September 17, 2025 • 28 mins
Scuderia Ferrari and IBM are redefining fan engagement with AI-driven insights, and cutting-edge digital tools. Learn how IBM is helping Scuderia Ferrari deepen connections with its almost 400 million fans worldwide, driving innovation and community in the digital age.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, it's Robert and Joe here. Today we've got
something a little bit different to share with you. It's
a new season of the Smart Talks with IBM podcast series.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This season on Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell is back,
and this time he's taking the show on the road.
Malcolm is stepping outside the studio to explore how IBM
clients are using artificial intelligence to solve real world challenges
and transform the way they do business.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
From accelerating scientific breakthroughs to reimagining education. It's a fresh
look at innovation in action, where big ideas meet cutting
edge solutions.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
You'll hear from industry leaders, creative thinkers, and of course
Malcolm Gladwell himself as he guides you through each story.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
New episodes of Smart Talks with IBM drop every month
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This is a paid advertisement from IBM pushkin.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
I never went to a Formula one race as a
kid because we lived in southern Ontario and there was
just one F one race in Canada. That race was
in Montreal. A good seven hour drive away. I never
watched F one race on television either, because we didn't.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
Have a television.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
But what I did have was a subscription to the
car magazine Road and Track, and Roadent Track took F
one very seriously. Every month my new issue would arrive,
I would turn immediately to the long, detailed account of
that month's race, and I fell in love. It's been
fifty years, but I can still rattle off the names
(01:45):
of all the top drivers of that era from memory.
James Hunt, Mario Andretti, Carlos Pace, Jacques Lafitte, and of
course the greatest of them all, my adolescent idol, Niki Lauda,
who won two world championships in the mid nineteen seventies
with Scuderia Ferrari.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
He was world championship material from the moment he joined
the Ferrari team.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
There's no question that in seventy five seventy six I
was really dominating the whole thing without any mistake. So
I did nothing wrong.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
I mean, this was perfect driving.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
If you had met skinny pre adolescent Malcolm in the
mid nineteen seventies in rural Ontario, there's a good chance
you would have seen me in my prize Ferrari T shirt.
I was a fan, one of what the Italians called tifosi,
a Ferrari devote, And that's what it meant to be
a fan fifty years ago, t shirts, magazine stories, and
a big Nikki Lauta poster on your wall. But what
(02:42):
does it mean to be a fan today? Today we
have the Internet and streaming and big data and AI
and all the other accouterment of the digital age. Is
there a chance to reinvent the meaning of fandom? My
name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to the latest episode
(03:02):
of Smart Talks with IBM, where we offer our listeners
a glimpse behind the curtain of the world of technology.
In our first episode, we talked about how an AI
assistant created with IBM watsonex helps future teachers practice responsive teaching.
Our second episode was how a custom AI model could
help Loreel's researchers shape the future of what we put
(03:24):
on our faces every morning. In this episode, how IBM,
one of the world's pre eminent technology companies, is joining
up with one of the world's pre eminent racing brands
to fundamentally change how fans interact with their favorite team.
The size of the Scuderia Ferrari HP fan base is staggering.
(03:49):
Three hundred and ninety six million people around the world
identify as Ferrari fans. Three hundred and ninety six million.
The only other fan base is that big belong to
the icon Premier League Football teams like Manchester United or
Chelsea FC. I don't believe there is any other Formula
one team that inspires that kind of devotion. Ferrari's job, then,
(04:12):
isn't necessarily grow its fan base. Three hundred and ninety
six million is more than enough fans. Their job is
to deepen the connection people feel with the scudery A
Ferrari team. But if I'm Ferrari, how do I find
out more about who my fans are, what they care about,
what they want? How do I use my archives and
data to create experiences that matter to them? How do
(04:34):
I say to the guy who spent his childhood eagerly
reading roadent track every month? Here are other ways you
can get involved with your favorite F one team Today.
The task of deepening an emotional connection in the digital
age begins as an information problem, which is where IBM
comes in. How would you describe what you do.
Speaker 6 (04:56):
I describe it as the probably the best job, but
I bem.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to
ask you, do you have the best job at IBM?
Speaker 6 (05:03):
I think so.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
I'm talking to Fred Baker, who leads sports and Entertainment
for IBM consulting in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
You can probably guess from the accent he's from New Zealand.
Speaker 6 (05:15):
We've had a really interesting range of experience over the
past sort of five six years. We've worked with Premier
League clubs like Liverpool Football. We've worked with England Rugby
St Andrews Links. We also globally, we've got a global team,
so we work with the Masters, the US Open, ESPN,
Fantasy Football, the Grammys.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
You do the tennis stuff. Is it all under Europe?
Speaker 6 (05:36):
Yeah, so we do Wimbledon as well. Yep, that's under
my rima.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
If you've ever watched Wimbledon on television, I'm sure you've
seen at various moments a little IBM logo on the
bottom of the screen. That's because IBM has been Wimbledon's
official information technology partner since nineteen ninety, when the idea
of a collaboration between Ferrari and IBM was first broached.
Baker actually took people from Ferrari on a tour of
(06:00):
IBM's Wimbledon operation, just so they could see what a
tech company like IBM could do for a sports franchise.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Which Wimbledon.
Speaker 6 (06:09):
Did you take them to last year's champs?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Tell me what you showed them.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
We take them into what we call the bunker, so
it's literally underground at the Champs, and showed them how
we bring everything to life from the data capture off
the courts, how we real time categorize, serve all those
points to broadcasters and serve them into the app the
website for millions of fans around the world. They were
really impressed by that.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
I'm also impressed by that IBM trained it on the
language of tennis, and not only the language of tennis,
but specifically the language of tennis at Wimbledon.
