Latest / Rusty's Garage / Inside McLaren F1 - Bob McMurray (Part 1)

Transcript

Inside McLaren F1 - Bob McMurray (Part 1) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:11
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:33
  In this episode, I'm trackside at Ruapuna Racetrack in Christchurch on the South Island of New Zealand, sitting in a corporate marquee on the hill by the start-finish straight alongside an ageing grandstand named after the legendary Kiwi Bruce McLaren.
• 0:50
  It's a really cool old-school reminder of one of the greats and the impact he still has in this part of the world.
• 0:58
  Fitting that we're here as today's guest, Bob McMurray, spent much of his working life with the famous F1 team, rising his way through various roles with them, as you'll hear...
• 1:10
  He was a very proud McLaren team member, and it's still very much in his blood.
• 1:16
  Bob worked closely with a number of big names during some golden eras.
• 1:21
  We'll reminisce about that and what it was like to be part of the inner sanctum, to be employed by and trusted by Ron Dennis.
• 1:30
  Bob went on to become CEO of the New Zealand A1GP team at the request of respected Kiwi businessman Sir Colin Giltrap.
• 1:39
  His experience at dealing with the media in F1 and explaining the finer points of the cars and the sport to corporate guests, for example, helped him transition into TV and radio in later life.
• 1:52
  Bob is also an ambassador for the Toyota Racing Series in NZ and is passionate about supporting the next generation of drivers trying to make it abroad through his role as a trustee on the Kiwi Driver Fund.
• 2:07
  Now, you may hear the odd car on the track outside.
• 2:10
  No apologies for that.
• 2:12
  In fact, one of them is a Brabham BT62, which David Brabham talks about in his episode of Rusty's Garage, which you can find in the library.
• 2:21
  It's also a little windy and Ruwapuna is right by Christchurch Airport, so there is the occasional plane on final approach.
• 2:29
  You'll enjoy this.
• 2:30
  Bob is articulate and engaging, not afraid to speak his mind.
• 2:35
  Yes, I ask him about that final F1 race of 2021 as well.
• 2:41
  But we begin with his early life experiences and how he gravitated to cars and racing.
• 2:47
  I was born in England and let's see, I had no connection with professional sport, professional motorsport or anything.
• 2:56
  I did have a connection with cars mentally.
• 2:59
  I mean, I bought myself a Mini, well, I was helped, bank mum and dad, two years before I was allowed to drive and continued driving for two years before I got a license.
• 3:09
  That wasn't a good thing, but we did that.
• 3:12
  What are we talking about?
• 3:13
  Are you sneaking out on the road or like farms and paddocks?
• 3:15
  Or what were you doing?
• 3:16
  No, I had to go around and see my girlfriend who's done my wife.
• 3:19
  That's awesome.
• 3:21
  So, no, we just drove.
• 3:22
  It was a different era, okay?
• 3:24
  It was a different era.
• 3:25
  We had a Mini.
• 3:29
  The registration number I remember to this day, BMH 272A, so it was a 1963 Mini, and it was in 1966, it was a red one, and as soon as I got it, my wife now, my girlfriend then, we used to go what they call road coursing and racing around car parks, backing into...
• 3:53
  cones and all that sort of stuff.
• 3:55
  Like a motor car.
• 3:56
  Yeah, like a motor car.
• 3:57
  So we bought another set of tyres for it, which were bald, and off we went.
• 4:00
  And then we had people who were running what was called the South Bucks Motor Car, Motor Club, and they did rallying.
• 4:08
  And a guy called Ted Cowell, who's quite a famous racer, rallyer over there.
• 4:14
  And we started rallying the car.
• 4:15
  And we did that reasonably successfully for about 18 months.
• 4:19
  And I built the thing up into a Cooper S basically at the end of it.
• 4:23
  Unfortunately, my wife was the, I say my wife, it was girlfriend then, was the navigator and she gave up.
• 4:33
  Well, I gave her up, I'm not quite sure what it was, after we, she was telling me flat, we used to do night rallies, flat, flat, flat, and we got to a T-junction and it wasn't flat.
• 4:42
  Well, it was flat, but it wasn't a T-junction with an exit the other side.
• 4:46
  So we went straight across the road through a ditch, through a drain and all sorts of things.
• 4:50
  No big deal, but she didn't come with me again rallying.
• 4:55
  So it was a gentle introduction, but then my...
