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Malcolm Oastler (Part 1) - Australian GP Special · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:14
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust, and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:27
  For this episode, I'm in the listener studio, so I had actually hoped to be chatting to our guest in person, but it's GP week in Melbourne, and he's about a six to seven-hour drive away, unfortunately, and I just can't make the planets align.
• 0:40
  He's been good enough to talk to us from his place, where he's escaped the world of Formula One for the farm.
• 0:46
  Malcolm Osler actually started out as a driver.
• 0:50
  He's been back at it in recent years, picking up some Australian titles, which we'll talk about.
• 0:55
  Armed with a degree in mechanical engineering, his talent in this area was quickly spotted when he was a bit younger, while trying to take the next step in his racing career in England.
• 1:05
  He transitioned to working on the other side of the pit wall and made quite an impact.
• 1:10
  He played a significant part in Raynard's success in various classes on the way to F1 and led the design of an IndyCar project that would net titles and Indy 500 wins on the way.
• 1:23
  There were stints in the formative years of BAR and with Jaguar as well in F1.
• 1:28
  You may recall that for a time, Lee Diffie, Billy Woods and I worked with Malcolm's brother, Mark, on TEN's coverage of supercars.
• 1:36
  They were golden years of broadcasting for us.
• 1:38
  will reminisce about some race cars that have Malcolm's engineering DNA embedded in them and a few named drivers he worked with too.
• 1:47
  And the fun he's now having on YouTube sharing his garage creations in a set of trademark thongs.
• 1:54
  If you're into motorbikes, you will not believe what he's been working on.
• 1:58
  Here we have possibly the world's longest motorbike fuel tank.
• 2:04
  Here's a little tip for fabricators.
• 2:05
  We begin with post F1 life and what he's been up to nowadays.
• 2:09
  You couldn't be more removed from the GP pit lane and he is loving it.
• 2:15
  I'm down on the far south coast, almost in the little corner of New South Wales, almost in Victoria.
• 2:21
  And what are you doing with yourself these days?
• 2:22
  We know we're going to talk a little bit about your hill climb success later in the podcast, but what have you been doing with yourself?
• 2:29
  I guess same as I was doing as a teenager, mucking around in the shed.
• 2:32
  And loving it.
• 2:33
  Yeah, I like making things.
• 2:34
  I always have, making things and fixing things and improving things and get a great deal of enjoyment from it and keeping fit, a little bit of travelling.
• 2:42
  Bit of cycling, I gather?
• 2:43
  I've got this bunch of blokes assembled roughly around some guys I went to uni with.
• 2:49
  And we did a trip six or eight years ago from Launceston down to Hobart, down the East Coast, which is a beautiful ride over sort of five days, just going from pub to pub basically.
• 2:59
  And that's turned into a yearly and it's now a dozen people.
• 3:03
  We sort of cap it at a dozen because you end up with –
• 3:05
  logistics go crazy.
• 3:07
  But we've just done five days up in the mountains to the west of here, up around Cooma, Adam Inivi, Mount Selwyn, Burrydale, Nimitabellum, back down here again.
• 3:14
  So five old blokes with grey hair, some of them on e-bikes.
• 3:17
  I think we rode 480km or something in five days and climbed 6.4km, which is, I think that's higher than Everest Base Camp.
• 3:26
  Fair old slog.
• 3:27
  Everest Base Camp is 5.5, so you are right.
• 3:29
  Is it?
• 3:29
  Okay, there you go.
• 3:30
  Now...
• 3:31
  You might have checked out of Formula One or motorsport in an elite sense, but you have that competitive side still, which I like.
• 3:43
  If we look through the Australian record books, what is it?
• 3:44
  Australian Hill Climb Champion.
• 3:46
  And what are you now?
• 3:47
  Are you five time?
• 3:48
  Am I right?
• 3:49
  Yeah, five times.
• 3:50
  I missed a year over in Adelaide, so five times.
• 3:54
  But I last won at a Bathurst.
• 3:56
  The absolute pinnacle of my hill climbing career was winning at Bathurst Mountain Strait in my little homemade car with a motorbike engine against the Gould, the car that's won 10 British Hill Climb Championships.
