Latest / Rusty's Garage / Chris Dyer - Part 1

Transcript

Chris Dyer - Part 1 · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:14
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:28
  Imagine being a part of one of the world's best touring car outfits as it entered a dominant phase and then going on to enjoy a similar wave of success with an iconic F1 team in an unforgettable era with one of the all time greats.
• 0:44
  Australia's Chris Dyer did just that, with HRT and Ferrari working with Craig Lowndes, Michael Schumacher and more.
• 0:53
  I tracked Chris down at Neon McLaren, where he is now working on their Formula E program, and it's a new chapter that he's really enjoying.
• 1:02
  As usual, he's keeping his feet on the ground after their recent breakthrough in the Sao Paulo E-Prix, McLaren's first electric race win.
• 1:11
  The squad was basically born out of the former Mercedes Formula E team and they've launched into the trademark papaya colours with respect for the past.
• 1:22
  but also being open to new ways of doing things, especially as Formula E is now racing its third generation car and the sport continues to grow in popularity, both for its clean objectives and its innovative formats and regulations.
• 1:38
  I want to thank McLaren, former HRT boss Jeff Gregg and Greg Murphy for the little bits of advice while prepping for this one.
• 1:46
  The consistent feedback that you get when asking about Chris is what a nice person he is.
• 1:53
  And that absolutely comes through in this conversation.
• 1:56
  He is incredibly thorough in his role.
• 1:59
  He always has been.
• 2:00
  He'll put a strong case forward to try something that invariably works.
• 2:05
  And he has this way of convincing the troops that it's right too.
• 2:09
  As you'll hear, he played a key part in some clever changes at HRT, including the pedibar roll cage mod that went from up behind the driver's head down to the footwell in the rear of the car on the passenger side on an angle.
• 2:24
  He helped Lowndes improve his starts, and he was with Shuey for much of his dominant Ferrari reign.
• 2:31
  Young, aspiring engineers will really enjoy this, and even if that's not your jam, as they say, you will love the insights on working with some great names, like Damon Hill.
• 2:43
  Current world champion Max Verstappen's father, Yoss.
• 2:47
  He can vividly remember a young Max being at the track.
• 2:50
  Chris also talks about basically badgering Ferrari for a job.
• 2:54
  What engineering Kimi Raikkonen was like.
• 2:57
  And he opens up on a difficult call that seemed like the right one at the time with Fernando Alonso.
• 3:03
  It's something in hindsight that he still ponders even now.
• 3:08
  It all began actually with a love of two wheels and what he thought would be an automotive career path, but racing would take over and he pursued it with an inspiring level of quiet commitment and dedication that I reckon all of us could learn from.
• 3:26
  Chris, it is great to get you on the podcast.
• 3:28
  Thank you for talking with us.
• 3:29
  Can we start with a little bit of life and time for our audience?
• 3:32
  If I'm right, you were raised in Bendigo.
• 3:35
  Where did the love of cars and engineering come from?
• 3:38
  Yeah, you're definitely right, Bendigo boy.
• 3:43
  The love of cars actually came first from a love of motorbikes.
• 3:48
  I started off on two wheels when I was very small.
• 3:53
  My father was into motorbikes.
• 3:56
  We always had motorbikes around the house.
• 3:59
  I learned to ride at a pretty young age.
• 4:03
  I competed in observed trials for quite a few years.
• 4:09
  So, yeah, I was always, you know, in the shed, tinkering with the bikes or pulling them apart, putting them back together again.
• 4:16
  And I guess that sort of started me down the engineering route.
• 4:20
  I had it in my head from a very early age that I was going to be an engineer of some sort.
• 4:27
  did my engineering degree and really looked around and thought, well, there isn't much of a motorcycle industry in Australia, so the next best thing, I guess, is four wheels.
• 4:41
  And I always thought, okay, well, I'll get a real job in the automotive industry.
• 4:48
  I guess I generally thought I'd go and get a job with Ford or Holden and that would be it.
• 4:55
  But I...
• 4:56
  Graduated, I think it was a pretty quiet period in the automotive industry and didn't manage to get a job with Ford or Holden, but got a job with a company called Packard CTA.
• 5:11
  We were doing wiring looms for General Motors, for Nissan, and that was kind of the foot in the door to the automotive industry.
• 5:20
  You would ultimately, in joining some dots here to get you to the Holden Racing Team, you would work for Holden Special Vehicles for a time there.
