Fast Five: Influence of Motorsports on Tech, Culture, and Society

Welcome to the first episode of a brand new series we will be bringing you throughout the course of 2023; Eddie’s Fast Five.

No, this isn’t the fifth instalment in a blockbuster automotive franchise. Instead, we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to re-visit key topics and questions we discussed with our guests over the past year on the Future Car Podcast. This will become an established series, and will be bringing you lots of insights from our guests through 2022.

Let’s re-visit some of these key topics from some highlight episodes 👇

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1. Mario Andretti’s induction into the automotive hall of fame

“Because of the automobile when it was invented is it was invented not to be raced, but to be transportation. But also, but then again, uh, there’s a sport that’s connected to it. And to be able to be recognized at that level, even outside of the sport, and to feel that maybe you’ve contributed to some degree as far as creating attention to it. Or maybe being part of the technology that is developed in a racing world where it’s also then fed down into the production side.”

Mario Andretti, Racing Icon and Library of Congress Living Legend

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2. How did the rear view mirror become integral to automotive?

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3. Electric Motorsports and the role they play for sustainability

Let’s re-visit another interview. Alejandro Agag is the founder and chairman of Formula E and Extreme – motorsports for electric cars. We asked him about the role electric motorsports is playing in the 21st century, and how we can take technological advancements and apply them to sustainability. It was an interesting answer to say the least! 👇

“It’s an incredibly important topic. We need to make it fun. motorsport has the power to bring sustainability to a much wider audience. People who don’t want to watch a documentary, but they want to watch a race. If you take this race like we do Formula E to cities and we showcase electric cars, that is using motorsport as a tool for the climate action.”

Alejandro Agag – Founder & CEO EXTREME E and Founder & Chairman FiA Formula E & E1 Series

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4. The 1981 Monza Grand Prix

Let’s take a trip into the past. It was September 13th 1981. John Watson’s Mclaren MP4 span out of control and crashed. This was an era in F1 when safety was a major issue for the sport, so you can imagine it was a surprise when Watson climbed out of the car completely unscathed. Why?

At the time, Mclaren first started floating the idea to use carbon fiber, but at the time it was thought to be too ambitious. Skepticism and glancing eyes were cast at Mclaren, mainly from their main rivals in the championship. It was only until the British Grand Prix the following year when the carbon fiber winning car changed skepticism into enthusiasm. Fast forward 43 years, and carbon fiber monocoques are on every single F1 and IndyCar. More importantly, they’ve proven to reduce weight whilst increasing safety to enable the chassis’ to withstand impact at high speeds.

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5. The greatest contribution Motorsport has made to the automotive industry

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If you like this Podcast, you might also like:

• Our Robotic Future with Marc Theermann CSO Boston Dynamics- Part 1
• Technology with Purpose – Barbara Humpton – Part 1
• Bringing Sustainability and Privacy to Autonomous Ride-Sharing with Felix Andlauer – Part1