Latest / Rusty's Garage / Rob Smedley - Part 1

Transcript

Rob Smedley - 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.
• 0:21
  I'm a journalist.
• 0:27
  When I first ventured into podcasting, people said to me, oh, you'll run out of guests pretty quick.
• 0:31
  I've come to realise that there's countless different stories in racing and automotive, and most of them are worth sharing.
• 0:37
  Not all great champions make good storytellers, and not all storytellers can become champions.
• 0:43
  Today's episode is another reminder that with the right commitment, you can make a successful career in motorsport that doesn't require competitive driving or riding, even if that bug is what got us addicted in the first place.
• 0:57
  If you follow Formula One, you'll remember that great partnership between Rob Smedley and Felipe Massa at Ferrari and Williams.
• 1:05
  Felipe, baby, stay cool.
• 1:06
  We're bringing you the white visor.
• 1:07
  Stay cool.
• 1:08
  Race win, 10 points.
• 1:10
  Hardest race as well.
• 1:11
  Good boy.
• 1:12
  I'm very, very proud of you.
• 1:14
  And you, sunshine, well done.
• 1:15
  Well done.
• 1:16
  Four position, fastest lap, and the race win.
• 1:20
  Job done.
• 1:21
  Job done.
• 1:22
  Ha, ha, ha.
• 1:25
  Rob's experience goes beyond those teams in the F1 paddock.
• 1:29
  After he wrapped up some impressive university degrees, he gained some early experience around the British Touring Car Championship during that insanely popular super touring chapter, which saw some of the world's best manufacturers and teams building cutting edge touring cars.
• 1:46
  It was an awesome era and he had some influence there.
• 1:50
  You'll appreciate he's got a bit of character too.
• 1:52
  Rob's radio chats during the GPs live on years later as TikTok and YouTube gold.
• 1:59
  Truly Raikkonen, Hamilton, Kovalainen, Alonso, who is the daddy of Brazil?
• 2:05
  And you'll also hear what he's up to now in karting, with a mission to make it more accessible than ever before, especially to those with talent that might ordinarily not get the opportunity.
• 2:17
  It's also fit for the future with some good partners, and it's electric.
• 2:23
  Search Global Karting League when you finish listening to this for more info.
• 2:27
  This is a two-parter and we cover lots of things, including Felipe's frightening crash at Hungary in 2009 and the subsequent change in helmet safety.
• 2:37
  And we'll also talk a little about just missing out on the title in 2008.
• 2:42
  which, as you know, is currently back in the headlines.
• 2:45
  Now, you may hear an extra voice early on in this.
• 2:48
  Rob's nephew, Ted, from West Australia is visiting, and he sat quietly with his uncle as we recorded this chat, gripped as I was by some of the cool things that Rob Smedley has done and maybe inspired to one day follow a similar path.
• 3:04
  I hope you enjoyed this one.
• 3:05
  I sure did.
• 3:08
  Hey Rob, welcome.
• 3:10
  This is an audio experience for my listeners, but you have a little bit of Aussie flavour that's crept through here with a family member from WA that's come to hang out with you in the UK.
• 3:20
  Tell us about that firstly.
• 3:21
  Yeah, this is my little nephew who is Ted Jones and he is across visiting us at the house.
• 3:32
  He's been here for the last three weeks.
• 3:34
  And where are you from, Ted?
• 3:36
  I'm from Perth in Scarborough.
• 3:39
  There you go.
• 3:39
  Nice.
• 3:40
  We're talking with Rob about motor racing.
• 3:42
  Do you like motor racing?
• 3:44
  Yeah.
• 3:44
  Is it a thing?
• 3:45
  Do you?
• 3:46
  Yeah.
• 3:46
  What do you follow?
• 3:47
  I like Formula One.
• 3:49
  Excellent.
• 3:49
  Well, hopefully one day, we're going to talk to Rob a bit about his Formula One career here and how it all started.
• 3:54
  Hopefully one day you'll be in Albert Park or Singapore or some of the places I used to see him back in the day.
• 4:00
  That would be quite cool.
• 4:01
  Do you want to drive or do you want to engineer like he did?
• 4:04
  Probably...
• 4:06
  Oh, I don't know.
• 4:07
  Probably engineer.
• 4:09
  Good for you.
• 4:10
  All right, Rob and I are going to have a little conversation here.
• 4:12
  Thank you for being a part of it.
• 4:13
  We're going to talk a bit about his career, okay?
