Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Evening With A Legend: Rob Dyson

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Evening With A Legend: Rob Dyson · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Evening with the Legend is a series of presentations exclusive to
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Legends of the Famous 24 Hours of Le Mans, giving us an opportunity
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to bring a piece of Le Mans to you.
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By sharing stories and highlights of the big event, you get a chance
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to become part of the Legend of Le Mans, with guests from different
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eras of over 100 years of racing.
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Tonight, we have an opportunity to bring a piece of Le Mans to you,
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sharing in the legend of Le Mans with guests from different eras
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of over a hundred years of racing.
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And as your host, I'm delighted to introduce Rob Dyson.
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who started his racing career in 1974 at Watkins Glen International.
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And in 1981, he won the SCCA's GT2 National Championship and began
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racing professionally in IMSA GTO and SCCA Trans Am in 1982.
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The following year, to support his professional racing efforts, he founded
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the Dyson Racing Team, which over the next few years grew to be one of
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America's premier sports car racing teams.
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From their base in Poughkeepsie, New York, over the course of nearly four decades,
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the team won 19 championships, 72 race victories, started 72 times from the
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pole and achieved 224 podium finishes.
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Among the team's notable accomplishments is a pair of overall
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victories in America's premier endurance race, the Rolex 24 at
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Daytona International Speedway.
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But in 1986, Rob found himself behind the wheel of a Porsche 956
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at the famed Circuit de la Sarthe.
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And with that, I'm your host crew chief, Eric, from the motoring
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podcast network, welcoming everyone to this evening with a legend.
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So Rob, welcome to the show.
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Great to be with you.
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You know, when you talk about racing, we're all lucky that we've
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experienced it in some way or form.
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Whether you're sitting in the seats and the grandstands, or whether
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you're in the pit crew, or whether you're driving the cars, I mean,
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it's just such a captivating sport.
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It's just remarkable.
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So glad to be with you.
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Well, for those that don't know Rob's origin story, we actually encourage
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you to check out his keynote address from the 7th Annual Argettsinger
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Symposium on Motorsports History on the Motoring Podcast Network.
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But we want to fast forward through your time at Watkins Glen,
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through the early days of the 80s, To 1986, but take us to 1986.
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How did you get to Lamont's?
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Was it always a goal?
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Was it a bucket list thing?
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What kind of deals had to be made to get you from America over to racing in France?
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All I can tell you is, is that, uh, you know, relating these stories is
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kind of got me thinking about it.
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I was fortunate.
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I had good support from my wife, from my family.
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I consider when I look back on my life, I'm glad of one thing.
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When I got out of graduate school, I said to my wife, I want to go racing one year.
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I want to understand what it's like out there.
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Which was Chris Economacky's number one question that he
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asked people during his life.
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What's it like out there?
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I've worked on cars all my life, and when I got out of grad school
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from Cornell, I said, well, we aren't kids, let's just do it.
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I bought a clapped out Datsun 510 because I did some research and Datsun
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had a lot of speed parts and I figured we'd get something going there and
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uh, we'd be able to get the parts and handle that and get that done.
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So, when I think back on how I would travel to the races in a business suit, I
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was building a radio business nationally so I was on a plane all the time and
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I'd get off the plane at Portland or Laguna or something in a business suit.
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So, in those days everybody traveled in business suits and go to the truck and
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Get into my stuff and was it fortunate enough to be able to do it and feel pretty
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good about it and do a pretty good job.
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So the thing that's, uh, it's interesting is that it wasn't on my bucket list, but
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it got to be that I was driving pretty effectively at the nine, six, two.
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And that's what those guys were racing.
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So I figured, well, hell, if I can stay up with those guys, in fact, beat a
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lot of them, including some Lamont's winners, maybe there's a shot for me.
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So that's what I did.
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And the thing is that.
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I went over in 85 merely just to kind of take a look at it.
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And it was there that I got to know Richard Lloyd, James Weaver.
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And I got to know one another in 85.
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James did a race for us in 85.
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I couldn't make the race down in Atlanta.
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So he priced it, the race in 85.
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So I met Richard Lloyd and we just struck up a friendship and started
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talking, but I was interested to see the Le Mans thing and kind of get a
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handle on it to see what it's like.
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And then the next year I talked to Richard and I said, Richard, what can we do?
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Do you have an opportunity for me?
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He says, yeah.
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And he says, why don't you plan on doing Silverstone, which generally happened two
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to three weeks before Le Mans, maybe a month, then you did Le Mans and then Spa.
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I said, gee, that'd be great, but I don't think I have the time to do all of them.
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So why don't we try to just do Le Mans?
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So we started talking about it and we worked on it and off we went.
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And at the end of the day, Richard rolled out a, uh, a nine, five, six
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that he had raced with his guys over in the world championship over in Europe.
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And that's what got me in the car.
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It was merely curiosity.
