
Bradley Lord is an instantly recognisable figure on any F1 broadcast, with the Mercedes’ chief communications officer rarely far from Toto Wolff’s side.
Pay close attention during any broadcast of a Grand Prix, and Lord can be seen in the Mercedes garage, usually pensively watching the screens alongside team boss Toto Wolff. As one of F1’s leading supporting characters, Lord plays a key role in the Brackley-based squad as chief communications officer.
Who is Bradley Lord, Mercedes’ chief communications officer?
Lord is an unmissable character in the F1 paddock, and frequently appears on Sky F1’s television coverage as a representative of Mercedes – a responsibility that’s come through 14 years of trusted service with the team.
Every Formula 1 team has a communications department, which is responsible for actively shaping the image of a team and how information pertaining to that team is disseminated to publications and other media outlets.
How this is done is bespoke to each outfit in Formula 1 – some prefer to be sleek and corporate, while others aim at a more grounded accessibility. While some teams can be more sensitive than others about how they and their personnel are written about, no team likes to have inaccuracies or untruths written or spoken about them.
This is where an F1’s communications department comes in. Working in collaboration with the media to help craft this image through accurate reporting, the department’s responsibilities can also include drafting press releases, handling media questions to ensure clarity, organising interviews and media opportunities, shaping a team’s voice on social media, and closely monitoring how the team is spoken about.
Lord is the person responsible for leading this department at Mercedes but, due to his unique skills and longevity, together with the trust he’s built with Toto Wolff, has also become a valued sounding board and delegate within the organisation. It’s a responsibility, and dynamic, that isn’t applicable at every team.
Jovial and approachable, Lord brims with confidence as he deals with the usual cut and thrust of engaging the media on a daily basis. This is a person who is very clearly at home in the paddock, and it’s evident he thoroughly enjoys every second of constructive debate that shaping the narrative surrounding his team inevitably brings.
At the end of the F1 2024 season, Lord sat down for an extensive discussion about his role, having first joined Mercedes as a communications officer in 2011. Alongside his primary roles as chief communications officer and team representative, Lord is a keen advocate of Mercedes’ sustainability push and also takes a keen interest in the team’s young driver’s mentorship – the programme overseen by Gwen Lagrue.
“I joined Mercedes in Germany rather than in the UK initially,” Lord said about his beginnings with Mercedes in an exclusive PlanetF1.com interview.
“I worked in Stuttgart for two years as a communications manager working both on Formula 1, but also on DTM as the other works motorsport platform.
“I was learning something new in German touring cars as well as the more familiar territory of F1.”
Unsurprisingly for such a role at a team that is as German as it is British, Lord is a polyglot – he’s fluent in both languages, while he also studied French at university. As if that wasn’t enough, he also holds his own in Italian. Such language skills mean there’s not much that gets past Lord – a thoroughly useful repertoire in such an international sport.
As the head of Mercedes’ communications department, Lord has a small but talented team of communications officers to delegate to – how is his role delineated from theirs?
“Daily duties, obviously, expand with time and with a measure of seniority in the organisation,” he said.
“My prime job on the comms side is really to give direction and good advice and counsel, direction to the team and to give them clear priorities and clear objectives to be working towards, in terms of what we’re trying to achieve.
“It’s to provide good counsel to the senior leaders of the organisation, to the drivers, and, particularly, working closely with Toto on how we not just navigate the media landscape but some of the other stakeholder relationships in the sport as well.
“So I do that with F1, the FIA, with the other teams, and working quite closely with him, to support him as best I can in his role as CEO and team principal.”
What is Bradley Lord’s background?
Heading up the communications side of a Formula 1 team isn’t exactly a role one falls into. Not only must the person have the strength of will to continuously battle on a team’s behalf, but they must possess a political nous alongside exceptional vocabulary and literary skills – after all, an errant word in the wrong place of an otherwise perfectly crafted press release could result in unforeseen fallout.
Diligence and attention to detail are prerequisites for such a role, so how did Lord refine his? Unsurprisingly, experience plays a key part in this – Lord’s first foray into Formula 1 was a quarter of a century ago.
“I’m a child of the automotive industry and grew up between the UK and the US,” he said.
