Latest / Rusty's Garage / Chris Dyer - Part 2

Transcript

Chris Dyer - Part 2 · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:10
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:26
  G'day everybody, Rusty here, all set for part two of my podcast with Chris Dyer.
• 0:30
  It is nice to share his story.
• 0:32
  An Aussie engineer who played a key part in HRT's emergence as a modern day powerhouse in supercars and then went on to work with Michael Schumacher in Formula One.
• 0:43
  at the height of Shuey's reign.
• 0:45
  More on that shortly.
• 0:46
  If you've arrived here, you have missed his journey from growing up in Bendigo to working with Holden Special Vehicles and then through hard yards and persistence, basically breaking into HRT.
• 1:00
  You'll enjoy some of the innovations he helped pioneer and what it was like to work with Craig Lowndes, Peter Brock and more.
• 1:08
  Check that out, part one, if you haven't already, it's in our library for you.
• 1:12
  I want to thank Chris ahead of this second instalment.
• 1:15
  Some of you might remember Abu Dhabi 2010, the F1 title decider where Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso all came into that final round at that spectacular new Middle East setting with a chance of winning it.
• 1:29
  It would have been a first for Mark, a third crown for Fernando and ultimately it became the first of four straight for Seb and Red Bull.
• 1:39
  Now, I was lucky enough to be there on the grid for Channel 10 reporting that weekend.
• 1:43
  I have very vivid memories of it.
• 1:46
  There was a point in the race where Mark pitted, Chris, Fernando and their crew kind of moved to cover.
• 1:52
  It seemed like the obvious and instinctive thing to do, right?
• 1:56
  Much has been said about that moment and what...
• 1:59
  could have been for Fernando and Ferrari since.
• 2:03
  It's probably a hard subject for Chris, but he opens up on it in a way that you may not have heard before.
• 2:10
  I'm very grateful to him for doing that, and I have a new level of respect for that candidness.
• 2:17
  Thank you, mate.
• 2:18
  I was travelling again when we recorded this chat, so I'm in a hotel room.
• 2:23
  He's beaming in from Neon McLaren Formula E headquarters where they are debriefing last weekend's round in Japan and prepping for the next event in Italy.
• 2:32
  More on that soon and how he is thriving in that environment.
• 2:36
  Don't forget to check out their website and the Neon McLaren social media platforms too.
• 2:41
  It's early morning in the UK, night time for me some 15,000 k's away plus.
• 2:48
  We begin this second instalment by reflecting on another driver that he engineered during his early days in the F1 paddock, a driver that they call Yoss the Boss.
• 2:59
  You also got to work with the now world champion Max Verstappen's father, didn't you?
• 3:04
  Yoss Verstappen, was he someone that you worked with along the way?
• 3:07
  Now he always seems like such a tough, uncompromising character, Chris.
• 3:11
  What was he like back in the day then?
• 3:13
  Yeah.
• 3:13
  Yeah, so I was Yoss's race engineer in 2000, which was my last year at Arrows.
• 3:18
  Probably the best year we had at Arrows.
• 3:20
  I think the car that year was quite respectable.
• 3:25
  We had the Renault engine in the back of it.
• 3:28
  And on the back of a couple of difficult years, things were kind of looking up.
• 3:34
  Yoss came into the team.
• 3:37
  And, yeah, I have fond memories of that year.
• 3:39
  Jos was pretty easy to work with, you know, as you might imagine, no nonsense, just said what he thought, just wanted to drive the car.
• 3:53
  So, you know, from an engineer's point of view, that was really easy.
• 4:00
  I remember we did a demonstration at the end of the season at Zandvoort,
• 4:07
  and Jos turned up with his three-year-old son.
• 4:14
  And I've got a photo at home of Max standing in the arrows at that stage.
• 4:22
  And I mean standing because he was in the cockpit standing up, holding the steering wheel with the eyes just seeing over the rim of the cockpit.
• 4:33
  Wow, that is cool.
