June 21, 2025 • 17 mins
Hot Pursuit is taking you to the racetrack at the 24 Hours of Le Mans--one of the toughest automotive endurance contests of all time. From the midnight pit stops to the sunrise battles, Matt Miller and Hannah Elliott take you into drivers seat with CEOs, racing legends and the brands competing for the Le Mans edge.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Coming up. It's the Davos of the automotive world.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I don't think there's a better way to promote your
brand to win here.
Speaker 4 (00:17):
I think it's bigger.
Speaker 5 (00:18):
One would before.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Bloomberg's Hot Pursuit goes inside the action, giving you exclusive
access to the world's most grueling endurance race. Welcome to
the twenty four Hours of Lamont.
Speaker 6 (00:37):
Welcome to a special edition of Hot Pursuit. I'm Matt
Miller along with Hannah Elliott.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
We're in Lamon, France for the legendary twenty four Hours
of Lamon, one of the most prestigious, challenging, and historically
significant races in motorsports.
Speaker 6 (00:54):
Leamon isn't just about speed, It's about Survivalour.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hours of Lamon is part of the Automotive Triple Crown,
alongside the Monaco Graham Prix and the Indianapolis five hundred.
It's a grueling endurance test that has attracted top level
executives and business titans as a destination for networking and
deal making. Those pilots who survived across the Finnic line
(01:20):
when sporting glory and a permanent place in the history books.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
For over a century, Laman has been the ultimate proven
ground for what cars and car companies are made of.
Speaker 6 (01:33):
We sat down with Ford CEO Jim Farley and Aston
Martin CEO Adrian Hallmark to talk about the ROI of motorsport.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
For us, the biggest is off road market. You know,
we have you know, almost twenty percent of a global
profit coming from our enthusiast off road products, and we
race it to car. We said Baja, we have said
King and the Hammers. That's a big thing.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
You know.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
I don't think there's a better way to promote your brand.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Look what Ford winning in sixty six at Lama did
for Ford Motor Company. It made us a global company.
We're an American company, but that moment changed us completely, and
that's why we're going back in twenty seven to take
on Ferrari and take on Porsche. We think we have
the technology but also the tech transfer software, battery, tech, aerodynamics.
(02:20):
It's different than the seventies, but the tech transfer over
to our road cars is immediate. You'll see hundreds of
Ford engineers here who will be working on Monday on
our road cars. And it's really important tech transfer, but
we do it I think as smart as we can,
and maybe as a racer, I'm more sensitive about wasting
(02:40):
money on racing, and we challenge ourselves to be really smart.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
I think we've done a great job with.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
The off road, the raptors, the tremors, all the broncos.
I think that's been, frankly, some of the smartest investment
we had in racing.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
You say you're an American company, and you've outed yourself
as literally the most American car maker. Eighty percent of
the cars that you sell in America are made there.
Donald Trump was saying maybe he's going to go after
even higher auto tariffs. While you've said in the past
that causes costs and chaos, does it also kind of
help you because no one else makes as many cars
as you do in America.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Well, for Ford, this is a moment for us.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
You know, we we have employee pricing out there. We
gained a couple points to share year over year. A
lot of Americans are shopping forward because now they're starting
to think, hey, half the cars in the US are imported,
and if all the car companies were like Ford, there'd
be fifteen new factories in the US, a million new jobs.
You know, I think a lot of Americans are starting
to pay attention to where these where these cars come from.
(03:40):
And for US, yes, I think Donald Trump's policies, especially
around the Asian countries where you know they've supported with
substities direct or indirect for their automobile industry.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
You know, this is a great thing.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
We have to sort out this Mexico Canada thing because
we need to keep the vehicles affordable in the US
and there's actually a lot of parts we can't even
make in the US, and so we have to kind
of sort out what it rolled does Mexico and Canada
have in our North America market from supply chain.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
And manufacturing keep the vehicles.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Affordable, and that's something that we're talking to administration. We
found the administration to be very positive to work with.
