As I was watching the Austin Grand Prix, I found myself thinking less about who won, and more about why.
It struck me that the difference between the fastest car and the rest of the field isn’t always horsepower or luck. It’s how efficiently each team manages the invisible intervals between corners: the sector times.
Those fractions of a second are where engineering precision, driver instinct, and team coordination intersect. They reveal the drivers of success long before the checkered flag does.
Most businesses, by contrast, only measure the scoreboard. Revenue. Margin. Valuation. But those are outcomes, not causes. The real work happens in the sectors, which for companies are in the financial and operational rhythms that determine whether you’re gaining ground or quietly falling behind.
Scoreboards Don’t Tell the Whole Story
It’s easy to mistake growth for progress. Many companies celebrate a good quarter and assume the system is healthy, only to discover that they’ve been losing efficiency the entire time.
Just as an F1 team dissects every lap to see where drag or delay appeared, a business needs to measure the quality of its motion, not just the distance traveled.
Ask yourself:
- How long does cash sit idle between invoice and collection?
- How quickly does a new idea make it from discussion to deployment?
- How much energy do your people spend fighting process friction instead of creating value?
These are the financial sector times — the hidden intervals that determine whether the engine of your business is running smoothly or wasting fuel.
The Real Drivers of Success
Every business has its own circuit. The straightaways might be sales velocity, while the corners are where operations, cash flow, and decision-making must stay tight to the line.
Over years of working with founder-led and high-growth companies, I’ve found a few recurring drivers of success that separate consistent performers from reactive ones:
Working Capital Velocity
How quickly money moves through the system — from inventory to invoice to collection — is a better indicator of business health than margin alone. The faster the flow, the more options you have.
Operational Adaptability
Businesses that adjust course mid-lap — reprioritizing, reallocating, rethinking — compound efficiency over time. The rigidity that once felt like discipline becomes drag when markets shift.
Decision Quality Under Speed
In F1, decisions are made at 200 mph. In business, they’re made under growth pressure. A CFO’s job is to slow the decision down just enough to clarify the signal from the noise.
Cultural Alignment
Every pit crew knows exactly what their role is when the car comes in. Businesses lose time — and trust — when accountability isn’t equally clear.
These factors rarely appear on a P&L, yet they are what make the P&L work.
Engineering Your Own Lap Time
The role of a great CFO — fractional or full-time — isn’t just to report the scoreboard. It’s to reveal and refine the sector times.
That means building visibility into the systems that actually drive performance: lead conversion cycles, cost of delay, capital utilization, and the feedback loops between finance and operations.
When companies start to see those metrics clearly, they begin to manage differently.
Decisions become less emotional. Resources get redeployed faster. Teams understand why something matters, not just what the goal is.
You can’t control the entire race — market conditions, competition, luck — but you can control your sectors. You can reduce friction, align motion, and find those small, repeatable gains that add up to sustainable advantage.
Final Lap
The companies that win over the long run don’t look the fastest at first glance.
They’re the ones that know where every second goes — financially, operationally, and organizationally.
Because in business, as in Formula 1, success isn’t decided at the finish line.
It’s engineered in the corners.
Saagar Grover
Managing Partner, SMG Capital