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Vincenzo Landino, founder of the six-year-old Business of Speed newsletter, and legendary Creative Director Lali Michelsen, define the DNA of your new essential motorsport briefing.
Discover how a LinkedIn video of a champagne saber led to the formation of a strategic content consultancy and media empire built on one core premise: Speed is the only sustainable competitive advantage.
We unpack:
- The Unlikely Kinship: Waking up at 5 AM for F1 in different countries and the shared "fringe of the fringe" obsession with speed.
- The Blueprint of Money & Tech: How the newsletter was engineered in 2019 to go beyond the track and investigate the power players, politics, and technology that fuel racing.
- The Consulting Pivot: Defining our mission to evolve beyond the "logo slap" and drive real-world operational and cultural leverage for sponsors.
- The Speed Lesson: Passion Meets Strategy. If you want to think and move at race pace, you need the right co-driver.
Creators and Guests
What is Business of Speed Podcast?
Business of Speed is the definitive, deep-dive into the money, power, and technology driving modern racing.
We don't report the race, we pull back the curtain on the strategy behind it. This show treats global racing as the ultimate laboratory for competitive advantage, focusing on the high-level business decisions that shape the sports. We move past passive sponsorships to explore how teams, brands, and executives leverage racing for technology transfer, cultural relevance, and operational impact.
This is where the C-suite goes to learn how to harness velocity into a sustainable business advantage.
Lali (00:00.974)
So one of the things that I'm worried about is that the people, or millions of listeners and followers, they've never seen me with my glasses on. So I didn't want to scare anybody. I know, I know, roll your eyes already. So I just want them to see me me, like the normal me.
that they love and adore and then now we're gonna do the world premiere not for vincenzo he's seen me in worse conditions but for the people we're gonna do the glasses so that's me with the glasses and they will come on and off they're kind of self-diagnosed
Vincenzo (00:29.989)
for the
For the people that are probably listening and not even watching this episode of the podcast, she's wearing glasses and she thinks people are going to be scared of her.
Lali (00:42.254)
I know I look like a very chic teacher though.
Vincenzo (00:47.439)
I was gonna say, you know, there are a lot of people that have like a teacher thing, right? Or like a librarian is what I'm going for, but.
Lali (00:51.283)
well then then hola bonjour bonjour to the people with the librarian thing because that is
Vincenzo (01:00.955)
Welcome to the first episode zero of the Business of Speed podcast. We wanted to get together, introduce ourselves, a little bit about what we plan on bringing on the podcast, talk about our origin, the origin of... I'll talk a little bit about the origin of Business of Speed and then we can talk together about the origin of the new Business of Speed which...
Lali (01:01.218)
Welcome.
Lali (01:24.802)
the new, we have a meet-cute everyone that I'm excited to share with everyone.
Vincenzo (01:29.083)
Okay, so I didn't know what meet cute meant. Until no, no, no, no. I knew what it meant when you said it, but I didn't realize what it meant. Up until like very recently, it was maybe a few months ago, somebody said a meet cute and I was like a meet cute. What the hell's a meet cute? And I was like, Oh, okay. Anyway, I had no idea.
Lali (01:31.404)
You had to Google it?
Lali (01:36.302)
I'm a boomer.
Lali (01:51.726)
So we have a meat cube that you're not even aware of our meat cube, but I'm going to explain it to you in a
Vincenzo (01:57.572)
I guess I'm gonna hear what your version of the meat
Lali (01:58.68)
In other words.
It's another world premiere like the glasses. Why don't you tell people who you are?
Vincenzo (02:04.996)
Yeah, we are.
Yeah, so my name is Vincenzo Londino. I am the founder of business of speed. Motorsport sports fanatic for all of my life. Yes, Formula One was on my radar long before many were probably even born that are listening to this podcast. Yeah, you know, motor sports and just going fast speed has always been something that I've been interested in.