• 4:59
  My future sister-in-law, my wife's sister, she took up with a guy called Ian Griffiths, Griff, who was in the McLaren Can-Am Formula One team, that sort of thing.
• 5:10
  And I started going around to McLarens with him.
• 5:13
  And then John Nicholson was our lodger at the time when we'd all shared a house.
• 5:18
  And John Nicholson was Nicholson McLaren engines.
• 5:22
  So you were surrounded by it?
• 5:23
  Oh yeah, completely and absolutely surrounded by it.
• 5:25
  And we only lived just down, well, half a mile away from McLaren, so people were around us.
• 5:30
  And once we were renting a house, quite a big house, we then had lots of itinerant Kiwis get off the plane and join us before they got a job at McLaren.
• 5:40
  So it was kind of a gentle easing in there and I was taking around the McLaren.
• 5:45
  quite early on.
• 5:46
  And my brother-in-law just said, there's a gearbox.
• 5:49
  And he tipped it out in the middle of the floor and said, put it back together again.
• 5:53
  That was my first introduction really to it.
• 5:55
  Bruce McLaren was there at the time.
• 5:57
  This was 67, 68.
• 5:59
  And he didn't know who the hell I was, called me the nameless mate who'd come around.
• 6:05
  And it was good fun.
• 6:08
  And from then onwards, I was in motorsport.
• 6:10
  And as they say, I haven't worked a day since.
• 6:13
  And I honestly believe that, apart from having to get jobs to get various mortgages and things like that.
• 6:19
  So...
• 6:20
  That's the early year.
• 6:21
  As we sit here and record this, we're at Mike Perrow Motorsport Park, or Rua Puna, as it's better known.
• 6:26
  And there is a Bruce McLaren grandstand, not all that far from where you and I are recording.
• 6:33
  I mean, people may have seen the movie Legendary Kiwi.
• 6:36
  What was he like as a human being and to work with?
• 6:39
  I've got to say I never got to know him very well.
• 6:41
  I was a pretty junior kid, but whatever interaction I had with him was nothing more than
• 6:47
  It's kind of what you read about it.
• 6:48
  He was a really nice guy.
• 6:50
  It was a really tight team.
• 6:51
  He knew everybody and he was hands-on.
• 6:54
  And it was just...
• 6:56
  I find it difficult to explain really because it is... all I'm doing is reinforcing the perception of him anyway.
• 7:04
  He was a fantastic engineer, a blowing good driver, and he was just... the whole thing was a wonderful experience.
• 7:13
  20 people, 25 people in the factory and there's Can-Am cars going here and the Formula One cars going here and they gradually built up the numbers there's Formula Two cars there and Indy cars are coming in and out.
• 7:23
  I mean it was, to my eyes, it was magic.
• 7:27
  It was simple magic.
• 7:28
  So it was
• 7:30
  Yeah, it was, I can't explain it well enough because it was, I still sometimes sit here with eyes open looking at what I'm doing now and I'm still involved in the damn sport all these years later in some form or another.
• 7:42
  And that's really, that's what started it off, I guess.
• 7:44
  Am I right in saying you have what we call an HGV license or heavy vehicle license?
• 7:50
  Did that come as a part of working with the team?
• 7:52
  And are you a qualified mechanic?
• 7:53
  Like, did you go through a…
• 7:55
  I'm not a qualified mechanic at all.
• 7:57
  Everything I did, I picked up, but it wasn't long before doing it.
• 8:01
  There's a convoluted story here, but it wasn't long before I picked up that it would be better to be hands clean and start doing things hands clean and earn more money than be a mechanic.
• 8:09
  So I was half and half.
• 8:11
  So, I mean, if I do a sort of a lineage here, I studied once again with McLaren and I was then employed by, I wanted to get involved and I was employed by a guy called John Hogan, who was in charge of Charles Stewart and company at the time, who was Marlborough.
• 8:26
  And I also thought I really ought to expand my horizons in motorsport.
• 8:33
  I knew Ron Dennis pretty well from just meeting him in a pub.
• 8:39
  And I started working for a company that was owned by Bernie called International Race Tire Service.
• 8:45
  And right after a year of that, Ron said, what the hell are you doing there?
• 8:48
  Because, you know, why didn't you come and work for me in Project 3 and then Project 4?
• 8:53
  That's how I got to know Ron quite well.
