JR Hildebrand

JR Hildebrand (JRH) is a professional racing driver who’s competed in the last nine consecutive Indianapolis 500s in addition to various other forms of motorsport during his career. He is also an adjunct lecturer for the REVS Program at Stanford University where he works with—and keeps a watchful eye over—his future autonomous competition. JR here. On Friday March 13th the gears of the global motorsport industry started locking up, and by the next day it had come to a screeching halt in response to the coronavirus pandemic. That weekend was set to be the kickoff of the Formula One and IndyCar seasons, while many other championships across the globe had just begun. As the cascade of postponements and cancellations fell, it left the entire industry scrambling to stay relevant and generate some kind of value to stay afloat. In the absence of racing on-track, motorsport has shifted to the virtual world, and it’s just now coming up for air.It’s worth noting that the experience of playing racing games is, and has always been, more true-to-life than gaming in other sports. Simply put, if you’re playing NBA2K or MLB The Show, you’re not making any of the same physical inputs that you would in a basketball or baseball game. Whereas if you’ve got a steering wheel and pedals connected to your Xbox, Playstation, or PC, regardless of the realism of the game, you’re doing a lot of the same basic things that you would to drive a real car. Add to it the laser-scanned racetracks that clone every bump and crack as they are in real-life, vehicle models built from real-world car data, and force-feedback gaming hardware that mimics the sensation of steering load, brake pressure, and even motion cueing (pitch, roll, bumps, and yaw) and you’ve got something that’s actually very deep in realism.McLaren F1 driver Lando Norris at his home setupThis is a space that’s evolved quickly over the last decade, but remained separate from real-world racing competition until now. All the pieces were there—major championships, as well as auto manufacturers, have been licensing their tracks and vehicles for use across various virtual racing platforms for decades. There was reason to believe it would all collide. Nissan and Porsche created gaming partnerships to assess and develop talent for their real-world racing programs, NASCAR and F1 both began hosting eSports championships in parallel to their real-life product, and Formula E hosted a big-money virtual e-Prix in Las Vegas pitting the best gamers and sim-racers against their real drivers. Sanctioning bodies, however, have been very careful not to take attention away from “the real thing.” But with the real thing suddenly on hold, that hesitation went out the window and these two worlds accelerated toward each other quickly, bracing for impact.Why is this interesting?Motorsport sanctioning bodies have by and large replicated what they currently do in the real world to represent their presence virtually. NASCAR and IndyCar both immediately announced their own all-pro virtual championships, using their cars with almost exclusively their drivers (by invitation only) at their tracks. The races broadcast on TV, providing some familiar distribution to fans and visibility to sponsors. The sanctioning bodies presented this as something serious and competitive, so people have responded to it that way—good, bad, or otherwise. It returned some semblance of value to sponsors and partners, but also resulted in drivers scrambling to get a hold of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment and spending hours per day coming to grips with their realistic, but not-actually-real-feeling, virtual race cars. Some came out looking great, some received death threats, and most agreed it was burning them out.Now free of real-world constraints like budgets, travel, and schedule, those same drivers have been taking full advantage of the freedoms the virtual world has to offer. They’re racing cars they’ve never raced in real-life, often at tracks they’ve never been to. They’ve hosted their own events or joined established eSports organizations to compete against other drivers they’d never otherwise race, sometimes across the globe. When designing their own competitions, they often leave the exact format, car, and track combination unknown until everyone’s logged in so there’s no way to fully prepare, and they’re having a blast doing it.There is a dichotomy in these two approaches. One is controlling and closed off, the other is loose and accessible. One is predictable, one is surprising. One is established, one is experimental. Motorsport is absolutely at a critical juncture looking to the future. And not just because of this pandemic. It’s built on a television advertising model that’s shifting and auto manufacturer support that’s quickly redistributing. It’s no longer showcasing relevant technologies in the macro fashion it once did, nor is it a platform where human excellence is clearly, unquestionably evident, as modern race cars become ever-more-refined. All of these challenges are addressable, but require potentially significant change and a