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The Motorsport Brief: with Supercars Team boss Ryan Walkinshaw · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:05
  Welcome to the Motorsport Brief.
• 0:06
  It's Tuesday, the 21st of November, 2023.
• 0:09
  We have a great guest on today for the short cast who says it straight, with no BS, supercars fans will enjoy his take on a few different subjects as we get set for the season-ending races on the streets of Adelaide this weekend.
• 0:25
  One of the best events on the calendar.
• 0:30
  Hi everyone, Greg Rust here for this edition of the Rusty's Garage Shorty.
• 0:33
  I won't spend too long on the housekeeping at the top here because I want to get to the convo with Ryan Walkinshaw who's kindly standing by.
• 0:41
  Just quickly, we released the latest long form or feature ep with Gary McCoy, the Sultan of Slide or the Slide King last Tuesday.
• 0:49
  Many of you have been asking for that one from racing against a young Valentino Rossi to winning...
• 0:55
  in 500cc, or MotoGP as we now call it, and how he made those spectacular slides work so effectively.
• 1:03
  Plus how he's helping the next wave of young Aussie riders, coaching them as a part of the Oceania Junior Cup.
• 1:10
  Next Tuesday, Gabriele Tarquini drops.
• 1:13
  You can almost hear the late Murray Walker commentating on his famous races on the way to a British touring car title for Alfa Romeo at the height of the two-litre race.
• 1:23
  super touring era there in the 90s and what gabrielli's secret is to a long career he was winning races world cups world championships in his 40s and 50s the italian is so passionate about racing it oozes it it's a beauty of the chat
• 1:40
  Let's get to Ryan Walkinshaw now, Supercars team owner, automotive industry executive, and as you'll hear, a keen diver with a hidden talent that could make him a real contender at MasterChef if he ever decided to have a crack at that.
• 1:54
  I think he's unlikely to.
• 1:56
  He's on the line ahead of this weekend's Adelaide 500.
• 1:59
  G'day, Ryan.
• 1:59
  Welcome back to the podcast.
• 2:01
  Thanks.
• 2:02
  Hey, can we kick off with something a little different?
• 2:05
  Vegas F1.
• 2:06
  What did you make of all of that?
• 2:10
  I thought it was awesome.
• 2:11
  Yeah.
• 2:13
  But I think it was always going to be awesome.
• 2:15
  I think the fact that it was so heavily hyped, you had a lot of naysayers that sort of almost wanted it to fail, this sort of masochistic view that some fans seem to have where they almost want their sports to do poorly sometimes at these big events that we've seen in supercars from time to time with a small minority of fans.
• 2:31
  But ultimately, I think it was always going to have the investment and the backing to make it a huge event.
• 2:38
  I thought the racing was fantastic.
• 2:40
  Who would have guessed that having long straights and 90-degree bends would encourage passing?
• 2:44
  It's such a novel concept.
• 2:47
  And I think it was really, really good.
• 2:49
  I thought it was a good race.
• 2:50
  I thought spectacle was exactly what it should be for Vegas.
• 2:53
  Loud, brash, a little bit vulgar and tacky, and a bit crass.
• 2:58
  But that's kind of what Vegas is.
• 3:00
  And I think it wouldn't have been true to itself if it wasn't all of those things combined, but done in a really beautiful, glamorous fashion.
• 3:07
  extravagant fashion.
• 3:08
  So I'm hoping, I was pissed off I wasn't there.
• 3:12
  I did try and go, but I'm definitely going to go next year.
• 3:14
  It was a lot of fun.
• 3:15
  Fantastic summary.
• 3:16
  Let's switch to V8s.
• 3:17
  Last year's Adelaide 500, which we're more or less on the eve of, must be edge-like film in your mind, right?
• 3:23
  That unforgettable one to final weekend for Holden and Commodore, which you and Walkinshaw had such a great association with.
• 3:31
  Your late dad would have loved the result.
• 3:33
  What has it come to mean to you in the fullness of time,
• 3:38
  Yeah, it was an important one for us.
• 3:40
  We wanted to go out with a bang, especially considering the tribute liveries that we were running.
• 3:46
  And as well, considering that so often you have teams and supercars that run tribute liveries and then end up having an absolutely shocking weekend.