It's never been scary. know, people, they get scared of, I don't know, going too fast on the highway or too fast on their bicycle. And I, for me, it was, can I go faster? How do I, how do I increase the speed? how do I maximize what I can get of speed? Even though the car that I have probably can't handle that. like doing 165 miles per hour on a two lane freeway in the United States here.
When I was like 16, it was my first car. Stupid things we do.
Lali (03:09.58)
similar story with a Ford Focus, yellow Ford Focus, his name was Lance after Lance Armstrong, and I would time myself how fast I could get from like downtown Miami to just outside of Miami where I lived. And I would just like clock and I would like be so proud if I could shave like a minute, two minutes off the time. So.
Vincenzo (03:28.879)
Yeah. Scary. Scary stuff.
Lali (03:31.438)
sort of very scary, just like Vincenzo, obsessed with motor sports from a very, very young age. I think that Vincenzo and I have talked about this extensively on our own, and we will talk about this in future podcasts, that we were both really sort of...
the oddball children that were very much into motor sports growing up. And even though we both have talked about our love for NFL and other sports, there weren't a lot of other kids that were watching open wheel racing as early in age as we were. So we grew up watching these sports. grew up separately. Of course, I was in Columbia. I haven't mentioned that yet. That's a miracle.
Vincenzo (04:09.859)
wow, this is the first mention of, I hope there's an ongoing counter for.
Lali (04:13.697)
Hola mis amigos colombianos! Okay, so I grew up in Colombia, Vincenzo was in a little town in Connecticut. We were both waking up at 5 a.m. all throughout our childhoods and teenage years to watch Formula One while our friends were all sleeping in. And this just became, and I speak of this all the time, this lifelong love affair that I've had with...
Vincenzo (04:19.713)
Number one.
Lali (04:38.017)
motor sports, open wheel, specifically motor sports, but that led me like you into other forms of speed. We were talking the other day on our own about how sad we were that the air bull, racing those airplanes. What was that called? The air race, I think. Like I got hooked on that, you know, like I will get hooked on anything that is about beating a clock.
Vincenzo (04:51.611)
The area yeah the Red Bull I yeah
Lali (05:00.167)
just being the fastest, which is why I adore grand tour cycling. So anything that goes against a stopwatch, I'm very much a fan of.
Vincenzo (05:00.187)
Nah.
Vincenzo (05:10.299)
It's funny because you mentioned getting up at 5 a.m. And whatnot and now we live in a time where and what we're talking I digress a little bit but Formula one specifically the calendar is now catered to the time zone that we once had to wake up so early for It's funny. It's come full circle and and now here we are talking about it serving clients in that arena something I don't know that
Lali (05:25.622)
snowflakes.
Vincenzo (05:38.497)
either of us grew up thinking was possible, especially in formula one. or, know, in the United States, had cart at the time, which is, you know, now Indy car and, NASCAR, but formula one. Yeah. You love it. formula one, it was, if you, if you knew somebody else that also watched formula one, you were, that was shocking. Yeah.
Lali (05:51.426)
in the.
Lali (06:04.791)
friend for life like shock but also the kinship would be instant right you couldn't believe that somebody else would watch it it was beyond fringe I'm telling you more people watch skateboarding you know it was it was X Games was way more and you and I were actually also fans of X Games we've talked about this how like
Vincenzo (06:16.068)
Probably, X Games, all that stuff, extreme sports, yeah.
Vincenzo (06:22.372)
We're talking about that.
Lali (06:23.935)
We were talking about that and our, our, our, remember we talked recently about our friend, Jeremy McGrath, Jeremy McGrath shout out. If anybody even knows who he is, like drop us a little comment because not a lot of people probably remember him. legend, but the reality is that it was fringe of the fringe. Nobody watched formula one. Nobody watched formula one. And then suddenly it's, it's, it's interesting because nobody watched formula one. For instance, where I was from,
Vincenzo (06:43.972)
Sure. Yeah.
Lali (06:52.467)
and then all of sudden Juan Pablo Montoya came into F1 and then Vincenzo something incredible happened in Colombia. Everyone was a fan of Formula 1.