willingness to try new things; this forced foray into the virtual world has shown us that while the motorsport of today might not reflect much imagination, it is in there. Racers have gone looking for the gnarly, weird, hard-to-drive things at least as much as the spend-20-hours-to-gain-a-tenth-of-a-second things, they’ve found ways of networking that cut across motorsport’s siloed landscape. They’re intrigued by the unpredictable and by the chance to see the humanistic element of great drivers more exposed. The interactivity of the virtual space, the ease with which it can be distributed across platforms, has given people a whole new way of engaging with the sport.So as real-world racing slowly begins to start back up, I’m asking: are we actually learning anything, and are we ready to try some new things? Because it appears that the status quo doesn’t represent the best our sport has to offer, and like any industry impacted right now, there’s no time to waste in finding the best way forward. (JRH)Race of the Day:Keeping with our racing theme today, this modified Honda Civic recently broke records during a quarter-mile run. According to the video, “a top-end Tesla Model S on Ludicrous mode can do 0-60 in about 2.3 seconds.” (CJN) Quick Links:While we’re talking about racing, here’s Part One and Part Two of my Formula 1 Edition. (NRB)More racing-related news: F1 cost cap: What is it, what does it cover and more questions answered. Speaking of, always fun to go back and look at the Liberty Media F1 acquisition deck. [Thx RPB] (NRB)What Is Street Photography without Street Life? (NRB)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & JR (JRH)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

Why is this interesting? - The Virtual Racing Edition

JR Hildebrand (JRH) is a professional racing driver who’s competed in the last ten consecutive Indianapolis 500s in addition to various other forms of motorsport during his career. He is also an adjunct lecturer for the REVS Program at Stanford University where he works with—and keeps a watchful eye over—his future autonomous competition. He previously contributed The Virtual Racing Edition for WITI. -Noah (NRB)JR here. Is it inevitable that a racing car will crash?If you’re an organizing body within motorsport, your perspective on this question likely influences an entire system of regulations, protocols, and overall safety design. For racing drivers, corner marshals, and even fans, how robust that system is might literally be the difference between life and death.During the recent Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix, F1 driver Romain Grosjean spent 28 seconds engulfed in flames after his HAAS F1 car split in half upon piercing through a metal Armco track barrier on the first lap. As his helmet visor warped from the heat of the gasoline chemical fire, he had time to try to get out of the car three times, name death “Benoit,” and think about his kids while frantically searching for an escape route. In the precious seconds that clicked by as Romain finally freed himself from the confines of his car, still enveloped by fire, Dr. Ian Roberts jumped out of the F1 Medical Car driven by former professional racer Alan van der Merwe and helped a corner marshal open his fire extinguisher just in time to clear a path for Grosjean through the flames. As a racing driver, you know that fire is deadly and the amount of time you have to get away from it is finite. Wreckage scenes that looked like this in the past have claimed some of our heroes. Fortunately for all involved, Romain narrowly escaped with only burns to his hands and feet.That he survived in this situation is a testament to innumerable safety advancements over the last several decades of motorsport and F1. The ultra-strong carbon fiber monocoque chassis (or “tub” as we know it) that makes up the safety cell Romain was surrounded by, kept his body protected during the 53G crash. The halo, a once heavily-debated addition to Formula One cars for its non-traditional effect on the cars’ aesthetic, almost certainly saved Romain’s life all by itself by shielding his head in the otherwise open-cockpit F1 car from the metal barrier as his car speared through it. The quality of his Alpinestars gloves, boots, and firesuit over fire-proof Nomex underwear and his Bell Racing helmet over a Nomex balaclava kept him from much more serious injuries during those 28 seconds. The quick and focused action of Dr. Roberts and Alan van der Merwe to dive right in are precisely the reason they’re there and they executed perfectly. Why is this interesting?While there is no question that F1 and motorsport as a whole have become safer over time, the fact of the matter is that Romain’s circumstances should never have been so dire. There should not have been any barrier piercing, there should not have been a fire, and there should not have been 28 seconds that held life and death in the balance. That’s because the wall should not have been an Armco barrier in the first place, and the fact that it still was reflects a more broad difference in viewpoint that the FIA (the global governing