• 5:28
  And you formed, I think, a good friendship with Richard Holway, Krusty, who many people following the podcast will know.
• 5:34
  Can we come to the HSV side of things?
• 5:37
  Did you interview with John Crennan, who did some amazing things with that company?
• 5:41
  He was a great leader for them.
• 5:42
  How did that role with HSV come to be?
• 5:45
  Yeah, it came about quite indirectly.
• 5:47
  So when I was working for Packard CTA, we were working on a project with HSV Engineering.
• 5:57
  So we were doing an export version of the Commodore with a 2.6-litre Opel engine in it that was to be exported to Southeast Asia
• 6:09
  And I was doing all of the wiring for that project.
• 6:13
  So the project was a Holden project, but it was being developed by HSV Engineering.
• 6:21
  And during that project, Packard CTA decided to pull out of Australia.
• 6:28
  So HSV were kind of left a little bit in trouble there.
• 6:36
  And I had the offer to move from Packard to HSV basically to finish that project.
• 6:43
  So that was my foot in the door to HSV.
• 6:48
  And yeah, John Crennan has always been a super supporter of me.
• 6:53
  Both John, Jeff Gretsch and Tom Walkinshaw were really amazing.
• 6:59
  you know, instrumental in my journey from HSV engineering through to Holden Race Team and through to Formula One.
• 7:09
  Now, in doing a bit of homework for this pod, Chris, I did speak to Geoff, and he tells me that you and Krusty, whenever you got...
• 7:17
  a bit of spare time might have been a day off or perhaps your lunch break or whatever you would do anything uh you could to kind of get involved with the race team side of things i mean it was even sort of menial jobs to begin with checking tire depths and all sorts but you wanted you clearly had a passion to pursue the racing side did you
• 7:36
  Yeah, when we were at HSV Engineering, we were literally across the car park from Holden Racing Team.
• 7:44
  And I didn't really have that passion to go four-wheel racing, I guess.
• 7:51
  I was always interested in it, but it never sort of seemed like something that, I guess it never seemed like something that was possible.
• 7:59
  So, it wasn't something that I was really pursuing.
• 8:01
  But I
• 8:02
  Then all of a sudden, when you find a race team on your doorstep, it's like, oh, okay, well, this looks interesting.
• 8:07
  And yeah, it's exactly as Jeff said, we would wander across the car park at the end of the day and, yeah, hung around HRT until they got sick of us and gave us something to do.
• 8:21
  I remember Krusty and I decided, must have been the end of 93, I think, last round of the Touring Car Championships.
• 8:32
  in Orham Park, Krusty and I decided, well, let's go.
• 8:36
  So we jumped in the car on Friday night and drove up to Sydney.
• 8:43
  And I think from memory, we ended up doing lap times for the team.
• 8:49
  And that was kind of the first experience at Trackside.
• 8:54
  And then that grew.
• 8:55
  I think we did Sandown and Bathurst that year just
• 9:01
  just helping out as odd jobs.
• 9:05
  And that led to the opportunity in the end to move across to HRT permanently.
• 9:13
  Jeff tells a good story about that.
• 9:14
  I don't know if you know the full backstory.
• 9:18
  He wanted both of you.
• 9:19
  He wanted both you and Krusty at that stage.
• 9:21
  And he kind of went to John and pleaded to get both of you.
• 9:25
  And I think from John's perspective, it had to stack up.
• 9:28
  It had to be feasible to let both of you go from the HSV side to the racing side.
• 9:33
  And at that point in time, I think they could only justify moving one of you.
• 9:38
  And Jeff talks about it literally coming down to a coin toss.
• 9:43
  and you getting the win in the coin toss at that stage.
• 9:47
  So it was pretty fortuitous in some respects and amazing that it came about that way.
• 9:55
  Yeah, I hadn't heard that story, but it was always an interesting one and never really worked out how it happened, but I was grateful for the chance.
• 10:06
  A couple of different stories.
• 10:07
  Your nickname is Speed.
• 10:09
  Now, is this because you're 100 mile an hour as you go about your work in the workshop, or is it because, as Craig Lowndes tells me, you drive your road cars slow?
• 10:19
  How did it come about?
• 10:20
  LAUGHTER
• 10:22
  Yeah, I think it was definitely, I'll go with Lounsey's side of the story.
• 10:28
  It was definitely handed out with a little bit of irony.