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And then.
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Richard saying, you know, why don't you hop in and do it?
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And I felt confident that I could do it.
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So you said you wanted to go over there and check it out
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and see what it was all about.
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That first impression, what you imprinted on when you got to Lamar, how different
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was that than racing in the United States?
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What was your impression of Lamar when you first got over there?
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Well, I never raced at Silverstone.
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I didn't go there.
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I just went to Le Mans, but Richard wanted me to run the Silverstone to get
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used to driving the car and all that.
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And that was the old configuration of Silverstone's changed significantly since.
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No, I went over to Le Mans and what I was impressed with was that, you know, these
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were cars from all over the world, very exotic teams, a lot of drivers I'd never
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even heard of, guys that were really quick too, by the way, and I got to see how the
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Porsche factory ran their deal, you know, the Jaguar guys, how they ran their deal.
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Because remember, we were running sort of against Holbert, we were running
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against the Porsche factory in the U.
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S., and then we were running against Jaguar in the U.
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S.
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as well.
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So it just gave me an appreciation for how the dynamic and what you
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need to do to get the deal done.
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But in 85, Richard, his car finished second to Joost, and they probably
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would have won the race, but they had a false reading of a sensor.
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And so they had to back off the car a little bit and they came in
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second, but they were running up front the whole entire 24 hours.
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But the thing is, is that when I got to 86, it was just, I had a better feel
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for not only the people, but I also had a better feel for what it entailed.
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Cause while I was there, you know, obviously I got a small scooter, borrowed
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it from Richard and just kind of rode around the circuit before the racing
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started and kind of get a feel for it.
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So I had a chance to kind of look the place over.
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I said, well, you know, let's try it.
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So that's what we did.
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By doing that sort of, let's say, hot lap on a Vespa there, did you
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find any of the corners suddenly like, Ooh, that's going to be tricky.
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That's going to be tough.
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It wasn't a particularly daunting track.
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I mean, you know, the corners were the corners.
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And it was a long track on a lot of roads.
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And I felt, well, okay, this all looks sort of familiar, you know,
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when you read the magazines and you see the layouts and all that.
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I mean, I understood from the year before that the Mulsanne straight's
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pretty long and the cars go pretty quick.
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And that's how I just handled it.
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I said, okay, let's go.
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Which is interesting because you weren't a stranger to a car that was
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capable 200 miles an hour because you were already piloting 962s.
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I was doing my own research and I had just kind of scratched my head for a second.
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It's like 956 in 1986.
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This is the period where there's an overlap between the
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956 Group C car and the 962s.
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So did you feel like you maybe you were taking a step backwards
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running the 956 or how did it compare running the Liqui Moly 956?
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Well, fortunately, there wasn't much difference between the 956 and the 962.
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The 956, they just had a slightly shorter wheelbase, water cooled engine, actually
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not as powerful as our air cooled engine that we were using, but the car, the
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basic ergonomics, the instrumentation, and everything, it The way the gearbox worked,
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the way the visibility went, the mirrors and all of that was the same as a 962.
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The only fundamental difference was the power plant, which was different.
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And also the wheelbase was just a little shorter because John Bishop said you're
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going to put the driver's feet behind the centerline of the wheels in the 956.
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Your driver's feet were slightly ahead, which when I got in the car for the first
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time, Price said, remember, this is a 956.
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It's got a shorter wheelbase, so if it looks like you're going to hit
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the wall, pull your feet back, which, you know, so I'll keep that in mind.
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Was that the first time you got to drive a 956?
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Was that outlap going into your first practice round at Le Mans, or had you had
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experience with the car prior to that?
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Nope, that was it.
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Doing a lap at speed versus doing it on a scooter, did it all come together for you?
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Did it change your perspective of Le Mans, especially coming down the
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Mulsanne at over 200 miles an hour and braking zones and learning a new car?
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What was your takeaway at that moment?
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Well, one of the things when I first started out, I went around a very
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slow lap and then I started to pick up the pace on the Mulsanne, which
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in those days was virtually straight, except for the kink at the end.
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It had a slight hill and a slight kink going in the Mulsanne corner.
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They had these sign boards saying 3, 2, 1, and an arrow saying turn.
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Well, okay, I absorbed that, but I didn't absorb it enough to
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realize that it's me, so I was going 3, 2, 1, okay, I gotta turn.
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Well, I realized that the Mulsanne Corner was still another tenth of a mile further.
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And I almost wrecked the car.
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I literally almost wrecked the car.
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How I saved it, I have no idea, because I was downshifting, getting ready to
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turn, and all it was was guardrail, and I said, holy shit, wait a minute.
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That was a quick tutorial to say, look, you gotta master
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this part of the racetrack.
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One of the questions that we got from the crowd, and Terry asked,
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how does the strategy differ?
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We're in approaching a six, 24 hour race.