Speaker 6 (06:46):
So it can then decipher what an unforced era or
a winner or a lob or you know, idiosyncrasies in
the language. It can decipher all of that, and then
it can also tell what is a broadcast like to
talk about that is in to a fan. You know,
we've trained it so it can not only analyze everything
going on in the match. It can analyze past performances
(07:07):
and rationalize results based on conditions or form and then
make predictions that fans can learn from. But it can
also pull out on the spot really interesting milestones, moments,
data points that then come out of the mouth of
a broadcaster.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
IBM is running an AI model that has been trained
on huge amounts of tennis data in order to give
human broadcasters ideas on what they can talk about. And
it all takes place underground, right near the courts.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
It's literally like it's the underground floor of the broadcast
center at Wimbledon. It's literally almost under the courts.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Is IBM got the entire bunker?
Speaker 6 (07:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (07:47):
How big is the room?
Speaker 6 (07:49):
I'm sure our team would like it to be bigger,
but it's big enough. There's probably thirty forty IBM is
down there. Man. Seeing it live is just impressive when
you see how much work and intelligence goes on to
then make an end experience for a fan that is
really beautiful and representative of their brand and tradition.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
IBM's goal in taking Ferrari to the Wimbledon bunker was
to show them what it looks like to harness the
power of data and how this could help shape Scuderia
Ferrari's fan and digital experiences. Could AI learn the language
of Scuderia Ferrari. What was the original app like before
IBM got involved. I'm speaking with Stefano Pollard, who runs
(08:33):
fan development for Ferrari's f one team.
Speaker 7 (08:36):
It was quite a good app, a very good digital product,
but just an editorial product. So we were providing fans
news and videos, articles and it was mainly about that.
The strategy and the idea was trying to use the
app to have a deeper connection and interaction with our fans,
make it more interactive. So turning it from an editorial product,
(08:59):
which was a very good editorial product, to a more
interactive product, digital product.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
With such a massive undertaking. I asked Stephen how it
all started once IBM got involved.
Speaker 7 (09:11):
We started really with a very long couple of months
of discovery phase. So looking at the current app, looking
at fans, looking at what fans wanted from an app.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Tell me a little bit more about that phrase something
a fan wanted, What is it that the super fan
wasn't getting before? That was something that would tie them
even closer to Ferrari.
Speaker 7 (09:33):
Having run some focused group, having having read that market research,
having spoken to fans, and being a fan. The strongest
inside is feridy. Fans and super fans want to be
part of something, want to belong to something, so they
want to be part of a community, and ultimately they
want to be part of a winning team, so they
(09:53):
want to feel closer and get access.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
The way Stefano side. The opportunity wasn't with race days
when the cars are on the track, the tafosi are
already locked in, but there was an opportunity to engage
Ferrari fans on the other days of the week or
during the off season.
Speaker 6 (10:15):
Formula One is so much more than just the race.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
This is Fred Baker again.
Speaker 6 (10:21):
What we can do is relive the race and bring
it to life after the fact. We can help them prepare,
we can help them relive the past, and we can
also bring the experience around race weekend to life as well.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
That of course, maybe wonder how do you engage fans
when there's not a race happening. Baker says it all
comes back to data and information. Talk a little bit
about data collection, because you're talking about a brand with
tentacles everywhere, and you're trying to bring a lot of
that stuff together in the app.
Speaker 6 (10:52):
This is an organization that has for decades used data
for racing the performance, it's not historically used that data
for everyone in the world to see. What we're trying
to do is expose as much of it as we
can to fans. So part of collecting the data, the
challenge with around how you go across all the disparate
different groups that collect data for different purposes. The team
(11:14):
that collects data on tires, the team that has data
on drivers, on whether or on competitors, and so on.
So you're trying to bring all that together and source
it and make sense of it and train our AI
to understand what it means, what things on team radio mean,
what nicknames mean, what abbreviations and slang and idiosyncrasies on
(11:35):
car specifics and track specifics and so on mean. And
you're also trying to design for something that is going
to be fan engaging but also appropriate to all the
sensitivities of the privacy that's necessary. So you want it
to be able to do all of that, collect all
the data, produce something for fans in an automated way.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
But in order to design something to expertly engage the tafosi,
it's necessary to understand more about the passion and the
type of national identity behind the fan base. You need
to get inside the mind of the super fan. If
you wanted to meet some modern day tafosi in the
United States, you could head to a bar in Midtown
(12:17):
Manhattan called Fela. Every race day, Formula One fans gathered
Feala to cheer on their favorite drivers, their favorite teams,
and I mean really cheer. I sent our producer Jake
Harper to Feala on the day of the Canadian Grand
Prix so you could see the fandom up close. The
bar gets loud and so crowded it's hard to move.
(12:40):
Today the room is packed with Scuderia Ferrari HP fans.
Speaker 6 (12:44):
Even your glasses are Ferrari.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I just noticed that Jake talked to a Ferrari fan
named Gino who was dressed head to toe in Ferrari's
signature red and black.
Speaker 8 (12:53):
And my shoes are Ferraria.
Speaker 6 (12:55):
Fully checked out.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
They were making fun of me last time I was here.
They're like, is your underwear Ferrari? I texted my girlfriend, like, Babe,
I need Ferrari underwear.
Speaker 6 (13:03):
Did you get it?
Speaker 8 (13:04):
Not yet? Not yet, I'll work on it.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Gino's fandom started with Ferrari as a brand.
Speaker 8 (13:10):
I love the cars.
Speaker 5 (13:11):
I think the four fifty eight Scoodaria is like the
pinnacle of automotive engineering.
Speaker 8 (13:15):
That's my dream car. The four point thirty with the
glass house for the engine. I mean, that's They're all gorgeous.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
It's always been an aspiration of mine to own one,
so that naturally.
Speaker 8 (13:26):
Made me gravitate towards Ferrari.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
Even when the company I worked for a sponsored AMG Petronis,
I was secretly like hiding my taphosi at the races, like.
Speaker 6 (13:38):
Clark Kenton Superman. You're just hiding the uniform underneath.