• 8:55
  And then Marlborough wanted us, all this time we're living in New Zealand and I'm travelling backwards and forwards.
• 9:03
  And my wife kind of got fed up with being six, nine months at home here in New Zealand and me travelling.
• 9:11
  So I gave up motorsport completely.
• 9:14
  Was that hard to stop?
• 9:15
  Yeah, it was hard to stop because I didn't give it up.
• 9:17
  My wife gave it up for me.
• 9:19
  But when I got back here and John Hogan of Marlborough rang and he said, we need you to come back to Europe to help us out driving a truck.
• 9:27
  I said, okay, fine.
• 9:27
  All right, I'll come back.
• 9:29
  But I can't.
• 9:30
  My wife.
• 9:31
  He said, no, Sean is my wife.
• 9:33
  She comes as well.
• 9:34
  So, okay.
• 9:37
  So he spoke to my mother-in-law and said, would you look after the property?
• 9:39
  We had a little farm.
• 9:41
  And she said, yeah, go, go for it.
• 9:43
  That was in 1976.
• 9:48
  We go for it.
• 9:49
  So we went in the early 70s to Europe.
• 9:53
  And I got there and John Hogan said, well, the first thing you need to do from Monaco two days after we arrive is drive the truck.
• 10:00
  right up to the Imatra Grand Prix in Finland.
• 10:04
  I said, okay, fine.
• 10:05
  Is it that truck there?
• 10:06
  He said, yes, I don't have a license for that.
• 10:08
  That's an articulated truck.
• 10:09
  I have a rigid truck.
• 10:10
  I was driving a rigid truck for Ron Dennis.
• 10:14
  And being a mechanic and a sort of a team manager for Ron as well, because there were only four of us on the team, five of us on the team in Formula 2.
• 10:21
  And that would go great years in Formula 2.
• 10:24
  I said, okay, but I don't have a license.
• 10:26
  He said, well, you've got to get one.
• 10:27
  So they didn't book me for any lessons or anything.
• 10:29
  I just went for a test in the middle of London with this articulated truck.
• 10:34
  I managed to pass and flew back down to the south of France and drove this truck all the way up to Finland with my wife's wife.
• 10:40
  as a co-driver, but she was driving a damn great 40 car line thing, which nine seater, and she'd been driven a left hand drive before anyway.
• 10:48
  So that was the introduction to the Marlborough side of Formula One.
• 10:52
  All a bit disjointed, I know, but all this was happening, you know, a month here and a month there and all that sort of stuff.
• 10:57
  Great.
• 10:57
  Great journey, mate, and I love how you've sprinkled some names there.
• 11:02
  Can we touch on a few of those?
• 11:03
  Firstly, I would imagine too, in recounting a little bit of your time with Bruce, that there would have been time with Denny Holm as well, wasn't there?
• 11:12
  Yeah, yeah.
• 11:12
  And what was he like?
• 11:13
  I mean, I can vividly remember…
• 11:16
  his passing at Bathurst, how well regarded he was by the BMW team and, you know, people talking about him, you know, with immense fondness of his, you know, depth and breadth of racing.
• 11:28
  What was he like?
• 11:28
  Well, yeah, once again, he was, I was a junior guy in an organisation and with personalities I held in awe.
• 11:38
  I mean, frankly, you know, it was Phil Kerr and that sort of person and Ian Young around and...
• 11:44
  So they were a group of people and there's no doubt that Denny Holm was a different personality coming in.
• 11:50
  He was very friendly with the mechanics, couldn't brook anybody that didn't really see the mechanical side of things or the racing side of things.
• 11:58
  But he drove the wheels of things.
• 12:00
  I mean, I remember my brother-in-law telling me a story that Denny was on the third row of the grid at a British Grand Prix and Griff, my brother-in-law, was on the car.
• 12:09
  And Denny was late to get in his car, but he walked up to, I think it was Jackie Stewart on the front row and said, look, be careful, look in your mirrors, because I'm coming through on the right-hand side.
• 12:17
  And then he went to the guy behind him, I can't remember, it might have been Graham Hill or something, be careful, I'm coming through on the right-hand side.
• 12:24
  And they all smiled and thought, yeah, righto.
• 12:26
  So they knew what he was like.
• 12:27
  So when it started...
• 12:30
  They all pulled to the left-hand side thinking he's bluffing them.
