Q&A: How Team Brady is Winning Sustainability & Racing

Team Brady stands out in the E1 Series with its unique Co-Team Principal structure. Ben King and Joe Sturdy, longtime friends who met during their Motorsport Engineering studies at Oxford Brookes University, bring a complementary skill set to lead the team.

Ben's career in motorsport business includes strategic roles at McLaren Automotive and Virgin Racing Formula E. Joe, on the other hand, focused on engineering, spending a decade in Formula 1, notably as Max Verstappen's Trackside Power Unit Engineer at Red Bull Racing.

The duo had long aspired to collaborate on a project that combined their expertise. 

E1's innovative blend of cutting-edge motorsport technology and environmental responsibility appealed to them as the perfect opportunity. 

In 2022, while maintaining their full-time jobs, they worked tirelessly to establish an E1 team, securing investors and ultimately spearheading Tom Brady's entry into the series.

Their efforts have paid off, with Team Brady securing victory at the inaugural E1 Monaco powerboat race and topping the UIM E1 World Championship standings. This success demonstrates the effectiveness of their partnership and their ability to lead a competitive team in this groundbreaking electric powerboat racing series.

The pair, hosted by Steven Downes, Editor in Chief of Sustainability Magazine, explored all things E1 at Sustainability LIVE Net Zero then came off stage to chat with James Darley, Deputy Editor of Sustainability Magazine.

Thank you very much for joining us today. You have just come off stage at Sustainability LIVE Net Zero – what did you speak about?

Ben:

We gave an overview of E1, what it is all about and what it's trying to achieve, which is to promote sustainable technologies in the marine space and also in doing so help with ocean preservation.

We explained a bit about our own journey with how we came to be setting up the team and running the team, and gave a look ahead to the future for what's in store for the series.

How did seven time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady get involved with E1?

Joe:

Tom got involved because ultimately he wants to leave the world in a better place than how he found it. He was very quickly sold on the dream of what E1 could become, which is a motor sport racing series, a boat racing series, but also one that has positive environmental impact. Ben, I and Tom set off on our E1 journeys separately, but quite quickly we were introduced and realised that we had the same vision. Ben and I were then tasked with taking Team Brady from just a name to a fully fledged boat racing series.

You won the first season of E1 – how was that experience?

Joe:

It was great! We turned up at the first race feeling like we were underdogs. We had no experience in power belt racing, but we applied a lot of what we'd learned in other fields. 

We had two weeks of testing before the first race where we still felt like we were the underdogs. We were by no means the fastest boat, but Tom's way of doing things is to just outwork the people around you, even if you're not the best to begin with. So we took that on board and we won the first ever race, which was great. At that race we didn't qualify the best, but we worked hard all weekend and came out on top at the end. 

We actually won the second race as well, which was a great reward for the whole team, for all the hard work that they'd put in throughout the preparation for the first ever race. And we continued that momentum through the first season and became the first ever E1 world champions.

Can you talk about the sustainability of E1?

Ben:

The boats are electric and also have hydrofoil technology. The hydrofoiling aspect means that the boats are moving much more efficiently through the water. It also means that you are not producing as much wake, as much disturbance of the water behind the boat, which also can have quite detrimental impacts to coastal systems and marine environments. 

But I think the biggest thing with electric powertrains with marine environments is the noise pollution and how drastically improved the noise coming off electric powertrains underwater is compared to internal combustion engines. 

E1 has done a study using the race birds – the boats that we race – to compare the noise levels underwater versus internal combustion engines. The difference was something like a tenfold improvement. So that means that the environment underwater, the wildlife are able to continue to be almost undisturbed underwater compared to internal combustion engine.

That's a huge improvement that electrification brings to the marine world. 

On top of that, it's just more generally trying to shine a light and champion a move towards more sustainable technologies for the marine industry. 

So when you compare that to the automotive industry, marine is maybe 10, 15, 20 years probably behind in that move and that transition towards electrification and net zero. It is starting to move quite quickly, but E1 is trying to be that shining light and help to shift mindsets towards actually this technology. 

Not only does it help to make the environment a better place and help to be more sustainable, but the technology itself in a lot of applications can be more useful than previous technologies. It is a bit of a twofold thing that E1 is doing.

With E1, you are at the forefront of technology and you're showing what these vehicles can do, which is exciting.

Joe:

Yeah, there's some really amazing engineering going on the hydrofoil technology that's used, the electric powertrain, even the buoys that we use to mark out the course there are autonomous. They don't harm the ocean floor. They're really great bits of kit.

The series also has support from Carlos Duarte, who is a world renowned climate change scientist who you may be familiar with, and he is on hand at all times to give us advice on how the engineering that we're doing can have the right kind of impact.

What are your hopes for the season coming up now?

Ben:

So obviously we want to win and that was very much the key mission that was given to us at the beginning of last year before we started racing from Tom and his business partners. 

Thankfully we're able to do that and we want to continue our winning ways of course, but we also want to use the racing that Team Brady is doing as a platform to help drive positive change. 

So today we announced a campaign that we are doing as Team Brady called Race for Change, that is a platform to bring together all of the incredible work that our partners and hopefully future partners are doing with sustainable technologies, with marine environmental preservation and also equality and diversity. E1 is probably one of the only global sports where men and women are competing equally. 

So Race for Change is intending to bring all of that together, highlight the great work that our partners are doing that's relevant to Team Brady and to E1 and also has an effort towards the E1's Blue Impact Championship. So that is another championship that sits alongside the racing where all the teams compete against each other on their sustainability and purpose led initiatives. 

We want to win at both!

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