Speaker 8 (13:41):
I love that. I love that. Yeah, I was wearing
a Ferrari shirt underneath my suit.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
In one sense, Gino is typical of what Ferrari has
learned about its followers. A lot of F one fans,
especially newer fans, are fans of drivers, but the tafosi
love Ferrari. It's the oldest brand in Formula One, the
only team that is stuck around since the series was
founded in nineteen fifty. But in another sense, Gino is
(14:06):
not typical. He lives in New York. He can go
to Fala to celebrate F one with other tefosi.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
I'm a big racing fan, and coming to this bar,
I found a bunch of people that were in a
F one.
Speaker 8 (14:17):
Now I'm at this.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Bar every weekend just about with four or five friends
that I made just through racings.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
But lots and lots of Scuderia Ferraris three hundred and
ninety six million fans don't live in a big city
with a Ferrari bar, and lots of those three hundred
and ninety six million fans aren't the kind of hardcore
fan who dressed head to toe in Ferrari's signature red
and black. A group that large is diverse, necessarily, and
one of the first tasks that IBM and Ferrari set
(14:46):
out to do was to understand the full range of
the tafosi phenomenon. People like Gino hardcore fans. They were easy,
They would follow Scuderia Ferrari HB anywhere it wanted to go.
But who else was out there? The most interesting addition
to the F one fan base were those who watched
the phenomenally successful Netflix documentary Drive to Survive. These tended
(15:09):
to be newcomers to the sport, more Americans than Europeans.
What was their emotional perspective? What did they want? Here's
Fred Baker again, the guy with the coolest job at IBM.
Speaker 6 (15:21):
If I'm a passionate fan, I want to read a
totally different thing on the app to a casual fan
who is of the Netflix drive to Survive generation versus
you know, some really niche personas that we found that
are super interested but don't find it accessible yet until
we start to deliver to quite different needs that they have.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Working with IBM WATSONEX, Baker and his team began to
develop personas archetypes of all the possible kinds of Ferrari fans,
because if Ferrari wanted to get better at talking to
their fans, they had to understand who the fans were,
and the personas are helping Ferrari and IBM create an
app that caters to the tafosi in all their iterations.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
How many personas did you come up with?
Speaker 6 (16:05):
I think we had over ten in the end, maybe
a dozen. And this is different, yeah, archetypes of people.
Even that process is helped by AI, so we train
AI to help us develop out a persona. We can
get really detailed as to what each archetype is and
their hobbies and backgrounds and so on. So our own
watsonex helped us in developing those personas, like our research
(16:28):
helped us uncover a segment of middle aged women in
China who Ferrari is a real status symbol and they're
really interested in the Scuderia Ferrari brand and now they
can engage more with it, but it wasn't yet accessible
or inclusive enough for them to feel comfortable doing so.
Real spectrums of fans across those dozen personas that we
(16:48):
had to design for.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Give me some more examples of personas. Can you give
you a couple more just so get a flavor?
Speaker 6 (16:56):
Yeah? Sure. So. The other obvious one is the Drive
to Survive fan and that they're probably not a diehard
all their lives Scuterier Ferrari fan, but they've really got
into the more social side of formula one that's been
born out of the really popular series Drive to Survive
on Netflix. You then have gamer personas who are into
esports is growing massively in motorsport, and they're probably not
(17:17):
necessarily into the real life racing quite so much, but
they're certainly into gaming, So how do you appeal to
them then casual fans who are sort of into the
luxury of scudo Ferrari but not the sport necessarily do
the personas have names? Yeah, I mean we give them
human names. So we had a Max, we had a Alfonso.
I think we had a Pedro.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Two women in China.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Is she watching F one or is she interested more
in the brand and what it signifies?
Speaker 6 (17:42):
Yeah, more in the brand and being part of a community.
If I'm that persona in China, then I probably don't
feel like I belong to it truly yet, but I'd
love to feel like I do, so I could start
to become a part of a digital community, learn more
about the brand, probably get access to exclusive merchandise, or
you know, if I can't necessarily own a Ferrari car,
(18:04):
which let's face it, not many people can. And if
we're relyinged only on the people who can own a car,
then we're probably not going to get much engagement. So
how do we make others feel that they're still a
part of that community.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
This is what I mean when I say the task
of relating to the Ferrari fan base is a data
and information problem. It's about collecting, organizing, and analyzing the
needs and wants of an enormous pool of people and
speaking to each of them in their own emotional language.
Giving all the work Fred put into understanding Ferrari's fan base,
(18:37):
I was curious to know how his framework would categorize me.
I want to figure out which persona I am. So
I'll describe to you my relationship to Ferrari and you
tell me so what I am is a huge car,
not so like all cars. Yeah, obsessively collect on a
(18:59):
very limited stage vintage cars, read serious car magazines, spend
a lot of time my car websites. Have a historical
relationship to have one. Because I grew up with Nikki
Lauda battling James Hunt in loudest for our years. I
have a grit nostalgic connection. Went to Italy with my
(19:19):
nephew and went to the Ferrari factory and rented one
of those to drive around, you know, and.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
I follow that F one. But I wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
I would don't think I would ever go to an
I wouldn't fly to Miami for F one. Miami, I
wouldn't go that far, and I don't have time to
watch a F one on TV on a regular basis,
but I'm interested. And I have a red Frari T
shirt which I've been known to wear, and if you,
if I ever got really rich, would I buy it
(19:48):
for Aur?
Speaker 6 (19:48):
Yes?
Speaker 9 (19:48):
I would.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Okay, So where am I? Where am I in your breakdown?
Speaker 6 (19:53):
Yeah? I think you're probably a combination of the I
think it's casual loyalist. It's not going to not going
to overtly go out of their way to sort of
spend money on the racing, but they are loyal to
the Ferrari brand and they have nostalgia with it or
whatever it might be. And then the luxury enthusiasts as well,
so and that type of fan. You're right, We're probably
(20:14):
not going to engage you by doing a ton more
on race weekend, but we can engage you by bringing
this hugely rich amount of archive material, footage, feelings and
past drivers of yesteryear, by bringing them to life.