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And obviously you came to Lamar with Daytona already on your resume, but
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the lap at Lamar is so much longer.
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So what type of strategy did you have to implement as a driver to keep your
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cadence throughout your entire stint?
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A couple of things.
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One was, is that Reinhold Joost came up to me and I asked him, I said,
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Hey, what kind of hints about Lamar's?
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He says, do not touch the curves.
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The various curves on the corners don't touch the curves.
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Brian Redman said that when you go down the Mulsan, go down as much as you can,
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or as long as you can, in the center.
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Especially when you come up over the hill, because you don't know what's
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going to be there, and you want to make sure you can go either left or right
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if there's something in the middle.
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Funny thing about the Mulsan Strait is it gives you a lot of time to think.
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And that was one thing that Derek Bell said.
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He says, don't let your imagination get away from you.
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You got 60 seconds with your foot to the floor.
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Just don't think about it.
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And that took me a little while to think about it, and especially during
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the race when it was starting to rain.
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Stuart asks, you mentioned Bell, Redmond, Yost, all racing
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Porsches for various teams.
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Of all the drivers with whom you spoke, who gave you what you would
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consider the most comprehensive, honest, or best advice?
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You lie.
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Fourth, that was when IMSA was racing at Lime Rock.
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Everybody that was going to do Le Mans had to get down to Kennedy
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Airport to fly out on Sunday night to get to France and get down to the
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racetrack for the Tuesday inspection.
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And you had to be there.
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You had to sign in.
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Fortunately, we had a travel agent, Marion Champlain, who started with us
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and started a huge catering operation as he's since retired from racing.
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Marion was a travel agent.
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She set up all the logistics.
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She hired small planes to fly us down to Kennedy Airport so that we
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could make the Air France flight.
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And there must have been about 15 of us that were doing Le Mans.
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Goes to show how times have changed.
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Landed.
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Plane's taxied up to the jet.
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We got off and went up the stairs to get on the plane.
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When I was flying over, Brian Redman came over to me and I wish I'd kept it.
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He handed me a eight and a half by 11 pad with his advice as to how to race Le Mans.
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I devoured that.
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In fact, I read it.
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I gave it to Cobb.
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Cobb may have it.
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He was the guy that gave all the detail on how the pit straight
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is, the kind of gearing you'll use going underneath the Dunlop Bridge,
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going down through the esses, how to handle the Mulsanne straight.
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He was the one that wrote, go down there in the middle as much as you can,
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especially over the brow by the kink.
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The Indianapolis, you've got to be very careful there, the road leading up to
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Indianapolis is crowned, and it still is as a matter of fact, so you've got to be
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careful that you're not going to unbalance the car, pick a side and go down that
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side, and so you've got to kind of stay with it, and that was the most edifying
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of all of it, and he was, was then, and is even now, a very, very, very close friend.
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The other thing is that the car was really set up pretty well, we ran the long tail.
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The long tail is a streamlined tail.
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Racing on IMSA, we had a high tail, more of a sprint format.
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The other thing is because we were running this water cooled
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engine, which was very benign, a 2.
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8 liter engine that was almost silent, it was very quiet, wonderful balance.
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It wasn't quite as loud or noisy in the cockpit because it didn't have
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the blower fan like the 962 did.
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That was a significant difference in kind of the way the car felt.
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It was just quieter.
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You were doing all these very fast speeds, but somehow it was just quieter and a
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little bit more I won't say relaxing, but it was a little more calming than having
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the air cooled engine, which sounded loud from the start in the cockpit.
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The fortunate thing is, our relationship with Goodyear was pretty deep, and
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so we were running Goodyear tires.
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And so we were running Goodyear tires that we knew how they
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worked, and we knew how they ran.
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We had several of the same tire engineers that we had with IMSA.
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So you had that advantage, but the strategy was, you know, just
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go until the red light comes on, and then come to the pitch.
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Drive as fast and as comfortably as you can.
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You know, the stopwatch tells you whether you're doing anything or not.
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You work up to it.
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We did not have radios in those days.
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Nobody did.
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Nobody had radios.
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People were experimenting with them, but the communications laws
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and all that stuff in France said you can't use radio, where we were
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just starting to use them in the U.
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S.
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So no radios.
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New track, new car, and new teammates.
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So talk about the relationship with the other guys driving the 956.
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The guy that was the European, the Liqui Moly sponsored driver,
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was Mauro Baldi, who we have known from being over in the States.
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He ran in the States as well.
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Very affable, very good guy.
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And then Price Cobb, of course, who's probably my oldest friend in racing.
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So Price and I went over there as kind of a package.
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You know, you got to understand, I'm a business guy.
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I didn't do this for a living.
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And I didn't do all the races from 1981 on.
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I never did a full season of racing or whatever class I was racing.