• 10:31
  I think it actually got handed out after I picked up a speeding ticket at some stage and people were so shocked that I'd managed to get a speeding ticket having seen the way that I drive on the road.
• 10:44
  Awesome.
• 10:44
  So you talked about, you know, a passion for two wheels and maybe thinking that a step toward four wheel racing may have been a little, you know, out of reach or a bit of a dream per se.
• 10:56
  But Jeff talks very fondly about you getting in, being first person to arrive, last person to leave.
• 11:02
  You basically immersed yourself in it, didn't you?
• 11:05
  Yeah, it didn't take long for the flame to ignite.
• 11:10
  And, you know, I've always thrown myself at
• 11:13
  whatever I do, you know, 110%.
• 11:16
  Motor racing was no different really.
• 11:21
  And, you know, it was such a great team, such a great atmosphere there at that time that, you know, everybody was super motivated and it was completely infectious.
• 11:33
  So it was easy to get hooked.
• 11:36
  It was a period of change for them too about the way they did things and they embraced some of the innovation that you were significantly involved with.
• 11:45
  Can we talk about a couple of them, Chris, if you don't mind?
• 11:49
  Firstly, you were a big driver of a step forward, perhaps a new level of the data side, weren't you?
• 11:57
  I think the move to PI, Jeff says, was quite a big step and a good step for them at that point.
• 12:03
  Yeah, I think when I arrived at HRT, one of the first things I really got heavily involved in was setting up the data acquisition systems on the cars, which until that point, there hadn't really been anything beyond data logging on the engine side.
• 12:22
  So chassis data logging was all new.
• 12:25
  And that was something that I worked closely with TWR in the UK on.
• 12:33
  They were running the Volvos in the British Touring Car Championship at that time.
• 12:39
  And I think it's fair to say that the level of technology in the British Touring Car Championship was a step ahead of...
• 12:48
  of where we were in Australia at that stage.
• 12:50
  So it was good to have the connections through TWR to be able to try and, you know, maybe jump a few steps forward more quickly than would have otherwise been possible.
• 13:05
  The other one that you played a real part in was a car that I think the team affectionately called Gabriel.
• 13:11
  The opposition called it the Petty Bar car, didn't they?
• 13:15
  A reference to the kind of Rolf Cage modification that the legendary Richard Petty had made in NASCAR.
• 13:21
  Can you describe that for us and give us the story behind its creation?
• 13:26
  It was a success, Chris, a big success, that car, wasn't it?
• 13:29
  I have a lot of fond memories of that car and I still remember the hype around it the first time we rolled it out.
• 13:38
  I think it was at Calder in Melbourne and keeping the thing completely covered up.
• 13:46
  It was more games than anything else.
• 13:51
  But that car...
• 13:53
  It was pretty much the first car that we did in my time at HRT that was kind of clean sheet of paper.
• 14:03
  Up until that point, we'd had cars that kind of dated back to probably VN, the first cars of those new regulations.
• 14:15
  And they were getting updated from VN to VP to the first VRs and
• 14:21
  everything was pretty much carryover.
• 14:24
  So with that first car there, we really started with a clean sheet of paper.
• 14:31
  And yeah, the roll cage was just one of the things that was new about it.
• 14:38
  It wasn't, you know, that thing.
• 14:40
  It was just part of a package.
• 14:43
  But I remember...
• 14:45
  That was an early experience with computer-aided design and we went through a process of finite element analysis on that car to really optimize the roll cage.
• 15:06
  And the pedi bar was just one part of that whole package.
• 15:10
  If you had a look at that roll cage in terms of,
• 15:14
  you know, what was happening under the dashboard and across the firewall and how it was linked in to the front suspension and the rear suspension.
• 15:24
  It was, you know, it was a whole package.
• 15:26
  It wasn't just that pedi bar.
• 15:30
  But the pedi bar didn't stay that long, so we had to take a hacksaw to it at some point fairly quickly.
• 15:38
  So, yeah, it was sort of a little bit of fuss and fun for a while, but pretty soon it disappeared.
• 15:45
  Is that a bit bittersweet, Chris?
• 15:46
  Because in the one sense, I mean, it won the Triple Crown, Lounsey won the title.
• 15:50
  He and Murph partnered so successfully to win Sandown and Bathurst.
• 15:54
  It was an amazing year in that machine.
• 15:56
  And then, as you say, it was outlawed.