Speaker 9 (20:36):
In zero an app that you saw another brand doing
that served as a kind of model. I don't mean
within F one, I'm talking about it from any other film.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
On top of.
Speaker 7 (20:47):
Being a very sport passionate. I'm, let's say, a marketing passionate,
a digital passionate guy. So I have a lot of apps,
and he also for my job. I tried to look
at the and different apps.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
As we were talking, I was thinking about Strava. I'm
a huge Stravahead. It's my favorite app. If you don't
already know, Strava is used by millions of active people
around the world. I'm a runner, and the app shows
me a map of where I went, how fast I ran,
what my heart ray was, what the weather was, on
and on.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Are you're a cyclostore runner, I'm a runner.
Speaker 6 (21:21):
I'm a runner.
Speaker 7 (21:22):
I run marathons and ultra marathons. I did let's see
one hundred kilometers.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
As it turns out, Stefano is a Stravahead too. Right
after I spoke to him, I followed him on Strava.
He and I run roughly the same distance every day
at the same pace, and if I'm ever in Milan,
I'm almost certainly going to look him up to see
if you'll take me out on one of his favorite
routes through the city. This is what I love about Strava.
You can find people to run with and interact with
(21:48):
Strava is a community of like minded people and for
those like me, the Strava app becomes a regular part
of my daily routine, and that's what Stefano wanted for
the Ferrari app. Are you interested allowing creating sort of
robust forums for our evans to communicate with each other?
Speaker 7 (22:07):
I think you have to work in three directions. So
direction number one is a Ferrari to fans, so providing
them something which is compelling, which has value, and this
I think we're already doing and we're working on it.
Second way is fans to Ferrari, so help like allowing
fans to better interact with us, which was something we
(22:28):
were not doing with the previous app. For example, we've
just introduced two features which are polls, so basic ones,
but polls and the possibility like the submit your message feature.
So really to work on the way fans to Ferrari.
And then the third important way to build a community
and nature community is like fans to fans. So if
you were able to work on those trae dimensions of
(22:51):
Ferrari to fans, fans to Ferrari and fans to fans,
that's how you could really create a strong community and
start really monetizing and create in value. I think we
are very strong in the first dimension right now, we're
building the second one, so fans to Ferrari and then
definitely the third one has to be there in order
to have a complete community engagement.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
So let's talk about results.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Scuddery of Ferrari HP launched the new app at the
Miami Grand Prix in twenty twenty five, incorporating AI elements
and tailoring it to those archetypes. Was talking about, are
more people using the app? Are users spending more time
on it than they did on the older version of
the app?
Speaker 7 (23:35):
Yes, we doubled these months the daily active users we
were having last season, so compared to the average of
twenty twenty four season, we have more than double of
daily active users. Also, we're doubling normal months down downloads,
so we did in these months more than two times
the download we are doing in a normal months. We
(23:56):
are increasing by thirty five percent the average times. So
keep your eyes out good.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
If you build the right app, they will come for generations.
Fans of all varieties have met in public places, the
stands of stadiums, in bars to watch races, and matches
on television. But there's a chance now for fandom to
exist on a higher and broader level, for a community
(24:24):
to be created over the Internet, even when the fans
are vastly different people who live vast distances apart. I
can imagine Gino in his Ferrari Red and Black, using
the scoodery of Ferrari app relating to me as I
relive my memories of Niki Lauder from the nineteen seventies.
Maybe I could use the app to learn something from
(24:45):
the woman in China, the Tafosie newcomer, or some seventeen
year old who got sucked in first by drive to survive.
I can imagine myself as part of that vision, taking
my lifelong obsession to the next level. Smart Talks with
(25:14):
IBM is produced by Matt Ramano, Amy Gains, McQuaid, Trina Menino,
and Jake Harper were edited by Lacy Roberts. Engineering by
Nina Bird Lawrence, mastering by Sarah Bruguier, music by Gramoscope,
Strategy by Tatiana Lieberman and Cassidy Meyer. Special thanks to
Scuderia Ferrari HP and the bar and restaurant Feala in
(25:36):
New York City Smart Talks with IBM is a production
of Pushkin Industries and Ruby Studio at iHeartMedia. To find
more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm Glappo. This
is a paid advertisement from IBM. The conversations on this
(25:57):
podcast don't necessarily represent IBM's position, strategies or opinions. I
asked Fred Baker to come up with a hypothetical something
that could fulfill my childhood dreams, something that this type
(26:20):
of technology could theoretically do that might appeal to a
fan like me, someone who's interested in the sport went
back fifty years. He said, what about using AI to
bring historical cars to.
Speaker 6 (26:33):
Life, bringing to live cars of the past and allows
fans to simulate a nineteen fifty Ferrari race versus nineteen
seventy one to see who which car would be faster.
So it's those sorts of trade offs.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Wait, you could do it. Wait you could do that?
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Tell me about last thing you said you can run
simulations race simulations out of the app.
Speaker 6 (26:54):
You can't out of the app at this point, so
I know, potentially, potentially, Yeah, it can you know, simulates
based on a whole range of factors that we can
feed and train it on.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Wait, so I could hypothetically you could allow me to
compare Niki Lauder, for example, to a contemporary driver, and
I could say if I put Nicki Lauder in a
contemporary car, what you're saying is that there is a
scenario where I could recreate that era in modern cars
(27:27):
and get a sense of how my childhood heroes were performing,
would have performed a break day?
Speaker 6 (27:32):
Yeah? Yeah, So you can analyze and understand how you
would rank all drivers of all time based on the
different traits of a driver, right, So you can say
who's the best late breaking, Who's who was typically the
best on a tight track with limited overtaking opportunities, who
was the best overtaker, who was the best of all
these traits. You then apply those traits and rankings to
different tracks and different cars where you know different Some
(27:52):
different cars are better for a late breaker, some different
cars are better for a you know, on straits and
so on. So you can simulate, You could hypothetically our
fans to simulate any scenario. You could say, who's going
to win in Monaco on a nineteen eighty model car.
