Speaker 1: Michael, So this is the one episode where you didn't
Speaker 1: come up.
Speaker 2: With a really a huge huck.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you have any thoughts about history?
Speaker 2: I love history. History repeats itself in order to predict
Speaker 2: the future. Take a look at the history. The thing
Speaker 2: I love about history is it has a tendency to
Speaker 2: repeat itself, repeat itself, much like a lap on a race.
Speaker 2: If history repeats itself, it's really not even history. It's
Speaker 2: just now over and over. For My Heart podcast one
Speaker 2: on one studios and Sports Illustrated Studios, this.
Speaker 3: Is choosing sides.
Speaker 4: If one wow, wow, So today, Tony, you're taking me back.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. F one as a sport has such a fascinating
Speaker 5: and rich history, and for so many Formula One I
Speaker 5: had Formula one fans. The biggest fan and I'm not
Speaker 5: even joking here, the biggest fan in the sport is
Speaker 5: revealing its history. I'm covering and retelling those stories. Sometimes
Speaker 5: it gets a bit pedantic if they go back of
Speaker 5: just like remember who beat the fastest lap and who
Speaker 5: beat who in the nineteen ninety one World Championship. Yah yah, yeah,
Speaker 5: but there's so many good stories.
Speaker 3: Clip Mike, Hello, can you hear us?
Speaker 5: And see us.
Speaker 6: Okay, I can can you hear and see me.
Speaker 5: The miracles of technology that solved it?
Speaker 7: That should certainly be quieter if nothing else.
Speaker 5: How's it going?
Speaker 3: It is another day in paradise.
Speaker 6: I'm totally comfortable. Don't worry.
Speaker 5: Fantastic well'na, We're gonna ask the first big question, which is,
Speaker 5: please introduce yourself to our listeners, and how do you
Speaker 5: fit into the big puzzle of Formula one?
Speaker 6: What a big puzzle Formula one is was and always
Speaker 6: will be. Indeed, my name is Matt Bishop. I've worked
Speaker 6: in Formula one well for a third of a century.
Speaker 6: I think we can now say born in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 6: and my first memory of Formula one is not watching
Speaker 6: it on the television because it wasn't on television. You know,
Speaker 6: I'm one of these people that does love the past.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm very happy to watch a movie from
Speaker 6: the sixties. Reybaby started off as a journalist editor of
Speaker 6: F one Racing Magazine, which is now called GP Racing Magazine.
Speaker 6: Fifteen years as a journalist, then was hired to McClaren
Speaker 6: as communications director, then stepped away from that and was
Speaker 6: one of the founders with David Coulthard of w series,
Speaker 6: which thrived for a while but isn't thriving now sadly,
Speaker 6: but I still think it played its part in driving
Speaker 6: forward the effort to incorporate women inside the cockpit. And
Speaker 6: then I moved to Aston Martin, spent two years there
Speaker 6: and now in my sixties, I've turned sixty. I'm now
Speaker 6: running my own comms agency and also turned my hand
Speaker 6: back to journalism and I'm doing a weekly column for
Speaker 6: the Most Sport magazine website. So there you are. That's
Speaker 6: a whistle stop tour. That's and a little bit of
Speaker 6: racing pride along the way. That's me.
Speaker 7: Hi, I'm James Allen. It's a great pleasure to be
Speaker 7: with you here on choosing sides. I've been in Formula
Speaker 7: one since nineteen ninety so what's that thirty four to
Speaker 7: thirty five years, and I guess the bulk of my
Speaker 7: career was a broadcaster and an announcer. I was with
Speaker 7: the ESPN, I was with the commercial station in the UK, ITV,
Speaker 7: and with BBC as well.
Speaker 3: Who's this guy, Well, allow me to explain. I'm Sean Kelly.
Speaker 3: If you've watched a Formula one broadcast anywhere, in the
Speaker 3: world in the last say, two decades. You won't know me,
Speaker 3: but you will know my work because I am essentially
Speaker 3: the chief statistician to the F one Broadcast's all the
Speaker 3: facts and figures you hear in a Formula one broadcast,
Speaker 3: whether they be in the graphics, whether they be spoken
Speaker 3: by the likes of David Croft or Martin brund or
Speaker 3: Alex Jakes or whomever, I am chiefly responsible for all
Speaker 3: of that content. So, depending on where you and on
Speaker 3: the whole statistics spectrum, either you're welcome or I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: I left edit points there so you could edit in
Speaker 3: whichever response you are. I should point out, by the
Speaker 3: way that Roman Grojan's career nos dived the very moment
Speaker 3: I asked him on stage on race day in Miami
Speaker 3: if he thought that breakfast Cereal was just soup with
Speaker 3: better marketing. He was having a great IndyCar season. Checked
Speaker 3: the dates from that moment on. I think it was
Speaker 3: May eighth, twenty three, twenty three. I literally killed his career.
Speaker 3: Oh God, put it in the show, get it in
Speaker 3: the show.
Speaker 8: Crashes out of the Indianapolis five hundred, another massive hit.
Speaker 3: Either way, I haven't had an answer which means he's
Speaker 3: still contemplating it in his head.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: One thing that you've been telling me in this voice
Speaker 2: that you use is that so many of the teams
Speaker 2: are based in the UK. Why is that? And is
Speaker 2: that your real voice or are you doing like a
Speaker 2: UK voice for me all of this?
Speaker 7: So, the reason why so many of the teams are
Speaker 7: based in the UK actually goes back to the Second
Speaker 7: World War.
Speaker 9: Yesterday morning at two one am at General Eichena headquartern,
Speaker 9: General Jodel signed the Act of Unconditional to render all
Speaker 9: German land, sea and the airportage in Europe, and simultaneously
Speaker 9: the Soviet High Command.
Speaker 7: At the end of the Second World War, you had
Speaker 7: all these people, these very clever people who had been
Speaker 7: building spitfires and fighter planes and technology that had been
Speaker 7: used during that war time period. And funnily enough, they
Speaker 7: were flying planes out of an aerodrome just north of
Speaker 7: London called Silverstone, which had a perimeter road around it
Speaker 7: that was just an ideal shape for a racetrack, and
Speaker 7: so they started racing on it, and then they started
Speaker 7: making the car's lighter, they put bigger engines in, and
Speaker 7: then they started playing around the materials and all the
Speaker 7: things they've been doing while fighting a war they converted
Speaker 7: into a sport.
Speaker 2: You kind of have this knowledge base, but there's no
Speaker 2: more war to fight, but there is this experience, yeah, right.
Speaker 5: And use this experience for something different, but also just
Speaker 5: keep busy, like, let's have a job here. And there
Speaker 5: was also not many cars left after the war because
Speaker 5: the automotive industries, both in Europe and in the US
Speaker 5: had been completely retool to manufacture the likes of tanks, trucks, airplanes,
Speaker 5: as we mentioned before. So engineers got creative. They built
Speaker 5: these really lightweight cars to go racing on these abandoned
Speaker 5: and empty airfields, which later become actual racetracks and still
Speaker 5: are some of the tracks where we go racing today.
Speaker 2: It's very cool, but airfields are straight, yes, so they
Speaker 2: added they added just a part of the race. So honestly,
Speaker 2: we still race on some of these todays.
Speaker 5: Comparsions of the racetracks I believe are still part of
Speaker 5: cal And airfields that we had in World War two.
Speaker 7: And basically that whole area around Oxford and Silverstone became
Speaker 7: a center of excellence for things like carbon fiber and
Speaker 7: materials and technology and aerodynamics and what have you, and
Speaker 7: then lots of international people came to work in those environments.