body of motorsport) and F1 hold in comparison to some other sanctioning bodies when it comes to defining the philosophy they seem to follow with regard to racing safety.Formula One conducts their racing with a concerted effort to avoid accidents happening altogether. And it’s working—over the last decade there have been very few large accidents in F1, and frankly, very few accidents period outside of low-speed, low-consequence first corner incidents. Formula One has the power to dictate the circuits it races at with significant authority, predominantly racing at tracks that have been designed specifically for F1 with large, often paved run-off areas that give drivers ample room to correct even significant mistakes. It is not unusual when an F1 car spins off-track out of control that it never reaches a barrier despite the high speed and high cornering energies. Through a mix of driver skill, more spread out races (few cars battling wheel-to-wheel at a given time), and circuits where you might really have to put some effort in to find something to crash into, wrecks just don’t happen all that often, when they do they tend to be in places you might anticipate, and big ones even more seldomly occur. So how likely is it that in any given place at a given track at a given time that a car will have a huge crash? The odds are very low, and in some respects, those low odds are actively designed into the sport.Now consider IndyCar by comparison. It’s not a matter of if but when a huge accident is going to occur, and the time and place are much less apparent. Amongst its circuits, IndyCar races on oval tracks at 200+mph with no run-off. At these tracks, a little wiggle puts you off-line and you’re firing it into the outside wall a few milliseconds later. The street circuits are gritty and rough, usually constructed the week before the race. The road courses are less forgiving, more narrow, and don’t have room for big run-off areas. The cars are more evenly matched and by default race more closely together. Everything from the proximity to another car to the distance of the nearest thing to crash into is just closer together, and the speed of the cars—though not “F1 fast” on a street or road course—is still very high. The nature of the sport is such that crashes are more common, and big crashes are inevitable.Because of all those differences, the safety systems that each sanctioning body employ is notable, from the way a driver is fit to the car to the deployment and scope of the safety car and emergency safety team, to the perspective on circuit safety design. The “seat” an IndyCar driver straps into is actually an insert that fills the entire cockpit area behind, below, and beside the driver, made of an energy-absorbent foam bead composite as an extra layer of protection against the G-forces of a hard crash. An F1 driver’s seat, while also formed to their body shape, is designed to be able to disconnect from the car to extract the driver if he or she is impaired but is made of carbon fiber and doesn’t give at all upon impact. IndyCar’s AMR Safety Team is a highly trained group of firefighters, EMTs, and paramedics who are stationed at multiple outposts around every track for rapid response, in addition to the medical car and ambulance. F1 is heavily reliant on volunteer corner marshals and the single highly-trained crew in the AMG Medical Car. The circuits IndyCar races at account for a ton of accidents due to their nature and design that wouldn’t happen at F1 tracks, but because of that they tend to give consideration to the chance of a crash happening almost anywhere.The result of all this—in addition to the style of racing of course—is that IndyCar drivers experience far more big impacts. Romain Grosjean’s crash energy registered at 53Gs, a rare occurrence in Formula 1. IndyCar, on the other hand, might have 10 accidents a year at that energy or more. But for all that, the fatality rate of both series is remarkably low. The last two incidents at this level of consequence in F1—Romain’s piercing through a style of barrier we know to be dangerous and the untimely death of Jules Bianchi after crashing into a tractor after sliding off the track under only a local caution condition—would not have occurred at all the way they did with a few small changes to the perspective with which safety at the track is viewed.Romain’s accident was in many ways a reminder of how far we’ve come. But it was also a reminder that innovation happens in many ways, and that continuing to develop the approach to safety itself that might make it more resilient to these kinds of harrowing scenes is just as important as creating new technology when seeking improvement. (JRH)Cartoon of the Day:Excellent New Yorker cartoon from Tom Chitty. (NRB)Quick Links:Finally got around to reading this excellent 2018 profile of Ichiro Suzuki. (NRB)America’s Short, Violent Love Affair With Indoor Track Cycling (NRB)Apple rolls out a new fitness subscription (CJN) Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & JR (JRH)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

Why is this interesting? - The Racing Safety Edition