• 3:53
  So there's that little sort of curse that everyone sort of believes exists in supercars.
• 3:58
  But thankfully that didn't hit us last year.
• 4:00
  So it was quite a special moment, an emotional moment for us in the team, but also for a lot of our fans.
• 4:06
  And, you know, I think it was quite poetic.
• 4:08
  I also think it was kind of poetic, to be honest, that...
• 4:11
  Brock Feeney ended up getting his first race win on the Sunday for Triple Eight.
• 4:14
  It was kind of a bit of a nod to the past from both factory teams from Holden over a long period of time that both had a lot of success for that brand.
• 4:23
  So I think it was the right way to go out and bow out of that part of our history.
• 4:28
  It was a great weekend, but...
• 4:30
  So that was last year.
• 4:31
  This year we're going to have to work a little bit harder to try and get a result, I think.
• 4:34
  Well, it'd be nice to think that you could get the first one for the Gen 3 Mustang.
• 4:38
  That sort of leads us, based on what you just said, to what chance you feel there.
• 4:42
  And I'm asking that, Ryan, based on the tweak that you had at the Gold Coast and things like that.
• 4:48
  Yeah, look, I mean, when you look at the disparity on the air and on the engine that we've had all year, that's been masked at street circuits previously.
• 4:58
  You look at Newcastle, you look at AGP and you look at Townsville to a degree.
• 5:03
  It was a little bit masked at those tracks, AGP a little bit less, but we didn't really get the track times actually really to be able to develop that and see the true results.
• 5:12
  And just as Shane Van Gisbergen said when he jumped in the Mustang and jumped into the Camara at that test day, the Mustang will win every pole and the Camara will win every race.
• 5:22
  And there's no parity in this.
• 5:24
  And he turned out to be half right because Hamara has won pretty much every single race, but it's also got nearly every single pole as well.
• 5:30
  So obviously there was an improvement at Gold Coast, but again, it's a street circuit.
• 5:35
  The aero tweaks that we had would be pretty irrelevant at the Gold Coast in actual fact.
• 5:41
  There'll be a little bit more evident at turn eight in that straight going into the braking zone at nine at Adelaide.
• 5:47
  So that'll be a little bit more of a test, but still a very small part of the circuit.
• 5:51
  And at the end of the day, the aero seems to be getting closer.
• 5:54
  If not, it's matched now.
• 5:56
  In my opinion, it probably is.
• 5:58
  But the engine is still vastly, vastly different between the two brands.
• 6:04
  I believe Shane even went up to the podium on Saturday at Gold Coast and started laughing with some of the...
• 6:11
  The Ford guys who are up there, Cam Waters was one of them, and basically laughed and said, you know, you guys have got absolutely no engine under those things.
• 6:20
  It's a joke.
• 6:21
  So that's something that really needs to be fixed for next year.
• 6:23
  What I'm confident with is that supercars are doing everything they can within their powers, and they're investing a lot of money to fix this issue.
• 6:31
  So it's good that the issue has been accepted.
• 6:35
  It's been proven.
• 6:36
  now countless times that there's been disparity, both on the aero and on the engines.
• 6:41
  So all those team owners and ex-team owners who are pretty vocal during the beginning of the season, they've had the parity being perfect and probably the best parity we've ever had.
• 6:52
  I've probably got a bit of egg on their face today.
• 6:54
  But I think also in fairness to them, we didn't know what we know today.
• 6:58
  So...
• 6:59
  When you go through this process and you're getting more and more data, you're gonna extrapolate from that data various different trends, and then it forces you to keep digging into that data harder and being able to try and understand the root cause of these sort of issues.
• 7:13
  And thankfully we found a lot of those and working towards fixes for next season.
• 7:18
  So to your question, how are we gonna do Adelaide?
• 7:21
  It's a street circuit.
• 7:22
  Street circuits are the great equalizer in touring cars, even in motorsport generally.
• 7:27
  And we should see a little bit more of the performance gain from the aero tweak, as I said, at turn eight and into that braking zone at nine.
• 7:34
  So fingers crossed, as always, I just want a fair fight.
• 7:38
  And we haven't had that this year at all.