Speaker 6: You know, you didn't have what they now call as
Speaker 6: a headquarters or a facility. They had what they called workshops,
Speaker 6: little workshops basically lock up garages, and they employed anything
Speaker 6: between ten and twenty people, and they worked incredibly hard,
Speaker 6: incredibly hard.
Speaker 5: Talent suppliers and mechanics and shops and repair shops which
Speaker 5: became what we now know as motorsport value. Motorsport value
Speaker 5: is essentially the biggest hub of motor racing. Most of
Speaker 5: the teams, if not nearly all of the teams are
Speaker 5: based in this motorsport value and.
Speaker 7: The only other exception to that has been Ferrari really
Speaker 7: in Italy, where they've been racing since before anybody else
Speaker 7: even thought about it, and before long before the Second
Speaker 7: World War had. They did it their way in their
Speaker 7: country and they've been competing basically against the rest ever since.
Speaker 7: But that's why the UK as a disproportionate basis because
Speaker 7: of the sort of handing down through the generations of
Speaker 7: this sort of technical know how.
Speaker 5: And it's not even just the UK. They're in this
Speaker 5: little vat like they're very close. They're very close.
Speaker 2: Hey, can we borrow the five sixteenth ranch for the
Speaker 2: nut bolt on the coming over the distributor valve?
Speaker 1: Michael, you know what a distributor valve is?
Speaker 2: Hell?
Speaker 1: Yeah, please enrich us.
Speaker 2: Next question, Okay, so he built this machine. Great, great, great,
Speaker 2: But drivers? I mean, were they able to get drivers
Speaker 2: who were willing to put their life on the line
Speaker 2: for this machine?
Speaker 5: I mean, it's a great question because it both shouldn't
Speaker 5: surprise us that they didn't have too much of a
Speaker 5: hard time coming out of World War Two, where I
Speaker 5: think a lot of the men were still in this
Speaker 5: heroism and heroic mindset where it was totally normal to
Speaker 5: put your life on the line for anything that you
Speaker 5: believed in.
Speaker 3: If you've been in the situation, if you've been an aviator,
Speaker 3: you've been bombed or anything like that. And then suddenly
Speaker 3: it stops and you're thinking, kind of miss missing the thrill.
Speaker 3: You know, it's lives of I kind of need another.
Speaker 3: I need I need to be a bait of a
Speaker 3: thrill seeker, a race car.
Speaker 7: There is an aspect of the psyche, certainly of the
Speaker 7: male psyche, and there is definitely a desire to feel
Speaker 7: alive by putting everything on the line.
Speaker 6: You know, in those days, if you knew you were
Speaker 6: likely to die or very possibly were going to die,
Speaker 6: then it did. It did mean that you were going
Speaker 6: to approach everything your whole life differently.
Speaker 7: Formula one was I guess along with bullfighting. According to
Speaker 7: having Away the original, the original extreme sport.
Speaker 6: I think the whole feeling of death was not quite
Speaker 6: so remote as it is now. I'm not glorifying it.
Speaker 6: Sterling Moss used to glorify it. He used to say,
Speaker 6: I find one of the appeals is that I'm risking
Speaker 6: my life.
Speaker 10: Are you conscious?
Speaker 1: Do you think about death while you're driving in races?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 11: Not when I'm driving, but I'm very I am frightened
Speaker 11: of death. It's something which I think every driver should well.
Speaker 11: Possibly it helps him to be frightened of it, because
Speaker 11: if you're not frightened an accident, then what is your limitation?
Speaker 11: You get a sort of tingling in the hands and
Speaker 11: feeling as though you'd just eaten a lot of porridge
Speaker 11: which goes right down, you know, to your feet, And
Speaker 11: that's the sort of sensation I get. But I wouldn't
Speaker 11: ponder on the thought.
Speaker 7: You know, my dad was a racing driver, and there
Speaker 7: was always something incredibly exciting about about racers, about the
Speaker 7: people who sort of commit to this sport with their
Speaker 7: time back in the day, sadly with their lives.
Speaker 3: Formula One the World Championship was actually quite lucky in
Speaker 3: the early years. I believe the first recorded fatality in
Speaker 3: a World Championship event was an Offering Marriman at the
Speaker 3: fifty four German Grand Prix. I'm looking at you as
Speaker 3: if you're going to correct me, and I don't think
Speaker 3: you will.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming that they were all like dumb eighteen twenty
Speaker 2: year old No.
Speaker 3: Actually, the average age of the Grand Prix field was
Speaker 3: well over thirty in the early years. I mean Fanjio
Speaker 3: won the tied to when he was forty six. Luigi
Speaker 3: Fajoli was I think fifty three when he shared the
Speaker 3: car with with Andrew at the fifty one French Grand Prix.
Speaker 3: Luis Chiron was fifty five when he raced at Monica
Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 6: But they were still just as skilled, they were not
Speaker 6: just as fit. You know, look at Freulein Gonzalez. You know,
Speaker 6: a huge fat man. There are no huge fat men
Speaker 6: in any sport now, with possible exception of darts, but
Speaker 6: not most sport and not Formula one, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Baseball.
Speaker 6: Are they fat? They're just big on they?
Speaker 10: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think some of them are. I could lose a
Speaker 1: few pounds.
Speaker 2: Here's my theory. Tell me, when you have a family
Speaker 2: and you have responsibilities at home, people that rely on you,
Speaker 2: that's when you want to do your dared devil activities,
Speaker 2: because it's like, get me out of the house, I'll
Speaker 2: do whatever. You know, I just need a couple hours
Speaker 2: to myself. Let me go with the boys down on
Speaker 2: the airfield and we'll do some racing.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, me and my wife actually fight over who's going
Speaker 1: to get to go to the supermarket without kids.
Speaker 2: I probably much preferred these types of drivers as opposed
Speaker 2: to like the twenty year old Max who's born in
Speaker 2: the sport and has seen all of the evolution through
Speaker 2: his dad. It's like, these were guys who just got
Speaker 2: done killing Nazis with their bare hands. Give me the
Speaker 2: fucking steering wheel, let's go, baby.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to mention here, like, keep in mind,
Speaker 1: Michael that in their day, Fanjo, I mean, he he
Speaker 1: wasn't changing diapers.
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. He wasn't walking a daycare nop.
Speaker 5: No, thank god for those days are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we blew it. I want to talk to
Speaker 2: Juan and tell him if you guys would have just
Speaker 2: put in a little more effort, would have been better
Speaker 2: for men today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they fucked it up for us.
Speaker 5: Oh oh, we need it done.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm done. What was the beginning, Like, what was
Speaker 2: the F one first F one race?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 2: Was there a shitload of people there? Was it just
Speaker 2: a couple ragtag guys with helmets in their hands?
Speaker 7: Oh no, I mean Formula well not just Formula one
Speaker 7: motor racing, you know, lamon twenty four hours, things like
Speaker 7: the mean a Melia that's featured in the Adam Driver film.
Speaker 7: You know, they would probably over a million people lining
Speaker 7: the roads in Italy for that thousand mile race back
Speaker 7: in the day. I mean bear in mind that this
Speaker 7: was the white heat of technology, the development of the
Speaker 7: automobile as it got faster and faster and more glamorous
Speaker 7: and brands like Ferrari and Mercedes. It was exciting and
Speaker 7: it was, as I say, it was an extreme sport.
Speaker 7: People were really excited about it and they could go
Speaker 7: to these racetracks like Monza in Italy or silver Stone
Speaker 7: and just just north of London and pack out the
Speaker 7: grandstands and have a really amazing experience watching these heroes
Speaker 7: sliding these cars around the racetrack. And so it was exciting.