• 4:17
  Here we go.
• 4:17
  Brilliant.
• 4:19
  Now, if I've done my homework right, I think you grew up around Normandy in Middlesbrough there.
• 4:25
  So for people that don't know that in our part of the world, what are we talking, Rob, about 250 mile north, northwest of London?
• 4:32
  Where did the love of engineering come from?
• 4:35
  And was there kind of posters of cars and bikes as a little kid?
• 4:39
  What about the love of racing and automotive and so on?
• 4:43
  Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a town, yeah, it's whatever, like 250 miles, 300 north of London, or the area where we are now, Oxfordshire, which is like the heart of, you know, this is what we call like Motorsport Valley.
• 4:59
  So certainly from that town, there wasn't many, there wasn't a great deal of interest in Formula One or motorsports in general.
• 5:09
  It was my dad who was really interested in Formula One.
• 5:15
  I was more interested in football, soccer.
• 5:19
  I had no interest whatsoever in Formula One.
• 5:22
  And one year, so it was 1988, and I was about Ted's age, and he asked me if I wanted to go to the British Grand Prix.
• 5:35
  so I didn't really want to go, if I'm being honest.
• 5:38
  I had no interest whatsoever.
• 5:41
  But anyway, I went along, and I was just blown away by it.
• 5:46
  It was just absolutely visceral, like looking at the cars.
• 5:49
  You remember the McLaren of that year with Aiton Senna driving it?
• 5:54
  Sure do.
• 5:56
  And all the other, like, just...
• 5:59
  all the aspects of Formula 1 just absolutely blew me away.
• 6:03
  I remember seeing the cars for the first time.
• 6:05
  We ducked through the grandstand at Woodco at Silverstone.
• 6:10
  I ducked through the grandstand there.
• 6:14
  and got out onto the catchment fence.
• 6:17
  And the first car that come past was Senna's McLaren.
• 6:22
  And this thing come past with this screaming V10 in the back of it, and I was just like, oh my Lord, this is absolutely incredible.
• 6:31
  heaven yeah yeah yeah and then i said to my dad i want to get close to the cars like where are the cars like how can i like see the cars and like he had no idea he'd watched it on tv we had no idea what we were doing so we kind of like snuck across into them into the center section of the of the circuit we didn't have the right passes or the right tickets or anything like that but we kind of just like darted across the track
• 6:53
  when all the action had stopped.
• 6:55
  And then we meandered and found our way to the Formula One paddock.
• 6:59
  We jumped over the fence into the Formula One paddock.
• 7:05
  And then actually we were in the pit lane and I was hanging around and we obviously looked like...
• 7:11
  two tourists, right, who shouldn't be there.
• 7:14
  And this security guy come up to me, well, come up to my dad.
• 7:17
  I mean, I was only like 10 size.
• 7:19
  And he said, oh, you two shouldn't be here, should you?
• 7:21
  And just at that, this guy from the Leighton House team, we stood outside.
• 7:25
  I didn't know what it was at the time, but it was the Leighton House march team, right?
• 7:29
  And this mechanic comes out and he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're my guests.
• 7:32
  They're with me.
• 7:34
  Just saw us, took pity on us.
• 7:37
  And the security guy, oh, OK, fine.
• 7:39
  So we went into the garage and I got close to the car.
• 7:41
  And my dad was profusely thanking this guy for not getting us arrested or for saving us from being arrested.
• 7:49
  And I got close to the cars and I just thought, oh my God, this is what I want to do.
• 7:53
  You know, on my days, this is something like these are like the perfect combination of art, engineering.
• 8:00
  They're just beautiful.
• 8:01
  I didn't really know anything about engineering, right?
• 8:04
  I was 10, 11 years old, but I knew that I wanted to work with Formula One cars.
• 8:10
  And that was it.
• 8:11
  I just set off studying at school.
• 8:13
  I asked around what I should study.
• 8:15
  I studied, I got half-decent grades, I guess you would call it.
• 8:21
  You know, did all the normal things, maths, physics, computer science, that type of stuff, mechanical engineering at college.
• 8:28
  And then fairly soon after that, got a job, well, straight out of college, in fact, got a job in motorsports and then Formula One.
• 8:35
  I was pretty lucky to be doing what, you know, people pay me to do my hobby.
• 8:41
  So it's not a bad position to be in.
• 8:44
  Can you tell me, was there anything racing orientated when you did those university studies and, you know, the various degrees that you've just rattled off there?
