While he’s ‘between jobs’ in Formula 1, former Aston Martin and Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer has launched an app which aims to take the pain out of transporting large groups of people around the world…
WORDS STUART CODLING
Many people complain about being busy when in fact the opposite can be rather ghastlier. Little wonder, then, that Otmar Szafnauer has embarked on a new business venture while serving a contractual “non-compete” period after his Alpine departure last summer.
That project is EventR, a logistics app designed to simplify the process of ushering racing teams to their destinations and back again (though it could just as easily be used to corral those attending a stag do, for instance). Many businesses in the F1 world still rely on multi-page spreadsheets to ensure everyone arrives at the right place at the right time and has accommodation – and a place in a hire car.
This isn’t the first time Szafnauer has gone digital while his F1 management career has been on hiatus. After becoming one of the many casualties of Honda’s sudden-onset withdrawal from F1 at the end of 2008, he co-founded Soft Pauer, a ‘digital solutions provider’ whose first product was a timing app for Formula 1, launched on iOS in mid-2009. Although this was later superseded by Formula One Management’s own in-house production (Liberty Media wanted to consolidate its digital operations into one organisation), the original app featured at the global launch of the iPad in January 2010, when Steve Jobs set the world a-flutter.
Remember those heady days? “Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet,” wrote the Wall Street Journal, “it had some commandments on it.”
“We developed the app when it was just the iPhone,” says Szafnauer. “The iPad didn’t exist yet. When the iPad came out, if you remember, Steve Jobs used to do a big keynote speech whenever there was a big product announcement. He chose 13 apps to demonstrate and we were one of them.
“I’d realised the information we had available to us on the pitwall would really improve the fan experience, and the means existed to transmit that information.
“That was back then. And now another year off – hopefully a year, we’ll see what happens – and this is another app we’ve done in between working for F1 teams. It’s a bit F1-specific now but it can also be used for other things. It’s sort of a continuation of other