Speaker 7: You know, its post war in Europe. You know, it
Speaker 7: was pretty gloomy. People that were still rationing. You know,
Speaker 7: football was back and running and people liked to go
Speaker 7: to the match and cheer on their team, but go
Speaker 7: and watch some really powerful, noisy, fast racing cars. You know,
Speaker 7: it wasn't expensive to attend, and sort of huge crowds
Speaker 7: at the you know, you know, tens hundreds of thousands
Speaker 7: of people watching motor races.
Speaker 2: How many races did they have that first year? Let
Speaker 2: me guess, Let me guess, have a guess. They're new,
Speaker 2: they're not really having their shit together, but they got
Speaker 2: a little bit of money. They had four before I'd say.
Speaker 5: Six races, very close, one more.
Speaker 2: Eight races. I've never been go with math. Seven races.
Speaker 5: Okay, they deemed that seven races was the suitable number
Speaker 5: for this championship.
Speaker 2: What is it now, like twenty three or something? Too many?
Speaker 5: Okay, seven races for the championship. How they guess at
Speaker 5: how many people participated in this championship because this is
Speaker 5: kind of cool.
Speaker 2: Well, previously we had thirty six drivers, so I would say,
Speaker 2: let's say the same thirty six.
Speaker 5: During that entire year. So during those seven races, we
Speaker 5: had between fifty and sixty drivers participate in at least
Speaker 5: one race, which also speaks volume. Remember that concorded agreement.
Speaker 5: They speaks volume about the amount of people who entered
Speaker 5: a race and sometimes didn't show up. And some teams
Speaker 5: had six drivers and some teams had one or two,
Speaker 5: so it was all over the place.
Speaker 6: There was a time where you could buy you know,
Speaker 6: in the fifties, but if you were someone like Horace Gould,
Speaker 6: who wasn't particularly quick but had a business wasn't minted.
Speaker 6: He bought a two fifty f Masa, one of the
Speaker 6: most beautiful fullball one cars there's ever been, and he
Speaker 6: went racing in it, not very well, and he didn't
Speaker 6: have to do all the races. He didn't have to
Speaker 6: take it to Argentina if he thought that would be
Speaker 6: too much of a pain in the bum to do that,
Speaker 6: So he could take it to the races that he
Speaker 6: wanted to take it to and race where he wanted to,
Speaker 6: so that was something you could do.
Speaker 7: One of the few female drivers who's raced in Formula
Speaker 7: one was a lady called Maria to Raise the Philippies,
Speaker 7: who was very very accomplished equestrian athlete. You a big,
Speaker 7: big horsewoman, and she was a very good racing driver
Speaker 7: as well. She loved cars, she loved driving, and she
Speaker 7: raced in the late nineteen fifties in Formula one but
Speaker 7: did really well, you know, she was, she was great
Speaker 7: and so the accessibility I think then probably helped a
Speaker 7: little bit. And it's a shame, it's it's we haven't
Speaker 7: you know, we haven't seen so many female drivers since then.
Speaker 6: And they were just what was called disparagingly garage East.
Speaker 6: In other words, they had a garage and they bought
Speaker 6: a cost of engine and a human gearbox, knocked it
Speaker 6: together and got someone to drive it. So they were
Speaker 6: garage East. It was a disparaging term.
Speaker 5: It made for very chaotic racing.
Speaker 2: Well, they're figuring they're shut out. Take your Vovo station
Speaker 2: wagon if you remember, take your kid's car seats out
Speaker 2: there you go. If not, car seats, definitely didn't exist
Speaker 2: back then. But it actually leads to my question of
Speaker 2: what was the sat what were the cars like? Was
Speaker 2: there a seatbelts? Were there?
Speaker 5: Certainly wasn't halos No, no halos no.
Speaker 2: And the wheels didn't even detach.
Speaker 9: No.
Speaker 7: They were bloody dangerous is what they were.
Speaker 11: Like.
Speaker 7: They're beautiful, you know, really lovely shaped body if you google,
Speaker 7: like a two fifty f Maserati or you know a
Speaker 7: two four six Dino Ferrari. So the fuel tank was
Speaker 7: in a kind of a behind the driver in a
Speaker 7: kind of a like a cone at the back, and
Speaker 7: then the engine was in front of the driver, and
Speaker 7: the pedals the throttle pedal on the right and the
Speaker 7: brake and then the clutch on the left, with a
Speaker 7: massive drive shaft that went between his legs down to
Speaker 7: the rear wheels which are just basically just by his
Speaker 7: hips if you want, sort of small leather seat, wooden
Speaker 7: steering wheel with a very rudimentary four gate metal gear
Speaker 7: gear change. Absolutely no seat belts, absolutely no rollcages.
Speaker 3: In the fifties, they were racing with cork helmets and
Speaker 3: polo neck shirts.
Speaker 2: Cork helmets literally like a little.
Speaker 3: Like you know, like a helmet you would wear if
Speaker 3: you were playing polo, Like if you're on a horse
Speaker 3: and playing polo, that kind of helmet is what they
Speaker 3: were wearing. There was no rollover protection at all. In fact,
Speaker 3: there was no rollover protection mandated until nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 3: and even when it was mandated, it was basically a tube,
Speaker 3: a hollow tube of aluminium which would crush flat as
Speaker 3: soon as the car rolled over.
Speaker 6: Anyway, it was a token gesture.
Speaker 7: Really really poor brakes have to start breaking about, you know,
Speaker 7: three weeks before you reach the corner to sort of
Speaker 7: go around it. I'm exaggerating, but really really really difficult
Speaker 7: cars to drive. Those cars like to slide. They didn't
Speaker 7: go around on rails. They If you google photographs of
Speaker 7: one Manuel Fangio, there's an amazing picture of him sort
Speaker 7: of drifting at one hundred and sixty miles an hour
Speaker 7: through a corner. It's like literally drifting like it's just
Speaker 7: insane at that speed. And yeah, they were beautiful cars.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at pictures of a nineteen fifties F one
Speaker 2: car right now, speak to you, and it looks like,
Speaker 2: sorry to say it, a carrot. It looks like a
Speaker 2: wide in the back, shallow in the front carrot. You
Speaker 2: could also say like a missile, you know, I mean.
Speaker 5: Which again goes I still look fast. They were building
Speaker 5: airplanes that it looks probably more like something you'd you know,
Speaker 5: it's see in the air flying around.
Speaker 2: And there's some listener right now saying like, just say it, Michael,
Speaker 2: say it looks like a penis, and I won't.
Speaker 5: Okay, but you just I won't know what I want,
Speaker 5: but you won't say what.
Speaker 2: I won't say that a nineteen fifties F one car
Speaker 2: kind of looks like a penis, which also lines up
Speaker 2: with the mentality mentality, the maleness the war. But still,
Speaker 2: but I will say this, it still looks fast, and
Speaker 2: it still looks dangerous. Do they have seat belts?
Speaker 5: Seatbelts were definitely around, but most drivers, as you can imagine,
Speaker 5: preferred not to use them.
Speaker 2: It's like wimpy if you put a seatbelt on.
Speaker 3: It wasn't considered wimpy to wear seatbelts. It was actually
Speaker 3: considered dangerous to wear seatbelts because there was the omnipresent
Speaker 3: risk of fire, and it was always felt that if
Speaker 3: you're gonna have a crash, it better to be thrown
Speaker 3: out of the car. You can kind of say, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'd rather have a few broken legs than burned to
Speaker 3: death in a fireball, because eventually drivers did have seatbelts
Speaker 3: and burned to death in fireballs.