• 7:40
  So hopefully, at least for the last race, we can have a proper swing.
• 7:45
  And at the end of the day, the most important thing is we put on a good show for the fans.
• 7:48
  And we know that Adelaide as a track, whatever happens on track, it's going to put on a good show, right?
• 7:52
  It's an incredible event.
• 7:53
  Yeah.
• 7:54
  Incredible support, the fan base that go there, all the different activations.
• 7:58
  And it's always exciting racing.
• 8:00
  So hopefully, if there is any parity issues, that will be masked by probably the best event on the calendar.
• 8:06
  So I'm really looking forward to it.
• 8:07
  Cool.
• 8:08
  Are you confident that this offshore testing process will get you the right result, will get the sport the right result?
• 8:16
  And in some ways, you know, lots of people with an outside view that aren't in your shoes, that aren't living a day to day, often say, why didn't we do this in the first place?
• 8:24
  I know it's expensive, but why didn't we go down the path of offshore or, you know, testing like this beforehand?
• 8:31
  Well, the answer to your second question is cost.
• 8:33
  We haven't needed to previously because, and what I've tried to explain to people is, when you look at what we've done historically, we've had second best practice for this sort of thing, which is runway tests, right?
• 8:44
  And we know that there are inherent flaws in those tests.
• 8:48
  However, previously, the cars weren't all identical.
• 8:52
  So if you knew you had a disparity at, let's say, mid-corner,
• 8:57
  on your aero map.
• 8:59
  Previous than the previous gen cars, you could change your uprise, you could develop and engineer your way out of those problems.
• 9:05
  Do you understand?
• 9:07
  So it didn't matter that the aero wasn't 100% perfect because it could be 97% perfect, but the engineers would design their way around to fill in those gaps over a period of time.
• 9:17
  That little deficiency.
• 9:18
  At the end of the day, we did have big aero issues.
• 9:20
  We've had...
• 9:22
  Ford up here, disparity with Holden, and then it would switch, and then it would switch, and then it would switch.
• 9:27
  We had this little seesaw for the last 15 years in this category.
• 9:33
  Every single time someone brings out a new car, it's better than the old one, even though you do the same test.
• 9:37
  Then it takes time to do the other guys and then develop the parts to sort of catch up, and then it equalizes.
• 9:42
  The problem with these cars is that you can't change anything.
• 9:44
  You can't develop anything.
• 9:45
  You're stuck with what you have and everyone's got the same.
• 9:46
  You can't go and develop new uprights to go and compensate for a part of the corner that you've got an error loss or entry instability under braking or all these different things.
• 9:56
  You can't develop your way out of the problem.
• 9:58
  You're just kind of stuck with what you have.
• 10:00
  So if the aero platform isn't perfectly identical on both cars, and one car has even a tiny, tiny, minute advantage, when the rest of the car is pretty much the same, you know, it's going to be harder to beat them.
• 10:12
  You can't engineer your way out of a problem.
• 10:14
  To your first question, am I confident that the testing in the off-season is going to fix this?
• 10:19
  I have no idea.
• 10:20
  I hire people who are far smarter than me in my engineering team to make those kind of assumptions or points.
• 10:28
  It's...
• 10:30
  From what I understand and from my position, you're not going to be able to get it perfect unless you go and do it, right?
• 10:35
  So amazing, great step by supercars to actually go and do it.
• 10:40
  It was no small feat to get the sport to agree to the cost because the cost is significant.
• 10:44
  It's not cheap to do this process.
• 10:47
  And you've got to get a lot of different stakeholders to agree to it and also to contribute to it.
• 10:51
  And they've got to contribute in the right way as well.
• 10:53
  You also want to make sure that the homologation teams are going to do this properly and fairly.
• 10:58
  And I use those two words quite importantly.
• 11:00
  You're going to have both manufacturers, hopefully, involved and potentially support from other parties and your CFD support and so on.
• 11:08
  And there's one of those things, you know, you're almost going from...
• 11:12
  The risk is you've got people from supercars who've been very, very used to a specific form of testing.
• 11:17
  And let's call that a normal computer that they understand pretty well.
• 11:21
  They're not perfect on it, but they get it to 98, 99% accuracy.