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Then we met with Morrow and he drove us around the racetrack and when it was a
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road, when it's open and you can just drive around and take a look at it, he
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explained a lot of intricacies and the kind of the tricks of the trade, he was
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very, very forgiving of our ignorance.
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And so he was a great teammate in that respect.
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Being a businessman and time being part of the constraints of your ability to
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complete a season and things like that, were you considered just part of the
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team, or were you looked at as, let's say what we would call today the bronze
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driver, or the gentleman driver, or how were you positioned in that hierarchy?
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Well, Price and I, of course, were raised together.
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So it wasn't like, who is this guy?
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So Price and I, we'd done pretty well on a couple races.
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One out of Riverside and, you know, we were, we were a unit.
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There was no problem there.
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Baldy, I think, respected us.
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I don't know whether he ran at Riverside when we ran there.
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But, you know, he, he knew us as being serious drivers.
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In fact, what I did for a living was kind of irrelevant.
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I didn't feel out of place or, uh, I didn't have any sense that, You
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know, I was behind the eight ball.
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It was just, Hey, I got a job to do and let's go.
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That was the great thing that I had about racing is that it was so
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different than what I do day to day.
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So I didn't feel unequal to anybody.
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When you come in from your stint and you have an opportunity to download
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with one of the other drivers that isn't running, what would you guys talk about?
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What kind of information were you sharing?
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Cause obviously you had this.
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Two hours or however long you were out there where you had no communication, what
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kind of information were you downloading back to the team and to the drivers?
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In those days, that was the state of the art.
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So in other words, you weren't coming from any flaw or anything that, you know, the
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other teams didn't have anything on us.
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Even the Porsche guys, they were suffering from the same, couldn't
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download all the information on the way the car was performing.
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But I think the main thing that we talked about was just, How you
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handled the mechanics of the car, shifting, brake points, feel of the
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car, that was the biggest thing.
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Marky Smith Haas writes, given the brakes had such a long time to cool off
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during the car's trip down the Molson Strait, and then the hard braking heat
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up for the Molson corner, did you need to lightly drag your left foot on the
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brake before hard braking to warm them up?
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Or did you experience cracked rotors as a result of the extreme heating and cooling?
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No, but during the race in those days, you changed brakes.
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Definitely changed pads.
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Nowadays, they don't even do that.
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Or they rarely do it.
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Carbon brakes and carbon pads and the technology they brought to bear on it.
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And we were present when we were doing that early carbon brake stuff
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with prototypes we were running.
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We were using steel brakes.
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That was the way you had to do it.
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And this is true also at Daytona in those days.
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When you came down the straightaway, when you crossed the stripe, you kind of rolled
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your left foot over the brake just to touch it a little while you're flat out,
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just to get them a little bit warmed up.
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And you had to do that at the Mulsanne.
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The rest of the time, you could pretty much brake normally.
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The thing that we had in our 956s, we were the slowest of all
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the Porsches on the straightaway.
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We were the quickest of all the Porsches in the corner, because we
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did not run a Le Mans undertrack.
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We ran a sprint racing undertrack.
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So while we were slower down the straight, we had better traction and
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better handling through the corners.
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We were running times that were equal to the guys that
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were running far ahead of us.
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And it was one of the reasons why we were able to make up so
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much time when we slipped down on these different maladies we had.
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But the braking, that's a great question, but braking, even braking has changed now.
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There's no degradation in the braking now because they've
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made the technology so good.
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Margi also writes, I was advised to drag the brake when I drove an 84 in the Group
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B 930 and competitors were having to pit to change their brake rotors all the time.
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Yeah, it was a common thing.
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We did it at Daytona.
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That was one of the things that we spent a lot of time developing
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the tools to enable us to squeeze the pads back to get new pads on.
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And have it help you if you had to replace the actual discs itself,
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because that took a lot longer.
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Nowadays, they have click in, it's literally a quick disconnect, they can
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disconnect the calipers, pop the whole setup out, and then put the new setup on.
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I saw that, in fact, I think I saw that at Watkins Glen, a Porsche
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did that just this past weekend.
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So you mentioned the rain, and we've talked many times before about the
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variable weather conditions at lama.
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It could be sunny on one side and a downpour on the other.
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It's just so big and so spread out.
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It just happens to have its own interesting microclimate.
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Your year 86.
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It rained quite a bit this year at the 101st anniversary of Le Mans in 2024.
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It rained quite a bit as well, but they didn't have safety cars
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holding up the show in 1986.
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So what was driving in the rain like at Le Mans?
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What did it teach you about your driving?
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Was there anything you took away from it?
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Well, it wasn't much because that year we had a lot of weather changes.
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It didn't rain hard, but it rained enough.
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So that was whatever you learned, you couldn't impart on anybody.
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Because, you know, you had to go on.
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Experiences herself pretty straightforward.
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I mean it was it was gonna be a long race and you just got to make sure you
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preserve the car Don't wreck anything.
