Have you had an intro like this before?
It gets better every year. Actually, it was good last year, and this was probably the best intro I've ever had in my life. So, thank you.
Thank you. There you go. Best intro of his life. Andrew, that's something you need. Great to have you with us, Lando, today. I think a lot of people here want to hear it from you. Fun fact about you, by the way. Outside of being world champion, you're also a big padel fan.
Padel player as well. I am. I am. I'm a golfer. I'm a padel player. I'm nowhere near as good as I am in driving. So, but it's just some of the stuff I like to do outside of racing. Keeps me active, keeps me fit. But I'm trying. I'm trying to learn from the best.
There you go. Also, today, of course, we're joined with Haider Rafique, the global chief marketing officer at OKX. By the way, fun fact, when he's not busy with OKX, he plays guitar, especially rock. So, here we go. Many talents in crypto. And of course, we're joined by Raj Dhamodharan from Mastercard. When, again, when he's not busy with crypto and Mastercard, he's a big cyclist in the Bay Area. So, guys, great to have you with us. There's a lot we're going to talk about. Lando, I want to start with you. Of course, you're world champion. Practically speaking, what has changed now since you're world champion? Are you more relaxed? Does it change your day-to-day? Like, what's been the one practical impact?
My salary, my salary. Honestly, it's not from a personal side, not a lot has changed, which is a good thing. Exactly what I would want.
It's hard to anticipate what to expect before it all happens. And you hear about a lot of things, but in a good way and in a proud way, not a lot has changed, and I'm very, very happy about that. I think one of the main things has actually been my mentality of the facts I achieved last year, and I can now enter this year just with more confidence, more self-belief, more knowledge that I can go against the best. I can fight against the best, and I've proved it to myself. And I've always been a bit of a guy who has to prove things to myself before I can ever really tell myself it, you know. So to get my first win, I needed to win my first race, and then I could go, okay, now I can win. To get my first podium, all those things. So last year was obviously a big year.
So, you know, as Andrew mentioned right now, you've been racing for almost 20 years, and now you became world champion. I remember even a couple of years ago when you started a partnership with OKX, you know, you guys were not again on one of the top teams. We're in a crypto bear market. So what advice do you have for us after all these years, you know, when it comes to somebody who has waited so long to win?
Well, in our game, you have to be patient. I think in crypto sometimes it's hard to be patient.
Because you see results right in front of you live in our sport, yet you have to be patient. It's about playing the long game sometimes. And you can't win every day. And I probably something similar in crypto. You can't win every single day. And I don't think you should expect to win every single day. You've got to set realistic targets. You got to set short-term and you got to set long-term targets. And this year, for example, we're not winning this year. A win for us this weekend does not mean first place. It might mean settling for fifth or third or a podium. So, setting realistic targets every single day and every year, I think, is something that probably correlates well and accepting you're not always going to be perfect. You're not always going to win. And having that as a realization, knowing that sometimes other people might do a better job, you might lose. That's a big part of it.
On the patience and perseverance side, when you look at athletes around the world, is there any particular athlete in other disciplines, could be driving or any other sport, that you look up to and you're like, 'Wow, I love the way this guy's focused and has patience and focus'?
Well, I mean, there's a lot. I mean, certainly from a tennis side of it, I'm good friends with some of the tennis players.
Whether that's Jannik or Carlos. It's rare, like, they're good guys that I get to know reasonably well, and you start to be able to pick apart slowly their brain, how they think about things. What's their mindset every day? Is it all I'm going to think about is work? Is it there's a balance? And you got to understand how to balance work and your life, enjoyment, fun. And golfers, golfers too. So, getting to meet golfers over the years, getting to meet Rory, you again, you understand how they think about things, you know, what they tell themselves every single day. For me, I was never that guy, like I just said, to wake up going, today I'm going to win everything. I kind of always had to go out and prove it to myself. So, seeing other people with that kind of the opposite mentality, which is I'm going to wake up and today my day, today I'm going to be the best. That's something that I've always been fascinated by because it's not something I've really ever had and I've kind of got to work on and learn about. So, getting to learn about that from others has been fascinating for me and I love to meet new athletes, all the stars, and work out how they are what they are.