• 8:52
  And then there's a master's in mechanical engineering, for example.
• 8:54
  Did you have a bit of racing flavour as a part of that?
• 8:58
  No, not really.
• 8:59
  I mean, I think when you look back, there was nothing in my academic course.
• 9:05
  You know, like now you can do like, there's all these really good courses like motorsport engineering, which you can do at university.
• 9:12
  You couldn't do that then.
• 9:15
  And don't forget, Formula One was very much like a cottage industry.
• 9:19
  My first job at the Stewart Grand Prix team, there was like 50 of us.
• 9:25
  There'd be more than 50 people in the canteen now in a Formula One team.
• 9:31
  So it's changed a lot.
• 9:33
  So I guess that the universities weren't really pushing people towards careers in Formula One because it was so niche and so small.
• 9:42
  But what I did do was I got a job.
• 9:47
  So I kind of did what I still suggest to young guys to do now, you know, when they send me letters.
• 9:54
  I always say, yeah, go and get a degree, that's important, because that's kind of your ticket to the dance.
• 9:59
  But you've got to do something else as well.
• 10:03
  So I was a go-kart mechanic.
• 10:06
  So I used to mechanic on go-karts from the age of about 12, 13, mainly because people paid me to do it, and I couldn't believe that anyone would pay you to do this.
• 10:18
  I was like, yeah, I'm going to keep doing it.
• 10:21
  I used to mechanic on the British Rally Championships when I was about 12, 13, 14, that type of age.
• 10:30
  um, and do all sorts of stuff like that.
• 10:33
  So, so when I got to university, um, in the summer holidays, every summer holiday, I used to go and work for, um, a guy called Adrian Raynard.
• 10:44
  So Raynard back in the day used to produce Formula Three cars, Formula 3000 cars.
• 10:49
  Then they started to do, um, Indy cars, very successful manufacturer, um, based in Bista in Oxfordshire.
• 10:57
  Um, so during my summer holidays, uh,
• 11:00
  whilst everybody was off doing spring break and all of that type of stuff.
• 11:04
  I used to be, I used to work for Raynard Racing Cars, designing cars, you know, taking them to the track, working in the wind tunnel, in the model shop, all sorts of stuff.
• 11:17
  Just having what I consider to be a great deal of fun.
• 11:21
  And I think that was what stood me in really good stead when I finally came out of university because I'd got like,
• 11:27
  this like wealth of experience by just getting involved and doing stuff.
• 11:31
  Malcolm Oslop has been on the podcast.
• 11:34
  Brilliant.
• 11:35
  So he's been a guest of ours along the way.
• 11:37
  So can we join a couple of dots there?
• 11:39
  Because you've rattled off some great things in that portion of your career that you talked about.
• 11:45
  There is a little stint, I think, am I right in saying, with Pillbeam Racing Designs 2 that gave you a bit of a British Touring Car Championship flavour too.
• 11:53
  Is that correct?
• 11:53
  I mean, you did a bit of stuff around Peugeot in the late 90s there.
• 11:57
  And then there was time with Williams on its British Touring Car Championship program too.
• 12:01
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:02
  And I think that, you know, so it was such a good grounding.
• 12:06
  When I left university, my first job was with Pilbim Racing Designs.
• 12:15
  And Pilbim at the time had contracts.
• 12:17
  The major contract that it had was for the Peugeot touring car.
• 12:22
  And back then, there were super touring cars, right?
• 12:24
  When we're talking about mid-90s.
• 12:27
  You know, the touring car teams were almost as big as the small Formula One teams at that point.
• 12:34
  Certainly Williams was, and it had the budget to match it.
• 12:37
  So it was a really good place to kind of cut your teeth.
• 12:40
  And Mike Pilbeam, the guy who owned the company, was an ex-BRM Formula One engineer.
• 12:46
  So he was the chief designer at BRM Formula One back in the day.
• 12:50
  And then he'd started his own company, like a design consultancy.
• 12:55
  So I worked for Mike for like two and a bit years.
• 13:00
  And I'm eternally grateful to him because he was such a good engineer.
• 13:07
  you know, very, very bright engineer, very, very clever engineer, very, very, uh, ingenious in his approach.
• 13:14
  So I worked with him, um, in my first job and actually I picked up so much about design, about, uh, structural calculations, you know, aerodynamic basics, suspension, kinematics, vehicle dynamics, all of the things that are super important.
• 13:33
  And I still use today, right?
