Racing to Oblivion
By Peter Bayley
For anyone who has driven a car very fast on a track over an extended period of time, it will be embedded in your memory that a strategy for endurance is as important as speed. Coming into a hairpin bend too fast and at the wrong angle is going to mean risking tyres, brakes, gearbox and stability to get around it. Do that too many times and something fundamental will fail and you will be out of the race. You’ll also suffer old-fashioned shame and humiliation. Did you notice Team UK’s squealing brakes, smoking tyres and bad trajectory after the new U-turn? Possibly justified by the circumstances, but not planned for and handled badly.
So now what?
To maintain the racing analogy, if this was the extremely demanding LeMans 24 Hour, the team boss would change the driver, ask the race tactician to go to the detailed plan B and communicate that plan clearly to the driver. He would get the pit crew to swap the tyres and know that he could rely on the mechanics to ensure that the car was in good shape to endure the rest of the race. The huge back-up team would all be working together to make sure that this car and our others (there might be 2–4 more) were coordinated in their efforts to get through the race. It might even require one or more of those to sacrifice their individual prospects to get a single winner. Morale would be high under stress.
Mmmh…..Team UK still has the same driver. Everything that gave us better traction of late has been removed and curtailed. No positive, workable new ideas have been put forward or implemented. Whatever was still working is being undone. The back-up team is uncoordinated and individually ineffective or simply incompetent. The “B” race plan is unremittingly negative, rather than a revitalised, positive one. Morale is rock-bottom.
So, can Team UK get its act together, endure the race and come out a winner?
If you were the team boss, how about doing a few really positive things?
Ø Stick or twist with our lead driver? He’s no great British Graham Hill, Sterling Moss, Mike Hawthorn or Derek Bell as a driver and no Lofty England as a Team Manager (for the LeMans history fans, out there). He’s picked a weak team and has only one potentially effective co-driver. He’s serially incapable of persistence in resolutely sticking to the race plan and is not astute enough to adapt it effectively while the high-pressure race is in progress. He’s no longer a fan favourite, either. Could a much stronger team bludgeon him into being effective behind the wheel; into being a true primus inter pares?
Ø If our commercial team boss was never seen at the track and had no idea where our sponsorship money was coming from or who would be supplying our vital track equipment, we’d get rid of him, wouldn’t we. Sack Alok Sharma tomorrow, before he has the chance to pose as an effective Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (no, don’t laugh, this is serious) as President of the Cop26 UN climate conference (again, try not to laugh). Use his absence (as if anyone will notice) to give the vital business job immediately to someone with serious business experience, charisma and relentless energy to work with The Treasury, the Dept. of Transport and all of the other departments to show direction and intent for all sizes of UK business.
Ø We wouldn’t let our race techies tell us how to devise and implement our race tactics, would we, although we would trust them to offer their best advice. Do not be tempted to give the flailing Health Secretary’s job to one of the scientists; they will — left to their own devices with all good intentions for “following the science” — ruin this country for decades to come. They lack the balance in their views to put us on the right track. If we trust the chief mechanic, give Hancock much better strategic help to assess the scientific advice and implement life-saving but economically viable action. Looks like we’re closing the track down again, but when will we reopen so that the cars and drivers are still ready to perform?
Ø How about our training manager, who embarrassingly knows less than any member of our crew? Education policy? Hahahahahahah. Yet another weak link in the team. Ask any child or university student, almost any one of which would have a better set of ideas on how to get themselves educated safely but effectively during the pandemic. Locking up our future team members in the pits accommodation cannot be the way.
Ø In the LeMans of the 1930s, the aristo “Bentley Boys”, plus European princes and nobility got oily and risked their money and their lives to gain LeMans glory. The Downing Street posh boys’ cabal is hardly made of the same stuff. We need to make urgent changes if they cannot leave their au-pair/nanny/privilege bubble and attempt properly to understand what the average citizen is going through. They are not listening to the feedback from anyone: hearing but not listening. And it’s not just them. The world’s greatest city is withering before our eyes.
Ø Encourage the Corporation of London to develop and immediately implement a “Save The City” plan of real substance. There’s no Great Fire; there’s no Blitz; it’s not The Great Plague (no, it really isn’t). Their august predecessors prevailed (yes, enriching themselves, but they did take action). Challenge the current incumbents to do the same.
Ø End the Mayor of London joke immediately; have Sadiq Khan clear his desk by 9.30 am tomorrow. Measuring the width of cycle lanes and promoting a personally posturing woke agenda is insulting to the world’s greatest city. Have the new Mayor work hand-in-hand with the C.o.L. and The Lord Mayor to save London as our engine of growth and symbol of international standing, wealth creation and success. We need a super-strong City and the rest of London to make the best of our new Brexit status.
Over the decades of LeMans races, fortunes were made and lost, racing marques appeared and disappeared, drivers, pushing themselves, their back-up teams and their machines to the limit, died (and in 1955, so did dozens of spectators). Records were continually broken beyond what anyone thought was possible and the cars evolved to an unprecedented degree of sophistication and performance.
Speed; endurance; planning; teamwork; sensitivity to feedback; experience; expertise; competence: the essentials for LeMans success.
Can Team UK grasp these essentials and use the challenge of the Covid-19 pandemic similarly to raise its game beyond just “coping”, to something far and away better? I hope so.
A final thought: the classic LeMans races always started with a run to the car. Some cars were even designed to be easier to jump into just for this purpose. Could we institute this for choosing the Cabinet, as a new way to choose who runs the country, at least that way showing who has sufficient energy and determination to get behind the wheel?
https://www.writeallalong.co.uk/
Peter Bayley
+44 (0) 75790 61508
