Latest / Rusty's Garage / James Allen (Part 2)

Transcript

James Allen (Part 2) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:19
  G'day, it's Rusty here, all set for part two of my podcast with respected motorsport broadcaster, writer turned media and tech company executive, James Allen.
• 0:30
  More on that new role and the future in a moment.
• 0:33
  If you've landed on the grid here for part two and you've missed out on race one or part one, head back to the garage library now and give it a listen from the influence of family at Le Mans.
• 0:45
  to riding bikes with Barry Sheen.
• 0:47
  And he shares some personal experiences, behind-the-scenes style moments, with some of the greats, the all-time greats, like Nigel Mansell, the late Murray Walker, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher and more.
• 0:59
  You'll be hanging on every word.
• 1:02
  We begin part two with his relatively new business card, a global destination for motorsport news, views and content.
• 1:15
  What I do now, I built a business up that was in parallel to still doing broadcasting through the sort of 2010s.
• 1:25
  I built a business up which was doing digital content.
• 1:28
  So again, storytelling.
• 1:29
  But it was doing storytelling for brands that are involved in the sport.
• 1:33
  So I worked with Shell.
• 1:34
  I worked with Tag Heuer.
• 1:35
  I worked with Heineken.
• 1:38
  I worked with UBS, a sponsor of the series and also of Mercedes.
• 1:43
  and helping them to activate what they do as a sponsorship through content in the early days of social media and that kind of thing.
• 1:50
  And it was really interesting, really enjoyable.
• 1:51
  Again, it was just a different format.
• 1:53
  I think I'm always looking for fresh challenges.
• 1:56
  I've done pretty much everything I wanted to do in broadcasting,
• 1:59
  I had four years working with BBC on the radio because I'd never done any radio, amazingly.
• 2:04
  And I wanted to see if I could master that as a medium, and I really enjoyed that.
• 2:08
  Obviously, very much enjoyed working with you and Varel and the team.
• 2:11
  That's in.
• 2:13
  Network 10, great, great years, really enjoyed that.
• 2:16
  Yeah.
• 2:16
  So, and through all of that period, that's basically what I was doing in parallel with that, was running this business.
• 2:23
  And then an American company called Motorsport Network
• 2:26
  was was started with a vision to create a multilingual digital platform so 15 languages around the world and be um kind of be the kind of convening power if you like across the motorsport world and then they bought the autosport assets you mentioned earlier on autosport magazine and things like the autosport awards which is the oscars of motorsport we just had it uh
• 2:47
  last month with the lots of star names in the room.
• 2:51
  And then there's a big show here in the UK.
• 2:53
  It's the largest kind of racing car show, which happens in January every year, 95,000 people coming.
• 3:00
  So all of that.
• 3:01
  So, and basically the owner just said, we're building something here.
• 3:05
  Do you fancy being part of it?
• 3:08
  Bring your company in and work with us on it.
• 3:10
  And I just thought, you know what?
• 3:11
  I've done all the things that I wanted to do in the space that I was in.
• 3:15
  I always like to have a fresh challenge.
• 3:17
  And so, yeah, I joined.
• 3:18
  And so I'm the president of My Sport Network, which is not the same as the CEO.
• 3:23
  We have a CEO who's the former CEO of the World Rally Championship, Oliver Siesler.
• 3:27
  So he's the CEO.
• 3:29
  He's responsible for the, you know, the...
• 3:31
  the company and all of its revenues and its costs and all the rest of it.
• 3:36
  And I work with him and other people in the senior management team, you know, working on the strategic side of it, working on the relationships we have with the big racing series.
• 3:44
  We've just launched, I've just come back actually from St. Petersburg IndyCar race.
• 3:50
  Together with Mark Miles, the CEO of IndyCar, we launched the global IndyCar fan survey.
• 3:56
  which was basically 53,000 plus fans in 147 countries on our platforms.
• 4:01
  And we were digging into what they think about IndyCar, what they think about the rules, who's the most popular driver, who's the most popular team, what would they like to change, etc., etc.
• 4:11
  And we've done a similar exercise.
