The shared drive behind Airwallex and McLaren’s partnership

What does it take to shave milliseconds off a lap time in Formula One? Surprisingly, it’s not that different to what it takes the best businesses to succeed.

Restless ambition, and asking “what’s next?”

This question was at the core of our official event held as F1 weekend kicked off in Melbourne. McLaren Racing’s Lando Norris joined me on stage for a chat about making continuous improvements and changes to reach ambitious goals, and F1 experts Sean Kelly and Bernie Collins treated us to a deep dive into the sport.

For Airwallex, partnering with McLaren Racing is part of our ongoing pursuit of excellence and high performance, and is something which sees us continue to deliver innovation for businesses globally. Our official partnership also extends off the track, with Airwallex powering McLaren’s global payments and multi-currency transactions every race week. This means the team can stay focused on performance, not paperwork and finance operations. 

Reaching goals in a changing sport

Lando says F1 is “constantly changing”. To ensure their goals are achieved, it’s about focus and drive.

“You always have to understand what your biggest target is. And your biggest goals now.”

To reach these ambitious goals in the world’s most elite motorsport, Lando says that the focus has been on incremental improvements.

“I think when you look at the past few years, it was the same rules and the same car, basically. It was all about the tiny, tiny things. When you have 10 tiny things, it might have added up to one tenth. But one tenth is actually quite a lot.”

Now, with the 2026 rule changes, which includes the addition of a ‘Boost’ button for a driver to take manual control and more emphasis on the electrical side of the hybrid system, Lando says you are more likely to see bigger changes and improvements. 

“We need to improve on some of the small things, but we also need the bigger things,” he says.

“That's one of the lessons you also learn – sometimes you don't necessarily need to be able to feel the improvement. As long as you've made that improvement over time, you'll start to see the results in a better way.”

Relentless ambition and incremental gains

Success is often a team sport, and this is especially true in elite motorsport. F1 strategy analyst and engineer Bernie Collins and F1 expert Sean Kelly discussed the focused, incremental changes made by the McLaren Pit Crew to shave milliseconds off their Pit Stop time.

According to Sean, McLaren own the world record for the fastest Pit Stop after changing four tyres on Lando Norris’ car in 1.80 seconds at the Qatar Grand Prix in 2023.

Explaining this achievement, Bernie says it came down to continuous analysis and improvement as a team.

Event attendees try their hand at the VR Pit Stop challenge.

“In 2017, McLaren's fastest pit stop time was 2.3 and by 2023 it was 1.8, so they've got like 30% improvement in seven years, which is massive,” she says.

“If you could do that in business that's massive. But it's been very, very small incremental gains, and it started by adding sensors to gather the data.”

“We realised that the guy lifting the lollipop, there's a delay in his reaction. There’s a delay in the driver’s reaction. Now we managed to achieve a 1.8 second pit stop. When you think of all the things that happen in 1.8 seconds, it’s unbelievable.”

This determined ambition and focus on making both incremental gains and big leaps is shared across both the corporate world and F1.

So, What’s Next? It’s a question Airwallex has been asking since we were founded in Melbourne in 2015. We’ve been redefining global business finance ever since. 

Changing the way money is managed for modern businesses for over a decade doesn’t happen without ambition and a constant restlessness to innovate.

For Airwallex, our pursuit of “what’s next” is asking what the future of finance looks like, and how we can build it.