Tom Brady

It’s hard to argue that the NFL has ever had a more influential quarterback than Tom Brady.

After seven Super Bowl victories, five Super Bowl MVP awards and three NFL MVP titles, he retired from American football “for good” in February 2023. 

Just a few months later, in July, he set his sights on a new sporting goal: winning the inaugural UIM E1 World Championship with Team Brady.

Clearly, his sporting prowess extends beyond the football field, because Team Brady did, in fact, win.

“I'm proud of the team and what we’ve accomplished,” he said.

“Competition is exciting for us, and life is about making memories and relationships, and I think what we've established in terms of our teamwork has been one of the most gratifying parts.

“Our Team Principals Ben and Joe led the way and solved a lot of problems. I was able to witness the way they handled the different adversities that we were facing throughout the season, it was great to see.”

At Team Brady, much of the responsibility for winning on and off the water is with Co-Team Principals Joe Sturdy and Ben King. They spoke to Sustainability Magazine about working for a global legend and pioneering clean, green boat racing.

How long have you known each other?

Ben: We met at university studying motorsport engineering. I quite quickly realised I wasn't an engineer – or wasn't passionate enough to be a very good engineer – so decided that I had more of an interest in the business and commercial side of motorsport and went down that route. I also had some time in automotive and a bit of time in the EV startup space as well.

Joe stayed on the motor sport engineering route and had a great career in Formula One and won a few championships with Max Verstappen and Red Bull.

We run Team Brady together. We have our areas of expertise: myself a little bit more on the commercial and strategy side and Joe more on the performance side. But we do very much overlap.

It's a pleasure to work so closely with someone who is also a very close friend.

Joe: We work together really well and our skills complement each other. And it's something that we've learned from Tom that teamwork is super important.

How did you come to be leading Team Brady?

Ben: I used to work at McLaren Automotive and with the work that I was doing there I met Rodi Basso, who at the time was heading up the Motorsports Division. Rodi is now the CEO of E1. We would catch up periodically and, during one of those meetings, he said: ‘What are you guys doing in terms of electrification?’ And then he went into this grand vision for an electric power boat racing championship.

I didn't really think much of it at the time. Fast forward a couple of years and Rodi had left McLaren and launched E1 with Alejandro Agag.

I reached out to Rodi, we had a meeting and it coincided with a very good time for Joe and myself, because we were talking for a while about doing something together. We had all sorts of ideas – one of which was a team in electric motorsport.

Read the full story in the March edition of Sustainability Magazine!

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