Vincenzo (07:06.458)
Kind of like everybody's a Ferrari fan.
Lali (07:07.117)
But for some reason, none of them could admit that they had just like jumped on JPM's bandwagon. Everyone had to be, Oh no, I've been a lifelong fan of formula lifelong. Everyone became a lifelong fan of formula one, which isn't true because as soon as JPM left formula one, nobody watched formula one again, you know? So the reality is that yeah, it goes, it went up and down. Now, now we have a lot of people obviously it's 2019 and the drive to survive card. Now, luckily people are watching again.
Vincenzo (07:26.938)
goes up and down.
Lali (07:37.003)
But yeah, we were pioneers, right? Can we say that?
Vincenzo (07:42.49)
Definitely ahead of most. Let's put, could say that. Let's fast forward to 2019. You brought up 2019, perfect segue.
I identified the opportunity while I was running my own production house to, you know, I'm very, what is the word I'm looking for? I have like ADD sometimes not diagnosed. That's sometimes I just I'm like a squirrel, right? Like, I see things shiny. Oh, look. Oh, look. Oh, look. So while I was producing and traveling the world for
Lali (08:16.365)
Like a crow.
Vincenzo (08:25.86)
global customer clients and whatnot. I said, okay, well, what can I do that brings me a little more joy? Right? Because you get into a grind and you start doing things that you're just, you you're collecting a paycheck, but it's doesn't fuel your your fire. Passion. La passion. And I said, Well, I want to I want to talk I want to start talking about Formula One somehow on mine and
I didn't know what form I wanted to take, but I've always been interested in behind the scenes. And in the United States, there's the saying of how the sausage is made, right? Can you peek behind the curtain? I'm always more fascinated with that than even a lot of the on track. You know, have a lot of people that are so interested in the engineering of the sport and the aerodynamics and every little detail of the car.
I've always been interested, but I don't know and I've never paid attention to the level of, I mean, some people can look at two cars and they'll notice the difference right away in, you know, suspension or the brakes.
Lali (09:31.969)
the front end plate changed. It's not the same one that it was last weekend. And you're like,
Vincenzo (09:35.843)
Yeah, and that's that's great. And I can, if you give me some time, I can look at it and say, Okay, there's some different but I'm not I've never been that level of, of detail with with the cars. I like I like the speed I enjoy the strategy aspect of it. But there are people that focus on that way more than I do. So so for me, it was, well, the money that's powering the sport, the money that is the government, the politics that is behind it.
the the movers and shakers, the who's who, that are actually making decisions, who's pulling the strings, that was of interest to me. And so that was where Business of Speed was born. It was went through a couple different name changes. I landed on Business of Speed, but it was a few other things before that. And I wanted to focus on the money, the technology, the culture that
really is behind specifically Formula One, but all motorsport and all racing.
Lali (10:39.549)
it right? It just propels it forward and advances the whole...
Vincenzo (10:42.554)
You know, there's there's so there's so many conversations had online in the paddock in the grandstands, maybe less so in the paddock, but in the grandstands, folks that just genuinely don't understand economics, I have an you know, I actually went to school for economics. So it's always been of interest to me. And there are folks that just refuse to understand how basic
principles of economics works and drive to survive the Netflix, the blit, the marketing blitz that Liberty media has put formula one through has created demand. Well, there's only so much supply. So something has to go up. What is it? Prices. Yes, it sucks for many, many people who can't afford and who used to go to races for 50 euro 50 pounds for an entire weekend. It doesn't exist anymore. It just doesn't exist anymore.
So to me that was always fascinating and so that's where Business of Speed was born. It has always been a newsletter and only a newsletter. This is the first time we're dropping a podcast, a proper podcast, both video and audio. my dispatches have gone out anywhere from three times a week to once a week, sometimes more depending on the action that's happening on and off the track that matters and is pushing the sport forward.