• 13:35
  I still use all of that basic stuff today.
• 13:37
  And then we deployed that on the British touring car.
• 13:41
  Pretty soon after that, I went to the Williams touring car team, which was the big team at the time, right?
• 13:47
  They were wearing everything with Alan Menuh and Jason Plato.
• 13:50
  Menuh.
• 13:52
  and that was the place to be.
• 13:54
  We had an enormous budget, it was run basically alongside the Formula One team, so I was already learning about Formula One.
• 14:04
  Yeah, and it was just a great place to cut your teeth.
• 14:06
  You kind of got on and did everything, you did a little bit of everything.
• 14:11
  It wasn't the...
• 14:13
  You know, kind of like when I first started in Formula One as well, like you got to experience everything, not through like any kind of super employee, like wellbeing scheme or training scheme.
• 14:29
  It was just that there wasn't enough people.
• 14:31
  So you had to do everything.
• 14:33
  And I loved it.
• 14:34
  You know, it was definitely, it was for a young guy that didn't need to sleep a lot and was single and, you know, no family or anything like that.
• 14:42
  It was brilliant.
• 14:43
  Just work.
• 14:44
  Awesome.
• 14:45
  Behind you and Ted are some great memories from your time in Formula One.
• 14:49
  You mentioned Stuart Grand Prix before.
• 14:53
  There's a period with Jordan as well.
• 14:55
  Can you tell us about how that opportunity came about, what you did with them?
• 14:59
  And was that kind of the real serious acceleration into the time of your career that was so focused around F1?
• 15:09
  Yeah, I think so.
• 15:10
  I think, you know, the stuff...
• 15:13
  So I had...
• 15:15
  When I went to Jordan, I was actually doing Formula 3000
• 15:20
  And the driver, my driver, was Fernando Alonso, in fact.
• 15:26
  What was he like back then?
• 15:28
  Very, very fast.
• 15:29
  Unbelievably fast.
• 15:31
  I mean, I can remember the first ever test that we did.
• 15:36
  And I was like the junior race engineer, right?
• 15:39
  So, like, the chief engineer was a guy called Chris Murphy, who was the ex-chief designer of Lotus Formula One.
• 15:47
  Um, so I got kind of like what, uh, so Chris, Chris's driver, Chris had got his driver already like sorted for the year.
• 15:55
  And then we were looking for the second driver all the way up to like about two months before the first race.
• 16:01
  Uh, so we went down to Barcelona to do a test.
• 16:04
  Um, and I can't remember that we had like three days of testing and three different drivers.
• 16:09
  And on the third day, this young kid
• 16:11
  called Fernando Alonso turned up, like 17 at the time, couldn't speak a word of English, had a translator with him, and he had never driven anything bigger than...
• 16:23
  So I think he was go-kart world champion.
• 16:26
  I think he was go-kart world champion.
• 16:27
  Then he'd gone straight into Formula Nissan, if you remember Formula Nissan that used to run in Spain, like a little Opel Wheeler Formula.
• 16:38
  And then he jumped straight into Formula 3000.
• 16:40
  And this kid was like just unbelievable.
• 16:46
  Like I think I'd had like two, and I won't name them, but like two, like you put them pretty much in the category of no hopers the previous two days.
• 16:55
  This kid gets in the car.
• 16:58
  In the other car, like our official driver, if you like, was like kind of pounded out the lap times over three days.
• 17:05
  Fernando gets in on scrub tyres, never having sat in a Formula 3000 car before, and he's like a tenth slower than him.
• 17:13
  And then the team manager come over and went, what have you done to the car?
• 17:15
  Have you taken the fuel out of it?
• 17:16
  Have you taken the ballast off it?
• 17:18
  I was like, I haven't done anything for the car.
• 17:21
  And then he then gets in.
• 17:24
  So he said, well, let's try with a new set of tyres.
• 17:27
  So we put a new set of tyres on and he went about a second and a half quicker than the guy who was official driver, second year in Formula 3000 and had been there for three days.
• 17:37
  And the team manager was hanging over the pit wall, telling him to slow down because he thought he was going to crash.
• 17:42
  And we did crash a couple of times, actually, in testing.
• 17:44
  But, yeah, he turned out to be...
• 17:47
  He was dominating Formula 3000 by the end of it at, like, 18 years old.
• 17:51
  So he was very impressive then.
• 17:54
  And then...
• 17:56
  Sorry, go on.
• 17:57
  Sorry, keep going.
