Meet ‘Mr. F1': CEO Stefano Domenicali on keeping the sport ‘relevant' in a changing world

New York Times

16-05-2025

When Formula One returns to Imola each year, Stefano Domenicali always makes time to walk around the three-mile circuit set in the Italian countryside. As he walks, the 60-year-old's mind steps back in time, to his childhood and the school he went to just a stone's throw from the track that hosts this weekend's Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix. He remembers the sounds of the cars and bikes and thinks back to when he played basketball on the nearby courts.
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'It's a memory activator, going back to Imola,' the F1 CEO told The Athletic in an interview. 'I love it there.'
Domenicali is speaking in his office at F1's headquarters in London, a room lined with trinkets — mini driver helmets, track figurines, a couple of champagne bottles — that act as a potted history of his time in charge of the sport to which he has dedicated almost his entire career.
After 23 years with Ferrari, culminating with a stint as team principal of F1's most famous team, Domenicali was at peace with saying goodbye to the championship when he stepped down in 2014. But, like so many lifelong servants, the sport kept drawing him back in.
In 2020, after stints with Audi and Lamborghini, he landed F1's top job as CEO and president at a time when the sport was going through rapid change and growth.
'We're in a great moment for our sport,' he said. 'I'm dedicating my life to this.'
Though Domenicali enjoyed a lengthy career in four-wheel racing, some of his earliest childhood heroes were motorcycle racers. He had a poster of Jarno Saarinen, a Finnish rider, on his bedroom wall. Giacomo Agostini, a 15-time world champion, was a national hero in Italy, and Domenicali also looked up to Britain's Barry Sheene.
But there was always one major pull while watching F1. 'As an Italian, you're more focused on the team than the drivers,' he said. 'The Ferrari drivers were always part of your legend.'
Domenicali's first interactions with the F1 paddock came as a teenager, when he offered to help at Imola for the grand prix weekend. Organizing the car park and checking the passes used to access the circuit led to his first interactions with a number of significant operational figures, including Bernie Ecclestone, F1's former ringmaster.
After finishing university, Domenicali sent off his resumé to a number of racing companies, including Ferrari, which offered him a job in 1991.
Domenicali's time at Ferrari coincided with the most successful era in the team's illustrious history. Centered on star driver Michael Schumacher, Ferrari dominated the early 2000s, with Domenicali serving as its sporting director.
Great times, but Domenicali never took it for granted. The idea of someone coming from what he referred to as a 'normal family' – his father was a banker – in Imola working at Ferrari never seemed possible.
'I always took a very responsible approach that I was very lucky to have it, but (thought) 'oh my God, I need to make sure I behave!'' Domenicali said. 'Can you imagine how many people would love to be here? I never had the full… amusement of it, because I was worried more about the responsibility of having that role, not the other way around.'
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As Ferrari entered its next 'phase', with Schumacher and Todt departing in 2006 and 2007, Domenicali was the natural successor as team principal in 2008 thanks to his experience overseeing its sporting operations. But after near-misses for the drivers' title with Fernando Alonso in 2010 and 2012, and as the team's form started to slide overall, Domenicali stepped down three races into the 2014 season.
'I was very happy. My weekends were free. It was really very, very good,' he said.
But then came a phone call, this time from Liberty Media. Chase Carey, the first F1 CEO after Liberty took over running the sport in 2017, was stepping down. Carey and Greg Maffei, then Liberty's CEO, wanted to offer the job to Domenicali. He'd built his CEO credentials through his time at Lamborghini, and, crucially, knew the F1 world inside out after 23 years ingrained in Ferrari. Carey had come from a media executive background but was not as familiar with F1 when he started.
Carey believed it was initially a boost for the new regime to be led by an outsider. That Liberty 'felt (F1) needed significant change and fresh perspectives.' But once his time was up, a successor who could link together so many F1 elements – Domenicali was even head of the FIA's single-seater commission from 2014 – would work best. The Italian's respected character was also a key factor during the search for Carey's replacement, which for Liberty included conversations with Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff that went nowhere. Wolff claimed Ferrari would've blocked his appointment in any case.
'What we felt was right (was) we want somebody who can maintain the momentum and continue to build on what we think we've put in place to grow the sport,' Carey told the F1 Nation podcast in 2020. Carey cited Domenicali's depth of knowledge as being key to his appointment, as well as his character.
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'He's somebody that has great respect,' Carey told F1 Nation. 'Sometimes I feel like in this role you're sitting in the eye of a storm, with a lot of partners circling around, and I think he brings a balance and an even-keeled personality to navigate through what at times can be very noisy situations.'
Domenicali was still surprised to get the call. 'It was really lightning from the blue sky,' Domenicali said now of his discussions with Liberty. 'They wanted me to take a decision very, very soon. I regrouped with my family and said, 'Well, F1 has always been my life. So why not? Let's go.''
Domenicali took the reins of F1 in the 2020-21 off-season, right as the world was in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and the sport was trying to re-find its feet. Getting to know his new team through Zoom was something he found challenging, as did the weight of the responsibility.
'F1 had always been my life,' Domenicali said. 'Knowing before it was Bernie, then it was Chase, there were so many people leading the sport — would I be ready for that or not?'