• 4:10
  And of all places, I shouldn't beat him there, but I got him by two hundredths of a second.
• 4:13
  I love it.
• 4:14
  And that's the last time I drove the car.
• 4:15
  I crossed the finish line and put it away and sold it.
• 4:18
  And that was my fifth championship.
• 4:19
  It was at Bathurst.
• 4:20
  It was televised.
• 4:20
  It was unreal.
• 4:21
  I had my family there.
• 4:22
  So great time to dip out, really.
• 4:25
  And so are you saying that you won't do any more hill climbing?
• 4:27
  You've ticked that box now?
• 4:29
  I've got a little shits and giggles car.
• 4:32
  I built this Goggle build-up thing, which is a hill climb car, but it's not competitive.
• 4:36
  So it's just a – it was really for the sake of building it rather than trying to go out and do anything with it.
• 4:41
  But I've got that to play with, but nothing serious, no.
• 4:44
  I've sort of built the ultimate car and now I've sold it.
• 4:46
  I wouldn't go there again.
• 4:48
  Okay, we can talk about that ultimate car in a second.
• 4:50
  Firstly, you've touched on places you compete when it comes to hill climbing.
• 4:52
  I mean, I love the fact that you, I think, correct me if I'm wrong here, Mount Panorama, you run the reverse direction up the mountain, don't you?
• 4:59
  Which is pretty cool.
• 5:00
  You do both.
• 5:02
  You start outside the clubhouse, the light car clubhouse, which is probably...
• 5:07
  100, 200 metres down Conrad Strait from Forest Elbow and go up there the wrong way, which is pretty hectic.
• 5:15
  But the best bit of track probably in Australia is the Mountain Strait hook line, which is you start at the hump on Mountain Strait.
• 5:22
  Excellent.
• 5:22
  And first, second, fourth, fourth, sixth, by the time you get to turn one, as we have it.
• 5:28
  I actually went through there on the last run in fifth, which gives you an idea of how fast these cars are.
• 5:32
  What sort of number?
• 5:32
  What kind of speed?
• 5:34
  I don't know quite there, but it's pretty flipping quick.
• 5:36
  I bet.
• 5:37
  And then fourth gear through the cutting and fifth gear over the top and going across the finish line just before the top, top, top of the hill, all the shift lights are on in sixth gear, which is 245 clicks.
• 5:50
  And we did a little bit of data analysis because Scotty McLaughlin was on pole that year in his Mustang.
• 5:56
  Yep.
• 5:56
  And if he went past me doing 230 kilometres an hour in sixth gear when I dropped the clutch, I'd catch him by the top of the hill.
• 6:07
  Is that right?
• 6:08
  Yeah, yeah.
• 6:09
  Fast cars.
• 6:10
  Rapid.
• 6:10
  Yeah, absolutely rapid.
• 6:12
  I mean, there's some unique venues for hill climbing in this country.
• 6:16
  I mean, back in the day, there was actually even a cool one at Amaru Park.
• 6:19
  I'm not sure if you actually ever got to compete at that because it's long gone now.
• 6:24
  It's housing and stuff.
• 6:25
  But in that Amaru Park complex in Sydney's northwest, there was a hill climb there back in the day.
• 6:29
  They do have some of their own unique venues as well, don't they?
• 6:32
  Yeah, I did ride a push bike down the hill at Amaru Park when I was about 14 years old.
• 6:38
  We had a bit of a search there before getting chucked out by the security guard.
• 6:43
  But Silverdale was very popular out in the west of Sydney, out near Camden somewhere, and Amaru Park, but there are still more.
• 6:52
  I think New South Wales is the sort of mecca for hill climbing in terms of tracks.
• 6:56
  There are about eight tracks in New South Wales and they're all quite different.
• 6:59
  Very cool.
• 7:00
  You talked before about the car that's ultimately gone to Canada and the engineering touches or input that you've had on that car along the way.
• 7:09
  Don't give away any secrets, but what are the unique demands from an engineering perspective when you're building a car like that?
• 7:14
  And how do you get that little extra tenth of a second, you know, maybe on arrival, not just in a driving sense?
• 7:21
  There are no secrets left at this stage of my career.
• 7:24
  Good.
• 7:25
  It's all, it's all, just ask.