• 12:33
  He went straight through on the right-hand side and I was took them.
• 12:36
  But he was that sort of guy.
• 12:37
  He was a great guy.
• 12:39
  Didn't have a lot to do with him socially, to be honest.
• 12:41
  But, I mean, it was all part of the aura of the thing.
• 12:45
  Just talking about those names now brings back some really good memories.
• 12:48
  Simple as that.
• 12:48
  Did you say a minute ago to Bernie with the, was it Bernie Eccleston you were referring to in relation to the, wow.
• 12:54
  Yeah, he started when Goodyear pulled out.
• 12:56
  Bernie bought the business effectively and he started a company called International Race Tire Service, IRTS.
• 13:03
  And he employed a guy called Keith Green who passed away recently, was involved in racing for many years.
• 13:09
  And another guy called Jean Mondier.
• 13:11
  who was his right-hand man, and they got me to work there as whatever was coming up, tie fitter and all sorts of things, because by this stage I was having to try and get a reasonable job to get a life going with it as a marriage.
• 13:23
  But it wasn't going to work out, so that's when Ron plucked me out of there to go and work for him.
• 13:29
  in Formula 2 and Formula 3.
• 13:32
  So, yeah, as I say, it was a convoluted period of just so much excitement.
• 13:38
  I mean, I can feel the excitement now about going here and doing that.
• 13:42
  First trip to Monaco, which I hated then and I've hated ever since to work there.
• 13:46
  Yeah, well, working there, yeah.
• 13:47
  I mean, it's a great place to be.
• 13:49
  But, yeah, it just carried on.
• 13:52
  We'll focus more on Ron and McLaren in a moment.
• 13:56
  But...
• 13:57
  In that time, going with your wife on these journeys to – some of the tracks are now gone.
• 14:02
  I mean, others are still like Monaco jewels in the calendar.
• 14:08
  And the world of motorsport has, in a safety sense, in a track sense, has evolved immeasurably in that timeframe.
• 14:15
  What was it like going to those sort of places back then?
• 14:18
  And was there one that –
• 14:19
  you know, was a real standout, one that you loved going to?
• 14:23
  Yeah, in Formula 2, I used to love it.
• 14:26
  I used to love Formula 2.
• 14:27
  It was a great, it was a great formula in those days.
• 14:31
  A lot of people came through it very well.
• 14:34
  We used to go to Rouen and Poe.
• 14:36
  Poe was a fantastic circuit.
• 14:38
  There still runs now, the Poe Grand Prix or whatever, but Rouen as a circuit was so dangerous but so exciting.
• 14:43
  We were parked in the forest.
• 14:46
  We used to go to the Salzburg Ring, which was not very far from Salzburg, as you might understand, which was literally a ring.
• 14:52
  I mean, it was just, that was an amazing track.
• 14:55
  We used to go to Musiello, then down to Estoril and drive around.
• 15:00
  We were driving around permanently around Europe for ages, all of us in the truck and the car in Formula 2, and it was, and there were guys then that,
• 15:08
  continued through the McLaren later on, Ray Grant, who I think is still at McLaren, all sorts of people.
• 15:14
  But Formula 2 was such an exciting formula at the time.
• 15:17
  Jean-Pierre Jassot was driving and all sorts of old names like that.
• 15:21
  And it was exciting because, once again, it was a very small collection of people.
• 15:27
  And what became the Formula One pit lane, which was my village and the pit lane was my, or at least the alley at the back was my main road.
• 15:34
  It was like that in Formula Two, but with a quarter of the people or fifth of the people.
• 15:40
  So, yeah, it was quite exciting then.
• 15:42
  Some of the circuits we went to, goodness knows how we got to them and from them because I'd never seen them before, nor would most of us just drive down there.
• 15:50
  I love that highlight underscore village because it was that for you for more than 30 years, wasn't it?
• 15:55
  It was your home, the paddock.
• 15:59
  Formula 2, let's chat on that for a moment.
• 16:02
  Did you cross paths incidentally with Tim Schenken at some point here?
• 16:06
  Because, I mean, he's been race director in Australia for…
• 16:08
  supercars for ages and been with us on the podcast too, which is quite cool.
• 16:11
  But he talks about Rondell Racing and going Formula 2 and things like that.
• 16:14
  What was he like back then?
• 16:16
  Well, once again, Rondell Racing was one step before me.
• 16:19
  That was Ron Dennis and Neil Trundle.