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That's a common theme amongst a lot of the drivers We spoke to is this idea
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this concept of mechanical sympathy and not every driver is maybe as sympathetic
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as another one But the goal is to maintain that consistent lap time from
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one driver to the next to the next and the car has to survive Winners bring
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it home at the end of the day if it breaks somewhere in between that's a
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failure Ironically, that is the first fundamental difference between endurance
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racing now and endurance racing then.
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Nowadays, the cars don't break.
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If you take a look at all the cars that started the Daytona race, Sebring, Le
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Mans, any of the long distance makes races, Silverstone, the six hours
20:47
of Watkins Glen, Petit Le Mans, Cars don't break anymore, and that's a
20:52
result of a whole lot of things, one of which is a lot of computer driven
20:56
and computer measured fuel, incredibly well built products that are put in
21:02
the car, the cars are built better now.
21:04
The other thing is, is that the gear shifting is all done by paddle
21:08
shift, and the paddle shift is all computer controlled, which means that
21:11
if you're going along the Mulsanne Strait, nowadays they're going about
21:15
210 maybe, the Jaguars were going 240.
21:18
When we were racing, we were going about 220 to 222.
21:22
But the thing that is different about it now is that they have
21:26
the ability to not miss a shift.
21:29
They don't miss a shift anymore because the computer won't let, it's
21:32
a wheel speed thing, the wheel speed catches up to the speed of the car
21:36
and that lets the gear shift go down.
21:38
All of that is completely different.
21:40
In our deal, it was a five speed, and off you went.
21:44
Fortunately with the Porsches, it was one of the great characteristics of it
21:47
was, is that they were synchro gearboxes.
21:50
The negative of it was, particularly in street courses and incident, you
21:53
couldn't quite get the shift quick enough.
21:55
Whereas the guys with straight cut gears like Hewland and the Jaguars and
21:59
a lot of the other guys, they could just jam the gears a lot quicker.
22:03
But in our case, we had to make sure with all the dog rings and all the things to
22:06
make a synchronized gearbox synchronized, you had to be careful with that.
22:10
But that is the fundamental difference between racing now and racing then.
22:15
Ricky So I'm glad you brought that up.
22:16
Your thoughts on the 963 in comparison to the 962 and the 956.
22:22
Transcribed by https: otter.
22:23
ai Well, it's typical Porsche.
22:24
I mean, they, you know, they take it very, very seriously.
22:27
I think having it under the, uh, aegis of Roger Penske also helps.
22:31
They spent the budget on the car.
22:33
The cars are clearly good.
22:34
They're clearly reliable, but they worked an awful lot on that.
22:38
Those cars are incredibly complex.
22:40
They have hydraulic front brakes and electric rear brakes.
22:43
That all has to be coordinated.
22:44
You know, in our deal, they were mechanical, fluid
22:47
pushed braking all around.
22:49
Now it's fly by wire.
22:51
It's a big factor.
22:52
And the hybrid is another thing.
22:54
Plus, the cars are a lot heavier.
22:55
At the end of your personal run in 1986, walk away from the event, from
23:01
the car, what were your thoughts?
23:03
How had your impression of Le Mans changed after being behind the
23:06
wheel, going through all the weather conditions, all the things that you
23:09
experienced while you were there?
23:10
Well, you know, it's kind of funny.
23:12
The thing that happened to us was Mauro Baldi got sick.
23:15
He got sick after his first, uh, he was sick actually when we met him
23:20
and then during the night before the race he was in really bad shape.
23:23
He got in the car and ran the first stint and from then on we
23:26
didn't see him until the end.
23:27
He didn't drive with us at all.
23:29
He did no driving after his first hour and a half stint in the car.
23:34
So it was just Price and I, kind of back to the old days.
23:37
You know, it was one of those things where, uh, where we were just able
23:40
to just run the car, just he and I.
23:43
The most important thing about LeMans was we survived it.
23:45
Joe Gartner was a real up and coming talent.
23:49
He was driving a Kramer car and the transmission locked up.
23:53
He hit the armco barrier, car cut in half, died of his injuries there.
23:56
But I think the biggest thing was is that I came out of it,
24:00
we finished, we were running as high as fifth, we finished ninth.
24:04
We were as low as 17th, we had some car problems that were inexcusable,
24:07
never should have happened.
24:09
Had we not had the car problems, I think we could have been up
24:11
in the, easily in the top five.
24:13
We had a very fast car.
24:14
The thing that was significant about it was that after that, there
24:18
was no straightaway that was long.
24:21
Any other racetrack I raced on, the straightaway was never as long.
24:24
You were never on the foot to the floor for as long as you were.
24:28
And had the time to think about it as you did it going down to Mulsanne Street.
24:33
The other thing is, I was kind of afraid of the dark.
24:36
I've always been a little bit afraid of the dark.