• 4:34
  And if that doesn't make you feel old, nothing does.
• 4:38
  Can we get to Ferrari now?
• 4:39
  Because lots of people will be interested in that, of course.
• 4:42
  How did the opportunity come about, Chris?
• 4:45
  And can you remember the approach and all of that sort of stuff?
• 4:48
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:50
  I spent four years at Arrows and learnt an amazing amount.
• 4:58
  Even there, I had amazing opportunities within Ferrari.
• 5:02
  Within one year, I'd moved up to race engineering.
• 5:06
  I spent three years race engineering there, learnt a huge amount.
• 5:11
  But it was clear the team was in a little bit of disarray, should I say, and I didn't really feel like there was more opportunities for me there.
• 5:23
  And I started to look around and thought, well, I've done the wrong end of the pit lane.
• 5:28
  I wonder what life's like at the right end of the pit lane.
• 5:33
  And so I wrote – I printed out my CV with a covering letter.
• 5:39
  I stuck it in an envelope.
• 5:41
  I took it to a race weekend with me, and I knew that whenever Ferrari did their pit stop practice, Ross was out in the pit lane.
• 5:52
  So it was literally got my timing right, wandered down the pit lane with the envelope in my pocket, sidled up to Ross –
• 6:02
  handed him the envelope and said, I'd love to come and work for you.
• 6:07
  Give me a call if anything comes up.
• 6:11
  I think Ross was like, didn't really know what to do.
• 6:14
  So took the envelope and off I went.
• 6:20
  And then I basically pestered him.
• 6:23
  So every second race, I'd find the time to wander down the other end of the paddock and
• 6:31
  you know, try and bump into him and just kept, you know, any news, any news, any news.
• 6:38
  And, you know, honestly, I think in the end it was far less hassle for him to give me a job than to put up with me every two weeks.
• 6:50
  So he did.
• 6:52
  But there was a bit of fortunate...
• 6:57
  timing involved in that Michael's performance engineer at that stage was, he wasn't Italian and he wanted to leave Italy and go home.
• 7:06
  So they were going to have a vacancy.
• 7:10
  And obviously with, you know, Michael at that stage was kind of heading towards his first world championship with Ferrari and they
• 7:20
  they wanted to put somebody in that was going to be comfortable with working with Michael and that they felt was going to be able to work at the right level.
• 7:32
  I'd had three years of race engineering under my belt, but I was taking a step backwards effectively to go to Ferrari.
• 7:43
  So to go from a race engineer back to a performance engineer and,
• 7:48
  So I think that was a strong thing in my favour that I'd already had experience at the next level, but I was prepared to step back.
• 7:59
  I think Jos also had put in a good word for me because Jos and Michael got on quite well from their early days at Benetton.
• 8:10
  Benetton, yeah.
• 8:12
  So I think I had Michael on board through nothing more than Jos's,
• 8:18
  Yoss's good words.
• 8:21
  And, yeah, so they had a hole and I, you know, right place, right time, managed to drop into that hole.
• 8:30
  So many things to take away from what you've just spoken about.
• 8:33
  Firstly, let's talk about the nucleus of people, right, from Jean Todd, Ross Braun, Rory Byrne, James Allison.
• 8:39
  I mean, there's just an unbelievable roll call there
• 8:42
  In the same way you reflected with HRT before, that group of people to be around, to draw from, to be a part of, that must have been something special.
• 8:53
  Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 8:54
  I mean, it was, you know, in some ways I was sort of Johnny-come-lately in that, you know, they finally won that first world championship and then I...
• 9:08
  strolled in the door to bask in the glory, if you like.
• 9:13
  So I arrived in a fully formed, fully functioning team.
• 9:19
  You know, it was just great to drop in there and everything worked.
• 9:24
  And, you know, I alluded earlier to that time at HRT where, you know, things just seemed to happen effortlessly because –
• 9:35
  everybody was motivated and aligned and knew what they wanted to do.