With F1 coming back from summer break this weekend in Belgium, we thought it would be fun to re-run this WITI favorite from JR Hildebrand on Virtual Racing. - Noah (NRB)JR Hildebrand (JRH) is a professional racing driver who’s competed in the last nine consecutive Indianapolis 500s in addition to various other forms of motorsport during his career. He is also an adjunct lecturer for the REVS Program at Stanford University where he works with—and keeps a watchful eye over—his future autonomous competition. He is also the author of The Racing Safety Edition.JR here. On Friday, March 13th, 2020 the gears of the global motorsport industry started locking up, and by the next day, it had come to a screeching halt in response to the coronavirus pandemic. That weekend was set to be the kickoff of the Formula One and IndyCar seasons, while many other championships across the globe had just begun. As the cascade of postponements and cancellations fell, it left the entire industry scrambling to stay relevant and generate some kind of value to stay afloat. In the absence of racing on-track, motorsport has shifted to the virtual world, and it’s just now coming up for air.It’s worth noting that the experience of playing racing games is, and has always been, more true-to-life than gaming in other sports. Simply put, if you’re playing NBA2K or MLB The Show, you’re not making any of the same physical inputs that you would in a basketball or baseball game. Whereas if you’ve got a steering wheel and pedals connected to your Xbox, Playstation, or PC, regardless of the realism of the game, you’re doing a lot of the same basic things that you would to drive a real car. Add to it the laser-scanned racetracks that clone every bump and crack as they are in real-life, vehicle models built from real-world car data, and force-feedback gaming hardware that mimics the sensation of steering load, brake pressure, and even motion cueing (pitch, roll, bumps, and yaw) and you’ve got something that’s actually very deep in realism.McLaren F1 driver Lando Norris at his home setupThis is a space that’s evolved quickly over the last decade, but remained separate from real-world racing competition until now. All the pieces were there—major championships, as well as auto manufacturers, have been licensing their tracks and vehicles for use across various virtual racing platforms for decades. There was reason to believe it would all collide. Nissan and Porsche created gaming partnerships to assess and develop talent for their real-world racing programs, NASCAR and F1 both began hosting eSports championships in parallel to their real-life product, and Formula E hosted a big-money virtual e-Prix in Las Vegas pitting the best gamers and sim-racers against their real drivers. Sanctioning bodies, however, have been very careful not to take attention away from “the real thing.” But with the real thing suddenly on hold, that hesitation went out the window and these two worlds accelerated toward each other quickly, bracing for impact.Why is this interesting?Motorsport sanctioning bodies have by and large replicated what they currently do in the real world to represent their presence virtually. NASCAR and IndyCar both immediately announced their own all-pro virtual championships, using their cars with almost exclusively their drivers (by invitation only) at their tracks. The races broadcast on TV, providing some familiar distribution to fans and visibility to sponsors. The sanctioning bodies presented this as something serious and competitive, so people have responded to it that way—good, bad, or otherwise. It returned some semblance of value to sponsors and partners, but also resulted in drivers scrambling to get a hold of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment and spending hours per day coming to grips with their realistic, but not-actually-real-feeling, virtual race cars. Some came out looking great, some received death threats, and most agreed it was burning them out.Now free of real-world constraints like budgets, travel, and schedule, those same drivers have been taking full advantage of the freedoms the virtual world has to offer. They’re racing cars they’ve neverraced in real-life, often at tracks they’ve never been to. They’ve hosted their own events or joined established eSports organizations to compete against other drivers they’d never otherwise race, sometimes across the globe. When designing their own competitions, they often leave the exact format, car, and track combination unknown until everyone’s logged in so there’s no way to fully prepare, and they’re having a blast doing it.There is a dichotomy in these two approaches. One is controlling and closed off, the other is loose and accessible. One is predictable, one is surprising. One is established, one is experimental. Motorsport is absolutely at a critical juncture looking to the future. And not just because of this pandemic. It’s built on a television advertising model that’s shifting and auto manufacturer support that’s quickly redistributing. It’s no longer showcasing relevant technologies in the macro fashion it once