24:37
Well, when I finished Le Mans, I was not afraid of the dark anymore.
24:41
Running in the rain in the middle of the night, which didn't last very long, but
24:44
running in, running in the rain in the middle of the night, 220 miles an hour,
24:48
cars darting all over the place because the adhesion was poor in those rain tires.
24:53
You know, that was the other thing that kind of changed.
24:55
I could be in total darkness and not have to have to worry about it.
24:59
Was it something you wanted to do again?
25:01
Well, I'll tell you why I only did it once.
25:03
I only did it once because first, now it's a real time sink.
25:07
You've got to be there for a period of time.
25:10
We got off the plane on Monday, uh, Monday morning and we were at the
25:13
track on Tuesday and we read, we did inspection on all that and ran Wednesday.
25:18
Wednesday night, Thursday qualifying, Friday had off, and then Saturday
25:22
was the race, and Sunday, you know, we headed off to the airport.
25:25
Now it's a lot longer, a lot more elaborate timing wise.
25:29
Had I not finished, had our car not finished, we had wheel bearing problems,
25:34
I had a, we had a shock absorber go, all had to be replaced, I had a
25:38
lower control link go on me and the, and the kink, at about 200 miles an
25:43
hour, popped the right rear wheel.
25:45
Kind of on its edge, slowed up, came in, they fixed it, and off I went,
25:49
got back into it, I couldn't believe it, I actually did it in retrospect.
25:53
But anyway, so, if I had not finished the race, and not had the experience of
25:58
driving around that track at the end of the race with the corner workers coming
26:02
back onto the track surface, waving all of their flags, their congratulations
26:07
for having survived it, And in those days, remember one guy didn't and
26:11
they had a, another team, a GT team had a, a pit fire and they had some
26:15
people really seriously injured there.
26:17
So, you know, it was kind of an experience that I'm glad I did and I don't think I
26:22
could have duplicated it, doing it again.
26:25
I just felt that, I hung it out there.
26:28
I had done it, did a great job, my times were comparable to all of the top guys.
26:33
I felt very confident driving the car at the tail end, I finished the race.
26:37
I just think that the experience was hard to beat a second time,
26:41
so I decided not to do it.
26:43
I had plenty of offers from other people, other teams, to do the race.
26:47
Jaguar called me, uh, Tony Dow was running the Jaguar team in the U.
26:50
S.
26:50
said we'd like to come and test and maybe do Le Mans with us.
26:53
And I said, Tony, no, I just, I won't have the time to do them.
26:56
You know, that would have been a first rate team.
26:58
Knowing those guys and racing against them, they were good.
27:01
They knew what they were doing and had great equipment.
27:03
I just felt that it was just good once and, uh, let's not push your luck.
27:07
That's really what it was.
27:09
So it sounds like Le Mans made you a better driver.
27:12
So you took that with you back to racing here in the States and other places then.
27:15
Oh, yeah.
27:16
So 1986, that was your time behind the wheel at Le Mans, but it was
27:20
not your last time at Le Mans.
27:22
So let's talk about the years following that and especially coming back as the
27:26
team principal for Dyson Racing and also supporting your son Chris's three attempts
27:31
at Le Mans in 2004, So what was that like coming back after all the changes?
27:39
From your time behind the wheel, because the Molson had changed,
27:42
the pits had changed, all the new buildings that were put in place.
27:45
What was it like returning to Le Mans as a team principal?
27:48
Well, it was kind of interesting.
27:49
Chris signed on with Jan Lammerstein in prototype.
27:53
Jan had driven for us.
27:54
And a couple of races.
27:56
And when I got there looking around, the place was substantially changed.
28:00
I mean, the garages in 86 were the same garages that were there
28:04
probably since the late 50s.
28:06
And they looked, it reminded me of Sebring before Don Panos Same kind of thing.
28:12
Plaster was falling off the ceiling and the bathrooms
28:14
were, I think, a mixed company.
28:16
I wouldn't like to describe them, but anyway, kind of a mess.
28:20
But the other thing that changed, of course, was the
28:22
fact that the teams had radios.
28:24
They had more electronics.
28:25
They had the setups in the garage.
28:27
They had setups out on the pit wall to monitor how the cars were doing.
28:31
And taking a brief again on a, on a scooter that Ann Lambert's had, I
28:35
talked to the organizers and they let me ride around in a, um, more of a
28:39
motorcycle so then they'd get it done quicker and ran around the course
28:42
and it was substantially different.
28:44
They got rid of the S's, the, uh, Dunlop Bridge is different.
28:48
It's slower.
28:49
They put a chicane there at the end of it.
28:51
In fact, I think one of the reasons why the Toyota lost in second place
28:54
was because they spun out there.
28:56
But the Mulsanne corner was in essence the same.
29:00
Down into Indianapolis, it was the same, and the Porsche cars were the same.
29:03
But the runoff area was a little bit better.