• 9:41
  And full credit to Jean and Ross, I think, for creating that
• 9:49
  that environment and that structure and that sense of purpose.
• 9:53
  I've just listened to a podcast in the last few days with a colleague, Tom Clarkson, who does the official F1 podcast, and he was talking with Pat Simmons.
• 10:03
  And Pat talked about how Michael...
• 10:07
  you know, was so personable around the mechanics, around the people in the team.
• 10:12
  He would know family members.
• 10:13
  He would ask about them, how they were and so on.
• 10:15
  And he created, as a result of it, an incredible bond.
• 10:20
  He, you know, whilst he was a tough competitor, I guess, Chris, he had a beautiful side, you know, doesn't he?
• 10:28
  Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
• 10:32
  I went there not really knowing what to expect.
• 10:35
  I'd only seen the public face of Michael.
• 10:41
  And, you know, right from the moment I walked in the door, I guess, it's like, oh, wow, this guy is so different to how he'd come across
• 10:55
  you know, in the press and in the media and all that sort of thing before that point that, yeah, it was just a completely different person to what I imagined and what I expected.
• 11:09
  And no, you're absolutely right with all of the engineers, all of the mechanics, all of the team.
• 11:16
  There was genuine...
• 11:19
  care there it wasn't well i'm going to be nice to you because you can you know you can provide me with something it was that genuine feeling of of you know interest in people where we're we're all part of the same team we're all in this together and we we're going to all look after each other and and do it together
• 11:43
  Title wins in 03 and 04.
• 11:46
  There must be some really fond memories there.
• 11:47
  Can we even tap into F2004?
• 11:50
  I mean, just an unbelievably successful car.
• 11:55
  Michael's fifth straight title with Ferrari.
• 11:58
  I think the sixth in constructor's terms straight for Ferrari.
• 12:02
  His seventh overall.
• 12:04
  I mean, it was just an amazing car and year.
• 12:07
  Yeah, I mean, it seems crazy now.
• 12:11
  I think back to those days where we'd start the season with last year's car and we'd be winning races with last year's car.
• 12:23
  And I think from memory, the F2004, we debuted in Barcelona and that was still back in the days of...
• 12:37
  one hour, 12 lap qualifying.
• 12:40
  And I remember the discussion before qualifying about how much fuel we were going to run in qualifying.
• 12:46
  You know, normally it's, well, you run the amount of fuel to do the laps, but we were like, well, we think we've got a bit of performance in the pocket.
• 12:56
  And yeah, I think we started,
• 13:02
  qualifying with half a tank of fuel or something, knowing that we still had a good shot at pole.
• 13:09
  And I think we got a bit nervous during qualifying.
• 13:12
  We might have taken 10 or 20 kilos out of it, but no, it was incredible, that car.
• 13:18
  But what's a bit interesting for me when I look back on it
• 13:33
  We never had the – it never seemed easy.
• 13:36
  It never seemed like we were cruising.
• 13:39
  It was – every race was hard work.
• 13:45
  Every race we were – there was no knocking off early or resting on the laurels.
• 13:54
  Every weekend you just went to a race.
• 13:58
  It was – doesn't matter what happened before.
• 14:01
  It's a new weekend.
• 14:02
  It's a new challenge.
• 14:04
  And I think that was, again, you know, part of the success of the team that it didn't seem easy at the time.
• 14:10
  It might have looked easy from outside.
• 14:12
  And when you look back on it, it seems like it must have been easy, but it never for a moment felt easy all the way through that year.
• 14:24
  You know, every weekend you were working as hard as you possibly could.
• 14:30
  to get the best out of that car.
• 14:33
  How did you feel about the skiing accident?
• 14:35
  I mean, when that news broke, you know, it stopped the world pretty much and was just incredibly sad to think someone like that had achieved so much that something unrelated to motor racing could do that.
• 14:47
  Yeah, it's – it breaks my heart, honestly.