• 16:21
  Neil's a very good friend of mine to this day.
• 16:24
  So I worked on Tim Schenken's car, but after he'd finished, so I never really got to know him that much.
• 16:31
  But, you know, you used to go to Thruxton and places in England, and there were different drivers coming in and out all the time.
• 16:38
  Graham Hill suddenly was driving the Formula 2 car and things like that.
• 16:42
  Now, Tim Schenken has been...
• 16:44
  Nothing but friendly to me all the way through.
• 16:47
  I mean, he was a lovely guy.
• 16:47
  He knows his business like backwards.
• 16:50
  But I never worked on his car.
• 16:51
  I worked anything to do with his car.
• 16:53
  I mean, my era, I suppose, in Formula 2 was Ron Dennis, was Eddie Cheever and Mikko Kazorovitsky, who was a Marlborough driver and people like that.
• 17:03
  So it was...
• 17:06
  It was so exciting.
• 17:07
  I mean, it really was.
• 17:07
  It was fantastic.
• 17:08
  I really hate getting old.
• 17:10
  I can't do it again.
• 17:12
  Ron is an amazing figure, still held in immensely high regard in the history of Formula One.
• 17:18
  Can you recount for us your first meeting with him?
• 17:20
  And was it clear to you from the get-go that he was this, you know, we know that he has this sort of perfectionist trait and he, you know, very driven.
• 17:32
  Was it clear that he was that sort of,
• 17:34
  human being from the outset when you met him.
• 17:36
  Absolutely clear as a bell.
• 17:38
  Yeah, clear as a, he would run the Formula 3 team and the Formula 2 team as he was going to run the Formula 1 team, nothing out of place.
• 17:46
  We had a, we were loading up a Formula 2 car one day.
• 17:50
  Neil Trundle and I were pushing it into the truck and Ron happened to come along.
• 17:54
  We were working at a Morris Gomes workshop in Old Woking.
• 17:57
  A lot of people might remember that.
• 18:00
  And we were pushing it on the truck and Ron noticed that one of the anti-roll bar links at the back of the car had not been anodised.
• 18:06
  And he said, no, take the car out.
• 18:08
  No, that can't go like that.
• 18:09
  And Neil said, Ron, we are late to get...
• 18:12
  It was going to Poe, actually.
• 18:14
  We are late to get down to Poe.
• 18:16
  We're going to make it very late.
• 18:18
  And Ron said, don't care, I ain't leaving here like that.
• 18:20
  So we had to wake a chromium plater up about four or five o'clock in the morning, and say, could you get to work and plate this roll bar link or do something with it to make it look like the other one?
• 18:34
  And the guy said, yeah, yeah, Ron does a lot with me.
• 18:38
  So we left a day late, effectively.
• 18:41
  On the way down there, the truck broke a pushrod in the engine.
• 18:47
  And we had Ray Grant in the truck and our Japanese mechanic, Kazumoto Hasueki, who was our Japanese mechanic at the time.
• 18:58
  So we sent Kazoo off to try and find some sort of material that we could make a...
• 19:04
  a new pushrod with.
• 19:05
  We unloaded the cars from the back of the truck.
• 19:07
  Ray Grant then got to the lathe in the back of the truck, welded up the pushrod, machined it down, put it back in, and to my knowledge, that truck, that furniture truck that we converted, or Bob Wallach converted it, was converted into a race car transporter, and to my knowledge, that pushrod was still in there 15 years later.
• 19:29
  So, and we got to Poe.
• 19:31
  And we were about the last people who arrived.
• 19:33
  There was no space.
• 19:34
  And a guy called Hugh de Schoenac was running the whole situation, a French guy who's still in charge of, I forget what his name is, Eureka, maybe now.
• 19:43
  And all Ron Dennis' entire argument with Hugh de Schoenac was, all Ron could say was, comme si, comme ça.
• 19:52
  15 minutes he argued with Hugh Deschonac and the only words he said were it was hilarious everybody was laughing but we got the parking spot and we went on from there but Ron would not allow a car to leave that he was not happy with it
• 20:16
  In the many years that you were there, and it can be Formula 2, it can be Formula 1, what's the car?
• 20:23
  And I say that it doesn't necessarily have to be something you were attached to from a success point of view.
• 20:29
  Maybe it's the look of the car.