did, nor is it a platform where human excellence is clearly, unquestionably evident, as modern race cars become ever-more-refined. All of these challenges are addressable, but require potentially significant change and a willingness to try new things; this forced foray into the virtual world has shown us that while the motorsport of today might not reflect much imagination, it is in there. Racers have gone looking for the gnarly, weird, hard-to-drive things at least as much as the spend-20-hours-to-gain-a-tenth-of-a-second things, they’ve found ways of networking that cut across motorsport’s siloed landscape. They’re intrigued by the unpredictable and by the chance to see the humanistic element of great drivers more exposed. The interactivity of the virtual space, the ease with which it can be distributed across platforms, has given people a whole new way of engaging with the sport.So as real-world racing slowly begins to start back up, I’m asking: are we actually learning anything, and are we ready to try some new things? Because it appears that the status quo doesn’t represent the best our sport has to offer, and like any industry impacted right now, there’s no time to waste in finding the best way forward. (JRH)Quick Links:New York Knicks' Nerlens Noel sues Rich Paul, Klutch Sports; claims $58M loss in potential salary (NRB)Nike's End of Men (NRB)Shipwrecked: A Shocking Tale of Love, Loss, and Survival in the Deep Blue Sea (NRB)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Virtual Racing Edition

JR Hildebrand (JRH) is a professional racing driver who’s competed in the last ten consecutive Indianapolis 500s in addition to various other forms of motorsport during his career. He is also an adjunct lecturer for the REVS Program at Stanford University where he works with—and keeps a watchful eye over—his future autonomous competition. He previously contributed The Virtual Racing Edition for WITI. -Noah (NRB)JR here. Is it inevitable that a racing car will crash?If you’re an organizing body within motorsport, your perspective on this question likely influences an entire system of regulations, protocols, and overall safety design. For racing drivers, corner marshals, and even fans, how robust that system is might literally be the difference between life and death.During the Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix two years ago, F1 driver Romain Grosjean spent 28 seconds engulfed in flames after his HAAS F1 car split in half upon piercing through a metal Armco track barrier on the first lap. As his helmet visor warped from the heat of the gasoline chemical fire, he had time to try to get out of the car three times, name death “Benoit,” and think about his kids while frantically searching for an escape route. In the precious seconds that clicked by as Romain finally freed himself from the confines of his car, still enveloped by fire, Dr. Ian Roberts jumped out of the F1 Medical Car driven by former professional racer Alan van der Merwe and helped a corner marshal open his fire extinguisher just in time to clear a path for Grosjean through the flames. As a racing driver, you know that fire is deadly and the amount of time you have to get away from it is finite. Wreckage scenes that looked like this in the past have claimed some of our heroes. Fortunately for all involved, Romain narrowly escaped with only burns to his hands and feet.That he survived in this situation is a testament to innumerable safety advancements over the last several decades of motorsport and F1. The ultra-strong carbon fiber monocoque chassis (or “tub” as we know it) that makes up the safety cell Romain was surrounded by, kept his body protected during the 53G crash. The halo, a once heavily-debated addition to Formula One cars for its non-traditional effect on the cars’ aesthetic, almost certainly saved Romain’s life all by itself by shielding his head in the otherwise open-cockpit F1 car from the metal barrier as his car speared through it. The quality of his Alpinestars gloves, boots, and firesuit over fire-proof Nomex underwear and his Bell Racing helmet over a Nomex balaclava kept him from much more serious injuries during those 28 seconds. The quick and focused action of Dr. Roberts and Alan van der Merwe to dive right in are precisely the reason they’re there and they executed perfectly. Why is this interesting?While there is no question that F1 and motorsport as a whole have become safer over time, the fact of the matter is that Romain’s circumstances should never have been so dire. There should not have been any barrier piercing, there should not have been a fire, and there should not have been 28 seconds that held life and death in the balance. That’s because the wall should not have been an Armco barrier in the first place, and the fact that it still was reflects a more broad difference in viewpoint that the FIA (the global governing body of motorsport) and F1 hold in comparison to some other sanctioning bodies when it comes to defining the philosophy they seem to follow with regard to racing safety.Formula One conducts its racing with a concerted effort to avoid accidents