sport manages risk. Between 1950 and 1994, there were over 40 driver fatalities at races; there has been one since. This has been made possible by creating clear priorities as regards safety. Compliance is non-negotiable. Safety is not an area of competitive advantage. Safety systems, processes and technologies are shared so that F1 doesn’t have islands of excellence in oceans of mediocrity.
However, the risk averse teams never win in F1 – the teams which embrace and manage risk are more likely to try new things, innovate in ways both small and large, and ultimately drive competitive advantage. It’s the difference between participating and competing. The other factor is ‘fear of failure’. Teams that have a blame culture create such a degree of fear that everyone minimises their contribution and hides their mistakes, whereas those which thrive on creating a learning environment of continuous improvement have a degree of openness, honesty and transparency which promotes creativity and innovation, and taking risks, in a controlled way.

The science behind enabling peak human performance, both physical and mental, has played a pivotal role in developing the way in which Formula One drivers and team personnel realise their potential in this enormously demanding sport. High performance coaches focus on aspects including physical training, nutrition, diet, hydration and optimising sleep patterns. All the teams now recognise that health and well-being is critical when building teams capable to delivering winning outcomes in a high-pressure environment.
This holistic approach to physical and mental health and well-being used to be confined to Formula One drivers but, over the last 20 years, teams expanded that to include the pit crews and travelling personnel. Today Formula One teams invest in the wellbeing of all personnel, whether factory based or travelling. Mental health has become a major focus as teams seek to help staff develop the focus, sustained performance and mental toughness to deal with the relentless challenge of this high-performance environment.