Musk and Peter Thiel (one of many founders of PayPal) had been on their technique to meet with enterprise capitalist Mike Moritz to hunt funding in PayPal when Musk crashed the F1 on a Palo Alto street.

As he advised Pando Daily, “We’re driving up Sand Hill Road, and I didn’t really know how to drive the McLaren.” Thiel requested Musk what the automotive was able to, to which Musk cheekily responded, “Watch this.” Musk mentioned he then floored it and instantly misplaced management of the 640-horsepower beast, crashing it into an embankment. All of the glass within the automotive was shattered, and it suffered intensive physique harm, however luckily, neither man was injured. 

Musk did not have insurance coverage on the automotive, nevertheless, and in the end needed to restore it out of pocket. He stored the F1 till 2007, and this previous summer time, the automotive was displayed on the Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex, England. However, the crash did irreparable harm to Musk and Thiel’s enterprise relationship. In his e-book “The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power,” creator Max Chafkin wrote, “The experience shook Thiel, who came to see Musk as reckless” (by way of Business Insider).