“My father worked for General Motors throughout his career, so I spent part of my childhood living in Detroit, and I’ve been in and around cars all my life but actually got into automotive, and then Formula 1, through a job as a translator at Renault back in the late 1990s.
“I worked as an intern in their translation department, and then that eventually became an internship at what were the latter months of the Benetton Formula 1 team in late 2001.
“I started off there as a trainee, and then have really worked in the industry ever since.
“So I’ve had time as a press officer and communications manager at Enstone, I worked as a journalist for a little bit, I returned to Enstone for a year, and then have been with Mercedes since 2011.
“I’ve been very fortunate to experience two different periods of success in F1 with two different teams, and also to have been a journalist – part of the British media in two British World Championship-winning years in 2008 and 2009, for Lewis’s [Hamilton] first title and then Jenson’s [Button] win as well.”
Given his start in the automotive industry, did ending up in Formula 1 occur as a natural evolution of that, or was F1 always the goal?
“I was a huge fan of Formula 1 from my very earliest days,” he said.
“My parents will happily tell stories of me, at the age of four, naming every car and driver coming out of the pits at Brands Hatch in Grand Prix qualifying, and things like that.
“I’ve always been a huge fan of the sport but as a linguist rather than an engineer and, coming at it from the art side of things rather than the science side, I never necessarily saw an obvious path into Formula 1.
“I fell into it by a combination of good fortune and making the most of opportunities when they were offered, and then have managed to stay there ever since.
“It’s been a huge privilege to be able to make a career not just in motorsport, but in F1 in particular.”
While communications and public relations have been the mainstay of Lord’s career in F1, his brief stint in journalism saw him work for then-industry leaders in F1 media, and this work gave him some added insight into working for the opposite side – the side trying to work its way in, rather than trying to keep nosy journalists at arm’s length.
“I found it incredibly rewarding and really interesting for my experience, and for my knowledge,” he explained.
“I’ve always enjoyed writing, enjoyed the sport, and wanted to experience things from the other side of the fence when I made that move in late 2007 when I got the opportunity to work at F1 Racing Magazine and Autosport.
“So it was something I really wanted to try my hand at. I relished the ability to go up and down the full length of the paddock, and be able to have conversations in every team and to be able to cover that breadth of the sport.”
But, while journalism had its merits, Lord found the more isolated nature of the game to be at odds with what he enjoyed the most.
“I think as a journalist, I really missed the ability you have when you’re part of a team to go from the kitchen at the back of the motorhome all the way through to the pitwall at the front of the garage, and to see that full depth of the organisation,” he said.
“I loved my time as a journalist but, equally, I really missed being part of a team and a group that has that collective competitive goal, which is the really, really special thing of being part of a Formula 1 team.
“At Mercedes, we call it teamship, and the fact that, whatever your role, you’re in it together through thick and thin.
“Certainly, doing what we do, it’s quite hard to make the car faster with how you handle the communications side of things, for example, but, if we handle things in the wrong way, we can create a heck of a lot of drag to slow the team down.
“So everyone’s got their contribution to make, and working in an environment that values each of those contributions is incredibly rewarding.”
Having had that foray into journalism, Lord fully understands what it is journalists are trying to achieve through their work – meaning he’s well-placed to diplomatically set about correcting misconceptions and untruths when they occur.
“I think there are points where you’re inevitably in conflict between PR and journalism,” he said of the transferable skills between both fields.
“Equally, both, ultimately, are forms of storytelling. We’re serving slightly different customers, if you will, in what we’re doing, but, ultimately, whether you’re on the PR side of the fence or the journalistic side of the fence, you’re trying to communicate the sport to fans.
“What’s changed most significantly, I think, in my time in the sport, is that the ways of doing that communication and reaching the fans have multiplied so significantly, and, from a team perspective, become much more direct than they used to be.
“So the media still play an incredibly important role in the sport, holding teams to account and being independent of the stakeholders of the sport, and that’s incredibly important for its health and for its credibility.
“But also there’s a huge amount in doing PR and working as a journalist, that the jobs have in common as well. A few occasional points of conflict, but I think the alignment is much stronger, and the ability to collaborate effectively, honestly, and transparently is a much bigger thing than the occasional points of difference or disagreement.”