happening altogether. And it’s working—over the last decade there have been very few large accidents in F1, and frankly, very few accidents period outside of low-speed, low-consequence first corner incidents. Formula One has the power to dictate the circuits it races at with significant authority, predominantly racing at tracks that have been designed specifically for F1 with large, often paved run-off areas that give drivers ample room to correct even significant mistakes. It is not unusual when an F1 car spins off-track out of control that it never reaches a barrier despite the high speed and high cornering energies. Through a mix of driver skill, more spread out races (few cars battling wheel-to-wheel at a given time), and circuits where you might really have to put some effort in to find something to crash into, wrecks just don’t happen all that often, when they do they tend to be in places you might anticipate, and big ones even more seldomly occur. So how likely is it that in any given place at a given track at a given time that a car will have a huge crash? The odds are very low, and in some respects, those low odds are actively designed into the sport.Now consider IndyCar by comparison. It’s not a matter of if but when a huge accident is going to occur, and the time and place are much less apparent. Amongst its circuits, IndyCar races on oval tracks at 200+mph with no run-off. At these tracks, a little wiggle puts you off-line and you’re firing it into the outside wall a few milliseconds later. The street circuits are gritty and rough, usually constructed the week before the race. The road courses are less forgiving, more narrow, and don’t have room for big run-off areas. The cars are more evenly matched and by default race more closely together. Everything from the proximity to another car to the distance of the nearest thing to crash into is just closer together, and the speed of the cars—though not “F1 fast” on a street or road course—is still very high. The nature of the sport is such that crashes are more common, and big crashes are inevitable.Because of all those differences, the safety systems that each sanctioning body employ is notable, from the way a driver is fit to the car to the deployment and scope of the safety car and emergency safety team, to the perspective on circuit safety design. The “seat” an IndyCar driver straps into is actually an insert that fills the entire cockpit area behind, below, and beside the driver, made of an energy-absorbent foam bead composite as an extra layer of protection against the G-forces of a hard crash. An F1 driver’s seat, while also formed to their body shape, is designed to be able to disconnect from the car to extract the driver if he or she is impaired but is made of carbon fiber and doesn’t give at all upon impact. IndyCar’s AMR Safety Team is a highly trained group of firefighters, EMTs, and paramedics who are stationed at multiple outposts around every track for rapid response, in addition to the medical car and ambulance. F1 is heavily reliant on volunteer corner marshals and the single highly-trained crew in the AMG Medical Car. The circuits IndyCar races at account for a ton of accidents due to their nature and design that wouldn’t happen at F1 tracks, but because of that they tend to give consideration to the chance of a crash happening almost anywhere.The result of all this—in addition to the style of racing of course—is that IndyCar drivers experience far more big impacts. Romain Grosjean’s crash energy registered at 53Gs, a rare occurrence in Formula 1. IndyCar, on the other hand, might have 10 accidents a year at that energy or more. But for all that, the fatality rate of both series is remarkably low. The last two incidents at this level of consequence in F1—Romain’s piercing through a style of barrier we know to be dangerous and the untimely death of Jules Bianchi after crashing into a tractor after sliding off the track under only a local caution condition—would not have occurred at all the way they did with a few small changes to the perspective with which safety at the track is viewed.Romain’s accident was in many ways a reminder of how far we’ve come. But it was also a reminder that innovation happens in many ways, and that continuing to develop the approach to safety itself that might make it more resilient to these kinds of harrowing scenes is just as important as creating new technology when seeking improvement. (JRH)—WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.Whose health concerns have we been solving for? Health inequities manifest in a variety of ways: limited access to food, care, or medication; unmet needs, when innovation is misaligned with disease burdens; or underserved communities when key actors fail to engage groups commensurate with their needs. Addressing the issues has obvious benefits for patients—and the pharmaceutical and life sciences companies that serve them. A new article outlines a framework to approach health equity.—Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & JR (JRH)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Racing Safety Edition

