#126: Race Car Driver Questions God

One of our core principles of leadership that we teach entrepreneurs is a willingness to be wrong or essentially a skeptic of your own feelings, right? Like that, yes, you can be very secure in what you believe, but always open and willing that, hey, maybe I don't have it all figured out and I'm still curious to gain more knowledge. Hey guys, I'm super excited to have Mr.
Lucas. Am I pronouncing Degrassi? Is that right? Yeah, that's good.
All right. Degrassi.
So Lucas is literally the godfather. He is the champion of F1E.
So you guys have probably seen Drive to Survive on Netflix, which is the Formula One circuit. The F1E circuit is essentially the same, but on the electric side of the vehicles.
And Lucas has been a driver for many years, comes from a very successful background, very successful family down in Brazil, and has been able to do a lot of really cool things. Welcome to the show, Mr.
Lucas. Thanks, Chris.
Thank you very much for hosting me. Yeah, I've raced my whole life since I was seven years old.
I raced in Formula One back in 2010, then in long endurance races, and I helped to create Formula formula e which is formula one electric for people who doesn't uh know that and yeah what year what year was that that you show with you that you created formula one e uh i was um i was not the founder right but uh a very good friend of mine as soon as he got the idea he called me i I was the first person to join him to do it, and it was July 2012. 2012.
Man, you know, a lot of people, myself included, would have never realized that this type of circuit existed 12 years ago. In fact, I look back at electric cars like Tesla.
In 2012, they had very little market penetration. There wasn't really even a lot of automakers in the full electric vehicles.
And so the fact that there was a race circuit that was founded 12 years ago in the electric, that's just kind of mind-boggling for me. Yeah, that was actually a lot of the difficulty we had at the very beginning because nobody really believed that electric would be a big part of the future right and i got my mind on that because i could see that formula one back then uh actually in 2009 started uh with the hybrid engines and then endurance racing in 2011 started with hybrid engines.
And when you extrapolate, when you go further with the hybrid part of the motor to make the motor more efficient, basically go towards more electrification. So for me, it was clear in a way that the technology will evolve towards more electrification of the fleet.
Yeah, that's so awesome. So you've been racing cars or racing go-karts or whatever else since age seven.
How old are you now, Lucas? I'm actually just 1040. So a big celebration for the 40th birthday.

And yeah, I've been racing since, well, professionally since 2020, 21.

And then before that in go-karting since I was seven.

Awesome.

So professional for 20 years, 40 years old, you and me both, man.

I just turned 40 in February.

Oh, really? Yeah. A couple 1984 babies.
I mean, August, so very close. Okay.
Very good. Very good.
So, Lucas, you come from a very successful family down in Brazil. Is that correct? Generally, yes.
I am. My father, my grandparents were born.
All of them were born in Italy, and they migrated to Brazil in between the First and the Second World War.

And they came here with nothing and started building their lives.

And yeah, my father was a successful businessman and allowed me to start the racing world to focus on this sport that I love.

So, you know, a lot of people would look at your life and be like, man, this guy's got to figure it out, right?

You've got, you know, a successful family.

So the financial and everything else seems to be in check.

You're racing. You're doing what you love.
You're able to compete professionally and everything else seems to be in check. You're racing.

You're doing what you love. You're able to compete professionally and everything else.
What are some things right now that are like the lids in your life that you're trying to break through? What gives you passion and what are you working on to become a better version of yourself right now that's probably one of the most interesting questions that uh that anybody has ever asked because it's not something that you hear every day like everybody wants to know what is actually doing well but very few people want to know what is the struggle right in your life well, there are many different slices of my life that I can name. For example, my personal life, I'm a young parent.
I have two young kids, a boy, which is six, a girl, which is three. So being a parent already is extremely difficult because it's very hard to educate children in the right way.

You have to be very hands-on. It's a lot of work.
And I really believe that doing the right thing is very important for them. So I try to spend a lot of time on that.

On the other hand, I travel a lot for my racing, so I'm away from them. So I miss them a lot of time on that.
On the other hand, I travel a lot for my racing,

so I'm away from them.

So I miss them a lot.

That puts a lot of stress in the family.

I live in Monaco.

All my family lives in Brazil.

My little family lives in Monaco,

but like my parents, my brothers, my cousins,

everybody lives in Brazil.