Ecclestone had transformed F1 into a global sport, uniting the teams and ushering in a new era of commercial success upon taking the helm of the sport in the 1980s. He oversaw F1's expansion into a number of new markets, including Asia and the Middle East, but by the end of his tenure, the demands of F1's previous owner meant there was a focus on profits, not the growth and health of the sport. Carey's appointment after Liberty's takeover was about turning that corner and placing a new focus on digital media, as well as expanding the footprint in the U.S. Now, it was Domenicali's job to build on that.
What followed was a period of rapid growth and a surge in popularity as Liberty's global approach, plus the undeniable impact of 'Drive to Survive' on Netflix, started to pay off. A titanic championship fight between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton in 2021 ignited the interest further. Behind the scenes, soon after he took charge, Domenicali and his leadership team helped broker deals which contributed to the sport's growth – notably adding a race down the Strip in Las Vegas from 2023, expanding the sport's footprint to three U.S. rounds and a 24-race calendar.
Domenicali felt F1's international reach and relevance compared to other sports was significant, highlighting the cancellation of the grand prix in Sochi the day after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as proof that it was 'not fearful of our responsibility.'
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The sport has faced criticism from groups like Human Rights Watch for its decision to race in countries with poor human rights records, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates. At least a quarter of the F1 calendar is held in countries with significant human rights concerns, as documented in international human rights reports. But Domenicali has always maintained he thought F1 could help drive positive change in these nations.
Drivers, he said, were also more mindful of the world outside F1 thanks to their 'huge' platforms. 'They're in a mindset now that it's not only driving,' he said. F1 had a 'very strong political platform,' according to Domeniciali and was 'more than a sport.'
'It's bigger than that,' he said.
Hamilton, the seven-time world champion, was a leading voice calling for racial equality and improving diversity in the sport in 2020 amid activism sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement after George Floyd's death by police in Minneapolis, igniting global protests against racial injustice. But there have since been limits placed on drivers from the FIA, F1's regulator. A crackdown on swearing was partially rowed back on this week, but the International Sporting Code does still contain provisions for punishing statements or actions that breach the FIA's neutrality position.
When discussing F1's global impact, Domenicali compared its scale to many other sports. 'To move around the world and be able to be so strong, you may laugh, with only 24 grands prix, with only 20 drivers, I think it's something we should be really thankful that we're able to do,' he said.
He then gestured toward the phone recording the interview. 'To be relevant in a world where everyone has the syndrome of (swiping), doing like this, in that tool, I think we should be proud of where we are,' Domenicali said. 'We cannot stop. We need to think about what is next.'
In March, Domenicali's contract was extended for a further five years, ensuring he will remain in the top job until 2029.
The news was met warmly through the F1 paddock, with Hamilton particularly full of praise. 'Thank God he's staying,' Hamilton said in Australia. 'It's good to have a neutral, good leader at the forefront of the helm. And, yeah. I'll stop there.'
This was a thinly veiled reference to concerns over FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, whose time at the helm of F1's governing body has featured significant turbulence and controversy. At points, the relationship between Formula One Management (FOM) and the FIA has been tense. The 10 teams are also yet to agree fresh governance terms with the FIA for the new Concorde Agreement that starts next year, but the commercial terms with FOM have already been finalized. Usually, the two sides of the agreement are signed at the same time – as they comprise the key structural documents binding F1, the FIA and the teams together. It is highly unusual for them not to be signed in tandem.
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Domenicali said he and Ben Sulayem may operate in different roles, but their underlying goal was the same.
'It's to protect the sport,' he said. 'We are working together, and we need to support the FIA in their decisions, and we need to make sure that our decisions are taken with our own responsibility. There is no other way to think of a sport (other than) closely together, because we need to be aligned on that.
'The alignment needs to be found in the relationship, on a daily basis, working behind the scenes. That is my style. Everyone has their own style, I've got mine. Mohammed has his own style. But we need to think for the best of the sport, and this will always be our approach.'
A word Domenicali used throughout the interview when discussing F1, now in the 75th year of its world championship, was 'relevant.'
'Authentic in a way that it's a sport that has developed, but relevant in an environment that has changed,' Domenicali said. 'I always said that our competition is not against one sport. It's against events, it's against music, it's against movies – it's against content that is different.
'I don't like to say legacy, because it seems too arrogant. But for me, the relevancy is what I would love to leave when I have to leave.'
Besides his track walk, Domenicali has another important tradition he maintains each year he goes back to Imola for the grand prix. He gives strict instructions to his closest aides to clear his schedule so he can hold a reunion dinner with his friends from high school on the Thursday before the race.
This year's grand prix is likely to carry an extra degree of poignancy, given it is anticipated to be the last at the track in the current era. Amid the continued evolution of the F1 calendar, and with Italy already having the long-established Italian Grand Prix at Monza, which has made significant investments in its facilities, the circuit is set to drop off the schedule for 2026.
Imola's F1 race has been known by many different names — once as the Italian Grand Prix, then as the San Marino Grand Prix, and, in recent years, the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix — but, for Domenicali, it will always simply be home.
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