29:06
Still not great.
29:07
I still think it's probably one of the most dangerous racetracks on the planet.
29:10
Onco barriers have long since been discredited as a safety barrier.
29:15
But that's what they line most of the track with.
29:18
Frankly, it's because most of them will sound straight as a road, but the
29:21
chicanes were the thing that were just staggering how slow it made the cars go.
29:27
And yet, the cars at the end of it qualifying faster than we ever did.
29:30
Shows you how technology and cornering speeds and braking have changed.
29:35
I found it different, but it, you know, it was good to be
29:37
over there to see Chris run.
29:38
When I was there, I met so many of the people that I actually
29:41
raced against 20 years before.
29:43
Different people from all walks of life, but the thing is, is that
29:46
the spirit of the place and the daunting task it is to run that
29:50
race and to win it still remained.
29:52
You talked about how Brian Redmond gave you all this advice, and you know,
29:56
you still wish you had a handwritten note, wherever that ended up, and
29:59
that was sage advice at the time.
30:01
But you also said how much the track had changed, especially when
30:04
you lead into 1989 and 90 and so on, where it really started to
30:08
take the shape that it has today.
30:10
Being very involved in your son, Chris's racing career as part of Dyson Racing
30:16
and all that, it was probably very difficult to relay any advice to Chris
30:20
because the track was so different.
30:22
So what did you guys talk about?
30:23
Did you find common ground?
30:24
Was there some sort of shared experience there between Le Mans
30:28
of the past and Le Mans of today?
30:30
Some.
30:30
I told Chris that he'll feel formal pressure.
30:34
There are a lot of races.
30:37
But I think there are probably five races, you know, that are real races.
30:40
Le Mans is one of them.
30:41
Indy 500 is one of them.
30:43
Probably the uh, Grand Prix of Monte Carlo is one of them.
30:46
Bathurst is one of them.
30:47
The Daytona 500 is one of them.
30:49
But then, you know, you get down to them and all the rest of
30:52
them are kind of just car races.
30:53
I told him that when he goes over there, it's going to be a different thing.
30:56
Because when he went over there in 89, they hadn't done all the chicane work.
30:59
They had changed a little bit of the, actually came close to running
31:03
the same course that I ran on.
31:05
But they did add a chicane going onto the straightaway.
31:08
They since moved it further down, so kind of a Mickey Mouse chicane.
31:12
But the big thing was, is that I just said to him, you're going to feel
31:15
a little more pressure on this one.
31:17
But Chris was pretty experienced by the time he did it.
31:19
He had run a lot of races with us and did pretty well.
31:22
So he kind of knew the score.
31:24
But I think other than saying that, you know, this is it.
31:26
If you're talking sports cars, this is the Indy 500 of sports cars.
31:30
This is it.
31:31
To do well at it and to finish it is really important.
31:34
And that's the one thing I told him to get with his guys.
31:37
And so then everybody knows they're not a hero, that everybody has to
31:41
handle with a car in good shape.
31:43
Between one driver and the next, because if you got it, some guy,
31:47
you know, wrecked third gear, pretty soon second or fourth is going to go.
31:51
And in those days, he was shifting.
31:53
It wasn't paddle shift in those days.
31:55
One of the questions that comes up from the crowd quite a bit is if you could pick
31:58
any one of the current 2023 or 2024 season Le Mans cars from any of the classes,
32:04
and let's say you could get behind the wheel tomorrow and turn another lap.
32:09
At Le Mans, what would you choose?
32:11
Would it be the 963, the Ferrari, one of the LMP2 cars, something else?
32:14
Well, clearly, I think I can probably get into the Porsche probably easier
32:18
because I know who I am and I know my record with working with them.
32:21
I'll tell you, the Ferraris are pretty damn impressive.
32:23
The Toyota cars are superb as well.
32:26
Not taking anything away from the Porsche guys.
32:28
But those Ferrari guys, they were really hooked up.
32:31
And what was interesting about all those guys that were running the two
32:34
lead Ferrari cars, and then the non works car, they were all GT trained.
32:40
They were not open wheel guys that came down to race.
32:42
They were all guys that started factory programs in GT cars.
32:46
That's what so impressed me about the fact that these guys, they were flying.
32:50
I mean, all of those guys were really running hard.
32:53
Again, they were running hard because they could.
32:56
They were running hard because they made it possible to be able to run
32:59
a car consistently harder all the time than it used to be, for all
33:04
of the reasons I mentioned earlier.
33:06
That Ferrari, clearly, it's pretty cool.
33:08
It's a, I think it's a, you know, one of the striking cars racing out there.
33:12
It'd be interesting to see what one of those is like, but clearly,
33:15
you know, you know, that was then, this is now, and you know, 50
33:18
years later, we're still doing it.
33:20
While I'm not doing it personally, driving that is, which was a lot of fun.