Speaker 2: I think if I had the choice of being either
Speaker 2: catapulted down an asphalt road, getting a concussion, three broken ribs,
Speaker 2: internal bleeding, two broken legs, a broken arm, and severe
Speaker 2: facial fracture, or being trapped in a burning car, I'd
Speaker 2: probably take the first option.
Speaker 1: Choices, choices, choices.
Speaker 7: My dad does. I mention was a racing driver and
Speaker 7: the only reason I'm probably here today talking to you
Speaker 7: is because he didn't have seat belts in his Lotus
Speaker 7: in nineteen sixty two when he had an enormous accident
Speaker 7: at SPA and the car didn't have a rollcage, and
Speaker 7: he would have been killed were it not for the
Speaker 7: fact that he was thrown clear of the car and
Speaker 7: landed in a ditch, not on the track, thank god.
Speaker 7: Otherwise he would have killed him. But he landed in
Speaker 7: a muddy ditch to the side of the racetrack.
Speaker 5: In the late sixties, Sir Jackie Stewart's campaigned to have
Speaker 5: them introduced in the sport.
Speaker 7: He was.
Speaker 5: If you retain anything from what sir Jackie Stewart has
Speaker 5: done for the sport is his endless campaign for safety
Speaker 5: and security for the drivers.
Speaker 7: You know, he was the first true professional, I think
Speaker 7: in Formula one. He took it. He became like an
Speaker 7: international icon. He had lots of endorsement deals with lots
Speaker 7: of sponsors, and he took it. He took the whole
Speaker 7: thing to a professional level.
Speaker 6: I mean, he's very precise, attention to detail, always attention
Speaker 6: to detail.
Speaker 5: Do you have any fun facts about Stewart?
Speaker 6: Maybe not so fun. Jackie Stewart deliberately wanted to finish
Speaker 6: on one hundred World Championship Grand Prix starts, and he
Speaker 6: did enter a Grand Prix for one hundredth time, which
Speaker 6: was the United States Grand Prix of nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 6: But he didn't start it because his teammate France Fois Severt,
Speaker 6: perhaps the most beautiful Formula One driver facially that there
Speaker 6: has ever been, who did, by the way, have an
Speaker 6: affair with Bridget Bardo, So his face took him a
Speaker 6: long way. For those who are too young, Bridget Bardo
Speaker 6: deserves googling. She has good taste in men, and he
Speaker 6: obviously had good taste of women.
Speaker 12: Jackie did all my education, Jackie Stewart, So in fact,
Speaker 12: I was what you could call a mad driver. I
Speaker 12: was driving like hell. I was not thinking enough to
Speaker 12: what I was doing. And Jackie stopped all that and
Speaker 12: teach me how you must analyze a car, how you
Speaker 12: must think when you're dying.
Speaker 1: Oh, what kind of.
Speaker 7: Vision must have?
Speaker 12: He did all my education.
Speaker 6: He was killed. He was killed in qualifying, and Jackie
Speaker 6: Stewart withdrew as a mark of respect, but also completely
Speaker 6: grief stricken, stunned and shattered.
Speaker 2: Stuart walks away from drawn prex racing his career over.
Speaker 6: And so he stopped on ninety nine.
Speaker 7: I think his biggest influence on the sport is the
Speaker 7: work he did on safety, because Formula one was incredibly
Speaker 7: dangerous during his period. He lost most of his friends
Speaker 7: to racing accidents. Partly it was so frightening. He was
Speaker 7: able to keep his mind under control and not get
Speaker 7: too worked up. So he was always in control, and
Speaker 7: that's why he was so successful, three time world champion.
Speaker 7: But then he just wasn't satisfied with the facilities they
Speaker 7: had for the medical facilities and all that kind of
Speaker 7: thing around Formula one, and he did it basically. He
Speaker 7: was just a true campaigner, and he pushed and pushed
Speaker 7: and pushed until the standards were raised, and not just
Speaker 7: like hospital facilities on track, but making sure that the
Speaker 7: barriers at the side of the racetrack were safer, making
Speaker 7: the cars safer. You know, I mentioned that fuel tanks
Speaker 7: were really exposed in those days. A lot of drivers
Speaker 7: died in kind of horrible fiery accidents, and so he
Speaker 7: played probably a bigger role than anybody in the transformation
Speaker 7: of Formula one from a killer sport into the safer sport.
Speaker 6: You know, there's the James Dean factor when people die young,
Speaker 6: and of course in those days drivers did die young.
Speaker 6: We've mentioned France FOI sever very talented driver who died young,
Speaker 6: and there's far too many. Jackie Stewart, thank goodness, did
Speaker 6: not die young. He's still alive in his eighties, and
Speaker 6: I think perhaps for that reason, he's not really given
Speaker 6: quite the credit for being such a brilliant driver. People
Speaker 6: regard him as, you know, terribly professional and awfully organized,
Speaker 6: but they forget that actually he was as quick as quick.
Speaker 6: That word, that big word begins with Q gets us
Speaker 6: all excited if we love this sport. He was as
Speaker 6: quick as anyone we've ever seen. Nerver Gring nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 10: In unclosures conditions that German Grand Prix got underway.
Speaker 6: He won in torrential rain by more than four minutes
Speaker 6: with a broken wrist. Just think about that for a second.
Speaker 2: It's good he's driving.
Speaker 10: It is Daddy's Juart number six, and a metropod was
Speaker 10: piloting his car as oh he hadn't built in radar.
Speaker 6: Stewart dominated the race. He was an incredible driver, Jackie Stewart,
Speaker 6: and where honored still to have him amongst us.
Speaker 3: Towards the end of the nineteen sixties and the start
Speaker 3: of the nineteen seventies was really the most perilous time
Speaker 3: of war. In nineteen sixty six the regulations were changed.
Speaker 3: There was the return to power, as called. They moved
Speaker 3: from one and a half liter engine back to a
Speaker 3: three liter engine. You were putting this tremendously powerful engine
Speaker 3: in the back of was basically a canoe filled with gasoline.
Speaker 3: And yeah, hilarity often ensued.
Speaker 7: The seventies was unbelievably glamorous, but also unbelievably dangerous. As
Speaker 7: the cars started to sprout these wings, the drivers sprouted sideburns,
Speaker 7: and it was all very rock and roll. But lots
Speaker 7: of people got killed, you know.
Speaker 3: In sixty eight Jim Clark was killed, Mike Spence was
Speaker 3: killed at Indy, Joe Slessor was killed in the French
Speaker 3: Grand Prix. You know, in nineteen seventy Pierce Courage, Bruce McLaren,
Speaker 3: Yoch and Rint All Eyed, seventy three, Roger Williamson, Francois Severe.
Speaker 3: It just became part of it. I heard Yok and
Speaker 3: Rint's widow, Nina won't say at the time. This was
Speaker 3: like in nineteen seventy so we would often buy black
Speaker 3: dresses if we saw them because we thought, well, we'll
Speaker 3: need that for the next funeral. Now can you imagine
Speaker 3: that in twenty twenty three? Can you imagine that being
Speaker 3: formula one being allowed to continue thinking well, I'll look
Speaker 3: great at the next funeral.
Speaker 7: You know, could be me looking at it through rose
Speaker 7: tinted glasses. Because I was a kid in the seventies.
Speaker 7: I mean, I thought the seventies were very exciting, and
Speaker 7: it was I remember the seventies in technicolor, you know,
Speaker 7: really it was vivid, but also when you look back
Speaker 7: at all the footage, you look at the amazing photographs
Speaker 7: by people like Ryan schlegel Milch, you know his images
Speaker 7: of the seventies there, it's just so sexy. It's like
Speaker 7: that whole steph McQueen, Marie Andretti. It's just everyone was
Speaker 7: just kind of cool. It was still sort of edgy
Speaker 7: and sort of a little bit dangerous and all those
Speaker 7: sort of things, and it was just it was very glamorous,
Speaker 7: but it was still a bit of a best kept secret.