And and now you and I will talk a little bit about that in a second, but fast forward six years and it's still the newsletter. We're still communicating to decision makers at brands and rights holders, different racing series, different teams who are all subscribed to the newsletter, which is great. But we we you and I and I'll let you tell the story, but I'll just say this really quickly.
You and I both had a very similar vision as to how we wanted to position ourselves in the racing world, Formula One world, and our conversations led to what we're doing now with Business of Speed, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but I'll let you kind of jump in and surprise me with our meet-cute.
Lali (12:57.985)
So I'll just tell a little bit about me. I was a writer from birth. really was writing poetry and songs since I was five years old. I was that kid, know, the theater kid, the dramatic kid. I was very much a creative, straight out of the gate. I played piano, I played guitar, I was in theater. I was always a creative and that's where my career took me. I started in advertising as a writer and I went up the echelons and...
I became a creative director, which is amazing. I adore my job. I adore creative. I love creating big ideas and then thinking of a strategy and how to execute these ideas. And I really have a passion for that. But I've always struggled because I have this in my bones love really for motorsport, right? And I was doing things.
Tangential I have worked on the Ford account or the Honda Acura account I did I did redo spots for a Jaguar Land Rover But it's not the same right that I really wanted to be in motorsports And I and I was at a point in my life recently where I was wanting to pivot so to speak and I was like if I don't I want to do this now I don't want to wait And and you hear me say so all this all this all the time. I have this mission of being unapologetically happy
I don't owe anything to it. just want to be happy happiness is my my goal in life if I'm happy everyone around me is happy and thinking of that In the process of that that was going through my head and I'm I'm on LinkedIn one day here comes the meat I'm on LinkedIn one day and for some reason the algorithm fed me Fed me this video of this of this gentleman in a tuxedo very very
Vincenzo (14:43.406)
Gentlemen, gentlemen.
Lali (14:45.235)
very posh and doing something that has been done since the days of Napoleon but is not often done which is opening a champagne bottle with a saber and I was so intrigued by the whole thing first of all because I'd never seen someone actually do it so I was already like wow that's cool and also why is he putting it on LinkedIn like the whole thing just intrigued me very much
I just commented on that and somehow Vincenzo and I connected through that for through my commenting on that on that post and Then I just followed his contact I started following business of speed and then when I was going through this Transitional thing in my life or I want to do something different. I think I want to get into motorsports more actively I want to I want to go all in in this I said to me just okay. We have a call To be quite frank
I did calls with a lot of people.
Sorry. But he was one of the calls that I did. Yeah, I'm so sorry. You so hurt. my God. for the people.
Vincenzo (15:46.799)
Wow.
Vincenzo (15:52.1)
I don't know if that's telling of me or telling of you.
Lali (15:55.818)
No, of course. I'm a very smart woman. gonna not gonna put all my eggs in one basket I needed to do like I just wanted to to be quite frank. There was no agenda I just wanted to talk to people who were in any way involved with motorsport and get their Get their opinions and and just sort of pick their brains as they say and When I was on a call with Vincenzo and he was talking and I was asking him questions, etc this idea in my head was kept like it was so loud this drum in my head like
I think he and I could do something. I think he and I could take business speed in a different direction and I don't know. And I didn't want to say anything at first because I didn't want him to think that that's why I took the call because it was 100 % not why I set up the call and then eventually I say something and he's like I already thought about it like He's like I'm way ahead of you. I've already had this idea and I think you're on to something
I was like, okay, that's good.
Vincenzo (16:55.806)
Wait, let's see. Do you actually remember the first time we were supposed to talk? Me?
Lali (17:02.486)
yes, you stood me up in New York. He stood me up in New York. I wasn't going to bring that up because that's such a painful memory.
Vincenzo (17:05.826)
I I did. I will say this.
genuinely felt bad about it because I wanted to come and Last-minute things just fell apart. I also got myself confused. I was able to come during the Day you were expecting and more of an evening get to get young Yeah, which I didn't realize
Lali (17:28.491)
was in New York for some work meetings, I was expecting him to meet with Vincenzo after five o'clock when I was done with meetings. He was thinking we were meeting in the daytime.
