Christian Horner admitted to making sweeping changes at Red Bull as he "just wouldn't accept" the mindsets of some of the team's staff.
These days, Red Bull is the dominant team in the Formula 1 world. And the same was true between 2010 and 2013 when the title was won in four consecutive seasons.
For all that success, though, there have been plenty of lean periods. Before any of it, there was a lot of work put in to transform the ailing Jaguar team which was bought by the energy drinks giant at the end of 2004.
Horner, then just 31, was brought in to lead the newly-rebranded Red Bull Racing outfit. Along with close allies like design legend Adrian Newey and long-serving adviser Helmut Marko, he went on to guide the team to remarkable success.
But, as Horner has explained, some major changes were required at the start of that journey. He reflected on some of them as he spoke to Sky Sports for the broadcaster's Secret to Success documentary about leadership in sport.
There was, it was clear to see from the beginning for the young team principal, an apparent lack of ambition among staff. "What I could see when I came here was lots of department working individually, not collectively," he said.
"There'd been a revolving door of management through the Jaguar years and people became battle-hardened to that, and they probably thought, 'Oh, here's another one, a 31-year-old kid turning up, he probably won't last long'."
Of course, anyone who did think that has been proven wrong. Horner is still in charge almost two decades later and his Red Bull team is threatening to launch another era of extraordinary F1 dominance.
In order to get the team into that position, though, Horner admitted some big changes had to be made. He added: "It was then a question of winning hearts and minds and changing, breaking down that culture.
"The team had a perception of, 'We've got the seventh biggest budget, we'll finish seventh because it's a sport that's dictated by funding'. Well, I just wouldn't accept that. It's a question of how you apply yourself and how you apply yourself to the task."