• 14:54
  It really does and, you know, I –
• 14:59
  he's still, you know, constantly in, in, in my thoughts.
• 15:10
  Um, you know, it's, it's, it's all the time you, you, you keep thinking back to it and, you know, there are so many triggers obviously working in, in, in this, in this industry, um,
• 15:24
  But, yeah, I remember when it first happened and you just think he's going to be okay.
• 15:36
  He'll shrug it off and he'll be back, he'll be back, he'll be back.
• 15:45
  He's not back and he's probably not going to be back.
• 15:48
  Very sad.
• 15:49
  Can we wrap up some stuff around Ferrari with a couple of things?
• 15:53
  You get to work with Kimi Raikkonen.
• 15:54
  He couldn't have been any more different, I guess, to Michael Schumacher.
• 15:58
  Blindingly fast.
• 15:58
  What was he like to work with?
• 16:00
  I had a fantastic time with Kimi.
• 16:07
  I mean, he was another one like Michael, like Jost.
• 16:11
  They were actually...
• 16:12
  really easy to work with because they were so straightforward.
• 16:19
  They were completely honest.
• 16:21
  They, you know, there was no games.
• 16:25
  There was no pointing fingers.
• 16:28
  There was no looking at other people wondering what are they doing?
• 16:32
  Why are they doing that?
• 16:33
  It was always just focused on themselves, focused on the job they were doing.
• 16:40
  focused on the on the job at hand and and you know kimmy was was very similar to michael in that sense it's just you know what's the car doing what do we need to do to make it go faster no it was it was um it was very easy to work with to be honest there was there was um never never any problems
• 17:12
  If you're enjoying this episode with Chris Dyer, you may also enjoy the two partner with Malcolm Mosler, the former technical director at the BAR Formula One team and former chief engineer for Jaguar.
• 17:24
  If you don't score points for two years, you hop off the $10 million distribution, whatever it is that the top 10 teams get.
• 17:32
  So it took us out of that $10 million for that year and the next year.
• 17:36
  So yeah, that exploded clutch.
• 17:37
  The two points that we're sitting on with our laps to go was $20 million cost.
• 17:42
  We don't recommend you let Rusty change your clutch.
• 17:45
  He did that in his teens and found a bolt on the garage floor when he finished.
• 17:49
  Back out the gearbox came.
• 17:51
  Where was the drive to survive crew then?
• 17:53
  This might be a little tricky one to chat about, Chris, but I was in Abu Dhabi in 2010 watching, you know, broadcasting around that event, obviously with Mark Webber being in contention for the title, Sebastian going on to win it and, you know, Fernando very much being in the mix there as well.
• 18:12
  And I'm not a strategist like you.
• 18:13
  I can't, you know, do that in the manner that you can.
• 18:16
  But it just seemed to me like the right call, that you'd have to move to cover Mark because Mark was pitting and so on at that stage.
• 18:23
  Lots has been debriefed in the wake of that.
• 18:26
  All these years on, do you feel the same about, you know, the call that day for Fernando and so on?
• 18:30
  No.
• 18:33
  it's still very painful.
• 18:37
  It's still something that sometimes I think about and mostly it involves shaking of the head and, you know, what the hell were we doing?
• 18:51
  I think it's, you know, absolutely the worst moment of my career, I think.
• 19:00
  And it was...
• 19:03
  what was extremely painful was it was instantly recognizable that, that we'd made a mistake.
• 19:11
  I think the moment he drove out of pit lane, I was like, Oh, you know, what, what, what, what happened?
• 19:22
  What did we do?
• 19:23
  So it, it, you know, it, it was, it was from, you know, 30 seconds from, from,
• 19:30
  thinking it was the right decision to realizing that, that it was absolutely the, the, the wrong decision.
• 19:39
  I dug and dug and dug in, into that decision and, and why me, why we made the decision we did, what fed into that decision and, and where did we, where did we go wrong?