You can put a current driver in a nineteen eighty
car equally, so you can do all sorts of fun
and simulations.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
And that's just the beginning.
Hey everyone, it's Robert and Joe here. Today we've got
something a little bit different to share with you. It's
a new season of the Smart Talks with IBM podcast series.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This season on Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell is back,
and this time he's taking the show on the road.
Malcolm is stepping outside the studio to explore how IBM
clients are using artificial intelligence to solve real world challenges
and transform the way they do business.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
From accelerating scientific breakthroughs to reimagining education. It's a fresh
look at innovation in action, where big ideas meet cutting
edge solutions.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
You'll hear from industry leaders, creative thinkers, and of course
Malcolm Gladwell himself as he guides you through each story.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
New episodes of Smart Talks with IBM drop every month
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Learn more at IBM dot com slash smart Talks.
This is a paid advertisement from IBM pushkin.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
I never went to a Formula one race as a
kid because we lived in southern Ontario and there was
just one F one race in Canada. That race was
in Montreal. A good seven hour drive away. I never
watched F one race on television either, because we didn't.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
Have a television.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
But what I did have was a subscription to the
car magazine Road and Track, and Roadent Track took F
one very seriously. Every month my new issue would arrive,
I would turn immediately to the long, detailed account of
that month's race, and I fell in love. It's been
fifty years, but I can still rattle off the names
(01:45):
of all the top drivers of that era from memory.
James Hunt, Mario Andretti, Carlos Pace, Jacques Lafitte, and of
course the greatest of them all, my adolescent idol, Niki Lauda,
who won two world championships in the mid nineteen seventies
with Scuderia Ferrari.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
He was world championship material from the moment he joined
the Ferrari team.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
There's no question that in seventy five seventy six I
was really dominating the whole thing without any mistake. So
I did nothing wrong.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
I mean, this was perfect driving.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
If you had met skinny pre adolescent Malcolm in the
mid nineteen seventies in rural Ontario, there's a good chance
you would have seen me in my prize Ferrari T shirt.
I was a fan, one of what the Italians called tifosi,
a Ferrari devote, And that's what it meant to be
a fan fifty years ago, t shirts, magazine stories, and
a big Nikki Lauta poster on your wall. But what
(02:42):
does it mean to be a fan today? Today we
have the Internet and streaming and big data and AI
and all the other accouterment of the digital age. Is
there a chance to reinvent the meaning of fandom? My
name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to the latest episode
(03:02):
of Smart Talks with IBM, where we offer our listeners
a glimpse behind the curtain of the world of technology.
In our first episode, we talked about how an AI
assistant created with IBM watsonex helps future teachers practice responsive teaching.
Our second episode was how a custom AI model could
help Loreel's researchers shape the future of what we put
(03:24):
on our faces every morning. In this episode, how IBM,
one of the world's pre eminent technology companies, is joining
up with one of the world's pre eminent racing brands
to fundamentally change how fans interact with their favorite team.
The size of the Scuderia Ferrari HP fan base is staggering.
(03:49):
Three hundred and ninety six million people around the world
identify as Ferrari fans. Three hundred and ninety six million.
The only other fan base is that big belong to
the icon Premier League Football teams like Manchester United or
Chelsea FC. I don't believe there is any other Formula
one team that inspires that kind of devotion. Ferrari's job, then,
(04:12):
isn't necessarily grow its fan base. Three hundred and ninety
six million is more than enough fans. Their job is
to deepen the connection people feel with the scudery A
Ferrari team. But if I'm Ferrari, how do I find
out more about who my fans are, what they care about,
what they want? How do I use my archives and
data to create experiences that matter to them? How do
(04:34):
I say to the guy who spent his childhood eagerly
reading roadent track every month? Here are other ways you
can get involved with your favorite F one team Today.
The task of deepening an emotional connection in the digital
age begins as an information problem, which is where IBM
comes in. How would you describe what you do.
Speaker 6 (04:56):
I describe it as the probably the best job, but
I bem.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to
ask you, do you have the best job at IBM?
Speaker 6 (05:03):
I think so.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
I'm talking to Fred Baker, who leads sports and Entertainment
for IBM consulting in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
You can probably guess from the accent he's from New Zealand.
Speaker 6 (05:15):
We've had a really interesting range of experience over the
past sort of five six years. We've worked with Premier
League clubs like Liverpool Football. We've worked with England Rugby
St Andrews Links. We also globally, we've got a global team,
so we work with the Masters, the US Open, ESPN,
Fantasy Football, the Grammys.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
You do the tennis stuff. Is it all under Europe?
Speaker 6 (05:36):
Yeah, so we do Wimbledon as well. Yep, that's under
my rima.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
If you've ever watched Wimbledon on television, I'm sure you've
seen at various moments a little IBM logo on the
bottom of the screen. That's because IBM has been Wimbledon's
official information technology partner since nineteen ninety, when the idea
of a collaboration between Ferrari and IBM was first broached.
Baker actually took people from Ferrari on a tour of
(06:00):
IBM's Wimbledon operation, just so they could see what a
tech company like IBM could do for a sports franchise.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Which Wimbledon.
Speaker 6 (06:09):
Did you take them to last year's champs?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Tell me what you showed them.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
We take them into what we call the bunker, so
it's literally underground at the Champs, and showed them how
we bring everything to life from the data capture off
the courts, how we real time categorize, serve all those
points to broadcasters and serve them into the app the
website for millions of fans around the world. They were
really impressed by that.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
I'm also impressed by that IBM trained it on the
language of tennis, and not only the language of tennis,
but specifically the language of tennis at Wimbledon.