• 11:25
  And then all of a sudden you're going to give them a quantum computer and hope that they understand how to use that and not leave with more questions than you have answers.
• 11:34
  which is always going to be a risk.
• 11:35
  So how do you mitigate that?
• 11:36
  You mitigate that with proper process, proper protocol, bringing in exterior experience that have got understanding, deep roots to understanding, how these machines essentially work and how to use the data properly.
• 11:48
  And from what I'm seeing so far, supercars are putting an enormous amount of effort into ensuring that the right people are going to be there in order to get the best result possible.
• 11:58
  Always in these things, you're going to wish that you were there for a month, right?
• 12:01
  Because you've only got a short period of time to do this.
• 12:04
  We're trying to jam everything into a short period of time.
• 12:06
  If you look at NASCAR and NASCAR teams, they spend dozens of days there at these places a year.
• 12:13
  You speak to my friends at Andretti, they're running their cars and there's wind tunnels the whole time.
• 12:18
  Always, if you had that resource here, you'd be using it more
• 12:22
  throughout the year, we're stuck with being able to use it once, which puts more pressure on making sure you do it the right way because you've only really got one chance to get it right.
• 12:30
  But I personally feel that they're doing everything they can to do it the right way the first time.
• 12:37
  But I think we need to be a little bit fair and understanding to supercars that it is still going to be a slightly imperfect process just by the nature that we haven't done it before.
• 12:48
  Let's also understand that going forward, we may need to go again.
• 12:52
  This may need to be something that we do at the end of every season, every single time we have a new update to a manufacturer.
• 12:58
  Us and as team owners, the drivers and the fans will need to understand that these things are complicated.
• 13:03
  They're not simple.
• 13:04
  Even companies like NASCAR don't always get it right.
• 13:08
  You can only go in with the best intentions and with the best plan and hope that the result you get is the right one.
• 13:13
  But even with all those intentions and processes in place, as accurate as you think they could be in place before you go there, there's always a risk that it's not going to work out exactly how you want.
• 13:23
  So what I would caution is it's the first time we've done this.
• 13:27
  We think we're going to do it the right way.
• 13:28
  We hope we are.
• 13:30
  putting big plans in place, but you never really know what the result is until you go racing.
• 13:34
  And ultimately, that's going to be the true test.
• 13:37
  That's an excellent answer.
• 13:38
  And I really appreciate the insight and the candidness that you've given there.
• 13:41
  And so for any journalist colleagues that are listening, I would ask that you respect Ryan's answer in full and balance there if you're going to take
• 13:48
  anything out of that before we move on can we move before we move on from this topic can we can we just finish with forward fans i mean i i see countless messages from frustrated forward fans along the way you've made a very high profile switch here in manufacturers in the past 12 months and invested in in that switch or that direction are they okay at ford hq is mark mark rushbrook and these people uh you know going to be with us as we go to this testing and and you know hopefully square the square things up
• 14:16
  Yeah, that's a question for supercars more than me and Ford.
• 14:19
  They're the ones that are managing the test.
• 14:21
  Homologation teams are supporting them.
• 14:23
  And there's going to be local support as well.
• 14:26
  The detail of that is up to supercars to go through with you.
• 14:29
  And if they're comfortable sharing that sort of information with you.
• 14:32
  And if you want me to ask how Mark Rushbrook is thinking, that's a question for Mark Rushbrook, not really for me.
• 14:36
  All I know is that Ford have been really, really supportive to us as a team at WAU all year.
• 14:42
  Andrew Berkic and Ben Nightingale in particular locally have been fantastic to work with and really, really appreciated their support in what has been a challenging year.
• 14:50
  This is the opposite of what we wanted from WAU in our first year with a new manufacturer.
• 14:56
  We went in with high hopes, high expectations.
• 14:58
  And off the back of a couple of seasons where we came third and third in the last two seasons with Chas and won Bathurst and probably should have won Bathurst last year as well if we hadn't had an issue with our steering rack.
• 15:11
  Then obviously, we are the leading Ford team as well, well, Ford car at least, with Chaz.
• 15:16
  If you'd asked me at the beginning of the year, one of the things we did say was we wanted to be the number one Ford.
