James Allen On F1

This week the James Allen on F1 podcast comes face to face with the most powerful woman in F1; Renee Wilm. Renee is Chief Legal And Administrative Officer of Liberty Media, the company that owns F1. She has played a central role in the way the company has shaped and grown F1 since 2017. But she is also the CEO of Las Vegas Grand Prix, which meant she was in the hot seat and responsible for delivering F1’s most ambitious race in barely a year from the announcement.  There were a few hiccups to say the least, from locals irate about road closures and grumbles about unsold hospitality units, through to the manhole cover that lifted during practice, damaging Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari. But it yielded a spectacular race and gave Willm a notebook full of ideas on how to improve for year two.  Uniquely for F1, Renee heads a female dominated leadership team at Las Vegas GP and we discuss her mission to create opportunities for women to grow into whatever role they want to be in, whether that's an engineer, a mechanic, a business executive, a team principal, or the ultimate goal: an F1 driver. We discuss why she thinks F1 has only scratched the surface in the US and how Renee felt when the local authority told her that the economic impact of the race on the city had been $1.5 billion, more than double the Superbowl that took place three months later. And she explains what F1 learned from being the race promoter itself for the first time. James is joined in the studio for chat and analysis by Autosport GP editor Jon Noble and Joshua Robinson of the Wall Street Journal. Email your comments or questions to: JamesAllenonF1@autosport.com

This month the F1 world is celebrating Ayrton Senna, the three-time world champion who died 30 years ago. For many lovers of the sport, he remains the greatest driver of all time. His story and passionate, intense character are captured in the 2010 documentary Senna, a movie that crossed F1 over to mainstream entertainment audiences. This wasn’t a film about cars and race results. It was about a human being. Without the Senna movie would Drive to Survive have been the crossover hit it has been? And would F1 have the fanbase it has today? In our main feature interview the writer & producer of Senna, Manish Pandey gives us his take.  Senna’s niece Bianca gives the family’s point of view and reveals how over 36 million children in Brazil have been given educational support by the Ayrton Senna Institute. Joining James in the studio to discuss all things Senna are Autosport Editor-in-Chief Rebecca Clancy and Brazilian journalist Julianne Cerasoli. They also go behind the scenes on the bombshell story that Adrian Newey, the designer of the last F1 car Senna raced, is to leave Red Bull at the end of the season. Get in touch with the show at JamesAllenonF1@autosport.com