So I've been away for so many years and I missed the contact with my brothers, with my family and then professionally I had a very, very tough year, last year it was the worst year of my career the car, I made a choice to change teams two years ago that really compromised a lot of my career. And I struggled a lot to get the cars competitive, didn't manage to do so.
So I changed teams again for this year. So yeah, I've been professionally and personally struggling a lot with this transition at this stage.
You know, it's interesting. I have the theory that happiness and success aren't destinations, right? Their trajectories that we're on and that much of what we experience joy and happiness is based on where we're, what trajectory we're going, right? You can be at a destination of a lot of money or very, very, you know, an incredible point of your career.
Like for example, you're driving, right? And kind of the top of your career. And if your trajectory is flat or even declined, like that is where our happiness stems from.
And whenever we're, whenever we're decreasing in our trajectory or maintaining our trajectory, like it feels like we're, we're missing something, right? Like there's, there's a joy that's, that's lacking. And so, um, you know, obviously you've had a, uh, so from the sound of it, it sounds like it's been a struggle the last year, year and a half from a professional.
And like most, most people from the outside looking in like, Oh no, he he's got to figure it out. He's a professional driver.

There's no way he can be mad about anything that's going on. Tell me more about what do you see happening with that? How are you trying to break through? What's the next move for you that's going to help you get back on that trajectory where you feel fulfilled again yeah i i would even go further and say that in professional sports being happy could be an enemy of performance right it's um when you're happy means that you're satisfied or where you are and in sports you can never be satisfied you can always you know there is always room for improvement there is always you did i always i never did a perfect lap around the racetrack i never did a perfect race so even if you win a race of course you have a period that you are happy let's say you race at midday uh sunday uh until the monday morning maybe you're happy, but Monday you have to be sad again in a way that you're trying to figure out where you can get better.
And for me, it has been a lot of struggle because first you have a lot of pressure in the races. So it's not that I do something that I love, but before the races, there is a lot of stress a lot of pressure both from within and both and outside and with myself to get better so every day every minute of every hour of every day thinking about what should i eat which training should i get better and as gets more complex, this just expands to different realms.
So like, how can I be a better father? Have I made the correct decision here or there or financial investment? So it is definitely happiness is not a state. It is a moment.
it is a period and for sure i think uh i think that uh many happy moments in a row could lead in a way for uh for you to be less hungry to what you want to achieve for sure no i agree pessimistic but i agree it is in a way like this. I agree with the happiness.
I guess more along the lines of success, right? Like success is a trajectory of constantly improving, right? Like you may not be happy along the way all the time, right? Like because you got to be hungry, like as you're talking about. So, you know, you bring up a good point.
I guess it'd be interesting to know if you could never race again, right? If professional driving was taken from you, where are you finding passion in life tomorrow, if that were the case? I wouldn't have a problem not racing tomorrow. I think I am in any way in a later stage of my career.
It's very rare to find professional racing drivers in single-seaters, which is the pinnacle of racing. It's like IndyCar, Formula One, Formula E.
It's very rare to find drivers over 40 years old. I think there is like a handful of drivers that are 40.
I am the oldest in Formula E. The oldest in Formula One, I think, is alone.
So at 42. In IndyCar, maybe it's Scott Dixon, which is 40 something as well.
So it's very hard to be there. So I'm in the later stage of my career and I'm preparing my transition already in a way to understand, do I become a team principal in a team? Do I shift completely and go to Brazilian politics? I don't know yet.
And I'm not in a hurry to figure it out. I have my plan A and my only plan is to do the best I can on my racing because it has to be like this with a mentality.
And then at one point that I decide to stop, then I will figure it out. But in the meantime, of course, I'm doing Harvard Business School with you and trying to figure out what would be my best next move.
Yeah, you bring up a solid point. So you're investing time to be at Harvard Business School, which is clearly an indication of you're still trying to learn, you're still trying to improve.
Why are you attending Harvard Business School? What's reasoning for for being there when you already have this successful career um trying to be a better a better person trying to to improve myself um i i i left university i i joined uh my my bachelor in economics um when i was 17 18 i did one year and i had to drop out to follow professional motorsport. It was impossible to do both.
So I've been doing a lot of different business in parallel to racing. You're always you are a business, right? You have to promote your own brand.
You have to promote your own products. There is a business around the sportsman all the time.
So I've been doing this business, but I felt that I could learn different businesses, different methodologies, different ways to lead and to understand a team, apply some of this into racing itself and prepare myself better to when I'm not, let's say, an individual racing a car, but I'm, let's say, coordinating a team in the future, that I would already have acquired part of the knowledge necessary from, for example, Harvard Business School that would accelerate my process or accelerate my transition to this next stage of my life.