• 17:57
  No, no, you keep going.
• 17:58
  I was going to tell you about Williams.
• 18:00
  So what happened because of that?
• 18:01
  So we had a really good year with Fernando.
• 18:03
  And then Williams... Not Williams, sorry, Jordan.
• 18:08
  They just got in touch with me out of the blue.
• 18:10
  I was at the Hungara Ring.
• 18:12
  And I didn't really have a, you know, I was just enjoying myself.
• 18:15
  I wasn't really thinking that much about Formula One.
• 18:18
  You know, I was just kind of happy to that someone was paying me to do my hobby.
• 18:24
  So I kind of, yeah, the technical director at the time got in touch with me and said, would I go and have a chat with him in Budapest?
• 18:39
  So I went to have a chat with him.
• 18:41
  They offered me a job.
• 18:43
  I was supposed to...
• 18:44
  I started as the...
• 18:47
  So I left, that was in 2000, and it was actually the end of 1999.
• 18:53
  And then I started as the test team second data engineer.
• 19:00
  So you couldn't get any more lowly title that they wanted to give me, you know what I mean, to tell them where I was.
• 19:05
  And then I think it was through a case of everybody leaving or something like that, but within like six months, I was like Giancarlo Fisichella's race engineer.
• 19:14
  uh unlike i've done like about eight steps of the hierarchy in about six months it was like every month they give me like a promotion i didn't get any more money by the way i was talking with eddie jordan about this on a podcast quite recently so he kept my wages the same but i got about eight promotions in about six in less than six months um and had no idea what i was doing absolutely blagging it all the way through
• 19:39
  But there you go.
• 19:41
  And that was it.
• 19:42
  And that was where I really started in Formula One.
• 19:44
  And we had some good times.
• 19:45
  I mean, I learned a lot there.
• 19:47
  Still a small team, you know, like the whole vehicle dynamics, race engineering department, there was four of us.
• 19:53
  In 2000, when we rewrote all of the, like the active code, there was basically four of us that did everything.
• 20:01
  like all the software, like all the embedded software.
• 20:03
  So you had to learn how to write embedded software.
• 20:06
  You had to learn how to write software.
• 20:08
  I had to learn aerodynamics, like everything.
• 20:12
  We just did everything together.
• 20:13
  Didn't sleep.
• 20:14
  There was like four young guys, like all about my age.
• 20:19
  all with no responsibility other than to Eddie Jordan, also Eddie Thor.
• 20:23
  Yeah, it was good.
• 20:26
  I mean, it was good times.
• 20:29
  I learned a lot, and I'm forever grateful that I got into Formula One at that time, because I think when you get into it now as a young engineer, it's much more difficult.
• 20:38
  Eddie's a great character.
• 20:39
  So, I mean, it's tremendous that you bring him up there.
• 20:43
  Can we talk a little bit about Giancarlo Fisichella?
• 20:45
  Because he was an early guest on Rusty's Garage.
• 20:48
  He's one of those guys who's in the record books as a winner, Rob.
• 20:54
  But I mean, it just gets so hard when you get to the pointy end of the game, doesn't it?
• 20:57
  Not everybody can be a world champion.
• 21:00
  Yeah, it is brutal.
• 21:01
  And I think that with Giancarlo, at least, I mean, he was unbelievably quick, like very, very quick and a very, very, you know, he had such a good feel for the car.
• 21:15
  He was a driver that immediately...
• 21:17
  you could see you know he had a he had a really good feel um not always uh you know there were there were times when when he wasn't happy with the car he couldn't get the most out of it so if you take a driver like fernando that we were talking about fernando will always get 10 tenths out the car um
• 21:39
  Giancarlo would get 10 tenths out of the car, and more at times.
• 21:43
  He could be faster than drivers like Fernando, but he had to be comfortable.
• 21:47
  If he was a little bit uncomfortable in the car, it was much more difficult for him.
• 21:52
  When we gave him a car that was a little bit too much oversteer, he wouldn't have been as comfortable.
• 21:59
  But a really good driver, and a really nice guy as well.
• 22:02
  We got on really well together.
• 22:04
  I was very young in my career at that point, so he kind of tolerated me rather than...
• 22:09
  You know, I gave him anything back in return.
• 22:14
  But then I think by the end of the second year that we had together, you know, we really had some good times there as well.
• 22:21
  I think we won a, I can't remember what year that was, but we won a race in Brazil.
• 22:27
  And that was a really good, you know, that was kind of like proper, like race engineer driver trust.