• 20:31
  Maybe it's the clever engineering things that you were pioneering and able to integrate into it.
• 20:38
  What's the car over all the years that stands out for you that you have this sort of soft spotter attachment to?
• 20:44
  I've got three incredible drawings on my wall in my office.
• 20:51
  One is an M23, James Hunt's M23.
• 20:54
  Gordon Coppock designed that.
• 20:56
  And the others are MP4-1, MP4-4 and MP4-8.
• 20:58
  MP4-1, MP4-4, MP4-8.
• 21:06
  The MP4 cars were fantastic.
• 21:08
  Low-riding cars, Ayrton Senna driving them.
• 21:11
  They just look the business.
• 21:13
  And to this day, that is the ideal Formula One car, in my opinion.
• 21:17
  It's clean.
• 21:20
  There's no junk and plastic rubbish all over it.
• 21:23
  It doesn't weigh three quarters of a ton.
• 21:26
  It's not an aircraft carrier size.
• 21:28
  It is a Formula One racing car.
• 21:31
  And it is, to my eyes, still the most beautiful Formula One racing car.
• 21:35
  You go back in history, you look at all the Alphas and all that sort of stuff and Ferraris, they're fine, they're great.
• 21:40
  But the ones I was involved in, that was just superb.
• 21:44
  I mean, it was just, to this day, I think it's wonderful.
• 21:47
  Intoxicatingly beautiful and sounding race cars.
• 21:51
  Exactly, with a paint scheme, the Marlborough paint scheme.
• 21:53
  that suited that car beautifully.
• 21:55
  And if you look at that paint scheme, that's Ron Dennis all over.
• 21:58
  Everything is meticulously placed by it.
• 22:02
  It's good.
• 22:03
  Apart from one incident when we were presenting the car to the Prime Minister in Downing Street and we had the car in Downing Street there and we happened to look at the car which had been rushed up there.
• 22:15
  And on the right-hand side pod, Courtaulds was the sponsor, and there was Courtaulds on either side of the right-hand side pods.
• 22:24
  And we looked at the car, and it wasn't on the right-hand side pod, and nobody noticed until Ron pointed it out three days later and went absolutely berserk.
• 22:32
  But anyway, it was fantastic.
• 22:35
  Sorry, I sidetracked.
• 22:36
  No, no, these are great yarns.
• 22:41
  On the way, what about the greatest defeat?
• 22:46
  What about, I mean, you had so much success along the way.
• 22:50
  I mean, collectively, I mean, such a successful racing and Formula One organisation, very competitive people in the car and out of the car.
• 22:59
  So when things don't go right, it's very difficult to, you know.
• 23:04
  What's the one that stings?
• 23:05
  The thing is with Formula One, everybody is more competitive than you can possibly imagine.
• 23:10
  The guys that paint the garage floors when we started doing that, they want to do it better than Lotus or better than Tyrrell down the road or better than anybody.
• 23:17
  The guys who put the interior of the garage up, they're doing better than anybody else and they're encouraged by Ron Dennis to do that.
• 23:26
  But the one stone under the blanket on the beach, as they say, was it has to be the failure of us as a team to win all the races in 88.
• 23:41
  because Ed and Senna tripped over Jean-Louis Schlescher at the chicane.
• 23:46
  And we didn't manage to win 16 out of 16.
• 23:49
  We won 15 out of 16.
• 23:51
  And strangely enough, Jean-Louis Schlescher was a very good friend of Monsieur Auger and a good friend of McLaren's.
• 23:56
  And that's where the end-of-year party was in his place in Paris.
• 24:02
  So, yeah, that one grates a little bit because it was so close because it had never been done before and has never been done since.
• 24:10
  So that would have been a real feather, but it was a stone in the end.
• 24:15
  You talked before about changing tact a little bit in career terms, about what you say, cleaning your hands up and working in the managerial area.
• 24:24
  side of the business.
• 24:26
  When did that happen?
• 24:27
  How difficult was that transition?
• 24:29
  And because those roles invariably become about people, don't they?
• 24:33
  And people getting the best out of people and so on.
• 24:36
  Did you find that easy?
• 24:37
  What was that like?
• 24:38
  No, I did find it easy because my wife was able to travel with me and that was in basically 1977.
• 24:42
  We were driving the hospitality truck then.
• 24:45
  But I was still keen on the mechanical side.
