Lessons from the Track: When Your Team Faces the Impossible

 

Niko French doing ~170kph through the bowl hairpin at One Raceway in NSW.

Sometimes we only understand teamwork and leadership through the lens of our own experience. Success looks like a high-performing sales team a slick ops unit or smooth knowledge management. And that’s not a failing — that’s just being human. We see the world through our own eyes. That’s why I try to remind myself there are all sorts of ways to succeed — and plenty of examples out there if I’m willing to look. This weekend I had the privilege of witnessing one of those moments, watching my son, Nikolaos and the Summons Racing team overcome what looked like a weekend-ending blow. And while it played out on the racetrack, the lessons are just as relevant for any team grappling with what feels like an insurmountable problem.

To set the scene — the team had been working hard all week. Multiple Hyper Racer X1s were prepped for Robbie and Niko (my son), along with a few rental drivers sharpening their skills in the Hankook Tire Australian Drivers’ Championship — one of the country’s longest-standing open-wheeler competitions. The cars are even built locally in Lilydale, which we’re quietly proud of. After an eight-hour haul to Goulburn, a few long days of testing and tuning followed. One Raceway is a tight, tough track, with different handling characteristics than the others on the circuit and lots of smooth, high speed corners taken right on the edge of grip.

In Sunday morning’s race, Niko was in third and closing on former champion Dean Crook in second. The top three caught the backmarkers — a common moment in racing — when one of them spun out and stopped sideways across the track. Damon and Dean managed to dodge, but Niko, already committed back in the corner, had milliseconds to react. Under full brakes, he slid into the stranded car, damaging his radiator, rear suspension and a dozen other small parts. Not giving up, he restarted the car and clawed his way back behind the safety car, passing five competitors before a second car cut him off, suddely re-entering the track after an off — destroying Niko's rear wheel and suspension completely. Red flags flew and his car was eventually trucked back to the pits.

Repairing the side fairing. What would we do without gorilla tape?!?

You could feel the weight of it. The disappointment. All that effort, gone in an instant — and nobody's fault. Just racing incidents. Our weekend had sadly come to an end. And I reckon a lot of you have had days like that in your own teams. When everything feels cooked. When you miss the mark despite massive effort. When it seems like the only option is to pack it in and try again next time.

This was one of those days that tests what you’re really made of. The damage was bad:

• Radiator completely wrecked,
• Side fairing snapped in two,
• Rear suspension fractured in three places,
• Rear left wheel completely destroyed.

Plenty of teams would’ve walked away. But ours didn’t. Rob Summons started shouting orders.

Inspecting the impact damage. A very bent side-pod radiator and torn suspension linkage.

Everyone got to work. Niko himself started swapping his rear tyre onto a practice rim. Rob, a very hands-on team boss, began tearing apart the old radiator, trying to MacGyver an old spare model into place with an assortment of spare pipes and tubes. I was bolting the replacement radiator to a bent and broken bracket, taping bits together while Jesse, Ben, Jack and James - our ideas guys - tinkered and investigated, staring at the broken suspension and thinking "Can't buy one of those at Repco!" He floated ideas — welding (but the metals didn’t match), bracing (wrong shape). Each option got ruled out. And here’s the thing — when a problem looks unfixable, you don’t always need to know the answer straight away. It helps to keep moving, keep working, keep solving what CAN be solved. Billionaire Dale Carnegie once told his son "Action solves everything" and sometimes the breakthrough only comes because you’ve keep the wheels turning, metaphorically and literally.

After some trial and error, Jesse suddenly sprang into action. He had a new idea. Hope was in the air! They quickly got the engineers OK and pulled the suspension completely apart, rebuilding it with a new approach, as people called out the minutes counting down to the next race. We were still frantically taping fairings, refilling coolant, plasti-welding a broken bolt and adjusting wheel alignment with lasers between busy legs as Jesse drilled holes and zip-tied what remained of the fairing to the side of the car. No time to make it pretty!

Constant communication! Yelling for tools, screaming questions, the beautiful sound of teamwork.

Recent management studies suggest many senior leaders and execs are primarily task-focused — and usually that’s brilliant. They are great problem-solvers. But in the darkest moments, it’s not always the mechanical or technical challenge that’s hardest to unravel. It’s the emotional one. The doubt. The feeling that there’s no point trying. And that’s where leadership comes in. Not just solving the problem — but keeping hope alive.  Top leaders also have this second trait, and that’s what the team did. Just minutes before the race, the car fired up, and Nik rolled it onto the grid in 20th place. You start in the position you finished the previous race so he was sitting dead last.

Over the next 19 laps, he proceeded to pull off the drive of his life. HyperRacer still not 100%, but heart fully in it. He carved through the field, overtaking car after car to finish in sixth place, somehow lapping just a second slower than the pro drivers at the front of the pack. The family went wild. The team punched the air. I’m still buzzing now.

What a come-back! The team celebrates on pit wall.

In my own job, I’m fairly new to the role. We’re still forming the team, shaping the structure, writing the playbook. Solving the problems is one thing but often the leader also has to deliver the goods. I hope that when it really counts — when we’ve built something solid — I can bring it home the way Niko did today. That I can show the team it was worth the effort. That we’re making a difference. That we’re saving lives.

So here’s my advice: get outside your field. Volunteer. Join a sports team. Lend a hand at a charity. Do something completely outside your usual expertise. You’ll not only be inspired — you’ll learn new ways of solving problems. You’ll see leadership, teamwork, and grit in new light.

And now, with huge thanks to our major sponsors, Suzuki Australia and Young Timers Garage (YTG) — as a proud dad, please let me share the video of the team’s comeback drive. From 20th to 6th. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did from the side of the track.

Thanks to Ben, Jake, Noah and Jenn for the photos.