Speaker 7: It was really only with the arrival of satellite TV
Speaker 7: in the sort of late seventies early eighties that the
Speaker 7: whole thing kind of really blew up as a global sport.
Speaker 2: It seems like F one has come a very long
Speaker 2: way since the cowboy days is what I'll call them.
Speaker 7: Oh absolutely yeah, I mean there's no question it's some
Speaker 7: people would say it's sort of become a bit more corporate,
Speaker 7: and it's not the better for that, But then I
Speaker 7: think that's inescapable really for international sports. Everything is it's
Speaker 7: a business. But I think Formula One and Tony I
Speaker 7: hope would agree with me, still retains a feeling of
Speaker 7: that vestige of a life lived on the limit. Into
Speaker 7: the eighties, the car's got a lot safer because they
Speaker 7: started building them out of carbon instead of bits of
Speaker 7: aluminium tubes.
Speaker 3: After eighty two, when Ricardo Pelleti and Gil Villanov was killed,
Speaker 3: it was not another fatality at a Grand Prix weekend
Speaker 3: until nineteen ninety four, and it fostered this sort of
Speaker 3: mentality that, well, can you really get killed in a
Speaker 3: Formula one car anymore? Because they've just transitioned from aluminium
Speaker 3: or aluminum to carbon five and monocoques and no one
Speaker 3: had been killed in one at a Grand Prix weekend,
Speaker 3: So it felt like, ah, these things are indestructible, you know,
Speaker 3: this is the thing that saves a driver. And we
Speaker 3: did see some monumental accent where drivers would just jump
Speaker 3: out and go back and get the spare car.
Speaker 5: Is there anything, because again you've seen I think so
Speaker 5: much of the evolution of this boy. Is there anything
Speaker 5: that you would want to bring back from the history
Speaker 5: of the past of Formula one team personality attract a
Speaker 5: tradition that you're just like, you know what, I want
Speaker 5: to bring that back.
Speaker 7: I'd love to bring back out and Sena and have
Speaker 7: him racing today against these drivers peak Senna sort of
Speaker 7: around what would it be, sort of around the age
Speaker 7: of sort of thirty, that kind of thing, at the
Speaker 7: absolute height of his powers. I'd love to see him
Speaker 7: taking on Hamilton and Vastappen and the rest. He was otherworldly.
Speaker 7: I've never met anybody like it. And Senna it was
Speaker 7: a real kind of charismatic presence. You know, when he
Speaker 7: walked into a room, everybody stopped, all eyes kind of
Speaker 7: you know, Wow, he carried a presence like I've never
Speaker 7: met anyone before or since. And God, could he drive
Speaker 7: a racing car. He was so fast, you know, and
Speaker 7: he was I think what marked him out was his commitment.
Speaker 7: All Grand Prix drivers have a huge level of commitment,
Speaker 7: but he was absolutely on it the whole time, and nothing,
Speaker 7: you know, was too much, whether it was in terms
Speaker 7: of effort that he put into it or trying to
Speaker 7: find a competitive edge or going over the edge sometimes
Speaker 7: a roster had.
Speaker 8: Taken the advantage. Senna is trying to go through the
Speaker 8: inside and it's time of the Madialyn.
Speaker 13: It is amazing.
Speaker 7: The rivalry between Air and Senna and Alain Prost was
Speaker 7: absolutely lethal and so intense. It really blew the sport up.
Speaker 7: It was just something that nobody in the world could
Speaker 7: take their eyes off. I mean, it would be mainstream news.
Speaker 14: I think if Prosty wants to be called the Saul
Speaker 14: champ and three times world champ, and the way he's
Speaker 14: doing his behavior like a coward and if he wants
Speaker 14: to be supportive, he must be prepared to raise anybody
Speaker 14: at any condition.
Speaker 7: It was this box office rivalry between these two very
Speaker 7: very different people for a while in the same team,
Speaker 7: but then they went their separate ways. Cross went to Ferrari,
Speaker 7: Sener stayed at McLaren and it was it was just
Speaker 7: so intense.
Speaker 8: Oh my goodness, this is fantastic they meet, This is
Speaker 8: what we were faring might happen.
Speaker 6: During the race.
Speaker 7: Schumacher took a lot of his cues from him. You know,
Speaker 7: I think I don't think Schumacher would have been the
Speaker 7: way Schumacher was if he hadn't had to compete with
Speaker 7: Senna at the very beginning of his career and Senna
Speaker 7: kind of set the tone for that's how Schumacher thought,
Speaker 7: that's how things were done in Formula One, and obviously
Speaker 7: then he came a bit of a cropper when he
Speaker 7: crashed into vel Nerve deliberately trying to win a world championship,
Speaker 7: got heavily punished for it. Had a bit of a
Speaker 7: reset about how to go racing. So Senna, Senna, would
Speaker 7: I bring Senate back in a heartbeat, good evening.
Speaker 13: The former world motor racing champion at and Senna has
Speaker 13: been pronounced clinically did after a crash at this afternoon
Speaker 13: San Marino Grand Prix.
Speaker 3: Finally our lock ran out at Inmbland ninety four and
Speaker 3: we were reminded that Isaac Newton does not discriminate based
Speaker 3: on race color, or creed or career.
Speaker 13: Senna suffered serious head injuries when his car left the
Speaker 13: track and crashed into a concrete wall. He's being kept
Speaker 13: on a life support machine because of Italian law, but
Speaker 13: a spokesman for the hospital in Bologna said there was
Speaker 13: no chance he would survive.
Speaker 3: From then on we moved into the era of really
Speaker 3: accident science, really understanding the physics of the thing, and
Speaker 3: fortuitously we have only had one more in the nearly
Speaker 3: thirty years since, which is a phenomenal record. A lot
Speaker 3: of people think that some of these racetracks are dull,
Speaker 3: but it beats going to a funeral every other Friday.
Speaker 3: We have come a long way, luckily.
Speaker 7: And what era are we in now? We're in the
Speaker 7: entertainment era. And you know the page turn here was
Speaker 7: the takeover of the sport by Liberty Media and American business.
Speaker 7: It had been run by the same guy for sort
Speaker 7: of forty years. He was sort of getting older and
Speaker 7: not innovating anymore. And the Americans came in and said, right,
Speaker 7: this is an entertainment and a sport and lifestyle and
Speaker 7: fashion and music, and let's really push this thing and
Speaker 7: see how far we can take it. And that's where
Speaker 7: we live today.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's safe to say that f one,
Speaker 5: although it has a lot of rules, they're constantly evolving
Speaker 5: and changing and for the better. I would argue the FIA,
Speaker 5: that governing body of motorsports that we've talked about extensively,
Speaker 5: has extremely detailed guidelines on absolutely every single element of
Speaker 5: this sport, from the card dimensions to the safety standards,
Speaker 5: to the sporting regulations, to when you should show up
Speaker 5: for media and how much time you give to media, etc. Etc.
Speaker 5: Which means that this creates a highly regulated but also
Speaker 5: ever evolving environment. And I think this is one of
Speaker 5: the things I love about the sport is highly regulated,
Speaker 5: which pushes people to get really creative.
Speaker 2: It feels like the cars today are very similar.