Yeah. You're a big golfer as you mentioned. Where's the one course you would love to play that you have not played yet?
Uh, where do you prefer? I've been lucky. Yeah, I've played some of the best.
What's your favorite place, of course?
Augusta National. Yeah. So, I'm a lucky beggar. I've got to play that a few times with Zach, my boss.
I have to let him win every time. But it's, I'm lucky that I get to meet amazing people. I get to travel the world. I get introduced to amazing people. So, I'm in a very privileged position that I get to do these kind of things. But there's a few, I think, like out in America in Vegas, some of the Tiger courses that I've never played that I've got to play at some point.
What about simulators? You're just golf simulators. Not really. I, you, simulators in F1. What about...
I love simulators. I mean, I grew up playing simulators or using simulators in my house. So remember, I started probably when I was, I mean, my life started playing Gran Turismo on a PlayStation, and my dad had a steering wheel and pedals that I had to put onto the table when I was four, probably four years old.
And I couldn't beat my dad on a controller. One day I thought I'm going to try plugging in the wheel and the pedals and seeing what it's like. And I had no idea about driving or anything. And my first time I ever managed to beat my dad at a race was when I was using the simulator and using the pedals and the steering wheel. So when I was four, that was my first, although I didn't realize it, probably my first indication of I'm actually pretty good at this. And here I am.
That's amazing. What about golf simulators? You play golf? Not the same thing.
I do a little bit actually. There's a couple here. So, I go with my team because I don't let them ruin golf courses. So, I have to take them to a simulator to practice a little bit and we just have a fun day out and I get to go with my friends at times. But, simulators are great. Anything where you can practice the real thing, I think is good. Whether that's probably with crypto and having an account that's, let's say, a fake account where you can practice, you can learn, you can make mistakes, you can learn from those mistakes. It's the same with driving and with golf. You learn what are your bad corners, good corners, what are you doing wrong with your driving, and you can learn. So, I think it's one of the best ways to feel like it's real, but be able to practice the real thing. And for me, that's a very, very valuable piece of information.
So, you mentioned crypto, Haider. I want to bring you in. There's been, I mean, it's quite incredible. In 2022, you decided to do this sponsorship with McLaren. I mean, at the time, McLaren was not the leading team that we have today. You know, back in the day, what role did the partnership with McLaren play in the branding of OKX that you've done a tremendous job of the last couple of years?
Thank you. So, 2022, it feels like it was a long time ago. So back then, the company was known as OKCoin or OKX. We had like some brand fragmentation.
So the reason why we did the McLaren deal or some of our other larger partnerships was we had just rebranded the company to OKX. I believe that was February of 2022.
And we needed really large distribution platforms. So, we were looking at sports teams. We were looking at entertainment. And the thing that attracted us about Formula 1, and I'll tell you why McLaren, is Formula 1 is the only sport that goes around the world. I think it's about 24 races, 22 markets if I'm not wrong.
And you can't get that distribution with any other property. As a CMO, I never believed in buying ads. I believe it's the cheap way of doing marketing. I think associating yourself to emotions is a better way to build brand. And that when you get that with a large distribution platform, that's where magic happens. So, you know, arguably 2022, nobody knew what OKX was. Nobody knew this logo. And thanks to McLaren, thanks to Formula 1 and some of the other investments we made, we had an incredible velocity. I think 2022 was the first year we sponsored Token2049.
And since then we've been sponsoring this event. So McLaren was interesting because we spoke with a bunch of teams at the time. Red Bull was performing really well and there was Mercedes. But McLaren, I believe as a fan and just like Lando, I used to play Gran Turismo and Grand Theft Auto.
But McLaren, I remember growing up McLaren having such incredible heritage starting from Senna to even the more recent drivers like David Coulthard, Montoya, Mika, all of these guys were great drivers. And I just feel that in life, whether it's trading or it's buying property or investing in a sports team or yourself, you kind of have to look at assets that have a lot of inherent value and maybe are not trading at a premium because that gives you a really good entry point. So, we were able to negotiate an incredible deal for OKX. I think it was priced really well and then we got to ride the winning strategy and, you know, we knew that Zach was doing an incredible job investing in the right drivers.
