Hi Way Paving
Leadership Road Retreat Activation Case Study
When Culture, Curves and a Ricky Bobby Pep Talk Realigned a Senior Leadership Team
Client: Hi-Way Paving (YPO Member Company)
Locations: Charlotte → Blowing Rock → Asheville → Tail of the Dragon → Atlanta
Duration: 3 nights / 4 days
Fleet: Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, BMW
Primary Goal: Rebuild unity, trust, and accountability within leadership
The Challenge: We need to remember why we work together!
Hi-Way Paving’s executive team had an excellent year! Not broken. Not dysfunctional. They didn’t need to sell more. We needed to show up better. For each other. Like many leadership teams inside YPO-style organizations, their biggest threat wasn’t competition…it was potential disconnection from remote work and travel.
No more conference rooms; No more planning marathons; No more offsites where trust stays on the surface.
They needed a journey, they wanted presence and laughter to remember why they want to be a leadership team again.
The Solution: Beyond-the-Racetrack Activation
Motorsport Lab designed and delivered a multi-day experience where we turned the road itself into the curriculum.
We replaced boardroom exercises with road miles, shared navigation, trust rituals, and a little bit of controlled chaos.
Day 1 — Charlotte → Blowing Rock
Keys handed out for a mixed fleet of Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, and BMW
Symbolic key exchange: you’re responsible for someone else’s horsepower
Surprise arrival: a Ricky Bobby impersonator giving an opening pep-talk
about confidence, humility, and helping your teammates “go fast too”
Immediate ice broken; hierarchy softened
Day 2 — Blowing Rock
Zip-lining over canopies to trigger vulnerability, adrenaline, and laughter
Group dinner & reflection: What part of your leadership needs a tune-up?
Day 3 — Asheville → Tail of the Dragon
Whiskey tasting at a boutique distillery to slow down and reset pace
The Tail of the Dragon: 318 curves in 11 miles
Not for speed. For trust.
For clarity. For teamwork under instinct.
For learning how to drive as a pack, not as individuals
Day 4 — Porsche Experience Center, Atlanta
Pro-coached sessions on skid pads and full track
Communication drills that required listening, not ego
Translating physical experience into conversational behavior
Why It Worked
According to Harvard Business Review, teams with high interpersonal trust can be 50% more productive and are 76% more likely to sustain growth over multiple years. Deloitte adds that companies with strong leadership cohesion are 2.3x more likely to hit long-term revenue targets.
Research from MIT Sloan and Stanford confirms that trust-driven leadership environments generate performance gains later, not instantly. Culture interventions don’t always spike short-term metrics — instead, they create behavior patterns that pay off months down the line.
Neuroscience calls this latent value:
when an experience plants a seed that blooms in decision-making, not dashboards.
Psychologists call it emotional residue:
the imprint left by joy, vulnerability, shared risk, or adrenaline — the stuff that changes how teammates listen, challenge, and support each other long after the retreat ends.
So these retreats aren’t “unmeasurable.”
They’re just not immediately measurable — because their impact shows up when:
conflict turns into collaboration
pressure becomes partnership
accountability feels shared, not enforced
This wasn’t about hitting a KPI.
It was about protecting the people who make the KPIs possible.
Results: The ROI You Can’t Spreadsheet
Most corporate retreats try to justify their existence with charts and KPIs.
This retreat refused to play that game.
This wasn’t a retreat built for spreadsheets or dashboards.
It wasn’t about revenue attribution or pipeline acceleration.
This trip didn’t make money on Day 1; But it protected millions in future revenue.
The impact showed up in micro-moments:
A CTO and CFO laughing like old friends
A VP stepping onto a zip-line platform because someone said “I’ve got you”
Honest apologies that didn’t feel performative
Gentle course corrections instead of blame
Strategy debates ending with handshakes instead of resentment
Eye contact that didn’t flinch
There’s no metric for:
the sound of a whole team cheering on a skid pad
a CEO who finally breathes
the feeling of keys exchanging hands and trust going with them
leaders choosing to sit together at dinner instead of scattering
About Motorsport Lab
Motorsport Lab turns motorsports into ROI. From Ferrari factory floors to Aston Martin F1 activations in Monaco — we fuse adrenaline, culture, and business outcomes.
Results
This trip didn’t make money on Day 1. But it protected millions in future revenue.
The Tail of the Dragon didn’t just twist through the Smokies — iIt realigned a leadership team toward each other.
The Porsche track didn’t just test skills — It taught them how to feel speed together.
This is motorsport as culture; this is motorsport activations as a leadership intervention.
Activation Evidence: Real-World Performance Validation
Sometimes the best proof isn’t a spreadsheet — it’s what you can feel through the screen.
These moments weren’t staged.
No scripts. No retakes.
Just a leadership team rediscovering each other in real time.
Why This Matters for Businesses?
For C-Suite leaders in YPO, EO, and high-growth companies, the biggest threat isn’t competition — it’s leadership fragmentation. When trust slips, accountability weakens, and alignment fades, performance follows. Research from Harvard Business Review, Deloitte, and MIT Sloan confirms that high-trust leadership teams outperform, scale faster, and sustain revenue growth longer, even if the ROI isn’t immediate. Our motorsport activations in the form of leadership retreats help rebuild that foundation without PowerPoint or hotel ballrooms — using curated motorsport journeys, shared challenge, and guided vulnerability to restore cohesion, communication, and cultural alignment. If you’re a YPO-level executive or C-Suite leader looking to protect your leadership team, strengthen psychological safety, and accelerate long-term performance, we design the experiences that make trust tangible again.
Why YPO Companies Hire Motorsport Lab
We would love to curate a journey for your leadership team — not to generate leads, sell more, or teach another framework, but to create the kind of shared experience that gives your leaders a reason to believe in each other again. The goal isn’t revenue tomorrow; it’s rebuilding the trust, cohesion, and commitment that makes revenue possible in the first place. Where we go next is up to you.