Speaker 7: You're absolutely right. I think if you painted all of
Speaker 7: the Formula one cars the same color, only real experts
Speaker 7: will be able to tell you which one was the
Speaker 7: Red Bull, which one was the Mercedes, which one was
Speaker 7: the Ferrari, which one was the Alpine And hats off
Speaker 7: to you if you can tell the difference.
Speaker 2: Was there some wacky shit in the past though.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, if you go back to the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 7: the rules were much more loose and you had crazy
Speaker 7: stuff they.
Speaker 5: Developed, like two tier back wings which looked absolutely insane,
Speaker 5: which if a crash happened, would absolutely decapitate the person
Speaker 5: behind them without.
Speaker 2: A dapt Well, who cares about the person behind him?
Speaker 12: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Who gets as long as it's behind us?
Speaker 2: Yeah, try to pass me.
Speaker 7: Someone had the crazy idea of having two sets of
Speaker 7: front wheels because you get more grip at the front.
Speaker 2: So I'm looking at a six wheeled one car right now,
Speaker 2: what your thoughts? And it looks like one of those
Speaker 2: toads that has like mutated. You know what I mean,
Speaker 2: but what's interesting about it is there's four tires up front.
Speaker 2: I would have thought it'd be like a front middle back.
Speaker 2: I don't, what do I know about aerodynamics. So it's
Speaker 2: four up front and then two in the back. It
Speaker 2: looks like the mama and the papa bear are in
Speaker 2: the back and their four little cubs are up front.
Speaker 2: But then in that metaphor, it's a race car. It's
Speaker 2: not an animal, yes, and its wheels not bears. Yes,
Speaker 2: got it?
Speaker 1: This is this is not making any sense.
Speaker 2: Okay, But the point is either did the six wheel
Speaker 2: car and he drives.
Speaker 3: The car you're referring to is the Tyrell P thirty four.
Speaker 3: It was designed in a woodshed in the south of England.
Speaker 3: Tyrrell well, they had it was a problem against Ferrari
Speaker 3: because Ferrari had their flat twelve engine which had a
Speaker 3: lot more horsepower, and they thought, was there some way
Speaker 3: we can claw back this straight line speed deficit against
Speaker 3: this flat twel Ferrari. So Derek Gardner, who was the
Speaker 3: designer for TiAl came up with the idea, why don't
Speaker 3: we have four small front wheels instead of two large ones,
Speaker 3: because firstly we can get them lower, which cuts down
Speaker 3: the cross sectional front area of the car and makes
Speaker 3: less draggy. And secondly it puts more tire in contact
Speaker 3: with the road, so therefore you should have more mechanical grip.
Speaker 3: So this is all designed in CPN. They wheeled it
Speaker 3: and everyone looked at it and said, guys are on
Speaker 3: drugs or something. I don't know what's wrong with you.
Speaker 3: You've got it all. You got six wheels in that car.
Speaker 3: What's abe? And I quite far apart from the fact
Speaker 3: that there's some minor things like, for instance, when the
Speaker 3: drivers tested the car at first, they couldn't see the
Speaker 3: front wheels and they literally said, it just doesn't feel
Speaker 3: right when you can't see any front wheels. So they
Speaker 3: actually had had to make a crylic inserting the cock
Speaker 3: pits so the drivers could physically see the wheels in
Speaker 3: their eye line. It did work quite well.
Speaker 6: You know. They won a Grand Prix, the nineteen seventy
Speaker 6: six Swedish Grand Prix Jody Scheckter and by the way,
Speaker 6: his teammate Patrick Depay was second in that race, so
Speaker 6: it was a one two and they had a load
Speaker 6: of podiums, seconds and thirds.
Speaker 3: But the problem was was tire development it ran Goodyear tires,
Speaker 3: and Goodyear were really not keen on developing tires for
Speaker 3: the four small front wheels of one car on the grid,
Speaker 3: so in seventy seven they fell behind. So the car
Speaker 3: was never as competitive as it was in seventy six,
Speaker 3: and by seventy eight they'd abandoned the concept.
Speaker 6: And by the way, it wasn't even the clever way
Speaker 6: of doing six wheels, because the cleverest way of doing
Speaker 6: six wheels, or the cleverer way was having two steering
Speaker 6: wheels at the front and four driven wheels at the back. Yes,
Speaker 6: there would have been a weight penalty because of the
Speaker 6: transmission complication, but you would have had four wheel drive
Speaker 6: at the back.
Speaker 3: Williams tested a six wheeler I think Ferrari may have done.
Speaker 6: I think Ferrari as well, and those cars just would
Speaker 6: have catapulted out of corners with enormous traction.
Speaker 3: But then eventually the FIA said, look, this is barmy.
Speaker 3: You know you're all to end up with like tractor
Speaker 3: trailer wheels. From now on, each car must have four wheels.
Speaker 7: Then someone come up this crazy idea of putting a
Speaker 7: fan on the back of the car that would then
Speaker 7: suck the car down to the ground so it would
Speaker 7: go quick around the corners.
Speaker 15: Sweden seventy eight will be forever remembered as the race
Speaker 15: that got a car banned. Bernie Ecclestone's Brabham team that
Speaker 15: introduced the new BT forty six. Nobody remembers the type mark.
Speaker 15: They just remember it's immediate nickname, the fan Car.
Speaker 6: People think of it as a classic. I don't think
Speaker 6: it was. It was a crude thing, stick a fan
Speaker 6: at the back and suck it to the ground. That's
Speaker 6: famously called the Brabham Fan Car. One the Swedish Grand
Speaker 6: Prix in the hands of Nikki Lauder, and by the way,
Speaker 6: he won it easily, he didn't even have to push.
Speaker 7: But of course it got banned because it was splitting
Speaker 7: stones out of the cars that was following behind, like
Speaker 7: some you know, like some Mario cart game or something.
Speaker 2: I love when humans go crazy with creativity because it's
Speaker 2: just so many's failed attempts. But that's what makes us human.
Speaker 5: That's what makes us human. And I would argue that
Speaker 5: all of these creative inventions came out at a time
Speaker 5: where there were regulations, so they just change and every
Speaker 5: time they're like woop, can't do that because this, you know,
Speaker 5: introduces a certain amount of dangers or variables that we
Speaker 5: can't you know, we can't control, So we're not going
Speaker 5: to do that. More regulations come out, more people try
Speaker 5: and push the boundaries, and it's just an endless cycle
Speaker 5: of pushing the boundaries of the regulation and coming up
Speaker 5: with creative and innovative idea.
Speaker 3: He's a great example. Nineteen eighty one. It was the
Speaker 3: skirts era, right, so you had underbody skirts, the first
Speaker 3: ground effect era, and the FIA mandated, okay, from now on,
Speaker 3: we're going to do a test in the pit lane.
Speaker 3: When you come in, the car has to be six
Speaker 3: centimeters off the ground. And Gordon Murray from Brabham, who's
Speaker 3: a genius, said, in the rule book it says it
Speaker 3: has to be in the pits. There's nothing there that
Speaker 3: says we can't lower it as soon as we go out.
Speaker 3: So they made a hydraulic system which had a button push.
Speaker 3: So as soon as they went out, they pressed the
Speaker 3: button and it lowered the car to the ground. And
Speaker 3: then we come back in and he pressed the button,
Speaker 3: it comes back up and it was literally there's an interview.
Speaker 3: There was an interview with him, So, what do you
Speaker 3: you This is ridiculous. It says it has to be
Speaker 3: six center me. He's like, no, it doesn't, No, it doesn't.
Speaker 3: It says it only has to be when the test
Speaker 3: is happening, you're going to test it. It doesn't say
Speaker 3: anything about being on the track.