• 24:47
  So it lapsed into a position at McLaren where I was in the garage explaining the cars to the guests and stuff.
• 24:54
  which, strangely enough, I was still doing.
• 24:56
  Anyway.
• 24:57
  So, no, it lapsed into that sort of job where it was not actually getting my hands dirty, but getting aware, shall we say, of all the engineering and all the mechanics and all that sort of stuff and dealing with the mechanics all the time.
• 25:11
  And at the time, I have to explain, we got, Sean and I got really very close with Ron Dennis.
• 25:17
  We used to live with him and sort out lots of, she sorted out lots of issues with his house when the house caught fire once.
• 25:26
  And she, anyway, did all that sort of stuff.
• 25:29
  And then we used to live on his property in south of France.
• 25:32
  So he and his then wife, Lisa, and the kids became, I mean, we were quite with them.
• 25:39
  Used to fly out there on the private jet to the south of France for a weekend to the house.
• 25:45
  That doesn't happen these days.
• 25:46
  No, no.
• 25:47
  So, I mean, Ron was a very, very special guy.
• 25:51
  I would...
• 25:53
  Any people that worked for Ron Dennis through the Formula One team, basically, if Ron said, boys, we're all going to jump off that cliff, if he had said, I'll hold your hands while we do it, there would be a cue for jumping off that cliff.
• 26:06
  I'm not joking.
• 26:07
  There was an absolute belief that Ron was the way, the path, whatever, to do it.
• 26:14
  And that remained all the way through...
• 26:17
  As far as I'm aware, his career with people there, he built that organization up from, well, what it was in, you know, 77, 78 and 80 up into what it was when he left with that great big palace of a facility and all the other stuff.
• 26:32
  Ron revolutionized Formula One by putting the garages, you know, making them look right to getting things on a business level and all that sort of stuff.
• 26:39
  He's still a, apart from my father, he's still a hero of mine.
• 26:43
  I don't mind saying it.
• 26:44
  You have spent time with him as a friend.
• 26:47
  You have spent time with him as a colleague, a co-worker, a boss, whatever you want to describe it as.
• 26:53
  What's the greatest lesson he's taught you?
• 26:55
  And that can be either business or life lesson.
• 26:57
  What's the key thing that sort of stands out from working with Ron Dennis, do you reckon?
• 27:00
  Um, I, I'm, I don't know really.
• 27:04
  Uh, I suppose loyalty is a, is a huge part.
• 27:07
  I learned that to my, um, pain.
• 27:11
  And once when I was unloyal, I don't want to talk about that really, but I told him something, I told somebody something that he told me and it was in conversation and it was not the right thing to do.
• 27:22
  And he let me know about it.
• 27:24
  And, um, it was to somebody who died subsequently, but, um, yeah.
• 27:29
  It was embarrassing for me, and I knew it was wrong, and I knew that was a sign of disloyalty, and it hurt me to admit it, and I remember it to this day, and that's probably one thing he's taught me.
• 27:41
  The other thing is an attention to detail, not necessarily the detail that you think, you know, anal detail, which he is, he is anal in the extreme, but...
• 27:53
  um but detail in uh approach detail in what should be happening and detail in looking after the people who are doing it he's he was amazingly supportive of all the people that work for him to the point where he used to employ them um if they were real he used to look after them from his own pocket and all that sort of stuff so yeah anyway yeah we're on to special guy
• 28:16
  We've bounced through a couple of names in Tim Schenck and Bruce and Denny.
• 28:21
  Can we tackle a couple of others and get your insights?
• 28:23
  And you've done one of them already.
• 28:25
  You've introduced one of them, and people will be very familiar with the movie Rush if they're not diehard Formula One fans.
• 28:33
  I got to work very closely with Barry Sheen for many years, and I would imagine James Hunt working with him would have been enormously similar to
• 28:44
  Tell us more.
• 28:45
  I mean, clearly a fast, a gifted race driver, but as a personality, I mean, it must have been wild at times.
• 28:55
  What was it?
• 28:57
  He was a personality.
• 28:58
  He was bursting with personality.
• 28:59
  Melty.
• 29:00
  Okay.
• 29:01
  Yeah.
• 29:02
  Once again, he sort of emboldened the team.
• 29:04
  James Hunt used to travel around, not him, but there was a group of people that traveled around with him called the Sutton and Cheam First Eleven.
• 29:12
  They were led by his brother and a bunch of mates, and they always used to go to a race and park in a campsite nearby.