They want to help companies like Ford that did the
right thing for Americans.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
But we have more work to do in.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
Terms of what the administration has been trying to do
with China. Are you satisfied with the rare earth minerals
that you have access to. I know that you had
to slow down production in the past. Have you been
able to secure the amount of magnets that you need.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
It's day to day. It's day to day. These high
patron magnets. The raw materials for them only come from
certain places in the world. They're all processed in China,
and they go in your speakers and your autosystem. They
go in your motors, for your wipers and your seats.
They're all over our f one fifty for example. We
have applications in them offcom. They're getting approved one at
(05:03):
a time. You know, we're educating the administration, we're educating
the Chinese leadership about how important these jobs in the
Midwest are.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
They are dependent. We have had to shut down factories.
It's hand to mouth right now.
Speaker 6 (05:17):
The electric business, though, I would imagine, also is dependent
on in some sense higher gas prices.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I drove your Lightning. It was fantastic, spent a week
in it.
Speaker 6 (05:26):
I've driven the Machi for a couple of weeks, and
one of the great pleasures is you don't ever have
to go to a gas station. Right How are those
businesses doing right now because you've taken such big losses
there and maybe slowed down in terms of your progress
into evs.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, we've really changed because we're thankful we've been number
two to Tesla for three years in the US because
we spent our capital like five six years ago and
all that product's been out for four years that you mentioned.
So we've learned a ton now. We've changed our capital
allocation for evs. We've reduced suspending, changed the battery chemistry
a lot to focus on more profitability. We've gone down
(06:02):
market and mostly in commercial. Those are the only markets
where we think in the US, you know, an age
seven percent of the industry is going to make sense
for EV where you can actually make money. And the
EPA requirements have a big impact on the EV investments
by OEMs. During the last several years, you know, we
had to kind of sell like fifteen to twenty percent
of our mix to be evs, both for the ZEV
(06:24):
states California, Colorado, New York, but also you know, to
meet the national tailpipe emissions.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
And so what's happened.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Interestingly, the total number of evs in the US has grown,
but the total revenue has not changed in three years
because the prices have come down equal to the volume
going up. So the EV market has not been going
for three years. If you look at total revenue. Everyone
looks at unit volume. Don't look at that, look at
the price and the volume, and I think we now
(06:52):
have a good strategy going forward. A lot of our
competitors are just investing for the first time, and good
luck if you're selling eighty thousand dollars SUV electric vehicle.
We've invested a lot in hybrid. We are really successful
with our truck. Hybrid's the best selling vehicle in the
US for forty seven years, been in the F one fifty.
Twenty five percent of those customers now by hybrid, and.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
A lot of it is exportable power.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
You can run your house for six days within F
one fifty hybrid now, and the others don't.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Offer that at all.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
Aston Martins CEO Adrian Hallmark.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Talk a little bit about what the brand gets out
of the race. Obviously this is an iconic race. What
do you get from it as a company?
Speaker 7 (07:35):
I think if you compare it with that Formula one activity,
the media coverage is a fraction of the pure global
awareness that F one gets, But if you look at
people that are interested in high performance.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
Vehicles, it's much more relevant.
Speaker 7 (07:50):
So it's a smaller audience, but it's almost self selecting
because most people buy supercalls hypercast sports cause they love
endurance racing. Why I've used this that we all have
before until Formula One got a lot bigger in terms
of number of races per year when it was only
sixteen races.
Speaker 5 (08:09):
Rough that's exactly the same as a twenty four hour race.
Speaker 7 (08:12):
So Lamont is the same as a full season of
Formula One back ten years ago and faster. So from
a technical challenge point of view, a people challenge point
of view, it's got to be the most demanding, incredible
sport in motorsport.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Talk to us a little bit about sustainability at Aston Martin.