How Bradley Lord found his home at Mercedes
With a yearning to find that teamship again, Lord leapt at the opportunity to join Mercedes in 2011. Under then-team boss Ross Brawn, the Brackley-based squad had Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg as its drivers, and Lord couldn’t resist the pull of the three-pointed star.
“I was fortunate to be invited over to Stuttgart and, honestly, seeing the incredible history of the company in motorsport, and the incredible pride that Mercedes takes in its future, and how it inspires that future from what it achieved in the past, was a real clincher for me.
“I think it’s the most incredible automotive company in the world, and responsible for a huge number of firsts. It’s shaped our industry, and it was a source of great pride to be asked to come and contribute to helping write the next parts of that legacy.”
Moving across from Stuttgart to join the F1 team as communications manager in 2013, Lord stepped up to head of F1 communications in 2014 – midway through the first season of Mercedes’ dominance. It’s since then that Lord has shaped Mercedes’ communications strategies, but how much of that strategy is defined by him (and, by extension, Wolff) relative to, say, the desires of shareholders like Mercedes and Sir Jim Ratcliffe?
“I think it’s probably important not to overcomplicate the process or how it works,” he said.
“We’ve got some clear objectives of what we’re trying to achieve in terms of how we want to be ultimately perceived, and our job is to enhance the Mercedes-Benz brand, first and foremost, and to help the shine of the star shine more brightly.
“But then also it’s to provide a really effective platform for the partners who invest in our success as well. So there’s a lot of listening involved in getting that strategy right and understanding what their objectives are, and then creating a platform and a brand positioning that is broad enough for all those different stakeholders.
“So we’re obviously shaped by the direction that Mercedes-Benz takes, but then looking at how do we refine that and adapt that to a Formula 1 environment.
“We have those objectives but you have to stay incredibly reactive, because there’s that old phrase that ‘Plans are useless, planning is indispensable’.
“The exercise of coming up with the plans is really helpful but everything can change on that first race weekend according to how your on-track performance is.
“That means you need to be adaptable to dial up certain things or dial down others. I always use the analogy that it’s a bit like white water rafting – the river is flowing whatever you do, and your job is to help navigate so you avoid getting tipped out of the raft or running into the big rocks.”
Bradley Lord on handling biases, online abuse, and the major changes in the F1 media landscape
Given his 14 years working closely with one team, it would be easy to imagine that Lord – as with anyone with such longevity in a role – might find it difficult to keep his own loyalty towards his team out of the picture when it comes to reading and hearing criticisms leveled at the crew around him.
For instance, in 2022, when the team’s W13 proved truculent and the media was full of negativity and criticism, how difficult was it to not feel aggrieved by that criticism – particularly when it’s made by people Lord would see on a daily basis in the paddock?
“It wouldn’t be fair to expect people to be fully informed if we’re not prepared to fully inform them. So everyone in the sport has a job to do,” he said, when asked if he feels his role includes that of enforcer.
“If you’re writing an article, you’ve got column inches to fill, or you’ve got broadcast minutes that you need to produce content for.
“If you’re not prepared to fill a void with information, you have to be prepared for journalists to speculate or reach their own conclusions. So part of a big challenge is just understanding how you communicate through difficult periods, and understanding that you do have to communicate through them.
“You can’t just shut up shop and hope that, suddenly, everyone will, by osmosis or magic, understand the reasons why a team is struggling or finding things difficult or anything else.
“So, it’s all part of it and I think not getting thrown off track by things that you might not agree with but, equally, aren’t prepared to offer the insight in order to help people reach a more informed view, you can’t have a reason to grumble.
“You’ve got to be quite pragmatic about it as well. It’s inevitable, in some places, you’ll see people just taking shots, and that’s part of it.
“Others will be more nuanced and more curious in terms of understanding what the situation is, and why. It just varies. But it’s about understanding where can you have the most influence on steering, the story of the season, and the story of the team.
“How do you, as a team, continue communicating on all of your own channels in a way that recognises the reality of the situation but also finds a positive route forward too?
