Latest / Rusty's Garage / Rob Smedley - Part 2

Transcript

Rob Smedley - Part 2 · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:18
  G'day, it's Rusty here, all set for part two of my podcast with former F1 engineer Rob Smedley.
• 0:24
  Would he ever go back to the GB paddock?
• 0:26
  We'll talk about that in this second part.
• 0:29
  But if you've arrived here and not listened to part one, you are missing some terrific yarns that are really well told by Rob because of his great personality.
• 0:38
  From growing up in the north of England to his early breaks in motorsport after finishing his uni studies, some of those were around the BTCC, in fact, which was arguably at its zenith in that two-litre super-touring era at the time.
• 0:53
  How he got into Formula One and what it was like when he first started and much more.
• 0:58
  We begin part two by chatting about a driver who he'd form a lasting bond with.
• 1:04
  Their memorable radio chats are something fans still talk about long after both stopped working and competing in Formula One.
• 1:15
  Working with Felipe, I can see one of his helmets over Ted's shoulder there as well.
• 1:19
  I mean, that was an amazingly special combination, a partnership, a pairing that you guys formed.
• 1:25
  And it went beyond Ferrari.
• 1:27
  It went to other teams too, didn't it?
• 1:29
  Yeah, it's...
• 1:33
  It did, yeah.
• 1:34
  I mean, I think that we had a, you know, we did have a super relationship.
• 1:39
  We had a relationship that was just very, very natural, you know.
• 1:45
  I think that Formula One is, it is a brutal industry.
• 1:50
  There's no doubt about it.
• 1:51
  It's a brutal industry.
• 1:52
  And I think that, you know, some of the incumbents involved in Formula One at the minute are, you know,
• 1:59
  kind of showing the outside world just how brutal it is.
• 2:02
  They're doing a very good job of, you know, reminding the world how brutal Formula 1 is, like if the world ever needed a reminder.
• 2:13
  But yeah, it is a brutal sport.
• 2:15
  So when you can find people that you really gel with and you know they have your back, that's really important.
• 2:22
  And that's what happened with Felipe and I.
• 2:26
  That was super important to have somebody like that, especially in a team like Ferrari where it is just pressure, pressure, pressure.
• 2:35
  Every day is pressure and you have to live and breathe.
• 2:38
  and stand that pressure to be able to thrive in that environment.
• 2:41
  And I think if you've got, you know, one or two people around you that have you back and understand you and, you know, you're all kind of, you know, headed towards just trying to...
• 2:54
  attain excellence all day every day um then that's super helpful and i guess that's probably why i i lasted so long at ferrari as well um and yeah the relationship with felipe was great you know we when felipe came in uh i don't think it's a secret that it was a one-year deal in 2006 um
• 3:16
  and we were gonna um you know for ferrari were probably gonna um you know retain michael schumacher replacing with uh replace felipe with kimmy raikkonen at the end of 2006 and in fact given the fact that he just did so well in that first year he ended up having one of the longest um careers at ferrari of all time uh
• 3:41
  Yeah, unbelievably, you know, and he was such a good, you know, he was such a good war horse for them.
• 3:47
  Got them lots of points, you know, won them world championships, all the rest of it.
• 3:51
  So it was a really good time that we had at Ferrari.
• 3:55
  And, you know, he deserves everything that he got out of that as well.
• 3:59
  And then, yeah, when I decided that, you know, my kids were getting bigger at that point.
• 4:04
  So we had kids and I decided I want to go back to the UK.
• 4:07
  I'd been at Ferrari for 11 years.
• 4:09
  and there was a few offers on the table, and the one that I really liked, the one that what I saw as the biggest challenge was Williams.
• 4:17
  So Williams looked like a team that, you know, I'd always had a lot of respect.
• 4:20
  I worked for them right at the start of my career, as we talked about, in touring cars.
• 4:26
  I really wanted to...
• 4:27
  I had a massive amount of respect for Frank and for what he'd done, you know, throughout his career.
• 4:33
  So I ended up taking their offer.
• 4:36
  And the little-known fact is that I actually took the offer to go and basically be, you know, head of all of their vehicle performance, which includes all the race engineering, all of the...
• 4:53
  vehicle dynamics, tyre dynamics software, all of that type of stuff.