• 15:20
  Currently, Chaz is the number one Ford and pending no absolute disasters at Adelaide, hopefully that will remain the case at the end of the season.
• 15:28
  From our internal little metrics on how well we did this year,
• 15:32
  Being the first Ford was pretty high up the list, but ultimately we're here to win championships and win Bathurst.
• 15:37
  And, you know, that was a very, very difficult challenge to try and achieve either of those this year, considering the hurdles that we've had.
• 15:44
  But, you know, next year we'll be going flat out as hard as we can to go and win.
• 15:48
  You know, hopefully we can do the Ford fans proud and do what we came here to do moving to Ford.
• 15:53
  A quick break here on the Motorsport Brief.
• 15:55
  More from Ryan Walkinshaw in just a few moments.
• 16:02
  You're listening to the Rusty's Garage Shortcast.
• 16:04
  Our guest this week is Ryan Walkinshaw, back on the podcast from the Walkinshaw and Freddie United Supercars team, CEO and Director of the Walkinshaw Group, with a growing footprint in the automotive sector.
• 16:17
  We'll endeavour to get to some of your questions shortly.
• 16:19
  Right now, back to the chat.
• 16:21
  Young Ryan Wood.
• 16:22
  I've had a little bit to do with him over time.
• 16:24
  A, he's got great character.
• 16:25
  B, as you've already reflected in other publications, great speed.
• 16:29
  What was it in your mind that kind of got you all over the line there at WRU to say, right, let's give this guy a step up?
• 16:36
  You know, clearly he's coming from Super 2 and it is seemingly a rapid rise, Ryan, but to give him the tick, what was it that kind of got you over the line?
• 16:44
  I mean, Ryan's clearly got some talent, right?
• 16:46
  He's a bit of a rough diamond.
• 16:48
  You know, he still makes...
• 16:49
  the sort of errors that you would expect from a young driver to make.
• 16:53
  But I think him and Kai Allen are probably the two most exciting drivers that we've seen come out of Super 2, probably to be honest, since Scott McLaughlin, Chas Mostert, Cam Waters sort of era.
• 17:05
  There's been a few okay guys that have sort of come through but never really been the kind of drivers that everyone sort of takes a step back and goes, holy shit, this guy's got some real potential.
• 17:14
  Yeah.
• 17:15
  And Woody and Alan are those two drivers, I think, that have managed to really, really get a lot of eyeballs on them.
• 17:21
  And, you know, I always say you'd rather a fast driver that you can slow down and polish than trying to make a slow driver fast.
• 17:26
  And I think that's what we've got with Woody.
• 17:28
  He's going to...
• 17:30
  have some issues next year because that's what young drivers do, especially when they're quick and they're pushing themselves.
• 17:35
  But it really wouldn't surprise me that if we can get the cars right, if we can get the parity right, Woody ends up surprising a few people next year in his first year.
• 17:44
  We've seen it happen before.
• 17:45
  Triple A did a fantastic job.
• 17:47
  bringing Brock Feeney into this category and very quickly turned him into a race winner.
• 17:51
  Ultimately, he was in arguably the best car with the best engineering team around him during that period.
• 17:57
  But he's bounced into this season very, very strongly as well.
• 18:01
  Arguably, he was one of the top three contenders for the championship.
• 18:05
  So you can see that if you get the right ingredients in the cake...
• 18:10
  corrects from even even a young driver very very quickly can develop into someone that can be uh fast and and and contending at the top end so that's our job to do that ryan's just got to
• 18:21
  listen to the guys, work really, really hard, get his fitness up to scratch and realize that his dream is being a supercar driver has come true.
• 18:30
  But that dream can get taken away from you pretty quickly if you don't perform.
• 18:34
  But I think Ryan gets that.
• 18:36
  He's a great kid.
• 18:37
  He's great commercially as well.
• 18:38
  Sponsors love him.
• 18:39
  He's got a very, very good character and attitude, which fits in really well with our team at WOU.
• 18:44
  We don't
• 18:45
  try and be anti-septic.
• 18:47
  We want our personalities to shine.
• 18:49
  That's why people like Chaz have flourished so much at our team.
• 18:52
  You know, we let him be who he is and let his character effervesce into the fan base as much as possible.