Where are you guys with the sustainable power trade and
where are you taking from the racing that we might
see in the cars in the future.
Speaker 7 (08:37):
So I think from a Lamont point of view, it's
probably the furthest away from our sustainability strategy.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
Why we have no hybrid.
Speaker 7 (08:47):
We've gone for a naturally aspirated twelve cylinder engine, which
is what makes the Valkyrie Lamon cars so incredible. There's
nothing else on the track like it. But if you
go to the road cars, we've just launched Valhalla. It's
a hypercar. It's two point six seconds to sixty two
miles per hour, over one thousand horsepower carbon fiber tub
(09:10):
hybrid system front electric axle, high power V eight engine
and a motor in the gearbox to combination well.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
Over one thousand horsepower.
Speaker 7 (09:20):
That's our first plug in hybrid for the road as
a regular car. Over the next five years, all of
our cars will be hybridized, and then within the ten
year window we'll have launched one or maybe two electric vehicles.
But we certainly see for the next ten years until
twenty thirty five, let's say, the majority of our business
(09:41):
now will be electrified combustion engine systems that massively reduced
real world emissions but also give more importantly, way more
horsepower than the current products.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
And that's the direction that we've taken.
Speaker 6 (09:55):
I sat down with Laurence Stroller at Q or whatever
you call your Aston Martin shop in New York on
fifty seven the Park, and he was doing with me
the back of the napkin math of what Aston Martin
could be if it got even half of a Ferrari valuation.
I'm sure that's the goal that you're aiming for as well.
(10:16):
What are your plans to get there and what do
you have to do to get investors to attribute that
kind of valuation to Aston Martin.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
One word perform.
Speaker 7 (10:28):
You know, as a company, we've been around for one
hundred and twelve years and it's been a rocky journey
for that one hundred and twelve years. The brand has endured,
it's got a fantastic reputation. The response that you get
in an Aston Martin is unlike anything I've experienced, and
you know, I've been with great German brands and another
great British brand for combined twenty five years of my life.
(10:52):
You can't stop at a gas station or at a
hotel without somebody taking a picture of you or asking
you a question about the car.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
It's phenomenal power is there.
Speaker 7 (11:01):
What we need is a consistent approach to product development,
which under Lawrence and that new investment approach has.
Speaker 5 (11:07):
Begun the first five years.
Speaker 7 (11:09):
If you look at what we've refreshed and what we've delivered,
Vanquish has knocked it out the park. We're beating the
Italian competitor in road test hands down. That's never happened before.
We've been accredited being better looking in certain products, but
never on a track in absolute extreme conditions. The asten's
(11:29):
the best. So we build cars at work. They look fantastic.
But we've really got to now with this transition between
the current product range, the hybrid range and electric. We've
got a whole strategy which I can't talk about in
detail today, which will rely on less volume growth, more
quality of margin, quality of business, operational excellence, all the
(11:51):
quite boring stuff that makes great companies even greater. We've
all done it before and that's what we intend to
do here. So we've got the brand, we've got the performance,
we've got the design. We've now going to make the
business as beautiful as the cars.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Up next, we'll go one on one with racers behind
the wheel. Welcome back to a special edition of Hot Pursuit.
I'm Hannah Elliott along with Matt Miller.
Speaker 6 (12:21):
For Racers Lemon Is where legends are made. We caught
up with Formula one world champion Jensen Button as well
as Michelle Gatting, a member of the Iron Dames all
female auto racing team.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
We talked about what makes this race so different than
any other. Tell us a little bit about the difference
of between what it takes to be a great endurance driver,
versus F one driver. I know it's a slightly different
skill set.
Speaker 8 (12:47):
F one driver it's the most selfish role possible in sport,
say more, because it's all about you. You know, you
know that the team will say, you're racing for this team.