• 4:56
  I went around all of that.
• 4:58
  It coincided with Pat Simmons going to Williams as well.
• 5:05
  And we kind of signed up together to try to go there and try and help the team.
• 5:13
  And then the little known fact is this, is that Felipe actually signed after me.
• 5:17
  So he signed because I was going there.
• 5:20
  Because one of the things that we wanted to do was have a really strong driver pairing.
• 5:26
  So I spoke with Claire Williams, who was the team principal at the time, or deputy team principal, in fact, and said, right, I think that you really need to speak with Felipe.
• 5:39
  And they did the contract very, very quickly.
• 5:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 5:42
  they did the contract in a couple of weeks.
• 5:43
  It was all done and dusted, and I went there.
• 5:46
  Because he didn't have gardening leave, obviously, he went there, and then obviously to the outside world, it looks like I followed him there, and I'm like, oh, my God, this is so unfair.
• 5:55
  I got you a job.
• 5:56
  You weren't here because of me.
• 6:00
  Classic.
• 6:01
  How much had it changed since you got the window into the F1 side of things when you were there in the touring car era?
• 6:06
  Well, massively, because they were very successful.
• 6:08
  I mean, you know, when I...
• 6:11
  You know, when I was, that was at the end of the 90s, they were just coming out of winning world championships.
• 6:19
  And even in the early 2000s, they were, you know, they were challenging that 2003.
• 6:26
  So just when I'd gone to Ferrari, they were...
• 6:29
  they had the fastest car that year without a doubt.
• 6:32
  They still produced very, very fast cars, but didn't quite manage to win the World Championship.
• 6:38
  Ferrari did.
• 6:40
  So they were a team, they were a formidable team.
• 6:43
  They were a team at the front.
• 6:46
  And essentially, you know, it just went into decline.
• 6:50
  It went into a long period of decline, unfortunately.
• 6:54
  So by the time I got there in 2014, I think the previous three years, they'd been like, you know, 10th, 11th, 10th in the championship, you know, back when there was 12 teams.
• 7:07
  So it was sad, to be honest.
• 7:08
  And I really, you know, I've always had a strong affinity with,
• 7:13
  Williams, in my mind, for whatever reason, whether this is true or not, they're like the British Ferrari, you know, and I wanted to be part of a team that could help them, you know, get back to some kind of former glory.
• 7:25
  And we had, we had a little bit of success in those first years, definitely.
• 7:28
  And I think with more investment, we would have had a lot more, more success.
• 7:35
  Was there a period on your CV there too where you kind of turned poacher gamekeeper?
• 7:40
  Did you go and work?
• 7:40
  You went and worked for the sport too, didn't you?
• 7:43
  What was that like and what was it like being on the other side, so to speak?
• 7:45
  Yeah, it was all right.
• 7:46
  I was never involved in it.
• 7:48
  My main involvement was I was trying to help the Formula One management build a technology department.
• 7:58
  So Ross was there.
• 8:00
  uh you know ross brawn had gone there as managing director um and when i was uh leaving williams uh and i was basically i wouldn't call it retiring but i was going to take a couple of years sabbatical because i'd done it for so long and it'd been so intense um so on the wife uh
• 8:23
  on wife.net somehow Ross got hold of the fact that I was leaving, you know, my wife and Ross's wife are really good mates, and so Gene, Ross's wife, Lucy, my wife, told Gene, Ross's wife that I was leaving, and I said, but don't like...
• 8:43
  tell anybody, will you?
• 8:44
  And of course, like, then Ross found out, Ross come to see me, he said, oh, why don't you come and do a couple of years with, with, with us?
• 8:51
  So that's what I did.
• 8:52
  And, and actually there was a lot of ex-Ferrari people there.
• 8:55
  So Ross was there.
• 8:56
  Um, the guy who was running the, the, the, the technical department at the time, a guy called Roberto Dalla was, uh, you know, very senior engineer at Ferrari.
• 9:05
  Valentino Ferrari all those guys who I knew so I was really comfortable with it and I thought to myself do you know what it's not something that I will do for the rest of my career but definitely I want to have a look at how it works on the other side and help them at the same time you know and I was at the stage of my career where I guess I could
• 9:23
  I had a lot to give them.
• 9:25
  So I went and helped them.