• 18:59
  And we want the same for Woody, and he's got that kind of cheeky character as well.
• 19:02
  So off track, he's got all the right ingredients to be a star and on track he does as well.
• 19:07
  It's gonna take some time, but we believe he's a very, very promising candidate.
• 19:11
  And I'm really excited to see what he can do.
• 19:13
  Was it a little bit of a fence-in move too?
• 19:15
  Because it's the kind of game where your rivals are always looking at what people are doing next door, and he had shown some great speed and so on in Super 2.
• 19:22
  Was it a case of preventing others from coming knocking?
• 19:26
  Yeah, there was absolutely an element of that.
• 19:27
  There were a couple of teams who were chasing him pretty hard.
• 19:29
  Okay, cool.
• 19:30
  Final one for you.
• 19:31
  Obviously, a lot of talk about Michael and Formula One.
• 19:34
  Zach's had an amazing year with the resurgence of McLaren.
• 19:40
  That clearly hasn't affected things with you.
• 19:42
  It hasn't taken their eye off things with WAU, has it?
• 19:45
  Is it, you know, all systems go?
• 19:47
  I mean, we're definitely talking to Michael a little bit less.
• 19:48
  Unfortunately, he's been pretty busy.
• 19:50
  And he was supposed to come to Bathurst this year.
• 19:52
  He's not been to Bathurst the last couple of years.
• 19:54
  We've had Zach filling in that role the last two Bathurst.
• 19:58
  So unfortunately, he had to cancel quite late in the day because he was getting quite close to his FIA approval deadline, which he managed to get by the sound of things.
• 20:08
  Look, we are a global team with WAU.
• 20:10
  It's one of the reasons we formed it with the people that we formed it with.
• 20:14
  And it's great to see people like Michael,
• 20:17
  trying to push the boundaries and get into that top flight of motorsport.
• 20:21
  There's nothing more exciting than racing in Formula One if you're a racer.
• 20:25
  And to see Michael even get to the level that he's already at, I think is quite impressive.
• 20:29
  Fingers crossed he manages to get it over the line.
• 20:32
  I think it's going to be a challenging task to accomplish because of the nature of the characters involved in Formula One.
• 20:39
  And there is a little bit of a turkey's voting for Christmas
• 20:41
  thing going there where you're essentially trying to get people to agree to maybe get less money um so they can go to someone else and the dilution of sponsor interest and additional competition is always going to be something that plays a part in that but at the end of the day those economics can be mitigated to some degree with the deal structure that you put in place and the money that you pay up front so i believe there's a fair bit that's gone on there but again these are questions from michael but it's
• 21:06
  It's pretty cool to see.
• 21:08
  Zach's had a good season as well, and he's had an okay season with United as well.
• 21:12
  I was there with him at Le Mans this year, which is really disappointing because they had really, really fast cars.
• 21:18
  Probably would have almost certainly had a podium, if not been pretty strong contenders for a win.
• 21:23
  But the racing gods went on their side, and they had some technical dramas, as happens at Le Mans.
• 21:30
  Yeah, it's awesome being part of a family of racers.
• 21:35
  And when you're in almost any weekend, you know, you've got either one of Michael's teams or one of Zach's teams racing doing something.
• 21:41
  And you can watch it and root for someone and that our team root for as well and that our sponsors root for.
• 21:45
  So it is a pretty cool and unique circumstance that we have at WAU.
• 21:50
  And yeah, hopefully next year we'll see a little bit more of Michael and we'll see Zach again.
• 21:54
  Yeah.
• 21:54
  We were going to put some listener questions to you, but I'm going to leave it there because you're – No, no, it's okay.
• 21:58
  Go on.
• 21:58
  I've still got time.
• 21:58
  You've still got time?
• 21:59
  Okay.
• 21:59
  Well, a couple of them have asked about your – and this is crazy left field here – but a couple of them have asked about your love of cooking and whether you're – I mean, I think it's around barbecuing and so on.
• 22:10
  Have you got a real passion for this now?
• 22:12
  Have you?
• 22:12
  Slow roasting and things or not?
• 22:14
  Yeah, well, during COVID I got bored a lot.