Vincenzo (17:41.913)
Yeah, I remember I confidently was like, yeah, so I'll meet you for lunch, coffee, whatever around noon, one o'clock, whatever. And you were like, wait, what? Absolutely not. I said, well, then I guess we're not gonna get together. That was the first time that was I think before we actually gotten a call. You did. But it was a few it was a few months that before. Yeah.
Lali (17:48.001)
like absolutely not.
Lali (17:53.751)
That's going to be a negative.
Lali (17:58.666)
I forgave him for that because I'm very benevolent.
A few months after that I was like, okay, well, I'll still talk to him, okay, even though he stood me up in New York. Oh, well, you should tell people I'm in Toronto. That's why I was traveling to New York. And for those who don't know, it's a 45 minute flight. But it's also a 45 minute flight. So I go often to New York. So it wasn't like I was... I'm from Colombia. Did I mention I'm from Colombia? Hablo Espanol. Do people know this?
Vincenzo (18:10.222)
Mm-hmm.
Vincenzo (18:15.78)
She's in Toronto for those of you that don't know.
Vincenzo (18:21.05)
She's also Colombian if you didn't know.
Vincenzo (18:27.418)
She also speaks Spanish and French and Portuguese.
Lali (18:32.461)
Do French? Yes. I Portuguese. I speak Italian. A little. Anyway, we finally had the call. were like, let's try to do something like I think that we're onto something and guess what? we executed on our vision and and here we are now the podcast and We're taking client meetings. We have some things in the works that we can't talk about quite yet. So
Vincenzo (18:37.902)
A little bit.
Lali (19:01.601)
Let's just say that we are both our hunches separately. We're correct that this could be a nice partnership and may we long live. I don't know. Yes.
Vincenzo (19:05.25)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Here we are.
Vincenzo (19:14.978)
Now we evolved to the point where now we have set up Business of Speed as a consultancy, strategic content creation, C-suite education, activations, event hosting, really working in ways that we both can leverage our strengths. And corporate lunch and learns, which a lot of people might not, people have asked me,
Lali (19:40.706)
Let's see what a corporate lunch and learn is because there's two facets to it which I love. So coming from the advertising world and I've been big agencies for a long time, it was really fun when sometimes they would say, hey, on Friday we're having a lunch and learn.
Vincenzo (19:46.489)
Yeah.
Lali (19:53.366)
What that would mean is that a speaker of any topic, it's just a, just a very fun du jour topic was going to come in and was going to, everyone brings their lunch and you sit at some kind of, you know, communal area that the office has, and they would do a very dynamic presentation on the most random of topics that were awesome. They were never about advertising. That was the only thing they can't, because I was at agency, so they could be about anything. And they were so fun and engaging and invigorating. And they sparked conversation.
Vincenzo (20:17.434)
Mm.
Lali (20:23.279)
etc. So Vincenzo and I are doing these corporate lunch and learns for two reasons. One, because sometimes if let's say you work at Petronas, for instance, a big Formula One sponsor, I would venture guess that a lot of the people at Petronas, a vast majority, don't really even know Formula One 101. So we can come in and like, hey, Petronas staff, let's teach you a little bit about Formula One. But also for the random non-
formula one connected companies, an ad agency, a bank, an insurer who just wants to bring in a little fun spicy Friday afternoon for their crew. That's also what we're doing. So it's sort of like two pronged and I personally have been involved in many, many fun lunch and learns and they're always like a hit.