Speaker 6 (06:46):
So it can then decipher what an unforced era or
a winner or a lob or you know, idiosyncrasies in
the language. It can decipher all of that, and then
it can also tell what is a broadcast like to
talk about that is in to a fan. You know,
we've trained it so it can not only analyze everything
going on in the match. It can analyze past performances
(07:07):
and rationalize results based on conditions or form and then
make predictions that fans can learn from. But it can
also pull out on the spot really interesting milestones, moments,
data points that then come out of the mouth of
a broadcaster.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
IBM is running an AI model that has been trained
on huge amounts of tennis data in order to give
human broadcasters ideas on what they can talk about. And
it all takes place underground, right near the courts.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
It's literally like it's the underground floor of the broadcast
center at Wimbledon. It's literally almost under the courts.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Is IBM got the entire bunker?
Speaker 6 (07:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (07:47):
How big is the room?
Speaker 6 (07:49):
I'm sure our team would like it to be bigger,
but it's big enough. There's probably thirty forty IBM is
down there. Man. Seeing it live is just impressive when
you see how much work and intelligence goes on to
then make an end experience for a fan that is
really beautiful and representative of their brand and tradition.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
IBM's goal in taking Ferrari to the Wimbledon bunker was
to show them what it looks like to harness the
power of data and how this could help shape Scuderia
Ferrari's fan and digital experiences. Could AI learn the language
of Scuderia Ferrari. What was the original app like before
IBM got involved. I'm speaking with Stefano Pollard, who runs
(08:33):
fan development for Ferrari's f one team.
Speaker 7 (08:36):
It was quite a good app, a very good digital product,
but just an editorial product. So we were providing fans
news and videos, articles and it was mainly about that.
The strategy and the idea was trying to use the
app to have a deeper connection and interaction with our fans,
make it more interactive. So turning it from an editorial product,
(08:59):
which was a very good editorial product, to a more
interactive product, digital product.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
With such a massive undertaking. I asked Stephen how it
all started once IBM got involved.
Speaker 7 (09:11):
We started really with a very long couple of months
of discovery phase. So looking at the current app, looking
at fans, looking at what fans wanted from an app.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Tell me a little bit more about that phrase something
a fan wanted, What is it that the super fan
wasn't getting before? That was something that would tie them
even closer to Ferrari.
Speaker 7 (09:33):
Having run some focused group, having having read that market research,
having spoken to fans, and being a fan. The strongest
inside is feridy. Fans and super fans want to be
part of something, want to belong to something, so they
want to be part of a community, and ultimately they
want to be part of a winning team, so they
(09:53):
want to feel closer and get access.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
The way Stefano side. The opportunity wasn't with race days
when the cars are on the track, the tafosi are
already locked in, but there was an opportunity to engage
Ferrari fans on the other days of the week or
during the off season.
Speaker 6 (10:15):
Formula One is so much more than just the race.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
This is Fred Baker again.
Speaker 6 (10:21):
What we can do is relive the race and bring
it to life after the fact. We can help them prepare,
we can help them relive the past, and we can
also bring the experience around race weekend to life as well.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
That of course, maybe wonder how do you engage fans
when there's not a race happening. Baker says it all
comes back to data and information. Talk a little bit
about data collection, because you're talking about a brand with
tentacles everywhere, and you're trying to bring a lot of
that stuff together in the app.
Speaker 6 (10:52):
This is an organization that has for decades used data
for racing the performance, it's not historically used that data
for everyone in the world to see. What we're trying
to do is expose as much of it as we
can to fans. So part of collecting the data, the
challenge with around how you go across all the disparate
different groups that collect data for different purposes. The team
(11:14):
that collects data on tires, the team that has data
on drivers, on whether or on competitors, and so on.
So you're trying to bring all that together and source
it and make sense of it and train our AI
to understand what it means, what things on team radio mean,
what nicknames mean, what abbreviations and slang and idiosyncrasies on
(11:35):
car specifics and track specifics and so on mean. And
you're also trying to design for something that is going
to be fan engaging but also appropriate to all the
sensitivities of the privacy that's necessary. So you want it
to be able to do all of that, collect all
the data, produce something for fans in an automated way.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
But in order to design something to expertly engage the tafosi,
it's necessary to understand more about the passion and the
type of national identity behind the fan base. You need
to get inside the mind of the super fan. If
you wanted to meet some modern day tafosi in the
United States, you could head to a bar in Midtown
(12:17):
Manhattan called Fela. Every race day, Formula One fans gathered
Feala to cheer on their favorite drivers, their favorite teams,
and I mean really cheer. I sent our producer Jake
Harper to Feala on the day of the Canadian Grand
Prix so you could see the fandom up close. The
bar gets loud and so crowded it's hard to move.
(12:40):
Today the room is packed with Scuderia Ferrari HP fans.
Speaker 6 (12:44):
Even your glasses are Ferrari.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I just noticed that Jake talked to a Ferrari fan
named Gino who was dressed head to toe in Ferrari's
signature red and black.
Speaker 8 (12:53):
And my shoes are Ferraria.
Speaker 6 (12:55):
Fully checked out.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
They were making fun of me last time I was here.
They're like, is your underwear Ferrari? I texted my girlfriend, like, Babe,
I need Ferrari underwear.
Speaker 6 (13:03):
Did you get it?
Speaker 8 (13:04):
Not yet? Not yet, I'll work on it.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Gino's fandom started with Ferrari as a brand.
Speaker 8 (13:10):
I love the cars.
Speaker 5 (13:11):
I think the four fifty eight Scoodaria is like the
pinnacle of automotive engineering.
Speaker 8 (13:15):
That's my dream car. The four point thirty with the
glass house for the engine. I mean, that's They're all gorgeous.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
It's always been an aspiration of mine to own one,
so that naturally.
Speaker 8 (13:26):
Made me gravitate towards Ferrari.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
Even when the company I worked for a sponsored AMG Petronis,
I was secretly like hiding my taphosi at the races, like.
Speaker 6 (13:38):
Clark Kenton Superman. You're just hiding the uniform underneath.