• 9:29
  I was a director there for two, three years.
• 9:33
  And it was good to see how the other side of the...
• 9:37
  of the sport worked because I thought that, you know, I'd been in the team environment for so long.
• 9:43
  I knew that environment inside out.
• 9:45
  But if I wanted to progress and I wanted to do more things in my life, then I wanted to see how all the different aspects of the sport worked because, you know, you never know where I'll end up in the next five, ten years or whatever.
• 9:58
  So it's good to kind of get all of that involved.
• 10:02
  information under my bell.
• 10:04
  I think that's the most cryptic word I've put in.
• 10:10
  Look, that naturally leads us to Global Karting League.
• 10:12
  Tell us about what you are doing here.
• 10:14
  You're giving people that might not necessarily have the ability to get into motorsport started, aren't you?
• 10:20
  Yeah, yeah.
• 10:20
  And it's not about ability.
• 10:22
  You know, my business partner says, you know, talent's everywhere, opportunity isn't.
• 10:26
  And I think that that is very true.
• 10:30
  when it comes to motorsports.
• 10:32
  You know, all my career, I've always been very close to the drivers, but they're all very single demographic.
• 10:40
  And you look at that and start to wonder about it, especially laterally in my career.
• 10:43
  You know, early on, I didn't.
• 10:44
  It was just kind of, you take it for granted.
• 10:46
  laterally you start thinking well why is that you know and then you understand that because to get to formula one is so expensive and then you go down to the grassroots of the sport and you understand that it's you know you know increasingly expensive you're talking about a hundred thousand dollars just to do a season of of national karting you know to do it at the front where you're going to be able to progress and then if you're going to come here in europe
• 11:10
  You can do the European Championships, it's like $250,000.
• 11:12
  In Australian dollars, actually, probably more like $500,000.
• 11:17
  You know, it's absolutely like insane numbers.
• 11:22
  It's just off the charts with how inaccessible it is.
• 11:27
  So I decided that, you know, it's like everything I've ever done.
• 11:31
  I've kind of looked at it and thought, can I make a difference?
• 11:35
  Can we do something?
• 11:35
  How big is the challenge?
• 11:37
  Doesn't matter.
• 11:38
  Let's just get on with it.
• 11:39
  And that's why we felt about this.
• 11:40
  And that's where Global Karting League was born like three years ago, was I was like, right, there's got to be a better way of doing this.
• 11:46
  There's got to be a better way of, you know, giving...
• 11:51
  you know, more, uh, normal families, let's call them, uh, access to outdoor competitive karting.
• 12:00
  And that's where we started.
• 12:01
  So I just, I, I kind of put my own money into it to start off with, uh, invested quite heavily into it.
• 12:08
  Um, um,
• 12:10
  and build the business.
• 12:12
  And I think now we're up and running in the UK.
• 12:17
  It's electric carts, the only differentiator.
• 12:20
  You can't buy your way to success.
• 12:23
  If you're going to have success on the track, it's because you're a good driver.
• 12:27
  Um, and that's, that was, uh, you know, that's been the premise all along.
• 12:32
  We're up and running in the UK, as I said.
• 12:35
  Um, it's, you know, seeing more and more success.
• 12:37
  We're seeing more and more, um, you know, you know, good talented drivers come into it or even, you know, spot good talented drivers.
• 12:46
  We've got an educational aspect to the program.
• 12:48
  We've got a data analytics aspect to the program where we spot and identify the best talent.
• 12:55
  And it's working.
• 12:55
  I've got it to work really well in the UK.
• 12:58
  It's running as a really strong championship, and I'm going to roll it out into different territories as well.
• 13:02
  So this year, we're going to roll out into two places in the States.
• 13:08
  in the United States, and then we want to get it into the States, into Australia, into Asia, into the Middle East, into Africa, into India.
• 13:16
  We'll get it everywhere, and it will become the de facto way to start and to go karting.
• 13:24
  I love it.
• 13:25
  That's tremendous.
• 13:26
  You've retained partnerships or connections with Formula One as a part of this.
• 13:30
  I think, did I see as well Idris Elba is an ambassador and so on.
• 13:34
  I mean, it's had a great – the electric aspect must be resonating too, Rob, is it?
• 13:39
  Yeah, it is, yeah.
