Leadership and HR Insights from Formula One (F1) Racing

Thoughtful colleagues amazingly capture leadership insights from many places: fishing, basketball, soccer, theater, gardening, farming, cooking, art, honeybees, and many other hobbies.

Today, Formula One (F1) has over 750 million fans worldwide. Our colleague Ken Pasternak and others have explored lessons of leadership from F1 racing. We recently had the privilege of sharing Ken’s insights into this topic with around 50 Global Leaders in Miami, and we decided to take this further—which is timely since F1 returns to Miami (Ernesto’s hometown) in May 2025.

At RBL, we crafted the Leadership Code with five timeless dimensions of leadership (figure 1), collected data from tens of thousands of leaders using this logic, coached thousands of leaders to improve, and have led hundreds of workshops and academies on leadership.

Figure 1: The Leadership Code: Five Timeless Principles of Leadership

By experiencing F1 up close in Miami (or 24 races in 21 countries on 5 continents) to see how F1 leadership actions illustrate effective leadership and HR practices for both organization and personal lives, we can advance our insights on effective leadership. Whether you’re a business executive, HR professional, entrepreneur, or simply someone passionate about high-performance culture, these ten insights from the world of F1 can inspire new ways of thinking about how leaders lead better.

So, let’s hit the accelerator.

I. Strategist: Where are we going? How do we shape our future?

1. Strategic Agility Under Pressure

• Analogy: F1 race strategists must constantly adapt to changing conditions (weather, safety cars, tire degradation), requiring both long-term planning and real-time decision making.
• Leadership Parallel: Business leaders must demonstrate strategic agility by adjusting to external market shifts and internal challenges without losing focus on the end goal.

2. Innovation and Continuous Improvement

• Analogy: F1 teams constantly develop new technology, aerodynamics, and materials to shave milliseconds off lap times—what worked last season is continually upgraded. The car at the end of the season is significantly different from the one that was on the track at the first race.
• Leadership Parallel: High-performing businesses and HR leaders embrace innovation, fostering a culture of continuous learning to generate and generalize new ideas and actions.

II. Executor: How do we make change happen to make sure we reach our goals?

3. Team Principal as Systems Integrator

• Analogy: The team principal (e.g., Toto Wolff, Christian Horner) is similar to a CEO. This F1 team member sets the vision and then ensures all departments (engineers, strategists, and drivers) work together to make critical high-stakes decisions that continually adapt to reach the goal.
• Leadership Parallel: Just like F1 team principals ensure their teams operate cohesively toward a common goal of winning races and championships, business and HR leaders make their strategy happen by aligning and bringing together different departments (marketing, operations, finance, etc.) around key capabilities.

4.   Data Analytics Driving Decision Making

• Analogy: Every F1 car generates millions of data points per race, which are analyzed in real time for strategic decisions (tire wear, fuel levels, track conditions, etc.).
• Leadership Parallel: Just like F1 teams leverage data to optimize performance, successful leaders use analytics, especially with AI tools, to access information to make better decisions that deliver results.

III. Talent: Who goes with us? How do we engage talent?

5. Race Engineer as Talent Integrator

• Analogy: The race engineer acts as a direct line between the driver and the team to make sure that the individual team members operate as one unit.
• Leadership Parallel: A strong manager (race engineer) translates strategic objectives from leadership (team principal) into tactical execution for the workforce (driver), ensuring real-time feedback and adjustment. We have identified the skills first time leaders need to turn strategy into action.

6.   Driver as Face of the Organization

• Analogy: The F1 driver is the visible front of the team, much like a CEO or spokesperson, but their success heavily depends on the team behind them.
• Leadership Parallel: Even the most talented leaders or professionals cannot win alone; they need a well-functioning team to support, execute, and elevate performance. Leaders create high-performing teams (we call them Results-Based Teams) that get the right work done.

IV. Human Capability Developer: Who stays when we go?

7. Pit Stops as Disciplined Action

• Analogy: A pit stop is a flawless example of disciplined action—each crew member has a specialized role (tire change, front jack, rear jack, fueling, etc.), and they execute in under two seconds. These routines often determine the success of the race.
• Leadership Parallel: Effective leaders create sustainable routines with disciplined actions where trust, synchronization, and efficiency become the cultural norms that determine success.

8.   Crisis Management in Real Time

• Analogy: An F1 team must stay calm under pressure—whether facing a crash, mechanical failure, or unexpected rain mid-race, decisive leadership and cohesive teamwork define the outcome.
• Leadership Parallel: Business leaders and teams must handle crises with resilience and adaptability, ensuring clarity in decision making under extreme pressure. Leaders who learn to turn crises into opportunities are more successful. They do so by creating rituals that encourage continual adaptation.