Otmar Szafnauer reveals the Costco hack that saved Force India’s budget

Bargain hunters around the world have an affinity for Costco, the members-only wholesale warehouse designed to sell products on the cheap — and as it turns out, Costco is just as good for low-budget Formula 1 teams as it is for the Average Joe.

In a recent interview with the High Performance podcast, former Force India Chief Operating Officer Otmar Szafnauer reveal how Costco kept the team afloat.

Need furniture for your Formula 1 team? “Go to Costco,” says Szafnauer

The Force India Formula 1 team operated between 2008 and 2018, and despite still managing to secure a best World Constructors’ Championship finish of fourth place, the team almost always operated on a tight budget.

In a recent interview with the High Performance podcast, Otmar Szafnauer revealed the lengths he went to preserve the budget for his Formula 1 team — which included runs to Costco to source cheap furniture.

“I remember Lawrence Stroll coming in to have a look around, because he was considering whether Lance should drive for us, and I think we were fourth in the championship at the time,” Szafnauer recalled, referring to the man who ultimately bought the Force India team and transformed it into today’s Aston Martin.

“Lawrence himself said, ‘I couldn’t believe it. I walked in to the electronics department, and they’re instrumenting a front wing with a fellow sitting on a stool, and the wing was on top of a rubbish bin, so he could work at the right height.’

“[Stroll] couldn’t believe that we’re performing at the level that we’re performing with having the front wing instrumented sitting on top of a rubbish bin.

“But that’s all we had.”

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In the conversation, Szafnauer shared that he twice paid the salaries for the entire Force India team when it became clear that payment would be late in coming. In doing so, he also revealed just what a financial disparity the team was operating at.

He compared his Force India crew of 400 employees with a??90 million budget to other top-tier teams running on up to 14,000 people and ?250 million.

However, paying bills and traveling to races ate up most of that budget — leaving the team just??4 million to develop a car, while the other operations had roughly??60 or 70 million.

While??4 million sounds like a lot of money, it’s peanuts compared to the big-budget operations of other Formula 1 teams — and Szafnauer knew “we didn’t have the money” to do things like develop an impressive garage set-up.

In the High Performance podcast, he shared a cost-saving trick he used to ensure Force India could operate effectively, albeit without a high bill.

“We needed benches for our laminating department for the technicians to be able to laminate parts, and we couldn’t afford them,” Szafnauer recalled.

“I remember telling Bob Halliwell, the Operations Director, I said, listen, go to Costco. They have great work benches. They’re about??220 each, and they’re high quality.

“We went to Costco, and we bought work benches for everybody. We got them at Costco. It suited what they needed.

“They loved them, but it wasn’t a Lista that was 10 times the money. We couldn’t afford it.”

The brand of the benches for the laminating department mattered much less than fostering community and developing “a good place to work,” which Szafnauer pegged as being the “differentiating factor” for Force India that saw the team recruit great talent, even as it struggled financially.

Read more:?‘It was in the millions’ – Otmar Szafnauer shares incredible Force India employee salary secret