• 22:16
  So, yeah, started cooking a lot and baking and things like that.
• 22:20
  And then I started getting into grilling, so I've got myself a big green egg with –
• 22:24
  thousands of dollars worth of stupid attachments that you put onto it.
• 22:27
  But yeah, I really, really enjoy it.
• 22:28
  My job is immensely stressful and complex with what I do now with all my different businesses.
• 22:33
  So when I'm not working, I try and enjoy things that I can distract myself with for a long period of time.
• 22:41
  And there's only so much YouTube, Xbox, and shitty TV that you can do before you start potentially making yourself more dumb.
• 22:50
  So I find things that are sport-based and food-based seem to entertain me a fair bit.
• 22:55
  So I train a lot in the gym.
• 22:57
  I cycle a lot.
• 22:58
  I do a lot of diving.
• 22:59
  So I've been getting all my certifications up to become a technical diver and try and become a cave diver by the end of next year.
• 23:05
  And I've got really, really into my cooking.
• 23:07
  But
• 23:09
  more complex things and watching lots of YouTube videos of chefs doing impressive stuff and pit masters doing awesome stuff in America.
• 23:18
  Hopefully I don't end up looking like half the pit masters you see on YouTube videos in America because by the time they're 40 they look about 60 and on the verge of death so far I've managed to avoid that but yeah maybe in 10 years you'll be looking
• 23:31
  looking at a far chubbier, more red face where I'm walking, sure.
• 23:33
  Okay, two to go.
• 23:35
  Because you've talked about the diving thing, that leads me to a couple of people have asked in a very caring way about the fact that you had COVID and that it knocked you around.
• 23:43
  But if you're doing this diving stuff, clearly there's no longer side effects.
• 23:46
  Have you completely bounced from that?
• 23:48
  Yeah, I've still got fibrosis in my right lung from it.
• 23:51
  So essentially what happens is I had COVID and then actually the COVID wasn't really that bad.
• 23:56
  It was just a bad flu, but then I had a secondary
• 24:01
  bacteria that you flush out.
• 24:03
  But when your immune system's being spent, you've already got inflamed lungs, it smashes you around pretty quickly.
• 24:08
  So unfortunately I was hospitalized with that pneumonia and sometimes with pneumonia you get heavy inflammation which causes scar tissue or fibrosis which essentially means that that part of the lung is essentially dead, no different to a scar you'd have if you cut yourself badly on your arm or burn yourself.
• 24:22
  So that's not great, but what it did do was force me to stop just lifting heavy weights and actually start training and doing some aerobic fitness.
• 24:31
  So I got really into my cycling, which is obviously a normal thing to get into when you live in Monaco and half the world's cyclists and motorsport drivers are there and they all cycle.
• 24:40
  So I got into that little community and really, really enjoy it.
• 24:43
  I've been doing some pretty big rides and trying to do some Tour de France stages and stuff like that with my friends over the summer, which has been really fun.
• 24:49
  So at the end of the day, yeah, that was the pneumonia was pretty average, but it was actually a blessing in disguise because it made me stop smoking.
• 24:57
  And yeah.
• 24:58
  managed to force me into trying to be more aerobically fit, which is probably going to add a lot more years to my life than would have happened if I'd just kept to my previous lifestyle.
• 25:07
  Well done.
• 25:08
  Okay, finally, Cadillac have announced in recent days a push into the Aussie market.
• 25:13
  What do you think of that?
• 25:14
  And do you think that's someone we could potentially entice into supercars at some stage?
• 25:19
  Although it's more of an EV focus, I think, for them, isn't it?
• 25:21
  Yeah.
• 25:21
  Yeah, I mean, it is an EV focus, so I think the chances of getting Cadillac in supercars is pretty close to nil.
• 25:27
  And you've got to remember, the Cadillac program here is managed by GMSV, who are our partners at Walkinshaw, and we do the conversions for the left-right-hand drive products.
• 25:36
  Cadillac product coming in is already in right-hand drive, so we don't touch it at Walkinshaw, but the rest of their products we do other than Corvette as well.
• 25:42
  But it's fantastic for Australia.
• 25:43
  I mean, GMSV is a bit of a success story in the automotive space.