• 22:35
  because I've still got the audio now of us arguing under the safety car, because I'm telling him, I think you should pit, because I think these tyres will go all the way.
• 22:44
  The IT guys back in the day, they recorded it for me.
• 22:47
  I was saying, you've got to pit, it's going to go all the way.
• 22:50
  And he was saying, yeah, this is never going to work.
• 22:53
  We're never going to get to the end of Grand Prix on a set of tyres.
• 22:56
  There's no way that this is going to work.
• 22:57
  I don't want to do it.
• 22:58
  I'm not going to do it.
• 22:59
  I'm not doing it.
• 23:00
  I'm not.
• 23:00
  And he was like, all right, I'm in the pit lane.
• 23:02
  I'm doing it.
• 23:03
  But he said, but it's your fault if it goes wrong.
• 23:05
  I was like, yeah, whatever.
• 23:06
  But I think that's like the beauty of youth, right?
• 23:08
  When you're in your mid-20s, you can kind of make decisions and have that level of confidence.
• 23:14
  So, yeah, we won that race.
• 23:17
  And we had some really good results together as well.
• 23:21
  And he was just, he's an incredible guy.
• 23:23
  You know, he's one of the, he's almost, you know, I've said this to him on many occasions, he's almost too nice for Formula One.
• 23:29
  You know, his demeanor and his manner is almost too nice.
• 23:35
  You know, you've got to be pretty ruthless to survive this business.
• 23:48
  Getting a break in F1 isn't easy but Rob showed through hard work that it can be done.
• 23:53
  Many people who followed the likable Brazilian Max Wilson in Supercars don't realize he also had a brief stint in F1 working in a testing role with the legendary team.
• 24:03
  And I was like, man, two years ago, I was at the go-kart trial.
• 24:07
  Now I'm sitting on that one.
• 24:08
  I'm talking to Frank Williams, Patrick Henn.
• 24:11
  That was really overwhelming to me.
• 24:13
  That actually wasn't good for me.
• 24:14
  I got to, you know, so many things that got me to emotion, which isn't good when you're driving a car or anything.
• 24:23
  A bit overwhelming or something, Max, do you feel?
• 24:25
  Too overwhelming, I would say.
• 24:28
  Don't worry Max, Rusty is overwhelmed every time he hears my awesome sat nav announcements too.
• 24:34
  Keep at it Rusty.
• 24:36
  You'll get there one day.
• 24:37
  Check out the Max Wilson episode in the garage library.
• 24:41
  Now it's back to Rob Smedley.
• 24:44
  Your radio stuff is well known by lots of people that follow the podcast.
• 24:48
  Did that come kind of naturally to you?
• 24:50
  Was it just you being you always?
• 24:52
  And, you know, you've just described one incident there with Giancarlo.
• 24:57
  And there's others that people immediately will think of with Felipe Massa, for example.
• 25:01
  Tell us about that.
• 25:02
  And because that kind of becomes everything Rob does, a bit of coach and straight talker and so on.
• 25:08
  Yeah, I mean, that's right.
• 25:10
  I mean, my...
• 25:12
  The radio... Don't forget when I first started, Rusty, we didn't broadcast the radio, so they only started to broadcast snippets of it when I'd been doing it for quite a few years.
• 25:23
  So for me...
• 25:25
  You know, it was always something very natural.
• 25:27
  It was something that you kind of, you know, you're having a conversation with a colleague at work and it's a private conversation, you know.
• 25:35
  Nobody's listening in and so you can just kind of say what you want.
• 25:40
  So there's a...
• 25:42
  Decent story with that, actually, because my kids sent me something quite recently.
• 25:47
  You know, they're of the TikTok and the Instagram general, all that nonsense.
• 25:52
  And they sent me, like, a TikTok video of, like, all my greatest hits, I think someone had, like, titled it, of, like, all these sweary...
• 26:00
  At least it's where we made messages.
• 26:02
  And, like, it had, like, you know, 100,000 likes or something, like, so people obviously weren't.
• 26:08
  But it was, you know, the radio for me was always just very natural.
• 26:12
  And you're right, it was times when...
• 26:14
  It's like working with any colleague under pressure, right?
• 26:16
  Sometimes you've got to, like...
• 26:18
  tell them which way is north.
• 26:19
  Sometimes you've got to put your arm around them and say, look, you know, we're going to get through this.
• 26:23
  I think we need to do this, this and this.