• 15:59
  I mean, the car lived on.
• 16:03
  One bar didn't make the car.
• 16:08
  But no, it was great fun, that car.
• 16:12
  I still remember from the bare chassis arriving and spending hours and hours just working on all the tiny details really to put it together.
• 16:27
  When we finally rolled out, I think it was something that the entire team was super proud of.
• 16:33
  And we knew we'd kind of moved the goalposts a little bit and taken a step forward.
• 16:39
  So you'd come from university, you'd had that thirst, that love of engineering, but I guess at this point too you're learning about people management, aren't you?
• 16:49
  I mean you had won over, I know for sure, both George and Dennis at Dencar.
• 16:55
  You'd formed a great partnership with Craig Lowndes.
• 16:59
  people management side must have been quite a learning curve.
• 17:01
  And why did it gel so well?
• 17:03
  Was it just a couple of young blokes, you and Lounsey, that got on so well?
• 17:07
  Why did that partnership flourish?
• 17:12
  Look, I think, and I talked about the atmosphere in the team at that time, you know, HRT had gone through, had such a sort of
• 17:22
  mottled history, I guess, up to that point with, you know, various people coming and going and, you know, operating in a whole bunch of different ways.
• 17:32
  And in that era, and I think a massive part of the credit there goes down to Creno and Jeff, that, you know, the team just was so...
• 17:51
  focused and so aligned and it was just, we were all in it together and everybody was roll the sleeves up, get stuck in.
• 18:02
  We knew what we wanted to do.
• 18:05
  So, it didn't seem like something we had to work at at that stage.
• 18:10
  And it reminds me very much of, I'm sure we'll come to it later, but
• 18:17
  When I went to Ferrari in that kind of tail end of the top Braun Schumacher era, things just came easily.
• 18:30
  And I think it was to do with the atmosphere and the people.
• 18:34
  It didn't seem like we had to make a big effort to build relationships or a big effort to keep everybody on side and to keep everybody motivated.
• 18:46
  It was just everybody was self-motivated.
• 18:49
  Everybody knew what we had to do, where we wanted to go, and we all just got on and did it.
• 18:56
  A couple of other final topics, if we can, to finish off the HRT chapter before we get to Formula One.
• 19:02
  Firstly, was there a little secret, Geoff says, to helping Craig Lowndes improve his starts?
• 19:09
  Did you guys devise a system that helped him get better in that area?
• 19:14
  Yeah, we did.
• 19:15
  Sputnik, I think we called it.
• 19:17
  Did you?
• 19:19
  Yeah.
• 19:20
  No, because it was a mechanical device and it looked a bit like a Soviet-era space station.
• 19:32
  Did it?
• 19:32
  So I think it was called Sputnik, yeah.
• 19:35
  It was down by the driver's knee.
• 19:39
  It was basically giving him a bit of help in...
• 19:44
  Throttle positioning and consistency at the start.
• 19:49
  So it was something that, and I've seen this time and time again, when it comes to start performance and it doesn't matter what sort of race car it's in, you know, the absolute most important thing to be getting great starts is to have a good procedure and to have a very clearly defined procedure and, and,
• 20:12
  a driver that can consistently execute that, that procedure.
• 20:18
  And that allows you then to adapt the procedure over time to, to make improvements.
• 20:26
  Cause if you've got a driver, that's kind of doing a different thing every time, it's really hard to work out what's good, what's bad.
• 20:34
  So when you have a good procedure and good consistency, you can start to improve things and, and,
• 20:40
  Yeah, we had a mechanical device in there that – it was a guide, I guess, that made it a little bit easier for the drivers to be consistent in their start procedure.
• 20:53
  Cool.
• 20:53
  Two thoughts, if we can, on firstly, the legendary Peter Brock, who was around in that period and what that was like.
• 21:01
  I mean, you've been able to work with Schumacher.
• 21:03
  You've been able to work with, you know, been around with Peter Brock was there.
• 21:06
  I mean, they're in their respective spheres, both legends.
• 21:11
  And we talked about Murph there before as well and the part that he played in the Enduros at the end of 96 and being a part of HRT and so on.
• 21:17
  What were both of those guys like to be around and work with?
• 21:20
  Look, you know, it was just an absolute amazing experience to work with Peter.
• 21:29
  I have to confess when I was much younger and I'd spend one weekend every October glued to the television set watching Bathurst, Brockie was the enemy.
• 21:41
  I was always a Ford fan.