You know you've got to put the team first. But
we all know that the driver is racing for themselves
because you win a championship and you know your main
(13:08):
competitor is your teammate who is in the same car
as you, and he's the person that you have to
be He's the one you get judged against. So you
have to be selfish. And that mentality was very difficult
for me when I when I got married and I
had kids and suddenly you're the least most important person
in the household. So getting over that selfishness was quite
(13:29):
difficult for me, and it took It did take a moment.
Insurance racing is very different because you have to work
with your teammates. You've got to work with your team
to develop the car and compromise. You know, compromising is
something that you're not very good at doing. As an
fun driver endurance driver. It's all about compromise, it's about
getting your teammates at your level or even higher than
(13:49):
where you are, because then you know, even if you're
the slowest guy in the car, you know you're quick.
Speaker 6 (13:55):
You must work on maximizing your strength for those for
those forty five minutes or whatever. And here, like you
have to wake up at three in the morning and
get back in the car. What is it like driving
at night? Driving or tired? What is it like seeing
the sun rise as you're you know, doing you know,
one hundred and eighty five miles an hour down a
(14:16):
straight at Lamar.
Speaker 8 (14:18):
You are always jet liked, basically, you know, that's the
feeling that you have when you're driving the car.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
You're jet like.
Speaker 8 (14:24):
You know that you're slightly off, always slightly off. If
you're lucky enough to get into the start of the race,
that's probably the only time that feels normal. The love
of this race for me is is sunrise sunset. You know,
that just blows my mind. When the sun drops and
(14:46):
darkness falls, the circuit comes alive, it becomes quicker, the
wind drops, the cars are a bit easier to drive,
but you have to get used to that change in light,
which is also very difficult. And I don't know, if
you've noticed, there's a lot of buz here at the moment,
so we've got yeah there. So like after two laps
(15:06):
you have a covered wind screen and trying to look
through that when the sun's in your eyes it's not easy.
So sunset's great. Sunrise. The best moment of the race,
you know, really is when the sunrises, you see.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
How dirty the cars are. You know you've come through
the night.
Speaker 8 (15:23):
You kind of feel like you're at the end already,
even though you have another ten hours to go. So
that moment is a very special moment and you've got
through the night. If you've not had issues, you're still
in with a chance of a win.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
The shell Gatting a member of the Iron Dames all
female auto racing team.
Speaker 9 (15:41):
The Iron Dames were born in twenty eighteen. It's an
all female project that is supporting women in motorsport not
only as drivers, but as engineers, mechanics on the marketing
side because the sport is it's huge and it needs
people like women as well. And the project is special
because we are an all female end up sharing a car,
three women racing against all the others, and the end
(16:04):
of the day, like we always say, we when we.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Put the helmets on.
Speaker 9 (16:07):
We have race drivers like anybody else, but we definitely
want to give female drivers a chance to be seen
out there, because that's what's been missing over the years.
And I think what the project has been doing since
the very beginning in twenty eighteen has really been showcasing
that women can compete on the same level as men
in the highest level of endurance racing. We have won
races in the World Championship, in the European Championship, and
(16:29):
we are proving that we can race alongside the men
and we can beat them.
Speaker 10 (16:34):
I just want to ask, because I have a couple
of daughters at home, four and one. They're watching racing
with me every weekend, what do I do to get
Edna and Lola into this sport, to get them prepared
and hopefully to a higher level.
Speaker 9 (16:48):
Well, the first thing you should do is bring them
to a race, bring them down to the Iron Name's
garage and show them that there are three ladies there.
Who is proving to your girls that is possible. Because
we had a dream we were their age. You know,
back then, when I was very young, it was difficult
to have somebody to look up to. In terms of
(17:08):
female drivers, because there was not really any. Now hopefully
we are the drivers that your two daughters can look
up to and say, yeah, but they are doing it
because with hard work, dedication, and passion and commitment, you
can do whatever you want in life. And this is
what we want to showcase with the Iron Dames Project.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
That's it for this edition of Hot Pursuit. Thanks for
joining us.
