F1’s Stefano Domenicali: ‘You cannot do anything alone; you need to have a good team’

The management style of Formula One head Stefano Domenicali is not exactly a private matter.

Netflix’s behind-the-scenes documentary series Formula 1: Drive to Survive has broadcast to millions the sensitivities of dealing with racing drivers, their team managers, billionaire owners and sponsors, as well as the heads of state and royals involved in motorsport’s elite car racing series.

In the latest season, Domenicali’s leadership is tested at a meeting of team chiefs, including Toto Wolff, head of Mercedes, and Christian Horner, his counterpart at Red Bull. The perennial rivals are locked in a row over new car design regulations and, as tempers fray, Domenicali intervenes to defuse the situation. The discussion would continue “in the proper way” with the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, the sport’s governing body, he tells the gathering of team managers.

Reflecting on the incident at F1 headquarters in London, Domenicali says knowing the team managers on a personal level was important to how he handled the situation. “These kinds of things you learn how to deal with the more you see [them] happening and the more you understand the people. Every one of us is different, so you need to respect that.”

Domenicali claims to have “zero ego” and “never” shouts. “That’s the beauty of it, you take one ego less.”

As a former Ferrari team principal, he knows the pressures the likes of Horner and Wolff face, from managing championship-winning drivers such as Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, to motivating engineers and aerodynamicists to build the best cars.

Formula One is expanding quickly. US owner Liberty Media, which acquired F1 in an $8bn deal in 2016, has redrawn the economics of the sport: it shares revenues more evenly among teams, introduced spending limits on the development of cars to boost competition and transformed the way it engages with fans on social media.

A Miami Heat basketball net hanging on the wall opposite Domenicali’s desk is a souvenir following the addition last year of a Grand Prix in the US city. F1 will race in Las Vegas this November for the first time in four decades.

Annual revenue increased by 20 per cent to more than $2.5bn in 2022 due to higher fees paid by race promoters, increased media rights, sponsorship and attendance at the Paddock Club hospitality business.

But for all the efforts to boost engagement, the sport has been lacking excitement at the front of the grid. Verstappen won 15 of 22 races in 2022. His Red Bull team has more than double the points of their nearest rivals this season.

For fans lured in by Drive to Survive, does Red Bull’s dominance threaten F1’s ability to keep their attention? Speaking at the Financial Times’ Future of the Car conference in London last week, Domenicali said he would “totally disagree” that F1 had prioritised entertainment over the sport itself.

“This year, we need to say the truth: Red Bull did a better job than the others, it’s a fact. But I would be imprudent to say the championship is finished,” he told the audience. “We cannot intervene in the performance of the teams. I am sure what we did in terms of financial regulations will help to minimise the gap on the technical side.”

Meanwhile, some former staff and others who know him say Domenicali is a little “old school” — he prefers staff to be physically present at the office and travel to races. It’s a demanding schedule: the season runs from March to November and has expanded to 23 races this season from double-digit teens in the 1990s.

At F1 headquarters, where the meeting rooms are named after legendary racing personalities such as Juan Manuel Fangio — but also nod to Hamilton’s vegan bulldog, Roscoe — the chief executive is relaxed about the pressure. “What is the weight of a demanding business if you like it and you’re motivated to do it? Zero,” he says.

“We are lucky . . . It’s hard work, yes, but look around, we are in a business of entertainment.” He adds that if people creating the entertainment are not happy, “there is a problem”. “So if you want to be here, you need to be fully dedicated to the job, with the right enthusiasm.”

The Italian says his approach is to treat people the same, whether presidents or his gardener. “It’s my style, take it or leave it. I’m not able to have a mask in front of me”.

“People that are not smart believe there is only one style to expand the business that you’re responsible for. I’ve proved I’m able to be the same, here, in this chair, and if you come with me on holiday with my family, with my friends . . . I don’t change.”

Born in Imola, home to the circuit where Brazilian three-time F1 world champion Ayrton Senna succumbed to a fatal crash in 1994, Domenicali started his career at Scuderia Ferrari and later saw German driver Michael Schumacher dominate the championship in the early 2000s.

“I learnt the fact that you cannot do anything alone; you need to have a good team, the strongest team ever, actually,” he says of his time at Ferrari.

In 2014, he quit three races into the season after Ferrari’s on-track performance slumped. “I have no fear to take responsibility when I think it is right to do certain things,” he says. “I started the job after university, so you can imagine it has not been easy, but you need to be rational.”

He worked at Volkswagen’s Audi brand — where the diesel emissions scandal thwarted a potential entry into F1 — and then joined Lamborghini.

As F1 chief executive he has helped convince Audi to return in time for 2026, when new power units, which will be more efficient and use more sustainable fuel, are due to come into play.

A bigger test of his persuasive capabilities came in March 2022 ahead of the second Saudi Grand Prix in Jeddah. When a Houthi missile attack struck a Saudi Aramco oil storage facility in the build-up to the race, the smoke that billowed into the air was visible from the circuit. Spooked, the drivers debated whether or not to race.

“To see such an incredible, dark mushroom of smoke 12 miles from where you are is emotionally quite strong,” says Domenicali.

The stakes were high. Despite criticism from human rights groups, Saudi Arabia has become an important market for F1, critical to Liberty Media’s expansion in the Middle East. State-owned Saudi Aramco is among F1’s global partners, the highest bracket of sponsorship in the sport, while teams such as Aston Martin and McLaren rely on Saudi sponsors.

What was already “not an easy moment” was amplified by social media, says Domenicali. The race went ahead after late-night meetings with the drivers in which Domenicali passed on assurances from local authorities and explained the safety measures in place.

“If you follow the emotion, you will most likely go in a direction that is wrong,” he says. “Lead by example means that I was there. If I was the first to be worried, I’m not so stupid to leave there . . . and to say, ‘I go and you stay’. Everyone understood and they trusted us.”

More recently, the expansion into Saudi Arabia has led to speculation that the oil-rich Gulf state’s sovereign wealth fund would be keen to acquire F1.

A Bloomberg News report in January that F1 had drawn takeover interest from the Saudi Public Investment Fund prompted a firm response from FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem. He tweeted that the governing body was “cautious” about the “alleged inflated price” of $20bn, including debt, and warned that any suitor should bring more than “just a lot of money”.

F1 and Liberty Media decided not to respond publicly, but in a letter to the FIA president that was leaked to the media, they warned his comments “overstep the bounds of both the FIA’s remit and its contractual rights” and that the FIA “may be liable” if the president’s tweets “damage the value of Liberty Media”.

Ben Sulayem subsequently stepped back from day-to-day involvement in F1.

“If you want to do something, you don’t have to shout or to announce,” says Domenicali of his attempt to resolve the matter privately, “and you do what is in the best interest of the business that you’re responsible for, as simple as that. Everyone is different, but this is me.”