So what are, you know, once again, from the outside looking in, you've got life figured out, right? You've got the great family. You're going to Harvard.
You're doing these different things. It's like, what are the mental weaknesses or the thoughts that go through your mind that you struggle with? And how do you work through those? I mean, just ask you to open up a little there and kind of maybe share.
Because some people, it's like, hey, man, I'm just not good enough. I'm not good enough to be in this room.
I'm still trying to find my purpose in life, whatever. What are some of the mental struggles that you battle with and how do you get through them? Definitely the imposter syndrome is real.
You always think how good you are. And am I the same person as I was 10 years ago driving cars? Is it? Am I not having good results because I'm aging is because I'm not good enough? Or it's just because the car is not good enough? Or how do I go around that?

The aging is a big factor.

When you turn 40, it's just a mark.

But still, you realize, again, another benchmark has reached.

So how do you keep as healthy as possible at optimal cognition and physical performance that you can have? What about with your family? Also, yeah, I was going to say I have a brother which has some form of autism in a way. So that lives in Brazil, a younger brother, that definitely I need to help more.
I've been away for 20 years in Europe. I became very distanced from him.
That's something that is always in the back of my mind that I need to go back and, you know, help more on this side and bring him closer to me. But it's impossible just living abroad.
And it is impossible to race or to fulfill my duties as a race driver living in Brazil because the team, everything is based in Europe. So, yeah, on this side of the family also, uh you know that i spent a lot of time away from my parents from my friends from everybody that i love in brazil that's always in the back of my mind and it's always something that every time i have a bad race i'm like is this worth it is this like is it enough have I raced enough? Should I go back? Should I continue? Should I push through? All these conflicts are always going back and forth.
So, I mean, obviously those are like some of the doubts or the worries. Like how do you handle that? Like where does your mind go to go to that? Like, oh, I can do this,

or I can do that to, to improve that, to, to better take care of my, my brother, or maybe one day I'm going to be able to have more time. Like what, where does your mind go to help, like, just deal with, with those types of doubts that you experience? I am a very pragmatic and logic person.

I'm not, I'm very little religious at all. My family, on the contrary, my family, it is, they are very religious from their Catholic and Italian background and my mom and so on.
So I can tell you that I wish I could have more of this exchange on the religion side, which I don't. So my mind goes through, yeah, how can I help? How can I do that? How can I incentivize the people around him to be able, or how can I bring him closer? But I haven't figured it out yet.
It's something that I need to be close. I need to be physically there to be able to be in touch more.
You bring up an interesting subject. So you bring up a religion.
Your family is religious and you're more pragmatic. And you kind of expressed a little like, man, I wish I was like, why have you gone that way? Or what keeps you from taking that step or maybe going back to the faith of your parents? I was raised in a Catholic house and I was married in church.
I was baptized and everything. But for me, the more I study and the more I see life and the more I see how hard life is to so many people.

For me, it had the effect of getting away from religion more than bringing it closer. because I see so many unfair things in the world,

so many suffering. Right.
That I never saw the evidence that I look for or the logical reasoning to be more religious. I'm not saying that I don't believe in anything.
The question is that I don't depend on what you define what God is, first of all. Do you believe in a higher power? I don't believe, let's say, on the Catholic.
Yeah. Yeah, if you say to me, look, let's say what created the Big Bang is a God, and he put the laws of physics, and he's not.
He's just saying, look, here it is, universe, go. I would believe it.
If you ask me if I believe there is a superior being looking at children with cancer, looking at children in Africa that are having a horrible time and not doing anything, I don't believe omnipresent, omniscient being could live so much suffering in the world. So that's where I come from.
So first defining what God is and then for the traditional sense, for the, let's say, the Catholic way that I don't believe, but I believe there is a, you can call it the laws of physics, or you can call God, or you can call the simulation universe or the guy who created the simulation. But there is some force that allow our universe to create life and to create consciousness, which is a deep mystery to me that is something

that I try to understand more and more as life goes by. It sounds like you struggle with a belief in a higher being because of the terrible things that go on in the world.
Is that correct? Yeah, because of the lack of evidence in a way. Lack of evidence that in any way our lives are influenced by something which could break the laws of physics, essentially.
This for me, I haven't seen that evidence. I looked everywhere.
So only a powerful God that could break the laws of physics.

I haven't seen any evidence of that.

So for me at the moment, the question, the answer is that I don't know.

I hope it exists.

You bring up an interesting point.