• 21:49
  So it was slightly ironic that in the end I got to work with Peter.
• 21:55
  But, you know, I think there are so many superlatives thrown in Brockie's direction that I can't really add to them.
• 22:05
  But, you know, from my personal experience, it was just amazing.
• 22:10
  I mean, such a fantastic person.
• 22:14
  Such a great driver.
• 22:15
  We didn't always see eye to eye on the technical side, I must say.
• 22:22
  We had the odd disagreement and I have a little treasure at home, which is the Bathurst yearbook from 96, the year we won, that the whole team signed for me.
• 22:37
  before I left and Peter signed it with, thanks for the lessons, Peter.
• 22:47
  So, you know, I think he used to listen, but I'm not sure too much of it.
• 22:52
  I'm not sure I convinced him too much about the science behind motor racing, but we had a great time and, you know, I will always treasure that.
• 23:07
  And look, all the drivers there were fantastic.
• 23:11
  Obviously, with Craig, it was that almost once in a lifetime chance, I think, for an engineer like me to really see a young kid from low-budget Formula Ford to bring him into the team and to see him grow and see him develop and then...
• 23:34
  sort of cut him loose and see what happened afterwards.
• 23:37
  So, you know, that was an absolute amazing experience.
• 23:42
  Bizarrely, I, you know, in my head, Craig's still junior, which is what we always used to call him.
• 23:48
  And I kind of look at him now and he's got just about as many grey hairs as I have and he's retired, but he's still junior to me.
• 23:56
  And yeah, Murph was another great character and great person to work with.
• 24:02
  And
• 24:03
  I think he came into the team maybe in a slightly difficult job, I guess, with the hype that was around Craig and the success that Craig was having.
• 24:20
  And Murph just came in and rolled his sleeves up and got on and did the job.
• 24:37
  It wasn't just young engineers HRT embracing the mid-90s.
• 24:41
  They were open to developing young drivers too, a move some saw as risky, but it gave Craig Lounds his big break and he learned a lot alongside the legendary Peter Brock.
• 24:50
  And I remember going into the weekend garden to basically say, cocky little driver, he won't even win a race, let alone a championship and you know, it was sort of, because at that point no team had really put a lot of emphasis on young people or young drivers.
• 25:04
  You can find Craig Lowndes or CL in the Rusty's Garage Library.
• 25:08
  Does that mean I have to start calling it RG now?
• 25:11
  So many acronyms in motorsport, I can't keep up.
• 25:15
  Over to you Rusty.
• 25:17
  At some point here in 96, there is a conversation, something appeals about F1 through TWR, through Arrows and so on.
• 25:27
  And I think you have to have probably a difficult conversation with Jeff, but one that he was fully supportive of, I know.
• 25:33
  And you talked about John Crennan before being a great supporter.
• 25:37
  He really helped with that transition, Chris, didn't he?
• 25:40
  Absolutely.
• 25:41
  Both of them were super, super supportive.
• 25:44
  I think I started, I think I went to Canadian F1 Grand Prix in 95.
• 25:52
  So that was kind of my first time to F1 outside of Australia.
• 25:59
  And after that, I went to the UK and started to – did the rounds of TWR in the UK and started to make some contacts.
• 26:10
  And then it kind of started to look like, well, this might be a possibility.
• 26:14
  And that kind of built up through 96.
• 26:19
  I think I already made the decision and everything was in place fairly early on in 96.
• 26:28
  that I was going to go at the end of the year because I remember driving to Bathurst towards the end of 96 and it came on the radio that Arrows had just signed Damon Hill who was the reigning world champion and I remember that being a bit of a shock.
• 26:45
  It's like, oh, okay, I'm not just going to Arrows, I'm going to work with the reigning world champion.
• 26:51
  The world champion.
• 26:53
  But no, look, Jeff and John were absolutely 100% behind me.
• 27:03
  I never had anything but support from them.
• 27:07
  Crono paid for my airline ticket to fly to the UK to take up the job.
• 27:13
  It was a bit of a hectic weekend because I still remember I finished work at HRT on Friday afternoon.
• 27:19
  which was a really difficult afternoon and evening, I remember.
• 27:24
  And then I drove back home to my parents' place in Bendigo that night and then Saturday morning back down to Tullamarine, got on a plane to the UK, arrived in the UK Sunday afternoon and then went to work at 9 o'clock Monday morning at Arrows in Leefield.