• 26:25
  So it was always very natural for me.
• 26:27
  And it was always, I found it actually like mortifying when they started to broadcast it as well.
• 26:34
  Like I really, really disliked it.
• 26:36
  And I still cringe now because it's kind of like, you know, in my mind, I'm having a private conversation with somebody.
• 26:44
  with, you know, sometimes quite colourful language.
• 26:48
  And then that gets broadcast to the rest of the office, right?
• 26:50
  And so look what Rob was talking to.
• 26:52
  You know, Rob was at the coffee machine with his colleagues saying this, and it gets broadcast with all the colourful language in it.
• 26:59
  But yeah, there's some good ones that come out of it.
• 27:01
  People have them as their ringtones, you know.
• 27:02
  That's what I find funny as well.
• 27:05
  You know, like Felipe Baby and like Fernando's faster than you and all this nonsense.
• 27:13
  Sometimes I've been in public places before, very quietly, like, you know, nobody would know I was there.
• 27:19
  And a phone's gone off and it's the ringtone on the phone.
• 27:26
  Rob, were there mentors during this period for you?
• 27:29
  I mean, you're a young bloke, you're hands-on, you know, when you were talking about the Jordan example and so on.
• 27:35
  Were there people, maybe it was Eddie, maybe it was others that you were able to draw from as you went through that rapid kind of learning curve?
• 27:42
  Yeah, I think so.
• 27:43
  I think I always had...
• 27:45
  I was very lucky, I would say, and I think that's all it is.
• 27:50
  I don't think it's anything to do with me or my personality or anything, but I was always very lucky that people...
• 27:56
  were kind enough to take me under their wing.
• 28:01
  And if I think about all the people that did that during my career, so I talked about Mike Pilbin when I first started.
• 28:08
  Mike ran the company, but he always gave me a lot of his time.
• 28:13
  And then when I was at Jordan, there was Gary Anderson.
• 28:16
  And Gary was... Gary's a character in himself.
• 28:19
  He's not a character to put his arm around you.
• 28:24
  He'll put his arm around you if he wants to physically hurt you.
• 28:27
  That's when Gary puts his arm around you.
• 28:29
  So you definitely never want any physical contact with Gary.
• 28:33
  But he was a brilliant and pragmatic engineer.
• 28:38
  And I got on with Gary really, really well.
• 28:40
  We just kind of clicked and got each other.
• 28:43
  Eddie as well.
• 28:44
  Eddie was always like kind of picked me out and like helped me and in his own way.
• 28:51
  I mean, Eddie is like, and I said this in a recent podcast, I'll say again, Eddie is like off the charts mad.
• 28:57
  You know what I mean?
• 28:57
  He's off the charts crazy with like, how are you?
• 29:02
  But he was always very good with me.
• 29:04
  He always, like, kind of took me under his wing and, like, helped me.
• 29:07
  And then, like, then when I ended up at Ferrari, you know, I had, like, Jean Todd there.
• 29:13
  Jean Todd, for some reason, like, took it upon himself to mentor me.
• 29:18
  You know, I think, like, I kind of, like, when I, when I,
• 29:21
  I'd been at Jordan for four years.
• 29:24
  So you can imagine I was like quite a rough diamond, if you like.
• 29:27
  I don't want to call it diamond, but it's just rough, right?
• 29:30
  But Jean took it on himself to kind of smooth all those edges off and turn me into, I suppose, like a manager, which is what I became when I was at Ferrari.
• 29:44
  And Ross Braun the same, you know, Ross Braun did that and, you know, Ross became like my F1 dad, F1 uncle, if you like.
• 29:54
  You know, he was such a great guy to be around, such a great guy to learn from and all of these people were so gracious to allow me to learn from them as well.
• 30:02
  And I think that's what, if I can do anything, you know, for young guys now in Formula One, it's to pay that favour back, right?
• 30:10
  To kind of say, here's all the mistakes you're going to learn, but it's all right, and here's how we're going to get through it.
• 30:15
  And I try and do that now.
• 30:17
  You know, I've done it in Formula One.
• 30:19
  I try to do it now in my businesses.
• 30:21
  So, yeah, I've been...
• 30:23
  Very, very lucky to have had all of these unbelievable mentors all the way through my career.
• 30:29
  And without a doubt, it's what's given me the career that I've had.
• 30:34
  Ferrari is a huge thing on the CV, a dream for many people.
• 30:39
  How did that opportunity come about?