• 4:13
  I have managed a similar exercise with Formula One, with Stefano Domenicali last autumn.
• 4:18
  So we did that during September.
• 4:20
  And then we had the press conference at the US Grand Prix in Austin, where we released the findings.
• 4:25
  So, yeah.
• 4:26
  No two days are the same, Rusty.
• 4:27
  I mean, they really aren't.
• 4:28
  I do so many different things.
• 4:29
  It's such an interesting and diverse business.
• 4:32
  And I enjoy it.
• 4:33
  It's good as well, because it means I don't have to travel as much as I did.
• 4:37
  Although my boys are now 20 and just about to be 18.
• 4:43
  So they're doing their thing anyway.
• 4:45
  It's just nice to not be traveling as much and to have a different kind of challenge in my life.
• 4:50
  So I enjoy it.
• 4:52
  Was the traffic around what we spoke about before, about the controversial end to the 2021 championship, the fallout that's happened since then, have they been some of the biggest clicked things that you've had so far?
• 5:07
  Absolutely.
• 5:08
  And all the signs are that as we go into the new season, that there'll be similar levels of interest to see how is this next chapter going to play out.
• 5:18
  First of all, with these new rules, the new cars, who's going to have the advantage?
• 5:24
  What's going to happen over the course of a series?
• 5:26
  It's a long championship, 23 races.
• 5:30
  And I hope people can follow the thread of it.
• 5:32
  That's a lot to commit to time-wise, isn't it, to...
• 5:36
  for people to watch that many.
• 5:37
  But then again, I suppose if you follow football, like I'm a big passionate Liverpool football club fan and we're having a great season and they play 60 games and I somehow managed to follow that.
• 5:45
  I don't watch all of them, but I certainly will watch at least half of them, I would think, and probably...
• 5:51
  10 or a dozen of them in person.
• 5:52
  So, yeah, I guess it's probably the same.
• 5:55
  It's just quite a big commitment, isn't it, to follow Grand Prix.
• 5:58
  So hopefully people will do that.
• 6:00
  But for sure, what we see as well, Rusty, I'm sure you're seeing it too, is the effect of a few seasons now of Netflix's Drive to Survive.
• 6:08
  Because what that has done
• 6:10
  has opened up the funnel to bring in new people who'd never really thought about motor racing or Formula One at all, and particularly females and younger people.
• 6:21
  And they find it compelling.
• 6:22
  In fact, only yesterday, a lady who's an old friend of my wife's was sending me WhatsApp messages saying, you know, I'm just really into this and I really want to come to a Grand Prix.
• 6:32
  And I'm like, fine, come with me at Silverstone on the...
• 6:35
  in july and uh and uh and we'll show you around and and you know i can't do that for everybody but uh but you know i'm it just there's no way someone like her would have been remotely interested before but that's brought her in and then with the younger generations it's clear that they then think what is this this is great who is dan ricardo this
• 6:52
  This kid's cool.
• 6:52
  Look at him.
• 6:53
  He's got a tats.
• 6:53
  He's funny.
• 6:54
  You know, this Lando Norris guy, this Max Verstappen guy, him and Hamilton, they really hate each other.
• 6:58
  This is fascinating.
• 6:59
  And then the cast of characters around, you know, Toto Wolff and Gunter Steiner, Christian Horner and all, they're just totally wrapped up in it.
• 7:06
  Then they find this fantastic social media and digital media output that's been generated by the teams, by the drivers themselves.
• 7:14
  by the brands around it, by Formula One themselves, which was not happening when Bernie was running the sport.
• 7:21
  He hated all that stuff.
• 7:23
  And Liberty Media just opened that all up at just the right time.
• 7:26
  And it's a masterpiece, the way they've done it.
• 7:28
  And everybody else in every other series around the world just...
• 7:31
  puts their hands up in admiration for the way that they've just created this massive funnel of new fans into the sport.
• 7:37
  So it's good for us because they also then find our platforms and find out, you know, we've got very authoritative, independent journalism.