Speaker 5: So Paddock is full of kids that always found the
Speaker 5: way around the homework and that would find of clever
Speaker 5: way of just saying I did the homework. Technically, I've
Speaker 5: done it.
Speaker 2: Sorry to interrupt, Tony, I'm gonna shift us in a
Speaker 2: neutral for a second, which means a quick commercial break.
Speaker 2: One of the things I love about sport is learning
Speaker 2: who the greats were. Okay, who are some of the
Speaker 2: greats of F one. We did talk about Urt and Senna. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Michael Schumacher.
Speaker 5: Michael Schumacher is absolutely one of the greats.
Speaker 7: Michael Schumacher took everything to a completely another level after
Speaker 7: Sena in terms of just the level of preparation and
Speaker 7: his commitment to what he was doing. When he was
Speaker 7: in his first couple of years of competition, he used
Speaker 7: to have his blood tested during a pit stop, you know,
Speaker 7: during a test session. He'd do like twenty thirty laps
Speaker 7: come in and then his physio would like draw some
Speaker 7: blood from his arm in a syringe and take it off,
Speaker 7: and then Schumacher go back out as if he's doing
Speaker 7: a race simulation, because he wanted they wanted to analyze
Speaker 7: what was happening in his blood and in his body
Speaker 7: during the course of race conditions. I mean, that's the
Speaker 7: kind of level he was starting to take things too,
Speaker 7: in the kind of early nineteen nineties. He wanted to
Speaker 7: make it as difficult as possible to beat him.
Speaker 5: You will hear the names one Min Vanjol as well
Speaker 5: from and around.
Speaker 6: Nurble Green nineteen fifty seven, the.
Speaker 8: World's Greatest circuit, Another race for the world's greatest driver.
Speaker 8: Que Manuel Fanjo. Panko's already won the Argentinian and the
Speaker 8: Monarco Grand Prix. He's already won four World championships for
Speaker 8: help Romeo on the snes Pared Ferrari. Now he's out
Speaker 8: to win his slip World championship in a Mazzarati.
Speaker 6: Fanjo was in a maserati miles behind the two Ferraris
Speaker 6: and drove out of his skin, frightening himself and to
Speaker 6: pass them, catch them and pass them and drove, I mean,
Speaker 6: the most dangerous track there's ever been, the Novergreen, and
Speaker 6: he drove so fast and took so many risks that
Speaker 6: for the next two weeks he had nightmares, literal nightmarees.
Speaker 6: He couldn't sleep because he'd gone closer to the edge
Speaker 6: and remember the danger of going to the edge in
Speaker 6: those days of death, likely death.
Speaker 5: We talked a lot about Sir Jackie Stewart, and a
Speaker 5: lot of people associate him.
Speaker 2: His name comes up a lot. Yeah, yeah, his name.
Speaker 6: Up like that.
Speaker 5: I don't know if this is true, but I feel
Speaker 5: like he's a bit like the grandfather of the Godfather,
Speaker 5: maybe even a Formula one.
Speaker 7: The most pure kind of driver, I'm told my dad
Speaker 7: knew him really well, he was friends with him, but
Speaker 7: I never obviously saw him. Race was Jim Clark, who
Speaker 7: was a Scottish driver in the nineteen sixties, two time
Speaker 7: world champion, who was just beautiful to watch and tended
Speaker 7: to win races by huge margins just because he's he
Speaker 7: was just he was just balletic behind the wheel by
Speaker 7: all accounts, just so smooth and just so fast, and
Speaker 7: no one could live with him.
Speaker 3: Everyone looked up to him, as just Jim.
Speaker 6: He won twenty five Grand Prix out of seventy two starts.
Speaker 6: Guess how many times he came second Once.
Speaker 3: He tended to either win or the car broke.
Speaker 6: Down when the car hill together, he won. He was
Speaker 6: as good as that.
Speaker 3: And in sixty three and sixty five when he won
Speaker 3: the championship, he scored the maximum possible score under the
Speaker 3: rules in both those seasons. Yeah, take that, Maximus Stappen.
Speaker 3: And in sixty five, get this, in sixty five years
Speaker 3: called the maximum possible score that season even though he
Speaker 3: skipped the Monaco Grand Prix, didn't compete in the Monica
Speaker 3: Grand Prix because he was winning the Indy five hundred.
Speaker 3: He won the Indy five hundred and the championship in
Speaker 3: the same year. That's unbelievable.
Speaker 10: And one of your food chop plans were you raced
Speaker 10: at Indianapolis next year where you'll go there again?
Speaker 2: Well, everyone in America keeps asking me that, but at
Speaker 2: the moment, I don't know.
Speaker 15: I'm I've come back to carry on with the European
Speaker 15: season and try and get the championship back.
Speaker 2: So well, wait, see how we get on with that.
Speaker 6: Clark is to me.
Speaker 3: The purest genius we've ever had in the World Championship.
Speaker 10: It was in the fifth lap, but something went wrong.
Speaker 10: Clark's car had not reappeared in front of the timekeeper.
Speaker 10: The reason was soon clear. Clark had careered off the
Speaker 10: track at over one hundred and fifty miles an hour.
Speaker 10: The world the mon's the loss of a likable man
Speaker 10: who was also one of the greatest Brand Prix drivers
Speaker 10: of all time.
Speaker 6: I think Lewis Hamilton has to be put up there
Speaker 6: as one of the most significant people in the history
Speaker 6: of the sport as well. Lewis Hamilton has opened up
Speaker 6: the sport to a different demographic, you know, the first
Speaker 6: person of color to race in it, and not only
Speaker 6: race in it, but become the most successful driver in
Speaker 6: the history of the sport. I think his impact, which
Speaker 6: has already been enormous on track, may end up being
Speaker 6: even greater off track. If you're a young girl, or
Speaker 6: a young black boy or girl, or a young LGBTQ
Speaker 6: plus person, you might think, I wonder whether this sport
Speaker 6: is for me. I wonder whether it's for me because
Speaker 6: I can't you know, you can't really see it. That's
Speaker 6: why I think Lewis Hamilton is so important as a
Speaker 6: role model obviously visibly the only black driver in Formula One,
Speaker 6: but also he's a straight man. But he still wears
Speaker 6: rainbow helmets where we do race at the beginning of
Speaker 6: this year, for instance Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and later
Speaker 6: Qatar and so on and so forth, and he wears
Speaker 6: those helmets because I think he wants to stick up
Speaker 6: for human rights wherever he sees it. It needs to
Speaker 6: be stuck up for if you like.
Speaker 16: What I truly believe is that everyone should have equal rights,
Speaker 16: freedom of speech and freedom of movement. There's places such
Speaker 16: as here where the LGBT community there's prison time, death
Speaker 16: penalty and restrictions from people from be in themselves, and
Speaker 16: I don't believe in that.
Speaker 6: People like me obviously a gay man, and I'm one
Speaker 6: of the founder ambassadors of Racing Pride, which seeks to
Speaker 6: further and promote the rights of LGBTQ plus people in
Speaker 6: motor racing generally and globally. So obviously we can do
Speaker 6: so many things. We can make our effort, but actually
Speaker 6: what we call allies, you know, straight allies, heterosexual allies,
Speaker 6: are so valuable. Their voices are so important because it's
Speaker 6: not just you saying I'm gay. Therefore I want to
Speaker 6: say this. It's no, I'm straight, but I want to
Speaker 6: say this still.
Speaker 16: Religions can change, rules can change, rules can change those things.
Speaker 7: They have the power too.
Speaker 16: So we don't choose where we're going. Others have chosen
Speaker 16: for us to be here, so we have to make
Speaker 16: sure that we have to apply the pressure on them
Speaker 16: to make sure that they are doing.