• 27:45
  So it was quite a hectic weekend.
• 27:48
  Amazing.
• 27:49
  You talked about working with Damon Hill there before in 97.
• 27:52
  I think from memory there may have been a podium that year and some points as well.
• 27:56
  What was the opening year of F1 like?
• 27:58
  How eye-opening, how much did you enjoy it, how tough and so on?
• 28:03
  It was an absolute bonkers year.
• 28:07
  It was crazy.
• 28:08
  It was...
• 28:10
  Arrows in that year was full of potential.
• 28:17
  There was...
• 28:19
  Quite a lot of money floating around.
• 28:20
  You know, I remember I was a,
• 28:25
  a data engineer, which is kind of the lowliest trackside engineering job, I guess.
• 28:33
  And we used to fly to the European races in one of Tom's private planes.
• 28:41
  It was a crazy, crazy year.
• 28:44
  Yeah, we nearly, we almost won Hungary with Damon Hill.
• 28:52
  We were leading the race with, I think,
• 28:55
  two laps to go, which would have been absolutely crazy.
• 29:00
  You know, it would have been Arrow's first win, would have been Yamaha's first win, would have been Bridgestone's first win.
• 29:07
  And hydraulic accumulator failure that leaked all the hydraulic fluid out of the thing with two laps to go, which shut down the gearbox
• 29:22
  shut down the throttles because it was hydraulic fly-by-wire, so we had almost no throttle.
• 29:28
  We managed to still limp home in second place, but it was so close to a win.
• 29:36
  It was extremely painful.
• 29:38
  We had, just to add to the distress, we'd worked all night, Saturday night, on that car.
• 29:46
  We'd had a clutch problem.
• 29:49
  It was back in the days when we were changing engines every day.
• 29:52
  None of this three engines for the year.
• 29:56
  It was one engine for Friday, one for Saturday, one for Sunday.
• 30:00
  And we were fitting the race engine Saturday night and we had a problem with the clutch actuation that we couldn't.
• 30:09
  resolve and unfortunately very late in the night we decided to change the hydraulic system for the clutch problem which meant that we put the accumulator on the car that then went on to fail in the race.
• 30:29
  So that was it.
• 30:32
  A doubly painful failure knowing that actually we weren't even meant to run with that hydraulic system.
• 30:38
  We'd only put it on because of another unrelated problem.
• 30:44
  Did you help Craig Lowndes that year too with a little bit of data on the side?
• 30:47
  I think he talks as though you were quite helpful while he was doing F3000.
• 30:52
  I think he's probably flattering me.
• 30:56
  Is he?
• 30:58
  We didn't.
• 30:59
  You know, I saw him a little bit in the paddock during the year.
• 31:05
  You know, we kept in touch, but I don't think there was too much...
• 31:11
  too much data work going on in the background.
• 31:15
  I was way too busy with the other cars.
• 31:27
  That's the end of part one of my feature length podcast with Aussie engineer Chris Dyer.
• 31:32
  I hope you enjoyed the HRT and supercars convo.
• 31:36
  How good were the innovations?
• 31:38
  And while loyal Ford followers mightn't remember those without getting a bit uptight, I reckon the statute of limitations has passed there.
• 31:44
  Enough time's gone, so keep that in perspective.
• 31:47
  The good engineers, like Chris, spend their lives searching for advantage.
• 31:52
  And if they're not exploring that,
• 31:54
  They're not doing their job properly.
• 31:56
  Let's face it, the clever stuff is what adds to the intrigue of our sport.
• 32:01
  I love that.
• 32:02
  Now, we're just getting started on Formula One.
• 32:04
  Don't worry, there is lots more on that subject to come in part two, which is all loaded up in our library for you to enjoy right now.
• 32:12
  from a young Max Verstappen and the good word that his dad put in about Chris with Michael Schumacher.
• 32:19
  What Michael was like to work with at the height of his reign and how Chris felt when he heard about the skiing accident.
• 32:26
  Plus, life now in Formula E and working as technical director for Neon McLaren.
• 32:32
  How he's keeping things in perspective in this ultra-competitive new age form of racing off the back of a recent breakthrough win in Brazil.
• 32:41
  And there's a little revelation at the end about how his love for it all started on one side of the tribal supercars divide, but he'd go on to lend his talents to their arch rivals.
• 32:54
  That's all ahead on this ripper edition of Rusty's Garage.