• 19:52
  And, you know, hindsight's, hindsight's a wonderful thing, but, um,
• 20:00
  it was pretty clear that it was a bad call.
• 20:04
  And I think ultimately we were a little bit blinkered in that we had a couple of options on our plate.
• 20:16
  We worked very hard to choose between those options and I think completely missed that there was another option.
• 20:30
  You know, we were, I know Ferrari gets a bit of flack at the moment for their plan A, plan B, plan C, plan D, but we were very focused on the plan A and a plan B.
• 20:47
  And we completely missed at that stage that there was another road, there was a plan C that we could have taken.
• 21:00
  And to be honest, at the time, I remember neither plan A or plan B looked very good because both plans saw us getting stuck behind cars that had already pitted.
• 21:15
  So I think we went for what at the time we thought was the least bad option and we just didn't have the visibility of...
• 21:28
  option which was maybe more of a long game that we missed.
• 21:33
  So no, it was sort of very clear in hindsight, but it wasn't very clear at the time.
• 21:45
  That's a tough question.
• 21:45
  Thank you very much for answering it so deeply there.
• 21:50
  Can we come to what you're doing now?
• 21:52
  In charting your career here, between that period, there was a stint with BMW Group in DTM.
• 21:58
  They must have been amazing cars.
• 21:59
  You returned to Formula One with Renault and Alpine.
• 22:03
  These days, you are with McLaren.
• 22:06
  You are heavily involved as their technical director on the Formula E program.
• 22:11
  Tell me about how excited you are about that.
• 22:12
  Are you enjoying it and so on?
• 22:14
  Yeah, no, I'm really enjoying it.
• 22:17
  I'm enjoying being part of a small team again.
• 22:23
  We're not quite as small as HRT were, but it's back at that kind of level compared to being in a thousand plus Formula One team.
• 22:37
  So it's great to be part of a small team again.
• 22:42
  Formula E is a really interesting challenge.
• 22:46
  I'm personally quite motivated in terms of electric cars and that being the sort of future of the wider automotive industry.
• 23:04
  And that's something that made me,
• 23:07
  start to look outside of Formula One when Formula E started to, you know, became clear that it was getting stronger and was becoming a more serious championship.
• 23:20
  So I was definitely attracted to the electric side of things.
• 23:26
  And now that I'm here, it's a really interesting technical challenge
• 23:34
  with the nature of the circuits, there are always new challenges every week.
• 23:42
  And then in terms of car development and team development, there's loads of interesting stuff to do, even though it's a little bit different.
• 23:52
  You know, we're not...
• 23:54
  We're not designing cars as such, but most of our work, I guess, is in the software side.
• 24:07
  So that's a really fast-paced area of development.
• 24:12
  So that keeps us all on our toes.
• 24:17
  You've always enjoyed that look into the window of innovation.
• 24:21
  That's been clear in this conversation, right?
• 24:23
  Are some of the things that you're seeing in that paddock, in this sport, in Formula E, going to make, you know, really significant differences, do you think, around some of the electric cars that we're already seeing on the road but in the years to come?
• 24:37
  I'd like to say yes, but I think the reality is that...
• 24:47
  It's happening in Formula 1 a bit as well, but in Formula E, we run under a cost cap and part of the ethos in Formula E is homologated cars, common components, and they're all things that benefit the sport in terms of making sure that we put on a great show
• 25:17
  making sure that the racing is as close as possible, the racing is entertaining, making sure that more than many other forms of motorsport, the drivers make a difference.
• 25:32
  So all those things are great for the motor racing side of the sport.
• 25:40
  Where that holds us back a bit is on the innovation side.
• 25:45
  Because we don't have the freedom under the technical regulations really to do really cutting edge things.
• 26:02
  You know, there's a little bit of it in sort of motor design and inverter design and that sort of thing.
• 26:12
  But the bigger picture of the whole car is, you know, it's not quite there.
• 26:19
  So for us, it's, you know, much more about software development.
