Building the Team

During this down time, I thought it may be beneficial to shed a little light on our Motorsports Program. Amy Liles, our VP of Corporate Partnerships, asked me to speak a little bit about the last 16-18 months and how we got to the point we are at!

First, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Jarett Andretti. I am a racing driver and also the co-founder and president of Andretti Motorsports. I founded a GT4 team with my father, the late John Andretti, in 2018.

When we started on the GT4 program in 2018, our first hire was Robin Pemberton. Finding the right leader of your team is the most crucial management decision you can make. Your team leader defines the direction and goals of the entire organization. My Dad and I chose Robin Pemberton because

Robin has experience on all sides of the equation, he was a successful crew chief, Manufacturer Representative and ultimately the Head of Competition for NASCAR. He really understands all sides of the racing business and we leaned on him heavily while building the team.

From the point of Robins hiring and onward, I learned a lot. I think the biggest thing Robin taught me about putting a team together is fit. Does this person fit within our group of people and how will they work amongst the group. It was more about fit and personality than experience.

Finding the rest of the team wasn’t so easy. We started out with a couple of guys who had raced sportscars before. They ended up not working out as we had hoped. It was time to switch gears and we ended up with a group of mechanics that hadn’t worked on a sportscar ever before.

Our GT4 program consists of two McLaren 570S motorsports vehicles. These are very much roadcar based so it makes them very complicated. The base price of each vehicle is over 200,000 dollars. We didn’t know if hiring inexperienced mechanics was the right choice, but we followed our team managers advice and went with those who fit our vision.

We hired an engineer that was previously a rally engineer and a driver (Me) whose main experience was on dirt. To say we had an odd mix of people would have been an understatement. The interesting thing was though is everyone fit, they worked together as a unit to make the most out of each day at the shop and at the track.

Once things started moving, we learned saw quickly that we had made the right hires. We noticed that each member of our team was adaptive to the environment and willing to learn a new skill. Everyone was “bought in” to the program. Everybody was working for the guy next to them instead of themselves. This is what coaches mean when they say everyone on the team is “gelling together”.

Finding the right fit and commitment to the common goal were really the main ingredients and with that we made steady progress throughout the year as everyone collectively got better. The engineer and mechanics got better with the cars so I had to raise my performance as a driver and then vice-versa.

Everything eventually culminated in a win at Watkins Glen on Labor Day weekend 2019 and another two wins at Las Vegas to end the season. Of note, on the Watkins Glen Victory the team found an issue and stayed up all night to fix it. Without that commitment we would have dropped out of the race. Finding the right people is a natural progression, you can tell when talking to them who would work well and who wouldn’t. Trust your gut. Listen to the leaders you’ve hired to lead.  It’s something I’ve learned a great deal about in the past year.