• 7:45
  You know, if you want to know about what's going on in the Barcelona test or this week's Bahrain test, you know, the place to come is motorsport.com or autosport.com and everything you need is there.
• 7:56
  And so of course the traffic has gone up hugely.
• 8:00
  So to underscore your point, I now have teenage daughters.
• 8:03
  One of them may have been very young when you perhaps met her, but Georgie and Stella are addicted, addicted to drive to survive, want to come to the races.
• 8:12
  And it's for all of the reasons you just mentioned.
• 8:15
  They follow, you know, I mean, they watched the McLaren launch with Dan and Lando.
• 8:20
  They watched it all online.
• 8:21
  They wanted to see the new car and what it was like.
• 8:23
  That kind of leads me, James, to the future.
• 8:26
  And, and,
• 8:27
  As a part of what you're doing here now, there is a significant investment in time and whatever else on the gaming side.
• 8:36
  How important do you see that in parallel with what's happening with the real racing and just in terms of the future and keeping that connection with these youngsters?
• 8:44
  I think you've really hit on it there, Rusty.
• 8:48
  It's critical.
• 8:49
  And one of the things that Formula One and IndyCar
• 8:54
  were most pleasantly surprised to see in the surveys that we did with them that I mentioned earlier on, was the crossover between their audiences, particularly their under 35 audiences, and gamers.
• 9:09
  When I say that 63% of those audiences in Formula 1 identify as gamers, and the same with IndyCar, you know, under 24s, you're in the high 60% of that audience.
• 9:22
  are gaming at least 90 minutes every week.
• 9:26
  That's the average, that's the average amount of time per week they're spending during driving games.
• 9:32
  Right.
• 9:33
  And so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that, um, you know,
• 9:37
  The pandemic has obviously opened that up.
• 9:40
  When there couldn't be real racing, there was eSports.
• 9:42
  And we were at the heart of a lot of that with our motorsport games business.
• 9:46
  And we ran the Le Mans 24 virtual, which was the biggest eSports race has ever been.
• 9:51
  200 drivers.
• 9:52
  I think it was in...
• 9:54
  50-something countries with 176 different sim driving rigs.
• 9:58
  Can you imagine the complexity of that?
• 10:01
  And Gerard Neveu, who was formerly the guy who used to run the World Endurance Championship in the Mont 24 hours, he was the CEO of that series for the FIA for 10 years.
• 10:10
  He heads esports for us now.
• 10:12
  That's how serious it is.
• 10:13
  You've got a guy on that level.
• 10:14
  who is running, and he basically managed the Le Mans 24 virtual the last two years.
• 10:20
  Max Verstappen, you know, racing in it.
• 10:22
  Max Verstappen's never going to race the real Le Mans while he's a front-line Formula 1 driver, but he can do this, land over races, you know.
• 10:29
  And that's what's wonderful is, I think, the blurring of the boundaries.
• 10:32
  The fact that you can have gamers,
• 10:34
  and Formula One drivers and touring car drivers and all sorts of other F2 drivers and Le Mans drivers all racing together in one event.
• 10:46
  And the Formula One virtual Grand Prix with the Grand Prix drivers themselves competing were hugely successful.
• 10:51
  So, yeah.
• 10:52
  Basically, I mean, not everybody's going to become a gamer, of course not, but it is absolutely fundamental to the future of motorsport that the parallel world of gaming and esports is growing.
• 11:05
  And it is another funnel for people that get into it and then it brings them into the real sport.
• 11:11
  So if you want to look at it, the pipeline.
• 11:15
  of new interest to the sport has never been stronger, in my opinion.
• 11:19
  And it's not just coming from one place.
• 11:21
  It's not just coming from drive to survive.
• 11:23
  It's coming from all these other things.
• 11:24
  So the sport is in really, really robust health.
• 11:28
  Have we got it right in your opinion in terms of the shape of the new cars, how green they are?
• 11:33
  I know that's another element of what you focus on in your role as well.
• 11:38
  And that's hugely important to that generation, James.
• 11:41
  So at heart, you and I have that purest view, that love of what your dad did when you were younger and so on.