Speaker 6 (17:31):
Tune in to see more of Hannah and me on
our Hot Pursuit podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts, this
is Bloomberg
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Coming up. It's the Davos of the automotive world.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I don't think there's a better way to promote your
brand to win here.
Speaker 4 (00:17):
I think it's bigger.
Speaker 5 (00:18):
One would before.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Bloomberg's Hot Pursuit goes inside the action, giving you exclusive
access to the world's most grueling endurance race. Welcome to
the twenty four Hours of Lamont.
Speaker 6 (00:37):
Welcome to a special edition of Hot Pursuit. I'm Matt
Miller along with Hannah Elliott.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
We're in Lamon, France for the legendary twenty four Hours
of Lamon, one of the most prestigious, challenging, and historically
significant races in motorsports.
Speaker 6 (00:54):
Leamon isn't just about speed, It's about Survivalour.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hours of Lamon is part of the Automotive Triple Crown,
alongside the Monaco Graham Prix and the Indianapolis five hundred.
It's a grueling endurance test that has attracted top level
executives and business titans as a destination for networking and
deal making. Those pilots who survived across the Finnic line
(01:20):
when sporting glory and a permanent place in the history books.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
For over a century, Laman has been the ultimate proven
ground for what cars and car companies are made of.
Speaker 6 (01:33):
We sat down with Ford CEO Jim Farley and Aston
Martin CEO Adrian Hallmark to talk about the ROI of motorsport.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
For us, the biggest is off road market. You know,
we have you know, almost twenty percent of a global
profit coming from our enthusiast off road products, and we
race it to car. We said Baja, we have said
King and the Hammers. That's a big thing.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
You know.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
I don't think there's a better way to promote your brand.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Look what Ford winning in sixty six at Lama did
for Ford Motor Company. It made us a global company.
We're an American company, but that moment changed us completely, and
that's why we're going back in twenty seven to take
on Ferrari and take on Porsche. We think we have
the technology but also the tech transfer software, battery, tech, aerodynamics.
(02:20):
It's different than the seventies, but the tech transfer over
to our road cars is immediate. You'll see hundreds of
Ford engineers here who will be working on Monday on
our road cars. And it's really important tech transfer, but
we do it I think as smart as we can,
and maybe as a racer, I'm more sensitive about wasting
(02:40):
money on racing, and we challenge ourselves to be really smart.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
I think we've done a great job with.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
The off road, the raptors, the tremors, all the broncos.
I think that's been, frankly, some of the smartest investment
we had in racing.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
You say you're an American company, and you've outed yourself
as literally the most American car maker. Eighty percent of
the cars that you sell in America are made there.
Donald Trump was saying maybe he's going to go after
even higher auto tariffs. While you've said in the past
that causes costs and chaos, does it also kind of
help you because no one else makes as many cars
as you do in America.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Well, for Ford, this is a moment for us.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
You know, we we have employee pricing out there. We
gained a couple points to share year over year. A
lot of Americans are shopping forward because now they're starting
to think, hey, half the cars in the US are imported,
and if all the car companies were like Ford, there'd
be fifteen new factories in the US, a million new jobs.
You know, I think a lot of Americans are starting
to pay attention to where these where these cars come from.
(03:40):
And for US, yes, I think Donald Trump's policies, especially
around the Asian countries where you know they've supported with
substities direct or indirect for their automobile industry.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
You know, this is a great thing.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
We have to sort out this Mexico Canada thing because
we need to keep the vehicles affordable in the US
and there's actually a lot of parts we can't even
make in the US, and so we have to kind
of sort out what it rolled does Mexico and Canada
have in our North America market from supply chain.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
And manufacturing keep the vehicles.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Affordable, and that's something that we're talking to administration. We
found the administration to be very positive to work with.
