The Perfect Car: The Biography of John Barnard
by Nick Skeens
I read this book because it is reccomended to folks in Formula One. However, after watching the nightmare of the 2026 season, it is apparent that they have not read it :')
The narrative is ultimately about the Complete Car.
Put simply, prune everything that is preventing you from getting to a Complete Car. Working on anything else is useless, a waste of time, and is not smart. That's it.
The universal advice is clear. Do important things. Do not do unimportant things. Doing unimportant things is deadly because it distracts you from doing important things. In Formula One, the important thing is to have a Complete Car.
Being a Complete Car opens an invaluable set of opportunities that are key to winning. No ammount of strategy will compensate for having a bad car. It does not exist.
The path to a Complete Car is consider your team as a living organism that can reliably output a winning car.
The truth is there. We know this. But people continue to get it wrong and will work on a lot of things that prevent them from becoming complete. It's as if you are looking at F1 engineers that do not like making cars. It sounds insane, but it's the norm. It's actually the default proxy for most people. If you are not getting to a Complete Car, your vector points directly to No Man's Land.
A Complete Car:
In the business world, this is equivalent to PMF.
In the startup world, this is growth.
In the YC world, this is make something people want.
A startup that does not grow is dead. Ultimately, this death is because the startup did not make something people want. Or in the form of a corollary, did not recognize that someone else made the something that people wanted.
Businesses commit the same sin when they do not realize PMF. They either fail to achieve PMF on their own or allow someone else to answer the market first. Usually this means they had a poor culture and a poor product.
Again, it is the core to become a Complete Car. For the startup, they want growth. Does the number go up? Or does it go down? This number equals paying customers. And by "paying", I mean the money is in your account. It does not mean a verbal confirmation or a pending email. If you continue to keep this number green, then you know you have a Complete Car.
For the YC Program, the same game applies, but the question is did you make something people want? YC believes that a powerful linear combination of {grit, intelligence} can do this in 3 months. Make your company as real as possible in 3 months. Did you make something people want? No? Then you're dead. Do not confuse this game by making something that people use, but do not pay for. If they do not pay for it, then they do not actually want it. Again, if the money is not in your pocket, they do not want it. If they are emailing you about how much they use it, but still do not pay for it, they do not actually want it. We know this.
But getting to Complete Car is hard. Even when the game seems natural (which is get a working car that is reasonably fast), it turns out this goes bad very quickly. I'll paint a picture using the current 2026 standings of Formula One. Below are the results of the Chinese GP last weekend.
In March 2026, Oscar Piastri (OP) has yet to even complete a lap between the Australian GP (his home town) and the Chinese GP. This same driver who was in contention for the World Championship nearly 4 months ago. Why? OP does not have a Complete Car. And it's not just McClaren. In the Top 10 Results, you can assume that the Mercedes being Position 1 and Position 2 have a Complete Car. Next up were the Ferraris who are 7x World Champion Sir Lewis Hamilton and Charles LeClerc. Which seem bad enough, but then the incompleteness starts to really show. In Position 5 was Bearman who was 57.268s behind Position 1. To put this in perspective, if two cars are driving on the highway at 60 mph, then a 1 minute difference means there is one mile between them. So what does this mean? It means every car in Position 5 and below is presumed to have an incomplete car. By Position 9 and Position 10, the cars were getting lapped. This might seem like a reasonable distribution if there were 10 Cars. But did you know that there are 22 positions in 2026?
In essence, Incompleteness is deadly. If you are not a Complete Car, you are not alive. There is no winning path out there. It doesn't exist. And nothing is out there to save you.
Be complete.
The book makes an awful attempt to suggest that the problem of Completeness is a system and the game is to optimize the system. To win, you need to navigate through an everchanging environment. There could be infinite parameters to work on, but it will reduce to two things: build the best culture and build the best car.
After she solves the problem of becoming a Complete Car, she now earns the ability to work on what is known as The Perfect Car. If she gets to a Perfect Car, she wins the game. GG.