The interesting thing about science is that although there are physical laws

and everything else, they've been proven wrong over the history of man. The way we understand science today is not the same way we understood science 100 years ago or 500 years ago or 1,000 years ago.
And so, you know, I so I'm a I, I'm a believer. I, I, I believe, I believe in God, but I do believe in, I believe that science is the power of God.
And, but, but also I, but I also believe that man has not come to a total understanding of how science works or how the power of God works. Like, for example, miracles.
I don't believe that there's miracles in the traditional sense. I believe that there's miracles in misunderstanding the way science works.
And like example, if we were alive 200 years ago, me and you, Lucas, and we looked up in the sky and we saw an airplane flying 200 years ago we would both look at each other and be like wow that's a miracle right that's a that's a or that's aliens or whatever whatever but it but but we would but we would look at it as a, that's not scientific, right?

Correct.

Because there's never in the history been able to have an airplane flying through the air, yet airplanes follow the science of God, the science of physics, the science, right? And so,, and so, you know, I think God, God is, is the one that actually has created the laws of physics, created the way that science works. And I think man has a misunderstanding around that.
And to your point around, you know, cancer and starving kids in Africa and all the terrible things that go on in the world. I'm a believer that we learn the most through the difficult things that we experience.
And although nobody likes to see suffering, nobody likes to see cancer or struggle or anything else. Those that make it through it or even those that don't make it through it, those that have to watch and have the opportunity to learn and grow from it.
And, you know, I'm a, that God put us on the earth to experience difficulty, to go through the terrible things that the world has to offer. So that, um, have you, have you ever read the book, um, by Urban Meyer? Uh, he's a, do you know who Urban Meyer is? The football coach from Ohio state? No.
So you love sports. I think you would love this book.
This, this guy, he, he has a book called above the line and he teaches his, he teaches his teams like how to deal with adversity and like to, uh, to handle life in essential. And, and he's got an equation that I absolutely love.
And it's called E plus R equals O. And it stands for event plus response equals outcome.
And essentially the whole thing with the equation is that we can control the outcome. We can't always control the event.
So there's two things in that equation that we control. And it's essentially the response and the outcome.
Events happen. People are diagnosed with cancer.
We lose races, right? We get in an argument, whatever it is. There's things that are external that we don't have power over that happens in the event.
And I think a lot of people, they look at events similar to what you're saying and they say, there can't be a God if this event takes place. And the thing that I've always believed is that God is not found in the event, but God is found in the response.
And when the way that we respond to terrible events or terrible things that we have no control over and that are scientific. right like that that the laws of gravity will stick to like events will take place because

of the laws of gravity will stick to, like events will take place because of the laws of gravity, right? Like a plane will fall out of the air or like when the engine no longer works or whatever it may be. Like those are all events.
And the way that we respond or handle those events, I do believe that there is a higher being that gives us strength, that gives us power to overcome, and which eventually, if we respond, produces the outcome that we desire. I understand this explanation is more of an inner explanation of how you see yourself responding to external phenomena and how do you deal with, let's say, an internal spirituality.
And I fully understand. The reason why I got away from the church, for example, is that if there was, let's say, if really there was a text, an ancient text or an ancient knowledge that was way far ahead of its time, right? That you could explain stuff that was, let's say, that many thousands of years later, we would look back and say, how could they know that? It must be somebody else that put that knowledge there.
But that's not the case. When you look at the past, it was very precarious.
When you look at trying to burn Galileo because he said that the sun does not rotate around the earth. Actually, the church tried to burn him.
The church burned alive tens of thousands of widows, of women, because they were witches, because they didn't understand that the black plague was actually transmitted by rats. And actually, widows, they had cats as a company.
So the rate of them getting contaminated by the plague was actually much lower than the average population. They said that the Earth was created in six days.

But if in ancient text, there was something written 5,000 years ago or 2,000 years ago,

the Earth was created in 4.5 billion years ago.

And then science, 2,000 years later, looking at the carbon isotope and looking and said, oh, it's actually 4.5. I will be, okay, wait, there is something there that the church knew that we don't know.
But apart from this, which don't take me wrong, I think this inner spirituality, and this is what I'm talking about, that actually gives you the strength to go through stuff and gives you the strength to do good and give you the strength to go through difficulty in life. And I think this is very valuable.
And this has a lot of value, not only for the individual, but for society. but the external knowledge is where it gets me

the more I dig

the more I read books

the more I try to learn

and the more I dig the more I read books the more I try to learn and the more I try to search for the truth the more it gets me away not the other way around right and I fully understand and I fully agree with you about the scientific method and science does not know science is really the question of saying I don't know so which is the question I raised. I don't know about God.
Let's try to figure it out. If somebody, by one time, I see something floating, let's say a guy floating or opening the Red Sea or whatever, which sea opened.
And there was evidence that actually that happened. Some laws of physics, either thermodynamics or gravity or whatever, actually were broken and was proven.
And you say, look, that guy has like some superpower. Then I would completely change my mind.
I'm open to change. I'm not certain of anything.
I'm definitely not trying to convince you one way or another, but just to, you know, it's interesting just to understand because I get it. You were raised Catholic and which is a very like this is like one way, one way to believe and whatever else.
and it's interesting because my belief is although I believe