• 11:48
  But at the same time, we need to trigger that in those younger people who are very environmentally aware, a lot more than you and I were at the same age.
• 11:56
  and so on.
• 11:56
  I think the new cars have that futuristic look that will appeal to that generation and so on.
• 12:02
  There are some elements there on the real side of the racing that will also cement that.
• 12:07
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 12:08
  I think, you know, you've got that and you've also got sort of, we need to make the sport more diverse.
• 12:11
  You know, Lewis Hamilton's pushing very hard for that as well.
• 12:14
  We need more females.
• 12:15
  We need more people from different ethnic backgrounds and stuff and really empower the regions of the world to sort of be able to put forward drivers and talents that can,
• 12:25
  can really diversify the sport.
• 12:28
  There's a lot of work to do there.
• 12:29
  But yes, to your point, I mean, I strongly believe that hybrid engines, internal combustion hybrid engines with 100% sustainable fuels, which is a huge project now that's going on,
• 12:43
  and which Formula One is at the vanguard of really, is a fantastic way for the future.
• 12:47
  You know, if you can take the two billion or whatever it is, cars that are on the road at the moment, and find a way of putting fuel into them that doesn't have any emissions, that to me looks better than relying on everybody driving around in electric cars, that A, need the electricity be generated somewhere by something, and B,
• 13:05
  And B, how do you dispose of the batteries?
• 13:07
  And C, look at the problems that come from getting the materials to make the battery.
• 13:13
  So, of course, it's not going to be one thing or another.
• 13:16
  It's going to be a combination of things because not everybody will have an electric car.
• 13:20
  But I do think governments are a bit...
• 13:22
  kind of myopic on this and they just, they know they've got to do something.
• 13:25
  Everyone's racing to net zero and all the rest of it, which of course is really, really, really important.
• 13:31
  And motorsport has to be at the very heart of that.
• 13:35
  It's always been an incubator for new technologies, whether it's disc brakes or safety belts or deformable crash structures.
• 13:41
  So many things that are on everybody's road cars came from motorsport and all sorts of technology in the engines and things like that.
• 13:50
  And here again, we have to do that and are doing it.
• 13:53
  You know, Formula E and those series are pioneering high density electric motors.
• 13:57
  And they've gone from needing two cars to do a race to having not only one car to do a race, but going faster.
• 14:03
  And then the next generation of cars is going to be even faster again.
• 14:07
  You know, that's range anxiety being solved right in front of your eyes through competition.
• 14:12
  But for me, the big challenge I think now for Formula One is the sustainable fuels piece.
• 14:18
  And if we can...
• 14:19
  make a compelling argument that there is a way to do this, then I think Formula One will have played a massive, massive role in helping society get itself about in a more sustainable way.
• 14:32
  And there's not enough communication on that for me coming out of the sport.
• 14:36
  They need to do a lot, lot, lot more.
• 14:39
  As a part of that, or perhaps even an extension of that, you enjoy talking to leaders in the paddock and beyond.
• 14:47
  Maybe it's some of those partners that you've talked about working with over the years and so on, and sharing that.
• 14:54
  You've done that in a video podcast series.
• 14:56
  That's been fantastic, James.
• 14:58
  Have you found that project to be in your role now and what you do and just generally for the betterment of the sport to be a good thing?
• 15:06
  Yeah, exactly.
• 15:07
  I mean, the series is called Hashtag Thinking Forward and you can find it on autosport.com or motorsport.com.
• 15:13
  And yeah, you're right.
• 15:14
  Since April 2020, roughly every month, we speak to different leaders from across the sport.
• 15:20
  So we spoke with both of the candidates before the FIA presidential election, for example, and the vice president.
• 15:27
  We speak to the leaders of all the different racing series, plus all sorts of other interesting characters like Fay Ho, for example, who's the only sort of top-level female motorbike team owner.
• 15:38
  And, you know, so it's a really interesting sort of behind-the-scenes discussion about the direction of the sport.
• 15:46
  And I think, you know, we've got some great leaders there.
• 15:48
  You know, we've got some people who really are thinking a lot about the future and embrace the need to...