• 25:48
  They've done a fantastic job.
• 25:49
  Every single year, their volumes are growing and growing.
• 25:51
  They've got a great team of people there.
• 25:53
  Us at Walkinshaw alongside GMSV have managed to keep a GM presence in Australia, which has been good for supercars.
• 26:00
  If it wasn't for us doing the conversion work on the Silverados in Australia and helping form GMSV and giving them a business model that was viable, you probably wouldn't have GM in the sport.
• 26:09
  You probably wouldn't have Kamara in the sport.
• 26:11
  And that's a testament to our partnership with them, but also the commitment from GM that they wanted to try and stay relevant in Australia and have a business presence here.
• 26:21
  So anything that they can bring that helps bolster that business going forward is exciting.
• 26:25
  The Cadillac brand is a great brand.
• 26:27
  Everyone knows that.
• 26:27
  Everyone loves it.
• 26:29
  They've got some fantastic products.
• 26:30
  Do I think it'll be in supercars?
• 26:31
  It's a question for them.
• 26:33
  But I don't think them bringing EV Cadillacs into Australia is going to suddenly force them to bounce into supercars.
• 26:40
  That would be sort of the antithesis of what I think their marketing is going to be on their products.
• 26:44
  As always, it's been awesome to get you
• 26:46
  on the garage.
• 26:46
  I know the fans will really appreciate this conversation.
• 26:49
  Thank you for making the time.
• 26:50
  Have a terrific weekend in Adelaide and all the very, very best for 2024.
• 26:53
  No worries.
• 26:54
  Thanks for having me.
• 26:56
  Now, apologies for not getting to each and every question that you kindly sent through on social media.
• 27:02
  I tried to pick a few key themes and weave them in to Paul Bagnell, Steve Reid, Dane Tannenberg, Cody Scott and Michael Bottrell.
• 27:11
  Thank you.
• 27:12
  I basically took your Facebook comments generically and endeavoured to tackle those.
• 27:17
  A reminder, please, to any media who may take something from that conversation, please do so with balance from Ryan's answers.
• 27:25
  It is great to get him on the podcast, and I want to continue to do that with a sense of fairness to him.
• 27:31
  Finally, before a couple of pieces of news, the conversation we had around parody isn't intended...
• 27:37
  to smash up anyone involved in that process to this point.
• 27:40
  It's more just the fact that this is a professional code, right?
• 27:44
  And even though that process of taking the cars offshore is expensive, perhaps it's what we should have been doing and will continue to need to do to keep the playing field level.
• 27:55
  We talked about Vegas at the top of that chat with Ryan.
• 27:58
  I am staggered that the rumoured $500 million, that's US, spend on the event didn't identify a potential issue with those drain covers beforehand.
• 28:08
  This is my personal opinion.
• 28:10
  If Michael Massey was still there, it would have been picked up in a circuit inspection much earlier and resolved, particularly as it's not the first time that this kind of thing has happened in Formula One.
• 28:20
  It wasn't a good look for such a big event with all that hype around it, nor was the treatment of Friday fans.
• 28:27
  Anyway, forget about all of that.
• 28:29
  It'll be a distant memory pretty quickly because the GP itself and everything around it from the driver introductions, it was incredible.
• 28:36
  It was Super Bowl-esque and huge for Formula One and motorsport.
• 28:42
  Max Verstappen took his 18th win of the year from Charles Leclerc, who passed Sergio Perez on the run home.
• 28:48
  The.
• 28:49
  passing during the race was awesome.
• 28:51
  That 6.2k track actually created some really good action around the Las Vegas streets and the strip there.
• 28:58
  Oscar Piastri did a super job to finish in the points there in 10th.
• 29:02
  And finally, congrats to Harry Bates and Coral Taylor.
• 29:05
  You can find Coral in our Rusty's Garage feature library.
• 29:09
  The Toyota pairing took out the 2023 Australian Rally Championship in a nail-biting finish there in Canberra.
• 29:16
  I need to get Harry on the pod.
• 29:18
  His dad, Neil, came on this year, and you all really seem to like that one.
• 29:23
  That is it for this edition.
• 29:24
  Enjoy the Adelaide 500, everyone.
• 29:26
  Bye for now.