• 30:41
  Were you kind of badgering them?
• 30:43
  Were they approaching you?
• 30:44
  How did you get a foot in the door there?
• 30:46
  And did that require, you know, they're pretty passionate about you being in Italy, being around the Scuderia and being a part of it.
• 30:52
  Did you live in Italy?
• 30:53
  And what was that life like at that time?
• 30:56
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 30:58
  We lived in Italy.
• 30:59
  We were completely integrated into it.
• 31:03
  You know, it was something that we decided very early on was that, you know, I would, or from the outset, really, that we wanted to live there.
• 31:14
  I was just married at the time.
• 31:16
  We didn't have any kids.
• 31:18
  So, but we decided that we would move there lock, stock and barrel.
• 31:22
  We didn't want to do this thing where, you know, my wife Lucy would live back in England and I would travel between.
• 31:31
  you know, we wanted to get completely integrated and get completely integrated with the local community as well.
• 31:35
  I think that's so important that you're, you know, Ferrari is the national team, right?
• 31:43
  And you have such a responsibility when you work there, not only to the team and the brand, but to the nation.
• 31:50
  And it's important that you kind of try and integrate yourself with the nation and be at one with them.
• 31:55
  So I think that, you know, I really enjoyed that.
• 31:58
  I mean, how did I end up there?
• 32:02
  No, I didn't badger them at all, in fact.
• 32:04
  In fact, at the end of 2002, when I'd been at Jordan for a few years, so I think, I can't remember what the reason was, but they contacted me.
• 32:22
  Hang on, let me go back.
• 32:24
  I do know what the story is.
• 32:26
  So when Giancarlo was leaving...
• 32:30
  So Giancarlo Fisichella was, because he'd had such a good time, he was leaving to go to Sauber and he actually did very well at Sauber as well.
• 32:37
  And when he was leaving, he did a press release and it was the usual press release with platitudes to say, you know, thanks very much to my incumbent team.
• 32:47
  I'm really grateful for the opportunity I've had.
• 32:50
  Thanks to Eddie Jordan.
• 32:52
  You know, I'm really looking forward now to this opportunity with Peter Sauber and Anand.
• 32:56
  And then he wrote something which I had no idea about until this opportunity come about, because I didn't used to read anything like that back in the day, which was very genuine, very authentic and very heartfelt.
• 33:10
  And he said,
• 33:11
  You know, I've had a great time at Jordan, but the one person that I really would like to thank is somebody you've never heard of, but you will hear of a lot in the future, is a young up-and-coming race engineer who was a major part of my success at Jordan.
• 33:27
  And I had no idea that he'd done this.
• 33:29
  It was such a nice thing to do.
• 33:31
  Um, and because of that, uh, John Todd read that and John Todd got in touch with Ross Braun and said, um, you better go, you better speak with this kid.
• 33:41
  Um, because, um, he might be like good for us.
• 33:45
  So they actually contacted me.
• 33:47
  Um, and then we, uh, had a bit of a discussion, went backwards and forwards and that's how I ended up there.
• 33:54
  So I, uh, yeah.
• 33:56
  I ended up going to Ferrari because they contacted me.
• 33:58
  So actually, I've been so fortunate with lots of different things in my career.
• 34:06
  But the main thing that I've been fortunate with, we talked about the mentors, we talked about Ferrari and all the rest of it, is I've never had to write a CV since I was about 16.
• 34:15
  Because if I did write a CV, I doubt I would have got many jobs.
• 34:19
  So I just blagged my way into all of these different positions.
• 34:27
  That's the end of part one of my podcast with respected motorsport engineer Rob Smedley, but we are not done yet.
• 34:36
  Jump back to the library when you're ready and enjoy part two.
• 34:39
  There's a strong focus on Formula One in that second part.
• 34:43
  Cool stories from living in Italy and working for Ferrari to a bit of a revelation on Felipe Massa's move to Williams and how all that came about.
• 34:54
  working with the sport instead of being immersed in a team, and the new project that is consuming him in a good way.
• 35:01
  How, as the name suggests, he intends to take the electric Global Karting League worldwide, and how it can give those who ordinarily might find it hard to get a break in motorsport a start, a chance to experience the game that we all love so much.
• 35:18
  Plus, some thoughts on Felipe Massa's title fight in 2008...
• 35:22
  which continues to this day, and the life-threatening crash in Hungary in 2009 and how it changed helmet safety.
• 35:30
  That's all ahead here on Rusty's Garage.