• 7:28
  Well, very light car with as much power as you can cram in there, bearing in mind the weight is the crucial thing.
• 7:35
  And as much downforce as you can, well, as sufficient downforce you can crank on there, bearing in mind it's all guesswork, no wind tunnel testing.
• 7:43
  Okay.
• 7:43
  So as far as the aero setup was concerned, it was just the basic stuff that I know works, which, you know, you could refine it and develop it, but...
• 7:51
  When you've got open slather and you can build a tunnel car and put really wide span wings on it and go crazy with the front wing in front of the front wheels and that sort of thing.
• 8:01
  It's just things you know work and it worked exceptionally well.
• 8:04
  The car, the cuddle car had no vices.
• 8:06
  It did everything you wanted to do exactly when you asked it to.
• 8:09
  It was fantastic over bumps, no understeer, no oversteer.
• 8:13
  I mean, obviously...
• 8:15
  It used to oversee occasionally when you use the 400 horsepower excessively, but it just stuck.
• 8:21
  It's an amazing thing.
• 8:22
  Crazy.
• 8:23
  300 kilos.
• 8:24
  On Pirelli tyres for the last event, they're a little bit lighter than the Avons.
• 8:27
  So it's just under 300 kilos and a good 400 horsepower.
• 8:31
  Pretty exciting.
• 8:33
  Can we touch a little bit on Formula One?
• 8:35
  Do you still watch it and have you been across the new regs for 2022 and what do you think of the new cars?
• 8:42
  That would be a good thing.
• 8:44
  I do keep in touch with it.
• 8:46
  I just look at the F1 website, nothing else.
• 8:49
  No podcasts or further reading.
• 8:51
  And to be honest, I only read probably one in ten articles on there because most of it's journalist opinions and stuff, which are not very much value.
• 8:58
  Nothing personal, Greg.
• 8:59
  Not at all, not at all.
• 9:01
  And some technical aspects, you know, some – anyway.
• 9:03
  But it's great, isn't it, Formula 1?
• 9:06
  It's probably the only thing I do follow, to be honest.
• 9:09
  And you think the new regs, I mean, their whole overarching, quote-unquote, entertainment thing was to create better racing.
• 9:15
  Do you feel it's, we're only a couple of races in as you and I talk, do you feel like it's got the ingredients to deliver that perhaps?
• 9:21
  It seems to be better.
• 9:23
  But to be fair, like when there's a good race on, you know, last year, there was a good race on, wasn't there?
• 9:28
  Exactly.
• 9:28
  Lewis Hamilton trying to get past Perez in the last race.
• 9:31
  He made it last three or four, I don't know, two or three, four laps side by side.
• 9:35
  You know, the cars weren't actually that bad, to be honest.
• 9:38
  To say they're better now, I'm sure they are, but how much difference it makes.
• 9:42
  Unfortunately, it seems to be dominated by the…
• 9:45
  the rather contrived DRS thing hanging off the back of the car that makes it a lay down when you want to go past it like NASCAR you just sort of line them up and cruise by can I rewind the clock a little bit to early life for you I'm sure people would be interested in that from memory you grew up in Sydney your brother Mark and
• 10:02
  In later years, we'd commentate supercars with Lee Diffie and I and Billy Woods and so on.
• 10:06
  Just give people, if you can, Malcolm, a sense of the connection to cars and motorsport for you at a young age and how you were perhaps drawn to it, your earliest recollections of it.
• 10:17
  I suppose it goes beyond further back than my earliest recollections, things my parents told me.
• 10:22
  I actually lived in Bathurst for a couple of years when I was a kid.
• 10:26
  and went to Bathurst and watched the Easter races on my dad's shoulders and was actually mesmerized by the whole business.
• 10:32
  But one of my earliest words was lawn, which was when someone in the neighborhood had started a lawnmower, I knew what it was, and I'd look up and go lawn.
• 10:39
  It had a motor in it, ideally a two-stroke, you know?
• 10:43
  Yep.
• 10:43
  And just a dedicated petrol head, you know?
• 10:46
  I remember being at primary school and finding a book in the library about how a two-stroke engine worked, and I just thought I'd found the gold mine.