They want to help companies like Ford that did the
right thing for Americans.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
But we have more work to do in.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
Terms of what the administration has been trying to do
with China. Are you satisfied with the rare earth minerals
that you have access to. I know that you had
to slow down production in the past. Have you been
able to secure the amount of magnets that you need.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
It's day to day. It's day to day. These high
patron magnets. The raw materials for them only come from
certain places in the world. They're all processed in China,
and they go in your speakers and your autosystem. They
go in your motors, for your wipers and your seats.
They're all over our f one fifty for example. We
have applications in them offcom. They're getting approved one at
(05:03):
a time. You know, we're educating the administration, we're educating
the Chinese leadership about how important these jobs in the
Midwest are.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
They are dependent. We have had to shut down factories.
It's hand to mouth right now.
Speaker 6 (05:17):
The electric business, though, I would imagine, also is dependent
on in some sense higher gas prices.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I drove your Lightning. It was fantastic, spent a week
in it.
Speaker 6 (05:26):
I've driven the Machi for a couple of weeks, and
one of the great pleasures is you don't ever have
to go to a gas station. Right How are those
businesses doing right now because you've taken such big losses
there and maybe slowed down in terms of your progress
into evs.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, we've really changed because we're thankful we've been number
two to Tesla for three years in the US because
we spent our capital like five six years ago and
all that product's been out for four years that you mentioned.
So we've learned a ton now. We've changed our capital
allocation for evs. We've reduced suspending, changed the battery chemistry
a lot to focus on more profitability. We've gone down
(06:02):
market and mostly in commercial. Those are the only markets
where we think in the US, you know, an age
seven percent of the industry is going to make sense
for EV where you can actually make money. And the
EPA requirements have a big impact on the EV investments
by OEMs. During the last several years, you know, we
had to kind of sell like fifteen to twenty percent
of our mix to be evs, both for the ZEV
(06:24):
states California, Colorado, New York, but also you know, to
meet the national tailpipe emissions.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
And so what's happened.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Interestingly, the total number of evs in the US has grown,
but the total revenue has not changed in three years
because the prices have come down equal to the volume
going up. So the EV market has not been going
for three years. If you look at total revenue. Everyone
looks at unit volume. Don't look at that, look at
the price and the volume, and I think we now
(06:52):
have a good strategy going forward. A lot of our
competitors are just investing for the first time, and good
luck if you're selling eighty thousand dollars SUV electric vehicle.
We've invested a lot in hybrid. We are really successful
with our truck. Hybrid's the best selling vehicle in the
US for forty seven years, been in the F one fifty.
Twenty five percent of those customers now by hybrid, and.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
A lot of it is exportable power.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
You can run your house for six days within F
one fifty hybrid now, and the others don't.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Offer that at all.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
Aston Martins CEO Adrian Hallmark.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Talk a little bit about what the brand gets out
of the race. Obviously this is an iconic race. What
do you get from it as a company?
Speaker 7 (07:35):
I think if you compare it with that Formula one activity,
the media coverage is a fraction of the pure global
awareness that F one gets, But if you look at
people that are interested in high performance.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
Vehicles, it's much more relevant.
Speaker 7 (07:50):
So it's a smaller audience, but it's almost self selecting
because most people buy supercalls hypercast sports cause they love
endurance racing. Why I've used this that we all have
before until Formula One got a lot bigger in terms
of number of races per year when it was only
sixteen races.
Speaker 5 (08:09):
Rough that's exactly the same as a twenty four hour race.
Speaker 7 (08:12):
So Lamont is the same as a full season of
Formula One back ten years ago and faster. So from
a technical challenge point of view, a people challenge point
of view, it's got to be the most demanding, incredible
sport in motorsport.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Talk to us a little bit about sustainability at Aston Martin.
Where are you guys with the sustainable power trade and
where are you taking from the racing that we might
see in the cars in the future.
Speaker 7 (08:37):
So I think from a Lamont point of view, it's
probably the furthest away from our sustainability strategy.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
Why we have no hybrid.