JR Hildebrand (JRH) is a professional racing driver who’s competed in the last 12 consecutive Indianapolis 500s in addition to various other forms of motorsport during his career. He is also an adjunct lecturer for the REVS Program at Stanford University where he works with—and keeps a watchful eye over—his future autonomous competition. He previously contributed The Racing Safety Edition and The Virtual Racing Edition.Why is this interesting? is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.JR here. 2007 Formula One World Champion Kimi Räikkönen made his NASCAR Cup Series debut at Watkins Glen for Trackhouse Racing two weekends ago to enormous fanfare. It was a one-off race, facilitated by a new (and young) NASCAR team owner with a different view of creating value in the sport. If a Formula One champion getting behind the wheel of a stock car sounds unusual, that’s because it is. But it hasn’t always been.Fifty years ago the world’s most elite racing drivers competed across multiple disciplines all at once, and while in their primes. Mario Andretti famously attempted to make his Formula One debut at the Italian Grand Prix in September of 1968 on the same weekend that he was racing in the Hoosier Hundred USAC dirt Champ Car race in Indianapolis by flying back and forth from Indy to Monza throughout the weekend. He topped the charts in Friday qualifying at Monza, flew back to finish second in the Hoosier Hundred to AJ Foyt on Saturday, and by the time he landed back in Italy (still seventh fastest after Saturday’s qualifying runs) he had been disqualified on account of Ferrari protesting that he had broken an obscure rule dictating that a driver must not have competed in another race within 24 hours of a grand prix. Mario Andretti after winning Daytona with NASCAR greats (R-L) David Pearson, Richard Petty, LeeRoy and Cale YarboroughNo matter, he would officially make his F1 debut two months later at Watkins Glen by sticking his Lotus 49B on pole position, would go on to become a multiple-times USAC (now IndyCar) champion, a Daytona 500 winner, a Pikes Peak Hill Climb champion, an Indy 500 winner, an endurance sports-car racing legend, and eventually became the 1978 Formula One World Champion. Even during his F1 championship year he was racing all the 500-mile USAC oval races for Roger Penske, much to the chagrin of Lotus F1 team-owner Colin Chapman. But Mario wasn’t the only one. Over a 30-day span in 1967, Dan Gurney sat on the front row of the Indianapolis 500, won the Belgian Grand Prix Formula One race, and won the 24 Hours of Le Mans alongside AJ Foyt. Graham Hill is, to this day, the only driver to have ever won the Monaco Grand Prix, Indy 500, and 24 Hours of Le Mans, known as the Triple Crown, and could be found rallying a Mini Cooper or Ford Fairlane on Formula One off-weekends.Why is this interesting?It can be said, with the benefit of hindsight, that it was this behavior that elevated drivers like Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, AJ Foyt, Jackie Stewart, Parnelli Jones, the Unsers, and a select group of other racers to an unprecedented level of recognition, value within the sport, and ultimate legacy. Some of these drivers are still household names today. All are considered among, if not the, greatest racing drivers of all time, even when compared to Senna, Schumacher, Hamilton, Petty, and Earnhardt, despite some of them having particularly short careers for one reason or another. So why did this stop happening, and could it start to happen again?Jim Clark during his NASCAR debutMuch of this has to do with television. In the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, the business of motorsport was somewhat primitive. Like any sport or entertainment platform it depended on creating audience and visibility, but in the absence of live broadcast television, a much greater percentage of the revenue attached to audience was generated locally around the events themselves. This dynamic created an environment where the value of individual events, even when a part of a broader championship like Formula One, USAC (now IndyCar), or NASCAR, was only tied to the value of those championships insomuch as it could help them manifest an attending audience, and where the overall notoriety and visibility of events was measured by their history, the magnitude of their challenge, the level of competition present, and the allure they created by the traditional media at large in the absence of instant viewership.This environment was, in turn, ripe for elite drivers to rule. Great racers that could compete in the biggest events across various disciplines instead of just a single one became even greater, and it emboldened the elite of the elite to showcase a degree of grit, bravado, and skill that we’ve only seen in glimpses since. They epitomized the racer’s spirit, the feeling you get the first time you sit in a go-kart or a quarter midget and experience the chaos of taming the wild mechanical beast that, even as you grow, sees little difference in the appeal of a 200mph+ car at Indianapolis and a hot-rodded riding lawn-mower in the yard if there’s