Lando was, you know, coming up and performing really well and then he ended up getting Oscar in there. So look, here we go. I'll tell you for people who are building companies here or working on projects or, you know, this idea that you can look at data and you can figure out how you're going to have exponential growth is wrong. You got to follow your intuition. You got to make some big bets, take some big swings.
And I think that ends up turning out to be, you know, the right outcome.
From mid-tables to world champion, it was great. See, those Grand Theft Auto days paid off. Haider, you know, it was very helpful. Raj, from your perspective, before I bring it back to Lando, what has been the benefit for Mastercard of such a partnership? Obviously everybody knows Mastercard, it's already a global brand. What was the benefit of this association with the McLaren team?
Yeah, look, thanks. It's incredibly great to be with both McLaren and OKX, two great partners, work on various things. Mastercard got onto a partnership with McLaren a few years ago and then the last couple of years we had the title sponsors, the Mastercard McLaren team. Really, really great to see not only the logo but also to see the passion and everything come together in the field and off the field. In terms of fans, for us it comes down to a couple of things. The first is really focus on innovation, right? Mastercard has been spending decades innovating, making it simple and easy for people to do speed, performance, putting technology first. I'm starting to describe how McLaren operates, right? They often innovate on every aspect of the technology. I still remember the first time I went into the garage and walked through, you know, what people do to get through, Zach describing the number of sensors, how do we, all of that is a focus on performance. And, you know, if you look at it, a lot of what we do in our technology, bringing a simple experience to consumers around the world. Billions of cards, millions of locations, simple tap it, the whole magic happens behind the scenes. And this focus on really simple experience. Great. And the second thing is that the Priceless and the passion that the Priceless brand has and connecting people to what matters and Formula 1 sports is one of the fastest growing and McLaren is one of the fastest growing brands with the great access. Perfect combination.
Yeah. So every market that we go to, Haider talked a little bit about the number of markets McLaren is present in. We are in those markets and more and it is able to bring that passionate experience to the fans with the best technology that we have and it's been a great partnership working with the team.
It's cool on the innovation side. I think a lot of people who don't follow racing on a regular basis don't understand how much innovation there is in Formula 1. It's really at the cutting edge, the teams that are behind. Are you surprised of all the innovation happening in the F1 world?
I mean, it's cool that I get to be a little bit part of it. You know, I get to hint at what we need to improve. So we have, I guess, we have upgrades, we also have innovation. There's a lot of things that Formula 1 creates because of the competitiveness that has transported to other parts of the world. And a lot of what Formula 1 has done over the last 20 years, you now see in automotive cars, the cars you drive around every single day. So, I remember McLaren made the first carbon fiber chassis ever of a road car. And now there's a lot of race cars, let's say, and high performance cars around the world that are all carbon fiber based. So there's a lot of things that have started in racing that have gone out to the general public and created from a safety point of view, from performance point of views. So to kind of be in that bubble, I think is pretty special and pretty cool. But also from outside of performance, every single weekend, we're trying to improve the car.
And that can be a range of trying to find one-tenth of a second, which to you probably doesn't sound like a lot. One-tenth. If I get told the car is one-tenth of a second quicker this weekend, I'm pretty happy. Party time. That's a decent upgrade. So, we're talking about tenth of a second, hundredths of a second, and thousandths. And it's how we can find every piece of the car, how we can put every little piece of the jigsaw together to find, you know, maybe 10, 15 things at a hundredth of a second, you're going to find a tenth and a half of a second. So, it's about really finding the small things, finding the things that other people don't look at. Discovering areas that are undiscovered and hopefully things that other people have not looked into yet for you to try and optimize and outdo your competition. So, it's a constant drive and if you ever relax for one weekend, the competition is going to pass you. So, it's a relentless drive and I think that's what makes it so exciting. It's like crypto in a way from that perspective.