in Christ and I'm very much

Christian

it is

my belief is, is although I believe in Christ and I'm very much Christian, it is, my beliefs are non-traditional from the, from the standpoint is I, I believe that, you know, like I, I actually have like a lot of answers for the things that you brought up, which we'll have to leave to a, we'll have to have a fun discussion at Harvard about that. But you're right, right? Like there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of power in ourselves individually.
I believe that a lot of that comes from God. And, but that there's a lot of terrible things that have taken place in the name of religion.
Right. In that that you brought up.
And, you know, when when we talk about like one ancient script, frankly, I believe that there's many ancient scripts and that scripts are simply inspired journals of of interactions and experiences with God. And I think that they exist very much so outside of the Bible.
Do I believe that the Bible has a lot of it? Yeah, it's great. But I believe that truth can be found in anything and that each one of us have a whole lot more divinity inside of us than we give ourselves credit for.
All right? Like a lot of it's like divinity is only in the Bible or divinity is only in God. But no, divinity is in each of us individually.
And I think it's part of this spiritual. Yes, these are, these are, these are, and I understand, and yeah, and I see, and I think there's a lot of value.
The other thing which for me is very important as I search for progress as a human being is try to, it's very hard to try to not, how can I say, not trust yourself, not follow your bias. There is a very strong mechanism for you to try to justify your own choices.
And this is something that I try to understand and try to avoid. So how I have to be as much as I can a skeptic of myself, of my preferences, of my bias, of my reasoning.
So how can I create mechanisms that allow me to be always verifying if I'm not going in a direction that I want to go without any rationale behind. And this is very common from education of kids to try to improve in my sport, try to, I don't know, gain some advantage on driving for some reason or trying to eat better or exercise better or have a better lifestyle.
or even investing money or so on. So how do you create these mechanisms and how you live your life to make sure that you don't do that? How to be skeptical of your own feelings, which sometimes are, in a good way, give you the right intuition, and on the other hand, could create a lot of irrational decisions.
You know, that's so, so important. In fact, it's one of our core principles of leadership that we teach entrepreneurs is a willingness to be wrong or essentially a skeptic of your own feelings, right? Like that, yes, you can be very secure in what you believe, but always open and willing that, hey, maybe I don't have it all figured out.
And I'm still curious to gain more knowledge. And I think that, like you said, it applies to everything.
This applies to being a parent.

This applies to being an athlete, a professional, our spirituality side. And really is the premise of everything that we believe in that in order to get to the next level, we have to always be open.
because if we're unwilling to be open around new ideas or improvements to be made, we will either maintain or decline wherever we're at in any area of life. And so I think with that, Lucas, man, I appreciate just the open conversation.
This is awesome. And just talking, being real with people of like, hey, man, I may look like I have things figured out, but I still struggle with how do I spend more time with my family? How do I be a better father? How can I impact my brother who has autism? Those are such good gems for us to know that you are a real human and you put on your underwear one leg at a time, just like the rest of us.
And you're still figuring it out just like we are. And so I just wanted to say thank you.
Thank you for being open and sharing those things. Are you active on social media? What's the best way for our listeners to get a hold of you or follow you? Well, first of all, Chris, thank you very much.
This hour of our talk will get me thinking a lot for the next days to come. So, yeah, thank you for occupying a piece of real estate in my mind, a large piece that I'll be thinking about that for a long time.
I think it's great what you're doing with this podcast because it shows the humanity in everybody.

And this is, I think, what is lacking nowadays.

I think a lot of people in social media, they see just the surface. They don't see the inside.
They don't see the struggles. They just want to see the good part.
And that creates a lot of anxiety because everybody is human. Everybody is struggling.
So congratulations on what you're doing. That's really amazing.
And yeah, I post mostly about racing and different topics, both on LinkedIn, Twitter, our X now and Instagram. It's at Lucas Degrassi.
And yeah, hopefully people that watched us will follow Formula E as well. And they're all all welcoming one race, including you.
Let's see

which one you have to come.

Alright, man. Super excited.

Just as a reminder to all

the listeners, success

is a trajectory.

It is never a destination.

We are all looking to level up,

get it to the next level, whether it's

physically, economic in our associations

or our spirituality.

Until next time.