• 26:23
  You know, as an engineer, you always want to have more freedom and –
• 26:30
  but you also have to temper that with, well, ultimately we're in the entertainment business and ultimately we have to put on a good show because if we don't put on a good show and we don't deliver a product, none of us have jobs.
• 26:45
  So we have to temper our engineering enthusiasm a little.
• 26:50
  A little, a little.
• 26:52
  Okay, a couple of the finish here.
• 26:53
  You've just returned literally from the Tokyo E-Pre.
• 26:55
  Misano, I think, is next.
• 26:57
  The Gen 3 car has been very much the focus of this year, having been unveiled whenever it was, I think, May last year.
• 27:04
  How are you finding the car?
• 27:05
  How competitive is the 2024 series and so on?
• 27:09
  Super competitive.
• 27:10
  I mean, we've been on a hell of a roller coaster in the last couple of weeks with a win in Sao Paulo.
• 27:21
  And then, shall we say, not a win in Tokyo.
• 27:25
  Tokyo.
• 27:28
  But that is a demonstration of how tight things are.
• 27:31
  You know, if you look at the gaps we face in qualifying, it's extremely tight.
• 27:38
  Every car on the grid just about has the potential to be on the front row of the grid.
• 27:45
  So, no, super, super competitive.
• 27:47
  Yeah.
• 27:48
  I think we've, as Neil McLaren, we've probably taken a step forward from last year in our competitiveness, but we've –
• 28:05
  you know, we've still got a lot of work to do to be consistently at the front end of the grid.
• 28:11
  We get a lot of people that listen to this pod that would aspire perhaps one day, Chris, to do what you, you know, you're doing now and the wonderful career path you've,
• 28:21
  had, what kind of advice would you give to them?
• 28:24
  I would imagine when you started out at uni after growing up in Bendigo all those years ago, there probably wasn't like a Formula SAE or one of those sort of projects back then, was there?
• 28:33
  So, you know, what kind of advice would you give to someone aspiring to having a career like yours?
• 28:39
  Yeah, I think first and foremost for me, I'm
• 28:51
  skills so you know i i i need to see people that that really understand at the the sort of nuts and bolts level not even the nuts and bolts level but but you know what what makes a racing car go around the corner and and and what makes a racing car fast so i think that that depth of of
• 29:17
  Theoretical knowledge is super important.
• 29:20
  You know, race teams over time are getting bigger.
• 29:26
  The depth of understanding in the industry is getting deeper all the time.
• 29:31
  So we're really looking for people with a really strong, solid technical understanding of, you know,
• 29:40
  Why does a softer front spring do this to the car handling or how does the aero affect the performance of the car?
• 29:50
  What's going on between this piece of rubber and this piece of tarmac?
• 29:54
  So I think it's important to have that depth and I think things like Formula Student give people the chance to really dig into those deeper questions in the university environment.
• 30:11
  And then it's, you know, it's a matter of getting out there and getting experience.
• 30:16
  And, you know, most of the time we're taking on people that have some level of experience, whether it's, you know, people that have done Formula Student, people that have done Weekend Warrior type stuff, which is where I guess I started in, you know, the volunteering process.
• 30:40
  I think the Supercars Championship in Australia now is at an amazing level.
• 30:46
  And looking at the engineering in the teams over there, that's great experience for anybody that wants to venture beyond the shores.
• 31:01
  Awesome.
• 31:01
  It's been great.
• 31:02
  You've kindly given us an hour of your time on what is a very busy day for you at McLaren.
• 31:07
  It must be super cool to be a part of that broader group.
• 31:10
  Congrats on everything that you've done, Chris, be it on this side of the equator or where you are now as we're talking to you.
• 31:17
  And we know that you've still got lots more great stuff to come.
• 31:21
  So thank you very much for coming on the podcast today.
• 31:23
  Thank you.
• 31:24
  It's been enjoyable.
• 31:25
  Thank you.
• 31:33
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 31:37
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• 31:41
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• 31:43
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• 31:48
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