I always wonder, Lando, when as a Formula 1 driver, you drive a normal car on a normal street with speed limits. How do you guys manage? Like it must be so...
It's scary. Yeah. Scary. I, you were saying, I get more scared driving on a road than I do in a race car.
I'm more, I think rightly so because you have some people that shouldn't have a driving license, first place. And you also, I mean, you have, yeah, no comment. And you have cars who are coming the other way. You know, you have, you know, so I'm with 20 of the other best drivers in the world. 21 of the other best drivers in the world. When you're on the road, you're not necessarily surrounded with 21 of the best drivers in the world. So we're all going in the same direction. We all know the limitations of things on a road is a lot more risky. So I do get scared. I get more scared driving on a road than I do in a race car, whatever speeds we do.
But I do get impatient. I do flash my headlights a lot. If someone's in the fast lane when they shouldn't be in the fast lane, I'm going to let them know. I'm going to give you the finger when I go past.
What's your view actually as a Formula 1 driver of self-driving cars? Do you think the art of driving will get lost? Do you think...
As long as it doesn't take my job, I'm happy. But I mean, I love driving cars. I'm a car lover. So I love the smell, the sound, the feel. I love historic cars, classic cars because you get more originality in all of that. You get more authenticity. Even in Formula 1 nowadays, you know, innovation is coming and a lot of it's gone electric and all of these things which I'm not as much of a pure fan of comparing to the V10s, the V8s that Formula 1 used to have. But there are other ways to get the innovation. And some of that is through fuels, you know, we can return back to V8 and V10 if we have synthetic fuels and biofuels and all these things, you know, so we can get back some of that originality and that pure power that we used to have. But there are also plenty of pros from driving self-driving cars and all of these things and you see them more and more around the world, especially in America. And that's a great thing for a lot of people, but of course for drivers, that's not such a good thing. So there's a market out there, but I think Formula 1 is great because you get to connect to the people, you get to connect to us as drivers, you get to see mistakes, you get to see, you can connect, you know, you can relate and I think that's something you always get to feel in sports in general. So I think it's an area that automation will never take over.
You know, you talk about connect, obviously you have tremendous fans in the room and Formula 1 has done it, it is very glamorous as a sport. In your day-to-day life, like what is the non-glamorous part that people think is glamorous from the outside but actually for you is like, oh god, we have to do this again, you know, outside of speaking to crypto events?
No, I think, I mean, it's cool that I get to explore things outside of my normal job. You know, my whole life has been about racing and cars and I love it and I would never change it for anything. And I think the bonus is that I get to meet guys like this and I get to come to events like this and at least start to learn about different things which I think is a good thing for me because when I was younger, I was never one to really explore into different categories. I loved racing. My whole life, my whole childhood was how can I be a racing driver? Yeah. So, when I'm now finally in this space and I've been in Formula One now seven years, I finally appreciate the things outside of that and I finally feel like I want to learn more outside of just my life that I've been inside of. Which is a cool thing. So, it's a pleasure for me to kind of be here and witness other things. But, the thing I enjoy the least is probably just that there's always a camera on you.
No offense. Don't take it personally. But, you know, it's just, I guess you just lose a little bit of the private life. You know, you lose a little bit of the I'm just going to go out with some friends and have a good time because you know that there's always someone watching with a camera and you know it's going to be on social media the next day. So, you can't ever make a fool of yourself and all those things, but I still try and balance things well. I still want to go out and feel normal. I still want to just go out and be with my friends, have a good time, have a party, whatever it might be. And sometimes forget that there's a camera on you. So, yeah, I've made a few mistakes, but, you know, that's the downside of Formula 1, but in a good way is because you have fans and you have supporters. You have kids that are growing up that are kind of looking up to you. And I think that's one of the most special things that I have is a responsibility also to that generation because that was once me. So when I was younger and I saw Lewis or Seb or Fernando, whoever it maybe was then I'm still racing against now, seeing them was amazing. So for me to think that was me and now there are kids looking at me in that same situation, that's something that feels very special.
What would Lando in his 20s give advice to baby Lando who was six, seven years old starting racing?