• 13:39
  I mean, like, you know, if you look what we're doing – and I didn't start it for this, right?
• 13:43
  You know, when I was kind of sat at home like we all were in 2020 doing nothing –
• 13:50
  with COVID, you know, one of the things, something that started to come back to me that I realized very early on when I started to germinate this idea and put it out there and we would, you know, when we could come out of lockdown a little bit here in the UK, we started to build carts and stuff like that.
• 14:08
  One of the things that I realized was I started because I wanted to get more kids into motorsport, either as drivers or as engineers, you know, just to inspire kids and allow and give access to families.
• 14:23
  What...
• 14:24
  actually happened was people were coming to me and saying oh this is a like diversity and inclusivity play isn't it and I was like uh not really but I guess organically it is right or this is a sustainability player like with the electric carts like is is that what you're trying to do and I was like well I'm not but I guess and that's why we've got so many partnerships now and so many people have like dived in like with two feet to be involved with it because it's a little bit of everything right so it's it's it's about
• 14:53
  kids it's about education it's about opportunity it's about accessibility diversity inclusivity sustainability it's all of those things but it's actually they they are the fabric of they're within the fabric of of of what global karting league is about so you know we didn't turn out we didn't set out to do something twee which was kind of gonna make us look good we turned out to get more kids involved in sport
• 15:18
  And it's got all of these side effects, which is why I know all these different partners are diving in.
• 15:23
  As you say, Idris has been a massive supporter for a long time, and Idris is a business partner.
• 15:28
  He's actually the business partner that coined the phrase, you know, talent is everywhere, opportunity isn't.
• 15:35
  And I think now when we're getting more kids from more diverse backgrounds into our series and seeing that some of those kids are really talented, it's great.
• 15:47
  It's what gets me out of bed on the morning nowadays.
• 15:50
  I love that it's had that reaction, but it's born out of that authenticity that you've spoken about.
• 15:57
  Fast forward, I don't know, call it five years.
• 16:00
  I mean, we'd love to see it down under in Australia.
• 16:02
  I mean, is that the sort of time frame that you would hope that it goes south of the equator, for example?
• 16:07
  I'd hope to have it in Australia before then, Rusty.
• 16:12
  I would hope that, you know, I think we've got these next two years where, you know, I'm going to be hammering out Global Carting League hubs across the United States.
• 16:22
  But then concurrently, I think from middle of next year, I want to start to get into different territories.
• 16:27
  We're actually talking to some people down in Australia already.
• 16:31
  Excellent.
• 16:33
  And, you know, there's enough room out there, you know, with...
• 16:38
  If you go around all of the coastal towns that you've got there, there'll be quite a lot of talent.
• 16:48
  There's quite a lot of room for us to put these around the major cities as well.
• 16:52
  So yeah, I'm definitely talking to some people down there.
• 16:56
  I would love to talk to more and I would love to make it a reality.
• 17:01
  I can't wait to get it into each and every different territory.
• 17:04
  And you guys have got such a strong motorsport heritage down there.
• 17:09
  And there's such a fever now with Formula One that we need to find a way that we can get more families access to actually participate rather than just watching.
• 17:19
  So yeah, I want to get it down there in the next couple of years, definitely.
• 17:32
  If you're enjoying Rob's medley, you might also like a recent episode with West Surrey Racing Team owner Dick Bennetts.
• 17:39
  He ran the great Ayrton Senna on the path to Formula One.
• 17:42
  Dick saw his caring side but also Senna's incredibly driven personality too.
• 17:46
  We had a couple of frosty moments because he sometimes crashed when he didn't have to.
• 17:52
  He wasn't prepared at times to finish second to Martin Brundle.
• 17:57
  You don't have to go back too far in the Rusty's Garage library to find that one.
• 18:02
  I'm looking forward to my feature episode one day.
• 18:05
  Susie Satnav, still patiently I wait.
• 18:08
  Back to Rusty and Rob now.
• 18:11
  Couple to finish here and we'll reflect on Formula One if we can.
• 18:14
  Couple of champagne bottles in the background.
• 18:16
  What is the career high for you from your time in F1?
• 18:19
  What's the key?
• 18:20
  Do you know, people ask me that all the time and I just...
• 18:28
  I really don't know the answer.