Speaker 7: Right by the people.
Speaker 6: He'll be forty when he first races a Ferrari, enormously
Speaker 6: exciting and by the way, as fit as a butcher's
Speaker 6: dog now, and he still will be, just as Fernando Alonso,
Speaker 6: who's four years older than him, is still as fit
Speaker 6: as a butcher's dog. I mean, personally, I'd absolutely love
Speaker 6: to see Fernando in a Murk and Lewis in a Ferrari,
Speaker 6: the two forty year olds duking it out in the
Speaker 6: two best cars. Wouldn't that be great? That would be fantastic.
Speaker 6: I mean, red Bull might end up being quicker or
Speaker 6: as quick as well. But I'm allow me my fantasy,
Speaker 6: Allow me my fantasy.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just was wondering if, since it also
Speaker 1: came up for you how it was growing up as
Speaker 1: a gay boy and then a gay man into the
Speaker 1: world of f.
Speaker 6: One answer, no worries. You know, when I arrived in
Speaker 6: Formula one, which was a third of a century ago,
Speaker 6: more or less, I was I think I was called
Speaker 6: the only gay in the Formula one village, and I
Speaker 6: can't have been, because, of course there must have been others.
Speaker 6: But I was the only one who wasn't in hiding,
Speaker 6: the only one who wasn't closeted. I just decided not
Speaker 6: to be. I decided not to be. And I did
Speaker 6: encounter some homophobia, some of which, of course I may
Speaker 6: not have known about, because homophobes and like all bullies,
Speaker 6: often caused trouble behind your back, not in front of you.
Speaker 6: But I did get some in front of me. I
Speaker 6: was a driver, funny enough, no longer involved in the
Speaker 6: sport in any way, not a commentator, not involved in management.
Speaker 6: But he used to call me the fat faggot. He
Speaker 6: used to call me that routinely, both behind my back
Speaker 6: and to my face. And I've never named him, and
Speaker 6: I'm not going to, because that isn't the point. The
Speaker 6: point is that that was a thing that used to
Speaker 6: be able to happen. I don't think it would happen now.
Speaker 6: So we are, we have come some way, and things
Speaker 6: are better than they were. I was a journalist, always
Speaker 6: had a reasonably confident way with me. It doesn't mean
Speaker 6: I don't have my own doubts and insecurities, because we
Speaker 6: all do. But I think I always had a reasonably
Speaker 6: confident manner about me. And I was a journalist in
Speaker 6: the first instance, then comm's man, and then you know
Speaker 6: all those other jobs. And I think from one grandees
Speaker 6: understood that such people were not mechanics and were not engineers,
Speaker 6: and therefore could be maverick in this way, and being
Speaker 6: gay might be one of those ways in which they
Speaker 6: could be maverick. If I'd been a mechanic, I think
Speaker 6: it would have been more difficult. And I do know
Speaker 6: mechanics who are still not out, who've been in the
Speaker 6: sport for donkeys years, some of them, and some of
Speaker 6: them honestly are out now in every other aspect of
Speaker 6: their life. They are married to their own same sex partner, married,
Speaker 6: and they had a wedding which their friends and families
Speaker 6: all attended. They're out to their neighbours, they're out to
Speaker 6: all their friends, and they're out to their partners, families
Speaker 6: and employers. The one place they're not out is in
Speaker 6: the factory they work in in England where they put
Speaker 6: bits of formala one cars together, or they design bits
Speaker 6: of formal one cars. And one of the reasons we
Speaker 6: founded Racing Pride, which I still work for as a
Speaker 6: founder ambassador I'm very proud of, is that we realized
Speaker 6: it's not just you know, teenagers who are struggling to
Speaker 6: come out and wondering whether the sport is for them.
Speaker 6: It's also men. It usually is men, not women, but
Speaker 6: it can be women. But the vast majority of the
Speaker 6: people I'm talking about a men in their thirties, forties
Speaker 6: and fifties who are upset and depressed by the double
Speaker 6: life they have to lead. And the story we take
Speaker 6: to the teams because we go to teams and we
Speaker 6: do workshops and symposia and lectures and explain to them
Speaker 6: why this matters. And what I say to them is,
Speaker 6: of course it matters because you should do the right thing,
Speaker 6: but also you should want to do it because they
Speaker 6: won't give of their best, they won't do their best work.
Speaker 6: If they're mechanics, they may make mistakes. If they're are dynamesists,
Speaker 6: they may not come up with the very best innovations.
Speaker 6: So ultimately, if you can create a situation where they
Speaker 6: can feel happier and work better, you will make your
Speaker 6: cargo faster. That's what you'll do. And when you say that,
Speaker 6: because of course, nobody is more competitive than a Formula
Speaker 6: one boss, he says, uh huh, right, because there's lap
Speaker 6: time there.
Speaker 5: That's why any I mean, look the reality with the history,
Speaker 5: we could I feel like we could do a whole
Speaker 5: season just on this. But any final thoughts from your end?
Speaker 5: Would you see yourself as a history buff a history fan.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's easy to diminish historical figures because in sport
Speaker 2: we're always getting better, you know, like you could just
Speaker 2: go but what do you mean that guy is a great.
Speaker 2: Look at his lap times. It's so slow, but we
Speaker 2: forget how pivotal they were. And I find my favorite athletes,
Speaker 2: world class athletes are the ones that know and respect
Speaker 2: the history of their sport. I don't know which F
Speaker 2: one drivers have that now, but my favorite athletes are
Speaker 2: the ones that know who those people were, because that's
Speaker 2: the reason they have and are in the position that they're.
Speaker 5: In, they have respect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just know where the sport came from. So
Speaker 2: it's important to know the history. Learn it. But life
Speaker 2: is for the now. We breathe now, we breathe air now,
Speaker 2: and so it's time to move on past the history
Speaker 2: into our next episode.
Speaker 1: This has been Choosing Sides f one, a production of
Speaker 1: Sports Illustrated Studios, iHeart Podcast and one oh one Studio podcast.
Speaker 1: The show is hosted by Michael Costa and Tony Cowen Brown.
Speaker 1: This episode was edited, scored, and sound designed by Senior
Speaker 1: producer Johai may Tho. Scott Stone is the executive producer
Speaker 1: and head of audio, and Danielle Wexman is Director of
Speaker 1: podcast Development and production manager at one on one Studios.
Speaker 1: At iHeart Podcasts, Sean Titone is our executive producer. And
Speaker 1: a special thank you to Michelle Newman, David Glasser, and
Speaker 1: David Hootkin from one O one Studios. For more shows
Speaker 1: from iHeart Podcasts, go visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts, and whatever you do,
Speaker 1: don't forget to rate us and tell your friends it
Speaker 1: really does mean a lot.
Speaker 5: So next week on Choosing Side, everyone we are going
Speaker 5: to be talking about the Brits. Absolutely favorite topic.
Speaker 2: American American Revolution.
Speaker 5: Nope, No so close though.
Speaker 10: Yah.
Speaker 5: The weather, weather, Yes, bring it on, it's good.
Speaker 2: Get your Sonnaise, gets your umbrella. What's what's an umbrella?
Speaker 5: The umbrella?
Speaker 2: Umbrella, umbrella?
Speaker 1: What accent are you trying to do that, Michael?
Speaker 2: It is it is. You guys do love talking about
Speaker 2: the weather, and you should. It's fun and interesting. Over
Speaker 2: the nice breaker, Yeah it is.
Speaker 5: It's great and it actually plays a huge part in
Speaker 5: Formula one
Speaker 2: That I'm interested to learn about.