Speaker 8 (13:41):
I love that. I love that. Yeah, I was wearing
a Ferrari shirt underneath my suit.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
In one sense, Gino is typical of what Ferrari has
learned about its followers. A lot of F one fans,
especially newer fans, are fans of drivers, but the tafosi
love Ferrari. It's the oldest brand in Formula One, the
only team that is stuck around since the series was
founded in nineteen fifty. But in another sense, Gino is
(14:06):
not typical. He lives in New York. He can go
to Fala to celebrate F one with other tefosi.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
I'm a big racing fan, and coming to this bar,
I found a bunch of people that were in a
F one.
Speaker 8 (14:17):
Now I'm at this.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Bar every weekend just about with four or five friends
that I made just through racings.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
But lots and lots of Scuderia Ferraris three hundred and
ninety six million fans don't live in a big city
with a Ferrari bar, and lots of those three hundred
and ninety six million fans aren't the kind of hardcore
fan who dressed head to toe in Ferrari's signature red
and black. A group that large is diverse, necessarily, and
one of the first tasks that IBM and Ferrari set
(14:46):
out to do was to understand the full range of
the tafosi phenomenon. People like Gino hardcore fans. They were easy,
They would follow Scuderia Ferrari HB anywhere it wanted to go.
But who else was out there? The most interesting addition
to the F one fan base were those who watched
the phenomenally successful Netflix documentary Drive to Survive. These tended
(15:09):
to be newcomers to the sport, more Americans than Europeans.
What was their emotional perspective? What did they want? Here's
Fred Baker again, the guy with the coolest job at IBM.
Speaker 6 (15:21):
If I'm a passionate fan, I want to read a
totally different thing on the app to a casual fan
who is of the Netflix drive to Survive generation versus
you know, some really niche personas that we found that
are super interested but don't find it accessible yet until
we start to deliver to quite different needs that they have.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Working with IBM WATSONEX, Baker and his team began to
develop personas archetypes of all the possible kinds of Ferrari fans,
because if Ferrari wanted to get better at talking to
their fans, they had to understand who the fans were,
and the personas are helping Ferrari and IBM create an
app that caters to the tafosi in all their iterations.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
How many personas did you come up with?
Speaker 6 (16:05):
I think we had over ten in the end, maybe
a dozen. And this is different, yeah, archetypes of people.
Even that process is helped by AI, so we train
AI to help us develop out a persona. We can
get really detailed as to what each archetype is and
their hobbies and backgrounds and so on. So our own
watsonex helped us in developing those personas, like our research
(16:28):
helped us uncover a segment of middle aged women in
China who Ferrari is a real status symbol and they're
really interested in the Scuderia Ferrari brand and now they
can engage more with it, but it wasn't yet accessible
or inclusive enough for them to feel comfortable doing so.
Real spectrums of fans across those dozen personas that we
(16:48):
had to design for.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Give me some more examples of personas. Can you give
you a couple more just so get a flavor?
Speaker 6 (16:56):
Yeah? Sure. So. The other obvious one is the Drive
to Survive fan and that they're probably not a diehard
all their lives Scuterier Ferrari fan, but they've really got
into the more social side of formula one that's been
born out of the really popular series Drive to Survive
on Netflix. You then have gamer personas who are into
esports is growing massively in motorsport, and they're probably not
(17:17):
necessarily into the real life racing quite so much, but
they're certainly into gaming, So how do you appeal to
them then casual fans who are sort of into the
luxury of scudo Ferrari but not the sport necessarily do
the personas have names? Yeah, I mean we give them
human names. So we had a Max, we had a Alfonso.
I think we had a Pedro.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Two women in China.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Is she watching F one or is she interested more
in the brand and what it signifies?
Speaker 6 (17:42):
Yeah, more in the brand and being part of a community.
If I'm that persona in China, then I probably don't
feel like I belong to it truly yet, but I'd
love to feel like I do, so I could start
to become a part of a digital community, learn more
about the brand, probably get access to exclusive merchandise, or
you know, if I can't necessarily own a Ferrari car,
(18:04):
which let's face it, not many people can. And if
we're relyinged only on the people who can own a car,
then we're probably not going to get much engagement. So
how do we make others feel that they're still a
part of that community.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
This is what I mean when I say the task
of relating to the Ferrari fan base is a data
and information problem. It's about collecting, organizing, and analyzing the
needs and wants of an enormous pool of people and
speaking to each of them in their own emotional language.
Giving all the work Fred put into understanding Ferrari's fan base,
(18:37):
I was curious to know how his framework would categorize me.
I want to figure out which persona I am. So
I'll describe to you my relationship to Ferrari and you
tell me so what I am is a huge car,
not so like all cars. Yeah, obsessively collect on a
(18:59):
very limited stage vintage cars, read serious car magazines, spend
a lot of time my car websites. Have a historical
relationship to have one. Because I grew up with Nikki
Lauda battling James Hunt in loudest for our years. I
have a grit nostalgic connection. Went to Italy with my
(19:19):
nephew and went to the Ferrari factory and rented one
of those to drive around, you know, and.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
I follow that F one. But I wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
I would don't think I would ever go to an
I wouldn't fly to Miami for F one. Miami, I
wouldn't go that far, and I don't have time to
watch a F one on TV on a regular basis,
but I'm interested. And I have a red Frari T
shirt which I've been known to wear, and if you,
if I ever got really rich, would I buy it
(19:48):
for Aur?
Speaker 6 (19:48):
Yes?
Speaker 9 (19:48):
I would.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Okay, So where am I? Where am I in your breakdown?
Speaker 6 (19:53):
Yeah? I think you're probably a combination of the I
think it's casual loyalist. It's not going to not going
to overtly go out of their way to sort of
spend money on the racing, but they are loyal to
the Ferrari brand and they have nostalgia with it or
whatever it might be. And then the luxury enthusiasts as well,
so and that type of fan. You're right, We're probably
(20:14):
not going to engage you by doing a ton more
on race weekend, but we can engage you by bringing
this hugely rich amount of archive material, footage, feelings and
past drivers of yesteryear, by bringing them to life.
Speaker 9 (20:36):
In zero an app that you saw another brand doing
that served as a kind of model. I don't mean
within F one, I'm talking about it from any other film.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
On top of.