Speaker 7 (08:47):
We've gone for a naturally aspirated twelve cylinder engine, which
is what makes the Valkyrie Lamon cars so incredible. There's
nothing else on the track like it. But if you
go to the road cars, we've just launched Valhalla. It's
a hypercar. It's two point six seconds to sixty two
miles per hour, over one thousand horsepower carbon fiber tub
(09:10):
hybrid system front electric axle, high power V eight engine
and a motor in the gearbox to combination well.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
Over one thousand horsepower.
Speaker 7 (09:20):
That's our first plug in hybrid for the road as
a regular car. Over the next five years, all of
our cars will be hybridized, and then within the ten
year window we'll have launched one or maybe two electric vehicles.
But we certainly see for the next ten years until
twenty thirty five, let's say, the majority of our business
(09:41):
now will be electrified combustion engine systems that massively reduced
real world emissions but also give more importantly, way more
horsepower than the current products.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
And that's the direction that we've taken.
Speaker 6 (09:55):
I sat down with Laurence Stroller at Q or whatever
you call your Aston Martin shop in New York on
fifty seven the Park, and he was doing with me
the back of the napkin math of what Aston Martin
could be if it got even half of a Ferrari valuation.
I'm sure that's the goal that you're aiming for as well.
(10:16):
What are your plans to get there and what do
you have to do to get investors to attribute that
kind of valuation to Aston Martin.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
One word perform.
Speaker 7 (10:28):
You know, as a company, we've been around for one
hundred and twelve years and it's been a rocky journey
for that one hundred and twelve years. The brand has endured,
it's got a fantastic reputation. The response that you get
in an Aston Martin is unlike anything I've experienced, and
you know, I've been with great German brands and another
great British brand for combined twenty five years of my life.
(10:52):
You can't stop at a gas station or at a
hotel without somebody taking a picture of you or asking
you a question about the car.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
It's phenomenal power is there.
Speaker 7 (11:01):
What we need is a consistent approach to product development,
which under Lawrence and that new investment approach has.
Speaker 5 (11:07):
Begun the first five years.
Speaker 7 (11:09):
If you look at what we've refreshed and what we've delivered,
Vanquish has knocked it out the park. We're beating the
Italian competitor in road test hands down. That's never happened before.
We've been accredited being better looking in certain products, but
never on a track in absolute extreme conditions. The asten's
(11:29):
the best. So we build cars at work. They look fantastic.
But we've really got to now with this transition between
the current product range, the hybrid range and electric. We've
got a whole strategy which I can't talk about in
detail today, which will rely on less volume growth, more
quality of margin, quality of business, operational excellence, all the
(11:51):
quite boring stuff that makes great companies even greater. We've
all done it before and that's what we intend to
do here. So we've got the brand, we've got the performance,
we've got the design. We've now going to make the
business as beautiful as the cars.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Up next, we'll go one on one with racers behind
the wheel. Welcome back to a special edition of Hot Pursuit.
I'm Hannah Elliott along with Matt Miller.
Speaker 6 (12:21):
For Racers Lemon Is where legends are made. We caught
up with Formula one world champion Jensen Button as well
as Michelle Gatting, a member of the Iron Dames all
female auto racing team.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
We talked about what makes this race so different than
any other. Tell us a little bit about the difference
of between what it takes to be a great endurance driver,
versus F one driver. I know it's a slightly different
skill set.
Speaker 8 (12:47):
F one driver it's the most selfish role possible in sport,
say more, because it's all about you. You know, you
know that the team will say, you're racing for this team.
You know you've got to put the team first. But
we all know that the driver is racing for themselves
because you win a championship and you know your main
(13:08):
competitor is your teammate who is in the same car
as you, and he's the person that you have to
be He's the one you get judged against. So you
have to be selfish. And that mentality was very difficult
for me when I when I got married and I
had kids and suddenly you're the least most important person
in the household. So getting over that selfishness was quite
(13:29):
difficult for me, and it took It did take a moment.
