Heat 01
— how it went.
14 May 2026 · F1 Drive London. Eleven design leaders. Two hours wheel-to-wheel under the floodlights. One private back room. Pints, pro talks, and the kind of conversation that only happens after a real race.
The night
in one paragraph.
Eleven design leaders showed up at F1 Drive London on a Thursday evening — most had never met. Helmets on, balaclavas on, kit zipped. A briefing, qualifying, and then a full standing-start race from the grid. Elbows. Overtakes. A real podium.
Then the part that actually mattered — we all walked to a pub up the road, settled the tab, and got into proper pub talks. Craft, hires, the weird stuff happening in our companies — the things you can't post on LinkedIn. The group chat is still going.
This is what we wanted UNKNW Design Go Karting Gran Prix to be — racing as the icebreaker, the pub as the point.
The grid.
P1 to P9.
| Place | Driver | Position | Company |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1 | Sam Lyne | Senior Product Designer | SecondMind |
| P2 | Tikhon Belousko | Founding Design Engineer | Granola |
| P3 | Jesse Cogswell | Lead Brand Designer | Monzo |
| P4 | Andrew Wells | Senior Designer | Wise |
| P5 | Toby Abram | Product Designer | Flo Health |
| P6 | Caio Orio | Principal Brand Designer | Wise |
| P7 | Alexandra Ciobanu | ex. Design Lead | Amazon |
| P8 | Alex Bird | — | Moss |
| P9 | Olga Altukhova | Design Lead | Paysend |
The whole
night.
Want in
on Heat 02?
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