someone to beat. The business model of the sport supported it—because visibility within the sport was more closely connected to single great events as opposed to complete championships, drivers that could win throughout the sport became enormously valuable to stakeholders across the sport’s business spectrum.Graham Hill and Jim Clark would drive anythingSo TV should just add multipliers to this dynamic, right? Not exactly. Live broadcast television was a game changer for the overall visibility and value of motorsports across the globe because it enabled an enormous degree of audience growth, but it re-distributed value in a different way. Before TV, great single events held a strong percentage of value and that value was somewhat evenly distributed across disciplines; after the introduction of TV, value increased substantially but favored championship products that had the greatest potential for dependable, programmable prime-time viewing. This tightly bundled and aligned all the events within major championships together in TV rights packages, distinctly benefiting existing top-level products that fit this template like F1, USAC/IndyCar, and NASCAR. These properties saw enormous growth through the ‘80s and ‘90s on the back of ever-more widespread television viewership, helping them to establish the rights-fee based business models that they still operate by today. Advertisers also flocked to these properties, directing their spending to the championships themselves and the teams that compete in them, because maximum visibility was now achieved by being associated with entities that got the most year-round viewership above all else. Forms of motorsport that didn’t fit this template due to any number of factors—extending outside a desired TV window, stage racing that goes on over a number of days, one-off events that aren’t part of a traditional championship structure, or events and championships that simply didn’t seem to be at the level of top-tier racing for a TV audience—didn’t see the same kind of relative growth, and in many cases became destabilized as businesses. Motorsport slowly went from a collection of loosely connected and more evenly valued parts to a stratified landscape of competing properties, and, as that happened, the power of influence swung away from drivers toward teams and sanctioning bodies.We’re in the midst of another motorsport media revolution. Digital has allowed racing categories of all shapes and sizes to find their audience, tell stories in new ways, and raise the profile of drivers to levels they haven’t seen in at least thirty years. So will this new sea change bring us back the golden age of driver crossover? It’s my bet that it will. Racers, ultimately, are racers. And it’s that core spirit that drives the entire sport. Innovation matters, without question, but the true heartbeat of motorsport is our connection to the humanistic act at the center of it, and when drivers do things we’re not used to seeing them do, the humanness is just more clear to see. I spoke briefly with Trackhouse team owner Justin Marks after Kimi’s debut—I’m a huge fan of Justin’s and of Kimi’s so I was curious what his take on the experience was—and he was buoyant about where it could go. An amazing experience for the team to work with a driver of Kimi’s caliber from a different part of the sport, a sellout crowd on raceday, a 20% uptick in domestic viewership for that race and a yet unknown but speculated-to-be significant international audience for a sport that doesn’t yet tend to move the needle outside North America. This was just the first go-around, but when I imagine the potential of racers today doing this enough that we might eventually see the kind of achievements we saw from Mario, Jim, AJ, and Dan, I think the impact on attention and the sport in general might actually dwarf the effects that occurred back then.Graham Hill rallyingWhen you talk to elite racing drivers behind the scenes you realize that each one is motivated by slightly different factors when it comes to trying something different. Some look at racing in a different discipline as a competitive challenge, a way to assert their ability and status no matter who against or what they’re in. Some consider their legacy, for when it’s all said and done. Some see the brand value. Some are just racers who are always curious about what else is out there and what it might be like. But it’s rare that they don’t have this itch in one form or another. So I’m excited to see how that underlying vibration manifests itself in the years to come, because I think it’s time that motorsport had some fresh human-centric energy. (JRH)—WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.How and where to work next. Selling, general, and administrative functions are integral to your organization’s success. What’s the best place for those people to work? Read here to see how the future of work will take shape. —Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & JR (JRH)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).Why is this interesting? is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.