• 18:29
  What I can say is I've been so fortunate and so lucky to have had the career and to continue to have a career where I get out of bed and somebody's paying me, myself at the minute, to do my hobby.
• 18:50
  You know, I think that's the career high.
• 18:53
  You know, there's nothing better than that.
• 18:55
  And it's what I say to my kids now and anybody who, like, you know, comes wanting any kind of advice is do something that you love because then, you know, every day is a career high, right?
• 19:08
  You know, even the bad days, you kind of get through them and you think, yeah, I've learned something.
• 19:13
  So it's all career highs, to be honest.
• 19:15
  You know, there is no one single thing that is standout.
• 19:18
  What about the technical innovations?
• 19:22
  Was there an innovation along the way that you are perhaps proudest of or that, you know, you really think, wow, we did that.
• 19:30
  That was big.
• 19:30
  Yeah.
• 19:31
  Then there's tons of that, right?
• 19:33
  So like going right back from, you know, designing to, you know, when I first started designing cars.
• 19:43
  you know, the Peugeot touring car, like being like 21, 22 year old and like taking like, you know, 30% of the weight out of the car and everybody being, wow, this is like quite, you know, an outstanding amount.
• 20:01
  To start, you know, like what I talked about in Jordan when we went to all of the, you know, active everything on the car, you know, traction control, active differential,
• 20:12
  you know, automatic, fully automatic gearboxes, launch control, pit stop, launch control, all of that type of stuff and writing all of that stuff and doing it all in record time with such a small team.
• 20:27
  All of the stuff that we did at Ferrari, you know, we put some really cool stuff on the car in Ferrari, which was so innovative.
• 20:34
  And just, you know, playing a small part in all of the teams that have done all of this.
• 20:38
  It's just been a real honour, you know.
• 20:40
  And I think that's what I love about Formula One and motorsport in general is that it doesn't sleep, right?
• 20:47
  You can't kind of rest on your laurels.
• 20:49
  You do something.
• 20:50
  uh, it's great.
• 20:51
  You kind of, you might have a beer in the bar in the night and then next morning you're at work, um, because you've got to get, you know, something new on the car.
• 20:58
  You've got to think of something new, some new innovation, which is going to drive, um, more lap time, you know, and, and, and give you a relatively faster car than everybody else.
• 21:06
  That's the beauty of Formula One.
• 21:08
  And that's why it's so innovative, right?
• 21:09
  Innovation is part of the, uh, part of the DNA.
• 21:14
  And that's what I bring to my business now, you know, the, and the guys that, uh,
• 21:18
  Worked in Formula One with me.
• 21:21
  We bring all of this, you know, this fail fast culture.
• 21:24
  Let's get it done.
• 21:25
  Like, let's just get on with things.
• 21:28
  Let's, you know, let's innovate.
• 21:30
  Let's not be scared.
• 21:31
  Let's not have, you know, let's have no fear.
• 21:34
  And let's make a difference.
• 21:36
  You made a difference, I think, you guys, too, from a safety perspective after that crash for Felipe in Hungary in 2009.
• 21:43
  So what they have come up with in terms of the top of the visor and stuff like that was, I mean, that must have been a frightening period, Rob, at the same time, was it?
• 21:53
  Rusty, that was definitely the two darkest days of my career were that day with Felipe and then Jules Bianchi in Suzuka in 2014.
• 22:08
  They were really, really difficult, tough days.
• 22:10
  Jules was...
• 22:13
  I was at the stage of my career where I was, I guess, a bit more of an elder statesman at that point, and Jules kind of...
• 22:19
  you know, was a young guy that used to come stay with me in Maranello.
• 22:26
  And, you know, I really just enjoyed being around.
• 22:30
  You know, it was clear that he was going to end up as an official driver with Ferrari.
• 22:37
  So when we lost him on that day in 2014, yeah, it was really difficult.
• 22:41
  But I think from that, what comes from that is the safety innovations, which are so unbelievably important.
• 22:52
  You know, you talk about the halo, you talk about the visor reinforcements, all of the things that saved drivers' life.
• 23:00
  You know, the visor reinforcement kind of just come in and nobody looked at it.
• 23:04
  The halo, oh my Lord, when I look back at all the naysayers and all the people that started to say, oh, but it's not Formula One, it's not open cockpit.