Insurance racing is very different because you have to work
with your teammates. You've got to work with your team
to develop the car and compromise. You know, compromising is
something that you're not very good at doing. As an
fun driver endurance driver. It's all about compromise, it's about
getting your teammates at your level or even higher than
(13:49):
where you are, because then you know, even if you're
the slowest guy in the car, you know you're quick.
Speaker 6 (13:55):
You must work on maximizing your strength for those for
those forty five minutes or whatever. And here, like you
have to wake up at three in the morning and
get back in the car. What is it like driving
at night? Driving or tired? What is it like seeing
the sun rise as you're you know, doing you know,
one hundred and eighty five miles an hour down a
(14:16):
straight at Lamar.
Speaker 8 (14:18):
You are always jet liked, basically, you know, that's the
feeling that you have when you're driving the car.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
You're jet like.
Speaker 8 (14:24):
You know that you're slightly off, always slightly off. If
you're lucky enough to get into the start of the race,
that's probably the only time that feels normal. The love
of this race for me is is sunrise sunset. You know,
that just blows my mind. When the sun drops and
(14:46):
darkness falls, the circuit comes alive, it becomes quicker, the
wind drops, the cars are a bit easier to drive,
but you have to get used to that change in light,
which is also very difficult. And I don't know, if
you've noticed, there's a lot of buz here at the moment,
so we've got yeah there. So like after two laps
(15:06):
you have a covered wind screen and trying to look
through that when the sun's in your eyes it's not easy.
So sunset's great. Sunrise. The best moment of the race,
you know, really is when the sunrises, you see.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
How dirty the cars are. You know you've come through
the night.
Speaker 8 (15:23):
You kind of feel like you're at the end already,
even though you have another ten hours to go. So
that moment is a very special moment and you've got
through the night. If you've not had issues, you're still
in with a chance of a win.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
The shell Gatting a member of the Iron Dames all
female auto racing team.
Speaker 9 (15:41):
The Iron Dames were born in twenty eighteen. It's an
all female project that is supporting women in motorsport not
only as drivers, but as engineers, mechanics on the marketing
side because the sport is it's huge and it needs
people like women as well. And the project is special
because we are an all female end up sharing a car,
three women racing against all the others, and the end
(16:04):
of the day, like we always say, we when we.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Put the helmets on.
Speaker 9 (16:07):
We have race drivers like anybody else, but we definitely
want to give female drivers a chance to be seen
out there, because that's what's been missing over the years.
And I think what the project has been doing since
the very beginning in twenty eighteen has really been showcasing
that women can compete on the same level as men
in the highest level of endurance racing. We have won
races in the World Championship, in the European Championship, and
(16:29):
we are proving that we can race alongside the men
and we can beat them.
Speaker 10 (16:34):
I just want to ask, because I have a couple
of daughters at home, four and one. They're watching racing
with me every weekend, what do I do to get
Edna and Lola into this sport, to get them prepared
and hopefully to a higher level.
Speaker 9 (16:48):
Well, the first thing you should do is bring them
to a race, bring them down to the Iron Name's
garage and show them that there are three ladies there.
Who is proving to your girls that is possible. Because
we had a dream we were their age. You know,
back then, when I was very young, it was difficult
to have somebody to look up to. In terms of
(17:08):
female drivers, because there was not really any. Now hopefully
we are the drivers that your two daughters can look
up to and say, yeah, but they are doing it
because with hard work, dedication, and passion and commitment, you
can do whatever you want in life. And this is
what we want to showcase with the Iron Dames Project.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
That's it for this edition of Hot Pursuit. Thanks for
joining us.
Speaker 6 (17:31):
Tune in to see more of Hannah and me on
our Hot Pursuit podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts, this
is Bloomberg
Hosts And Creators
Hannah Elliott
Matt Miller
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