“Because that’s part of what we need to do. When the team is in a more difficult phase, you need to also help lift the team and find ways to do that and protect the organisation so it can work in its most effective way to find the route to improve performance and get back there.
“That’s something you do through your key spokespeople. You do it through what we’re putting out on social media, and how we’re briefing the media behind the scenes, and all those different levers that we have at our disposal.”
One area in which Lord has seen significant change during his time in Formula 1 is that of online abuse. With Mercedes and Red Bull’s respective fandoms descending into anarchy online in a tension-filled 2021 season as the two teams battled for glory, Lord saw firsthand the effects such abuse can have on the real-life people targeted by hate campaigns and brigading.
“I think it’s an interesting challenge that certainly has changed hugely in my time in the sport when you see some of the vitriol and some of the abusive behaviour that can take place on social media, and how deeply personal that has become,” he said.
“That has real-world consequences, real-world mental health consequences for the people on the receiving end of it, and team members on the receiving end of it.
“That’s something we have to adapt to and be able to discuss and support within the organisation as well. So it definitely is a consideration and a concern.
“Some of how to deal with that comes with experience, and some of it – for people who’ve been in the industry for a long time, like myself – it’s recognising that the job and its pressures have changed compared to when I joined.
“You were dealing with maybe angry people on the phone or frustrated people in front of you, but you’re always dealing with people at the other end. It’s a much more anonymised and much more polarised environment that we operate in.”
Given that Lord’s time in charge of Mercedes’ communications, up until the last three years, overlapped significantly with the team’s unprecedented run of dominance between 2014 and ’20, did that on-track strength translate into an easy life for his department? After all, it’s difficult for anyone to speak negatively about a team that can’t stop winning – did that simplify Lord’s job for those years?
“I think you get a big tailwind from success,” he said.
“It’s easy to feel like everything is working really well when you get that free adrenaline boost and motivational boost of success on track. The period that we’re in now has been really important for the organisation, across the board, including in our area.
“Being quite self-critical about what we’re doing well and what we’re not doing so well, where we need to improve, and how we can do that.
“So it’s huge fun and really rewarding to be enjoying success week on week and really fighting for that. I think the challenges that the job brings change at that point as well.
“It was one of our biggest objectives during that period of huge success, to make sure we were respectful of the sport in a period of dominance when we had two drivers fighting directly for the Drivers’ Championship and they were the two contenders.
“Making sure that we were doing that in a way that respected the sport and the fans, and then, when we were in a very close and targeted fight with other teams, making sure that we were able to fight on every front in a way that maximised our chances of success.
“I’d say the most rewarding years have been the challenging ones, where we’ve been in really close battles and where how we presented ourselves, how we’ve managed our external and our internal comms has helped, maybe, contribute a little bit to the overall success of the team’s outcome in the championship and the team’s performance.
“We don’t directly make things faster. We can, inadvertently, make things or people less competitive if we don’t handle things in the right way. That’s the rewarding challenge under that pressure and under that spotlight of the heat of competition.”
With 25 years under his belt in Formula 1, the sport has come a long way in that quarter of a century. While it was always popular, F1 is now a mainstream sport globally – it certainly couldn’t have dreamed about shutting down the Las Vegas Strip for a race back in 2000.
Lord has seen the sport evolve significantly but, despite the huge changes, the fundamentals are still the same – and the same applies to communications.
“Going from photocopying and handing out press releases by hand in the media centre to, essentially, telling our story through what we do in the digital space – on social media in particular, that’s certainly the biggest transformation of how the teams are structured and what we spend our days doing,” he said.
“That’s definitely the biggest change but I think the challenge remains very similar, to be honest. Ultimately, we’re all there to win. We’ve got slightly different tools at our disposal compared to 20 years ago, but we’re in this sort of absolute, flat-out, no-holds-barred competition with our rivals and with rival teams.
“It’s all, ultimately, about winning and about each individual making our contribution to how we do that as a team, and that is the same challenge, even though we’re doing it with slightly different tools to when I joined in 2001.”
The final part of PlanetF1.com’s exclusive interview with Mercedes’ chief communications officer Bradley Lord will be published next week.
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