• 15:56
  keep the sport relevant.
• 15:57
  I mean, we all love motorsport because it's extreme.
• 16:04
  And when it's at its best, it looks difficult and it looks dangerous.
• 16:08
  I mean, it shouldn't be too dangerous.
• 16:10
  We're trying to make it as safe as we possibly can, obviously.
• 16:11
  But it needs to look dangerous, I think, to be exciting.
• 16:15
  And it needs to be extreme.
• 16:16
  It was the original extreme sport, right?
• 16:18
  Long before people stood...
• 16:19
  long before people sort of threw themselves off mountains wearing bat wings, you know, Formula One or driving racing cars was the extreme sport.
• 16:27
  And so I think those USPs, those key values of Formula One, of motor racing, are definitely still there, but it has to have a purpose, right?
• 16:37
  Everything has to have a purpose now in the modern world and be relevant.
• 16:41
  And so a big part of why I do that and what I'm trying to tease out of people or draw out of people is ways in which this sport remains relevant so it has a strong future and thrives long into the future.
• 17:04
  This one's for anyone living in Melbourne at the moment.
• 17:07
  The scooters, gosh we have to talk about the scooters, they're everywhere.
• 17:12
  Send in your thoughts about them to Rusty, he's got it way too easy on the roads in New Zealand at the moment.
• 17:18
  Few to finish because I know you're going to have to press on here with a busy work day.
• 17:22
  It's the beginning there for you and the end of the day here for me.
• 17:25
  People will fondly remember your voice as well, James, around the press conferences and, you know, the conclusion of a race and getting to talk to the top three after they've been on the podium and so on.
• 17:37
  Rapport is key in those moments, being good journalistically, which is your background, is so important to you, but they are all very different human beings in the way that they're programmed.
• 17:46
  I often think about when you perhaps may have been confronted by Kimi Raikkonen or people like that.
• 17:52
  Have there been some tricky moments, albeit they're celebrating at the time?
• 17:56
  There have been some tricky ones.
• 17:57
  Raikkonen, funny enough, wasn't one of them.
• 17:59
  I always got a good answer out of Raikkonen.
• 18:01
  I think you just have to know how to ask him a question.
• 18:03
  But I was in the middle of some pretty hot ones.
• 18:06
  I mean, obviously the one that was really memorable was the Multi-21.
• 18:13
  the press conference there with Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel when Vettel broke the team orders.
• 18:18
  And that was incredible, the chemistry between the two of them there.
• 18:23
  Absolutely extraordinary.
• 18:25
  And I think any time, yeah, we've had those sort of people have kind of carried it into the press conference.
• 18:30
  And I think I'm glad that I kind of did that role, which I did from 2009 to 2017.
• 18:34
  I'm glad I did that as a much more experienced person
• 18:41
  journalist and broadcaster because you need to know when to push something and when to back off.
• 18:48
  And of course, you also always have to remember who you're representing because this is the official conference, right?
• 18:54
  So you can't sort of go at it as if you're sort of a tabloid journalist, but equally you want to tease out the sort of the human stories that are going on behind the scenes and draw the guys out a little bit.
• 19:05
  So yeah, but the one that really sticks in my memory was the
• 19:11
  seeing how that was all going to unfold.
• 19:13
  I think Vettel knew he'd done something he probably shouldn't have done, but I think he felt entitled to because he felt that he was the guy who was going to be winning the world championship.
• 19:23
  The other one was not bad for a number two driver.
• 19:25
  Again, Mark and Vettel.
• 19:28
  you know, after the British Grand Prix where they'd switched Mark's engine out, if you remember, and he went and then won the race at Silverstone and famously said, not bad for a number two driver.
• 19:39
  On the radio.
• 19:39
  On the radio.
• 19:40
  Yeah.
• 19:40
  So there's been great ones.
• 19:42
  One of my, one of my favorite though, which really sums up Danny Rick was the pre-race press conference in Singapore, uh,
• 19:49
  when he was sitting up there with Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel.
• 19:54
  And he was talking about something, about drivers' experience or success or something.