• 29:18
  So after the race, especially if James had had quite a good one, we would smuggle him out in the van and go to the Sutton & Cheam First Eleven campsite, and things would happen there.
• 29:29
  We did it once.
• 29:30
  I've got to be quite delicate how I say this.
• 29:32
  Fair enough, fair enough.
• 29:33
  We once had the race at Zanvoort, which we won.
• 29:38
  And at the time, I was looking around for my wife, and somebody said, she went off with James a little while ago.
• 29:46
  And I thought, hang on, boy, stop this.
• 29:49
  There's James, that's dangerous.
• 29:51
  And they said, well, where's she gone?
• 29:53
  I went off in the car.
• 29:54
  Okay.
• 29:55
  So about 40 minutes later, they roll back in and Sean's a bit giddy.
• 29:59
  And I'm thinking, what's going on here?
• 30:01
  Anyway, James used to be quite fond of smoking.
• 30:10
  An aromatic smoke.
• 30:12
  Right, yes.
• 30:12
  Used to arrive.
• 30:13
  Anyway, he'd taken her for a ride around the track to show things how they should be, but he went the wrong way around the track for about three laps.
• 30:20
  So nothing untoward happened, apart from the fact she was absolutely scared witless in the whole time.
• 30:25
  But James was a great guy.
• 30:28
  He used to...
• 30:29
  I used to have some fun parties with him.
• 30:30
  I got some wonderful photographs of Watkins Glen, the Seneca Lodge at Watkins Glen, which is a famous place to be, in the parties there.
• 30:39
  But most of that really should stay with me, I think, because it's carried away.
• 30:42
  Cool.
• 30:43
  Right.
• 30:43
  Let's bounce through some more.
• 30:45
  Patrick Tombay.
• 30:46
  Patrick is a lovely guy.
• 30:48
  We stayed with him in the south of France quite a lot, and his beautiful American wife.
• 30:55
  Patrick, sadly, these days is suffering from a form of suffering from an illness, which I think is Parkinson's, I'm not quite sure.
• 31:03
  But he was such a sweet, lovely guy.
• 31:05
  I have to add here that amongst all the drivers, my wife fell in love with all of them, Patrick, Jokin Mass, all sorts of them.
• 31:14
  So they were all lovely guys.
• 31:15
  But, yeah, Patrick was such a soft person.
• 31:19
  Not driver, but such a soft person.
• 31:21
  He was considerate and good fun, and he knew his way around his home area, around the Nice Can area.
• 31:29
  And he was a great guy.
• 31:31
  Modern or recent era fans will know.
• 31:34
  Nico Rosberg, son of Keke.
• 31:37
  What was he like?
• 31:39
  Yeah.
• 31:40
  He seemed like a man's man kind of thing.
• 31:43
  Loose as a goose, that guy.
• 31:45
  I was out to a brand's hatch one day and we were testing.
• 31:48
  I think it was a Thursday or Friday.
• 31:52
  And for those people who know Brands Hatch, you come around the hairpin, you go around Southbank, then you come up a long left corner, and you come up over a rise.
• 32:00
  And we were doing a speed trap there.
• 32:01
  I was with the Williams guy doing a speed trap.
• 32:04
  And KK came around once and saw us look like that.
• 32:07
  And then he came around a second time and he was winding up.
• 32:09
  And the third time he came around, the car was absolutely sideways in the wet, and one hand off the wheel, and he was waving slowly to us on the side of the road there.
• 32:18
  I mean, it was just wonderful.
• 32:20
  He took me for a ride in the McLaren three-wheeler, the F1 car around the Nürburgring.
• 32:26
  And that was one of the times I realized why they were racing drivers and I was not a racing driver.
• 32:33
  Just an amazing, amazing guy and such a fun guy.
• 32:36
  You know, cigarette going all the time or a cigar these days.
• 32:39
  I think he's given up now, but cigars and, yeah, he was fantastic.
• 32:49
  That's the end of part one of my podcast with former McLaren F1 team member Bob McMurray.
• 32:55
  If you're keen for more, you can fire up part two right now.
• 32:58
  It's in the Rusty's Garage Library and good to go.
• 33:01
  What it was like working with Ayrton Senna to the early days with Lewis Hamilton and his take on the controversial finish to the 2021 World Championship.
• 33:18
  Listener.