• 10:51
  I said, look at this, this is what goes on.
• 10:54
  And just reading everything you get your hands on, which wasn't much in those days, and making stuff, learning hands-on with mini bikes and go-karts and modified road cars and whatever I could dream up, really.
• 11:09
  Terrific.
• 11:09
  What was the first road car?
• 11:11
  How did you pay for that?
• 11:11
  How did you get your hands on that?
• 11:14
  It was $50.
• 11:15
  Broke down the road owned it, Austin Lancer.
• 11:20
  with a broken axle.
• 11:21
  And so I pushed it home, I suppose, and there was an upside down one in the bush somewhere, so I went and pulled an axle out of that and put it in mine, and then I had a working Austin Lancer.
• 11:32
  And this thing, gosh, it was dreadful.
• 11:34
  It was just the epitome of what the Palmers were exporting around the world in the 50s.
• 11:37
  It just had terrible suspension, terrible brakes, horrible gearbox, horrible engine.
• 11:43
  It was a shocking thing.
• 11:45
  So that got clicked on and had a Mini then, which I rescued.
• 11:48
  It was on its way to a demolition derby.
• 11:50
  Was it?
• 11:51
  So I turned that back into a road car and had a broken piston, but that easily fixed.
• 11:56
  And then an Alfa, my third car when I was 18 was an Alfa Giulia Super.
• 12:01
  Oh, cool.
• 12:01
  Beautiful little four-door Alfa.
• 12:03
  And I still don't know why I sold that.
• 12:05
  It was such a gorgeous thing.
• 12:07
  But I used to have four or five road cars a year, just keep buying sports cars and tidying them up and flicking them on.
• 12:12
  Nice.
• 12:13
  You, correct me if I have not got the title correct, but from what I can remember, you went to university at UTS or University of Technology Sydney, is that right?
• 12:24
  Yeah.
• 12:25
  And mechanical engineering with honours.
• 12:27
  Did you do a paper that was around cars and motor racing or something along those lines?
• 12:31
  What did you do in the study in that regard?
• 12:34
  I was naturally obviously led in that direction.
• 12:38
  My final year thesis was running another one of those shitty Austen – can I say shitty?
• 12:43
  Yes, you can.
• 12:44
  Of course you can.
• 12:46
  They had an Austen 1800 engine and a dyno downstairs in the lab.
• 12:50
  The UTS was funny because they'd originally planned to have more of those towers and they built the foundations sort of 10 stories underground.
• 12:57
  and then ran out of money to build the tower.
• 12:58
  So they ended up 10 stories underground and three above.
• 13:01
  It was quite a strange setup.
• 13:02
  But down in the basement, there was a dyno with this BMC engine and there was a project available, thesis available to run it on ethanol, as they do, you know, we're doing running engines in ethanol in Brazilian places.
• 13:13
  And just go through the thermodynamics of it all and getting it to work.
• 13:16
  which was funny because I then sort of 40 years later ended up with my little hill climb car running on E85 and loving it.
• 13:24
  Terrific.
• 13:24
  Back in those days, were you doing sort of midnight motor stuff and running the dyno at late hours after normal university and things?
• 13:31
  No, it was all – I don't know if you needed a technician, but no, it was all done in –
• 13:36
  in civilised hours.
• 13:37
  But I did a sandwich course, Greg, which was six months study and six months work.
• 13:42
  I didn't want to be a uni student when I finished school.
• 13:44
  I wanted to go out in the workforce and be doing stuff.
• 13:47
  And the reason I went to UTS rather than Sydney or New South Uni was I had this sandwich course where you could work six months and go out to the workforce.
• 13:54
  So tell us more about that.
• 13:55
  What were you working and what were you getting into at that stage?
• 14:00
  Well, six months study and then I'd met Peter Janssen.
• 14:04
  I introduced myself to Peter Janssen when… Captain.
• 14:07
  Yeah, the captain.
• 14:09
  A mate of mine and myself, both petrol heads, obviously went down to, I think, to Phillip Island and Calder there were a couple of race meetings at the end of the year after our HSC.
• 14:19
  And we used to draw cars.
• 14:20
  We used to, you know, just do 50 drawings a week of…
• 14:24
  racing cars.
• 14:25
  Yep.