• 19:58
  And he said, after all, he said, I mean, we've got seven world championships between us up here.
• 20:04
  As only Dan could do.
• 20:07
  Maybe it was eight or whatever.
• 20:08
  At that time, Lewis had four and Sebastian had four.
• 20:11
  Absolutely classic Danny Rick moment that just melted the whole room and everybody's laughing at it.
• 20:16
  Fantastic.
• 20:16
  Bounce through a couple to finish.
• 20:18
  Is there a Formula One car in the time that you've been working in the paddock that you look at and go, that thing is a piece of art, that thing is a special race car?
• 20:27
  What's the one that might sort of, you know, get the hairs on the back of the neck up a little bit?
• 20:32
  That's a very good question.
• 20:33
  I mean, I think the Ferrari that Nigel Mansell, the 639 and 640 Ferrari from 1989 and 1990, that Mansell drove it in 1989 and Prost in 1990, you know, that kind of…
• 20:49
  That car is the foundation of modern Formula 1 cars.
• 20:52
  There's so many ideas that were in that car.
• 20:54
  It was the first car that had a paddle shift operated gear levers on the steering wheel as well.
• 20:59
  But just the shape of it, it's a beautiful, beautiful car in my view.
• 21:04
  And of course, the one behind me, Emerson Filippaldi's 1973 JPS Lotus.
• 21:11
  That's kind of, I was what, six or seven years old when that car was racing.
• 21:15
  I had a model of it.
• 21:15
  It was about that big.
• 21:17
  And you could take the wheels off with this little spanner thing.
• 21:19
  And I remember just that, for me, it was a very effective car, but it was just so beautiful.
• 21:26
  It was the livery and the look of it and the way the light hit, the black and gold bodywork was really cool.
• 21:33
  Do you have a little resto project in the James Allen garage?
• 21:36
  If so, what is it?
• 21:37
  No, I'm afraid I'm completely useless.
• 21:39
  I mean, I can barely do anything on my own car.
• 21:43
  I can't even put it on a shelf.
• 21:44
  I'm totally impractical.
• 21:46
  The only ambition I have when it comes to vehicles is at some point before I'm too old, I want to own a 1942 or 43 Willys Jeep.
• 21:56
  I've always wanted one.
• 21:57
  Well played.
• 21:58
  Yeah, I've always wanted one.
• 22:00
  The weather here in England is not so well adapted to it, but hopefully we can get it out on certain high days and holidays.
• 22:07
  But yeah, that's the only ambition I've got.
• 22:09
  That's good.
• 22:09
  I know Mr Beattie will enjoy talking to you about that over a beer or two.
• 22:13
  Final one.
• 22:14
  Did you tell me at one point in the time that we worked together that you and maybe a couple of media colleagues occasionally played in a band at certain events?
• 22:24
  Have I got that true?
• 22:26
  Tell us a bit about that and what sort of music were you playing?
• 22:28
  Were you a singer?
• 22:30
  Were you a bass player?
• 22:31
  What were you?
• 22:32
  I was a singer, yeah.
• 22:34
  The band was called the Pit Stop Boogie Boys.
• 22:37
  There was me and I was working with Brabham Yamaha.
• 22:40
  It was 1991.
• 22:41
  And the truckie for Yamaha was a guy called Eddie Taylor, who had been grown up in Birmingham.
• 22:50
  And, you know, Slade?
• 22:51
  Do you remember the band Slade?
• 22:52
  Yeah.
• 22:54
  here it is, Merry Christmas and all that sort of stuff.
• 22:55
  He had actually stood in for them as a drummer a few times when their drummer was sick and things like that.
• 23:00
  So he's a very, very good drummer, obviously frustrated musician who'd become a truck driver.
• 23:04
  And we got talking about music, and I'd been in bands at college and things like that and just loved it, and played the guitar as well.
• 23:12
  And we started this band, and we found that there were a bunch of mechanics around the pit lane.
• 23:16
  Like the number one mechanic on the Lotus was...
• 23:20
  Johnny Herbert's mechanic at the time, I think, was a very good rhythm guitar player.