Vincenzo (21:12.73)
Yeah, from an employee engagement perspective, it's important, especially for if you're a sponsor, or if you're a brand looking to you want to get involved in sponsorship, the our biggest thing and we'll talk about this episode or the next episode. So after you're done with this episode, go ahead and listen to episode one. This is episode zero, technically. So listen to episode one. We'll talk all about our manifesto.
what we believe, what we think is changing. But one, I'll give you kind of a sneak peek. One of the biggest things that we truly, truly believe is sponsorships, partnerships need to go beyond, actually, sponsorship should be partnerships, right? They should be true collaborations, but they need to go beyond the logo slap, which is a word or a phrase we'll use a lot, the logo slap. It's easy enough to throw your logo on a car or throw your logo on, well, it doesn't have to be a car. It can be anything, right? You can sponsor anything.
could be a football kit. It could be a basketball jersey, whatever it is. You can have your logo on there. If you're not engaging beyond that, you're just in it for vanity metrics, vanity impressions and views, which don't really move bottom line. They don't engage your employees, which is where the lunch and learns and C-suite education come from, but also they don't give you any advantage over really
anyone else that can pay the money to slap their logo on anything. And that's what we're looking to change. And so we'll talk a little bit about that more about that in Episode One. But we are glad that you're here. We're glad you're listening to us. This podcast is going to be geared for the folks that care about the behind the scenes, what's happening in the racing world. And we say racing, not specifically motorsport, because there's so many different racing series out there. There's electric boats.
there's electric cars, there's sail powered cars, or sail powered boats, like sail GP America's Cup. There's bicycle racing, racing in there is such a large world out there of racing, that I think people tend to it like in the United States, if you said racing, most people might stuck might say NASCAR, that might be the first thing they say, when you say racing, maybe globally, maybe they do say Formula One, but there's so so many
Lali (23:36.727)
So my IndyCar, my lover's an IndyCar that I am so proud about.
Vincenzo (23:36.803)
different racing series.
Yeah, I mean, there's there's and there's all of the extreme, the extreme racing like Dakar, extreme. Now there's the hydrogen racing series, know, hydrogen power. So the technology and the different applications that you can you can see this technology getting slapped onto. It's wild. But here's the cool thing. A lot of that technology ends up trickling down into our everyday lives. It's one big cycle, right? It's just one one big cycle.
Formula one, the things you see happening in Formula one now are probably gonna be in road cars in, you five to seven years, just like things that were in. Well, perfect example is the hybrid system occurs. That's that's how you see hybrid systems in cars all the time now, right? And you see kinetic regeneration is in cars. That's one example. Anyway, we like all that we love all that stuff.
Lali (24:23.277)
Exactly.
Vincenzo (24:38.379)
So that's what we're going to be talking about on the podcast. We will eventually have interviews. We will eventually have, you know, campaign breakdowns from a creative director herself right over there. We want to talk about all this stuff. what? we will have we will have plenty of rants. We'll have plenty of rants. But what we
Lali (24:55.883)
We may have rants. We may have rants. We'll have some rants. We'll have some rants, especially maybe after the end of the, let's see what happens with the championship, et cetera, and F1. We're not gonna talk about it today because we wanna get the people hooked, but there will be rants, of course, and Vincenzo and I often don't agree on things, unfortunately, or very fortunately for our listeners. So that'll be it.
Vincenzo (25:07.102)
Yeah, we'll talk a little bit about that. I have my feelings, but...
Vincenzo (25:22.563)
Fortunately for you, we don't agree on a lot of things. Pretty much nothing. But besides the point, we want you to help us shape the podcast as well. So if you have questions and comments, please leave them wherever you are hearing or seeing this. If it's over on YouTube, drop a comment. If it's on Instagram, drop a comment. If it's on Spotify, you can drop a comment. I think the only place you probably can't leave a comment is on Apple. But if you really want to let us know,
Lali (25:25.545)
literally anything.
Vincenzo (25:51.501)
leave a review and in the review, ask a question. We'll make sure that you get answered first. On that note, I'm going to tell you to listen to... yeah, five stars or nothing, right.
Lali (25:58.509)
If you're gonna leave a review, five stars or nothing. Five stars or nothing. Don't even bother, don't give us four stars please, just five.
Vincenzo (26:08.311)
On that note, this is Business of Speed with Vincenzo and we will see you on the next one. Ciao.
Lali (26:11.519)
and my leave. Ciao.