The world used to be divided into two groups.
The first group is those people with zero interest in Formula One racing. And with good reason. It can appear to be dead-boring.
The other group is those über-enthusiasts who know everything about the cars, the teams, the engines. Avoid them at all costs at a dinner party.
With a stroke of genius, Netflix has created a third group. They’ve distilled the season’s most exciting elements—especially the personalities—into a thrilling TV series.
Suddenly (and bewilderingly), your wife, sister, and aunt know all about Formula One.
But there is another way to look at Formula One.
Beneath the glamour lies a masterclass in competitive edge. While “Drive to Survive” brought Formula One to mainstream audiences, its deeper value lies in the sport’s scientific core.
The Laboratory of the Track
Every Grand Prix is a live experiment. Engineers test hypotheses in real time: a redesigned front wing either cuts lap times or fails under Monza’s brutal curves. There’s no ambiguity—the stopwatch decides.
The best teams don’t win by luck. They win because they’re obsessed with process—shaving milliseconds through relentless iteration. A wing adjustment here, a suspension tweak there. Over a season, those micro-gains compound into dominance. Formula One is more than a sport—it’s a laboratory for relentless innovation.
The Adrian Newey Principle: Obsession Wins
I recently finished reading an autobiography called “How to Build a Car” by Adrian Newey.
Trained as an aerodynamicist, he became arguably the greatest race engineer ever, driving the success of teams like Williams, McLaren, and Red Bull.
His cars propelled drivers like Alain Prost, Mika Häkkinen, Sebastian Vettel, and Max Verstappen to World Championships.
His genius lay in refining minutiae—the angle of a rear diffuser, the curve of a bargeboard.
Each tweak alone meant little. Together, they made his cars unbeatable. Marginal gains create champions.
Sound familiar? It should.
Alpha-Elite as a Formula One Team
Our "races" unfold monthly. The competition? Benchmarks like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 are the reigning champions most hedge funds struggle to beat.
Like an F1 team, we are constantly trying to come up with new ideas, new metrics and new methods to try to improve the performance of our momentum quantitative strategy.
The difference? We replay historical ‘races’ to stress-test every adjustment.
The massive advantage we have over Red Bull and McLaren is that we can go back in time and re-run every month’s race in different simulations — all 218 of them.
The Finish Line
By no means do we compare ourselves to the high-octane performance and glamour of Formula One – the real parallel is in the method: the relentless cycle of testing and improvement.
The Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500 might win some months (or even seasons). But like a top F1 team, we focus on the long term: over 3, 5, or 10 years, our incremental gains aim to outpace them.
Also, the reality check: while F1’s stakes could be life-and-death, at least a bad month for us isn’t going to wreck and destroy our car.
Therefore, Alpha-Elite isn’t just about raw monthly performance — it’s about the process. We optimise systems through a continued process of hypotheses, testing, tweaking, rejecting, and repeating—until only the strongest ideas survive.
And we’re getting better. One race at a time.