• 23:24
  The guy who drove the truck for Tyrrell was Ginger Baker from Cream.
• 23:27
  It was his cousin, Denny.
• 23:30
  That's awesome.
• 23:31
  He was a good singer and a very good harmonica player.
• 23:34
  And one of the tire fitters at Goodyear was an incredible lead guitarist.
• 23:39
  Obviously, Eddie was the drummer.
• 23:42
  And then there was a mechanic on the Brabham, on Mark Blundell's car called Meathead.
• 23:49
  I don't know his real name.
• 23:51
  Paul, I think it was.
• 23:52
  Everyone just called him Meathead.
• 23:53
  And he was the bass player.
• 23:55
  And so we played a bunch of gigs.
• 23:57
  And just somehow or other, it caught the imagination of Bernie and a few of the others at the top of the sport.
• 24:03
  And they helped us and facilitated us.
• 24:05
  And so the first gig we did,
• 24:06
  was in the main square in Cascais in Portugal, just before the Portuguese Grand Prix.
• 24:10
  And we had hundreds of people there, because obviously people are curious and everyone's out, you know, for the Grand Prix weekend.
• 24:16
  And Eddie Jordan kind of cottoned onto this, and he quite liked having a go on the drums.
• 24:20
  So he came and joined in.
• 24:22
  And completely, surreally, and by chance, Leo Sayer was there that weekend.
• 24:26
  So he then got up on stage and he started singing with us.
• 24:28
  And then the thing just developed a life of its own, really.
• 24:31
  And we played in Japan, we played a lot in Adelaide.
• 24:35
  quite a few gigs, big gigs in Adelaide.
• 24:37
  And we played sort of R&B, you know, sort of Rolling Stones, you know, just very accessible sort of music, really, you know, Roland on the River, what's that called, you know, Sweet Mary, those type of songs, you know, just very accessible songs that everybody liked.
• 24:54
  And, yeah, it was great fun.
• 24:55
  But the highlight was after the end of the Australian Grand Prix in 91, Senna won it.
• 25:02
  And McLaren, Ron Dennis said, come and play our end of season party at the Hilton in Adelaide after the race.
• 25:08
  So we did.
• 25:09
  And Paul Simon that year was doing the after show, after race concert.
• 25:14
  So we went to see that and we met Paul Simon and it was all great.
• 25:17
  And I met his one of his percussionists and said, what are you doing later?
• 25:21
  And he said, nothing after the gig, not doing anything.
• 25:23
  I said, why don't you come down and play with us?
• 25:24
  So he did.
• 25:28
  World-class percussionist turned up with his couple of sets of congas and things like that and was playing with us.
• 25:34
  And the drivers were getting up on stage, so Senna got up on stage and Schumacher, and it was great fun.
• 25:40
  It was mad.
• 25:41
  It was really, really fun.
• 25:42
  I was, what, 25 or something?
• 25:44
  I thought it was always like this.
• 25:46
  Great memories, mate.
• 25:47
  Thank you very much for sharing for the walks down memory lane on some things that people will absolutely love here.
• 25:53
  Congratulations on the various accolades that you've won along the way.
• 25:58
  And I love the fact that you are wonderful.
• 26:01
  working in a space now that is so important for the future of the game too, and we can hear your passion for that.
• 26:09
  So thank you for spending a bit of time talking to us, and we look forward to catching up at a racetrack somewhere this year.
• 26:13
  Take care.
• 26:14
  Pleasure, Rusty.
• 26:15
  Thank you very much for asking me to do it, and congratulations to you for all that you do.
• 26:19
  You're a top, top broadcaster, and I love your enduring passion for the sport.
• 26:23
  So we love you for what you do.
• 26:26
  Thank you, mate.
• 26:33
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 26:37
  Series editor and producer is Ed Gooden.
• 26:40
  Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
• 26:43
  If you've got a guest suggestion, get in touch with me via social media.
• 26:48
  The Garage.
• 26:49
  It's where a journey begins with a tank full of passion fuel stories.
• 27:02
  Listener.