• 23:13
  If you look at, we must have had, we've had genuinely at least one life saved from that.
• 23:20
  I'm probably more like three from the halo.
• 23:24
  So it has been an incredibly important safety innovation in Formula One.
• 23:30
  So, yeah, from these really dark moments, you know, that's the good thing about Formula One.
• 23:36
  We all kind of like hunker down and think about how we're going to, you know, make it safer for the guys who are going out there and putting their lives at risk.
• 23:45
  Yeah, and touch wood, we haven't had a massive accident in Formula One for a long time.
• 23:54
  We had that terrible day with Hube in Spa some years ago, but motorsport is inherently dangerous, but the safer we can make it, the better it is for everybody.
• 24:09
  two to go because I want to let you get back to your family probably can't talk too much about it because it's the subject of a big court case and I know Felipe feels very strongly about crash gate Singapore 2008 um
• 24:20
  how it was handled and ultimately the impact he believes it had on his race and title dream.
• 24:26
  For that briefest of moments, he and the Massa family thought that they had it.
• 24:32
  Lewis passes Timo Glock on the run to the line there in Sao Paulo.
• 24:36
  I mean, that was just an unbelievable set of circumstances.
• 24:39
  What was that rollercoaster of emotions like to ride for you?
• 24:43
  And how do you feel about it all these years on, if you can indeed say that?
• 24:48
  Yeah, yeah, sure, Ken, yeah.
• 24:49
  I mean, you know, when I, you know, at the time, I think that it was such a, you know, at the time it was such a difficult period for us, you know,
• 25:12
  In sport in terms, because it was such a hard-fought World Championship.
• 25:19
  And I think when we got to that race in Brazil, I think we put everything on the line so much that...
• 25:31
  you know, it was, you know, to lose it as we did, I kind of knew that we were going to lose it or I thought that there was such a strong chance that we would lose it or it was such a slim chance that we would win it, let's say.
• 25:43
  So when we got to the point where, you know, we'd finally lost it, it was a bit of a rollercoaster, you know, those final laps.
• 25:52
  I remember, like, the guys, like, pulling me off the pit wall and going, come on, come on, we've won the World Championship.
• 25:57
  And I was like, we haven't, we haven't.
• 25:59
  Like, you know, I'm...
• 26:01
  I was trying to watch the GPS map, and they dragged me backwards off the pit walls.
• 26:06
  And I was like, like, off.
• 26:08
  Like, I'm trying to watch the monitors.
• 26:10
  Like, go away.
• 26:13
  Like, and they dragged me so far back.
• 26:16
  And, like, in Interlagos, if you look down to your right,
• 26:20
  you can see that if you look down to your right, you can see the cars coming up the hill.
• 26:28
  So they dragged me so far back, I could no longer see the monitors, but I was looking down and I thought, right, I'll watch the two cars come up the hill and see which one's in front.
• 26:39
  And as it came up, I could see there was a silver one in front of Glock and I was like, oh, we've lost it.
• 26:43
  So anyway, it was kind of like when you...
• 26:47
  when you keep, you know, to win a world championship or to come close to win a world championship, you've got to kind of keep your wits about you and have no emotion about it all the way through.
• 26:59
  And I think that...
• 27:05
  you know, all of that emotion kind of poured out right at the very end.
• 27:09
  So I kind of took myself away.
• 27:10
  And I never get emotional at work, to be honest.
• 27:14
  But I took myself away.
• 27:15
  And I, yeah, I was, I did do quite a lot of crying for about an hour.
• 27:21
  Like, unconsolably.
• 27:22
  Like, I was just, like, sat out at the back of the garage.
• 27:25
  And, like, not the garage, like, the hospitality bit.
• 27:28
  And I kind of found a bit where there was,
• 27:30
  There was like, you know, I was just enclosed and there was nobody else there.
• 27:33
  And I knew nobody else would hang around there because it was like where they were like throwing all the food slops out and stuff.
• 27:38
  So I just sat around there on my own for a long time.
• 27:41
  It was just upset for, yeah, with myself.
• 27:43
  But then you kind of like come around and it's like, yeah, it's all good.
• 27:46
  Like, it's just a motorist, man.
• 27:47
  Let's just get on with it.