33:25
I enjoyed all of them.
33:26
To be a part of it still, through Chris, and now through my grandsons,
33:31
they're both starting to do some racing.
33:32
Go karts for John at this point.
33:35
So eight years old, it's kind of like, uh, you know, it's like Ted Williams.
33:38
He'd like to think he could hit a home run against a major league
33:41
pitching at the age of 75 or 80.
33:44
But the reality of it is by the time you're swinging, the ball's already
33:47
gone into the catcher's net, which actually leads into a great sort of
33:51
closing question, Rob, let's just say somebody walked up to you, maybe at the
33:55
Glen or one of the other tracks that, you know, you're still frequenting.
33:58
And says, Hey, I heard you drove at Lamont, but I don't
34:02
know anything about it.
34:03
You know, I wanna learn more about the race.
34:05
Why should I either go all the way to France to see it, or why
34:09
should I tune in to watch it on tv?
34:11
What would you say to those folks?
34:12
Well, I think because it's lamonts, I mean, uh, after the Indy 500, I think
34:16
it's one of the longest, one of the oldest continuously run races in the world.
34:21
I mean, there's a tradition, there's a history.
34:23
I mean, the Bentley boys started in, you know, the mid to late 20s.
34:27
I mean, they were running cars of Le Mans in their teens.
34:29
It's the tradition of them.
34:31
The other thing, I think, it's all the resources that everybody puts into it.
34:34
Porsche made their name and made their reputation.
34:39
Running and winning Lamont's, they are masters of having done that well.
34:44
And it was a part of their corporate objective every year that we are going
34:49
to win Lamont's and that's part of it.
34:52
The tradition, the competition, everybody brings their best stuff.
34:57
Before we close out, I would love to turn the microphone over to ACO USA President
35:03
David Lowe for some closing thoughts.
35:05
Well, again, Bob, I certainly want to thank you on behalf of all the members.
35:09
We certainly appreciate your time and look forward to you attending
35:12
one of our live events as a legend.
35:14
That'd be great.
35:15
I'd be honored to do it.
35:16
You know, it was long ago, but, uh, when you start thinking about it,
35:19
all I can tell you is, is that I'm really honored to have been able to
35:23
do the racing that I was able to do.
35:25
It's an honor to impart what I've learned to people, and I'm really
35:30
honored that you asked me, Eric.
35:31
I really appreciate it.
35:32
And thank you, Rob.
35:33
And I do want to turn the microphone over to Bob Barr, press president of
35:37
the Society of Automotive Historians and a member of the International Motor
35:41
Racing Research Center that helped co sponsor this evening with the legend.
35:44
So Bob.
35:45
40 years ago, I was a brake and suspension mechanic and lowly G production
35:49
SCCA, which doesn't exist anymore.
35:52
So Rob, I found a lot of your talk really fascinating about the brakes.
35:56
Just a thank you to Rob.
35:58
Dave and Eric for putting this on.
36:01
This is a real treat.
36:02
Thank you all.
36:03
During his 21 seasons as a professional racing driver, Rob Dyson drove in 92
36:08
races, scoring four overall race wins, including the 1997 Rolex 24 at Daytona,
36:15
and a total of 18 podium finishes.
36:17
Rob continued to compete episodically in professional racing through 2007,
36:22
and today remains active, driving his collection of vintage Indy cars in
36:26
a variety of demonstration events.
36:28
He was named chairman of the board of the directors at the Indianapolis motor
36:31
speedway museum in 2021, following a decade as a member of the board.
36:36
And he is guiding the institution through its 89 million transformation
36:40
and renovation and charts its future path as a repository of history and
36:44
related artifacts of America's oldest active and most storied racing facility.
36:48
Rob is still involved in the Dyson racing team.
36:51
And supporting his son's efforts and his grandsons.
36:54
And so look forward to more things coming from Rob in the future.
36:57
And on behalf of everyone here and those listening at home, thank you
37:01
for sharing your story with us.
37:03
And we hope you enjoyed this presentation and look forward to more Evening with
37:06
the Legend throughout the season.
37:08
So Rob, thank you again for coming on and we appreciate you sharing
37:11
your time and your stories.
37:12
Thanks everybody.
37:13
It was an honor to be here.
37:25
This episode has been brought to you by the Automobile Club
37:28
of the West and the ACO USA.
37:30
From the awe inspiring speed demons that have graced the track to the courageous
37:34
drivers who have pushed the limits of endurance, the 24 Hours Le Mans is an
37:38
automotive spectacle like no other.
37:40
For over a century, the 24 Hours Le Mans has urged manufacturers to innovate
37:44
for the benefit of future motorists.
37:46
And it's a celebration of the relentless pursuit of speed and
37:49
excellence in the world of motorsports.
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To learn more about or to become a member of the ACO USA, look no further than www.
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org, click on English in the upper right corner, and then click on the
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