Speaker 7 (20:47):
Being a very sport passionate. I'm, let's say, a marketing passionate,
a digital passionate guy. So I have a lot of apps,
and he also for my job. I tried to look
at the and different apps.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
As we were talking, I was thinking about Strava. I'm
a huge Stravahead. It's my favorite app. If you don't
already know, Strava is used by millions of active people
around the world. I'm a runner, and the app shows
me a map of where I went, how fast I ran,
what my heart ray was, what the weather was, on
and on.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Are you're a cyclostore runner, I'm a runner.
Speaker 6 (21:21):
I'm a runner.
Speaker 7 (21:22):
I run marathons and ultra marathons. I did let's see
one hundred kilometers.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
As it turns out, Stefano is a Stravahead too. Right
after I spoke to him, I followed him on Strava.
He and I run roughly the same distance every day
at the same pace, and if I'm ever in Milan,
I'm almost certainly going to look him up to see
if you'll take me out on one of his favorite
routes through the city. This is what I love about Strava.
You can find people to run with and interact with
(21:48):
Strava is a community of like minded people and for
those like me, the Strava app becomes a regular part
of my daily routine, and that's what Stefano wanted for
the Ferrari app. Are you interested allowing creating sort of
robust forums for our evans to communicate with each other?
Speaker 7 (22:07):
I think you have to work in three directions. So
direction number one is a Ferrari to fans, so providing
them something which is compelling, which has value, and this
I think we're already doing and we're working on it.
Second way is fans to Ferrari, so help like allowing
fans to better interact with us, which was something we
(22:28):
were not doing with the previous app. For example, we've
just introduced two features which are polls, so basic ones,
but polls and the possibility like the submit your message feature.
So really to work on the way fans to Ferrari.
And then the third important way to build a community
and nature community is like fans to fans. So if
you were able to work on those trae dimensions of
(22:51):
Ferrari to fans, fans to Ferrari and fans to fans,
that's how you could really create a strong community and
start really monetizing and create in value. I think we
are very strong in the first dimension right now, we're
building the second one, so fans to Ferrari and then
definitely the third one has to be there in order
to have a complete community engagement.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
So let's talk about results.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Scuddery of Ferrari HP launched the new app at the
Miami Grand Prix in twenty twenty five, incorporating AI elements
and tailoring it to those archetypes. Was talking about, are
more people using the app? Are users spending more time
on it than they did on the older version of
the app?
Speaker 7 (23:35):
Yes, we doubled these months the daily active users we
were having last season, so compared to the average of
twenty twenty four season, we have more than double of
daily active users. Also, we're doubling normal months down downloads,
so we did in these months more than two times
the download we are doing in a normal months. We
(23:56):
are increasing by thirty five percent the average times. So
keep your eyes out good.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
If you build the right app, they will come for generations.
Fans of all varieties have met in public places, the
stands of stadiums, in bars to watch races, and matches
on television. But there's a chance now for fandom to
exist on a higher and broader level, for a community
(24:24):
to be created over the Internet, even when the fans
are vastly different people who live vast distances apart. I
can imagine Gino in his Ferrari Red and Black, using
the scoodery of Ferrari app relating to me as I
relive my memories of Niki Lauder from the nineteen seventies.
Maybe I could use the app to learn something from
(24:45):
the woman in China, the Tafosie newcomer, or some seventeen
year old who got sucked in first by drive to survive.
I can imagine myself as part of that vision, taking
my lifelong obsession to the next level. Smart Talks with
(25:14):
IBM is produced by Matt Ramano, Amy Gains, McQuaid, Trina Menino,
and Jake Harper were edited by Lacy Roberts. Engineering by
Nina Bird Lawrence, mastering by Sarah Bruguier, music by Gramoscope,
Strategy by Tatiana Lieberman and Cassidy Meyer. Special thanks to
Scuderia Ferrari HP and the bar and restaurant Feala in
(25:36):
New York City Smart Talks with IBM is a production
of Pushkin Industries and Ruby Studio at iHeartMedia. To find
more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm Glappo. This
is a paid advertisement from IBM. The conversations on this
(25:57):
podcast don't necessarily represent IBM's position, strategies or opinions. I
asked Fred Baker to come up with a hypothetical something
that could fulfill my childhood dreams, something that this type
(26:20):
of technology could theoretically do that might appeal to a
fan like me, someone who's interested in the sport went
back fifty years. He said, what about using AI to
bring historical cars to.
Speaker 6 (26:33):
Life, bringing to live cars of the past and allows
fans to simulate a nineteen fifty Ferrari race versus nineteen
seventy one to see who which car would be faster.
So it's those sorts of trade offs.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Wait, you could do it. Wait you could do that?
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Tell me about last thing you said you can run
simulations race simulations out of the app.
Speaker 6 (26:54):
You can't out of the app at this point, so
I know, potentially, potentially, Yeah, it can you know, simulates
based on a whole range of factors that we can
feed and train it on.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Wait, so I could hypothetically you could allow me to
compare Niki Lauder, for example, to a contemporary driver, and
I could say if I put Nicki Lauder in a
contemporary car, what you're saying is that there is a
scenario where I could recreate that era in modern cars
(27:27):
and get a sense of how my childhood heroes were performing,
would have performed a break day?
Speaker 6 (27:32):
Yeah? Yeah, So you can analyze and understand how you
would rank all drivers of all time based on the
different traits of a driver, right, So you can say
who's the best late breaking, Who's who was typically the
best on a tight track with limited overtaking opportunities, who
was the best overtaker, who was the best of all
these traits. You then apply those traits and rankings to
different tracks and different cars where you know different Some
(27:52):
different cars are better for a late breaker, some different
cars are better for a you know, on straits and
so on. So you can simulate, You could hypothetically our
fans to simulate any scenario. You could say, who's going
to win in Monaco on a nineteen eighty model car.
You can put a current driver in a nineteen eighty
car equally, so you can do all sorts of fun
and simulations.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
And that's just the beginning.
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