• 27:49
  But, you know, all these years later, you know, you talk about Felipe's...
• 27:55
  You talk about Felipe's case.
• 27:57
  You know, Felipe believes that, you know, he's been very clear about why he's doing it.
• 28:01
  He's doing it because he believes that he wants justice hasn't been served.
• 28:06
  You know, he believes that the way that, you know, people went about it at the time was incorrect and unjust.
• 28:17
  And I think that what he wants is he wants to see...
• 28:22
  you know, at least to be able to have a conversation.
• 28:27
  You know, if I talk to Felipe about it, which I do on occasion, he wants to at least to be able to have a conversation with people and for them to say, yeah, there was like, you know, perhaps, you know, whatever party at whatever point in time didn't behave or into the rules.
• 28:42
  Where that ends up in terms of world championships and rescinded points and suspended races and all the rest of it, I don't know.
• 28:55
  None of us know, but it certainly doesn't seem to be going away.
• 29:02
  It was recently a petition for the court, which has now happened quite recently, I think.
• 29:08
  over the last few weeks.
• 29:10
  So, yeah, I mean, let's see where it goes.
• 29:12
  I do watch it with a lot of interest.
• 29:14
  I watch it with a lot of interest, you know, even as a fan, but, you know, as a friend to Felipe as well.
• 29:21
  So it'll be interesting where this whole thing ends up.
• 29:23
  Formula One had been such an important part of your life.
• 29:26
  You've got your teeth into Global Carding League now, which you're excited about.
• 29:29
  Was it hard to stop F1?
• 29:32
  Do you know what?
• 29:33
  It was absolutely the right time for me.
• 29:37
  It was absolutely the right time to stop and not...
• 29:41
  I'd done it for such a long time.
• 29:42
  I've been lucky that I'd done it for such a long time.
• 29:45
  And I always used to say to people who worked for me, if ever you feel that your heart isn't in this 110%, then you shouldn't be...
• 29:57
  doing it.
• 30:00
  And I was starting to feel like that, you know, I was starting to feel that, you know, I don't want to be, I'd done Formula One for so long, you know, and I'm absolutely cognizant that you can't be in a team that can win every single week.
• 30:14
  But yeah,
• 30:17
  I wanted to be with a team that had the possibility of winning every single week.
• 30:24
  It's hard.
• 30:25
  I don't want to get on the play.
• 30:26
  I don't want to be part of Formula 1 just to be part of Formula 1.
• 30:29
  I decided that what was being set out for me in my career path at that point with the team that I was with...
• 30:37
  you know, where you become like chief technical officer and then after that you become team principal and then you'd probably be team principal at that team for a while and, you know, hopefully you'd do a good job and then you'd become team principal at the bigger team for a while.
• 30:51
  And I thought, yeah, that's all interesting, but I've done all that.
• 30:54
  You know, I've done most of it now and it's going to be more of the same.
• 31:00
  So I'd like to actually go and do something different.
• 31:02
  And this is where we are now.
• 31:03
  So, you know, I'm still very lucky.
• 31:05
  I'm still super fortunate that I still get offers, you know, within Formula One, you know.
• 31:12
  And I never say never, you know, if the offer was absolutely right and, you know...
• 31:19
  It was as part of a team that was committed to winning.
• 31:22
  I'm not saying they can win, but they were committed to winning.
• 31:25
  It was the right position and the right project and all the rest of it.
• 31:28
  I'm not going to say never because things change so quick in this sport.
• 31:33
  But right now, I'm really happy, you know, trying to make a difference at the grassroots.
• 31:37
  And, you know, if I can bring in as our ambitions are...
• 31:41
  We want to reach a million kids over the next five years and get them into motorsport.
• 31:45
  If I can do that on a global basis, then it will just eclipse a hundred times over anything that I ever achieved in Formula One.
• 31:53
  mega to chat with you congrats on everything in f1 and well done on what you're doing at that grassroots level ted go and hang out with your uncle and thank you for being so good while we recorded for an hour today unbelievable mate i wish i could sit still like that for an hour when i was i was your age well done thanks rusty
• 32:18
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 32:22
  Series editor and producer is Thomas Dullard.
• 32:25
  Audio production by Link Kelly.
• 32:28
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• 32:32
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