• 14:26
  And in the week between the races, we gave Jansen a call and said, we've got these drawings of your car, would you like to see them?
• 14:31
  He said, yeah, boys, come on up.
• 14:31
  And we went and visited him in mid-afternoon in the garden there at the Windsor Hotel, the penthouse suite, and Jansen's walking around in a bloody dressing gown because he's just got out of bed with some woman.
• 14:42
  LAUGHTER You've painted a great picture of him.
• 14:46
  Keep going.
• 14:47
  Yeah, and bottles of Windsor Brutes and a flat champagne.
• 14:50
  He said, here you go, boys.
• 14:51
  And he'd like the drawings.
• 14:52
  He said, what are you up to?
• 14:53
  And so we're going to go and camp out at, we're here for a week, going to camp out at Calder for the race.
• 14:58
  He said, no, don't go and hang out at that horrible shithole, as he called it.
• 15:03
  Stay here.
• 15:04
  Okay, you know, so then he added off somewhere and there were two 18-year-old kids in charge of the penthouse suite of the Windsor Hotel with bottles of champagne.
• 15:13
  Classic.
• 15:14
  Yeah, that was the end of 76, I suppose.
• 15:18
  Yep.
• 15:19
  And went back over Christmas and worked for him for a few weeks and then when the time came to do my first stint of appropriate industrial experience, I ended up driving double liquor buses around Melbourne for Janssen.
• 15:31
  Did you?
• 15:31
  It was great fun, great fun, great fun.
• 15:33
  Yeah.
• 15:34
  Good stuff.
• 15:34
  Somewhere here and maybe in the ensuing few years, stuff with Formula Ford starts for you.
• 15:41
  Probably I maybe have jumped the gun a little bit because you mentioned dirt bikes and things before.
• 15:44
  What was the first proper motorsport experience for you?
• 15:47
  What was the first racing thing that you got your teeth into?
• 15:50
  It was Formula Ford.
• 15:51
  I did nothing because at the time you couldn't race a kart in those days until you had a kart license.
• 16:00
  So that was off the agenda.
• 16:02
  I couldn't afford it anyway.
• 16:04
  And then by the time I had a car licence, I was driving a car around, you know, mucking about.
• 16:09
  But, and I would have liked to have raced a Formula Ford, but I could afford to buy a car, but I couldn't afford to run it.
• 16:16
  Couldn't afford a trailer or tyres or, you know, engine rebuilds.
• 16:19
  So that's just crazy.
• 16:21
  But then I had through, actually through the drawings again, I got to be working with Harry Galloway.
• 16:27
  building one of his, building his last former Atlantic for Andrew Medici.
• 16:32
  Yep.
• 16:32
  In 1980, I used to drive from Wurrunga down to Moorback twice a week in the night and spend a couple of hours in Harry's shed making stuff and drive home again.
• 16:39
  That got me involved with a guy called Mike Stack, who I helped with his Formula 2 car in 1980.
• 16:47
  And then, so I was sort of around racing cars.
• 16:50
  And this guy, Ed Busso, a guy who was at school a couple of years above me, or one or two.
• 16:56
  had a Formula 4 which he'd been running and it was sort of too much work on his own to do it all.
• 17:02
  So he ended up hiring it out to this guy John McGinn, drove it a little bit in 82, I think, and won a race and set a lap record and didn't want to carry on.
• 17:11
  and Ed asked me if I knew anybody who would be interested in hiring the drive.
• 17:14
  And it didn't occur to me at the time, but I guess he was asking me if I'd like to.
• 17:18
  Because he must have thought I was sensible or something.
• 17:22
  It turned out not to be.
• 17:23
  But I chewed on it for a couple of days and said, yeah, it was $6,000.
• 17:27
  It was nothing for a well-sorted car with Steve Wiesner engines and...
• 17:33
  All the good kit.
• 17:34
  So we went Formula Ford racing.
• 17:36
  Went out to Amarillo Park, did 13 laps and smashed the thing up.
• 17:40
  And Ed stood by me through that.
• 17:41
  We built the car again.
• 17:42
  I ended up doing my observed licence test in my XJ6 around Iron Park.
• 17:46
  Okay.
• 17:47
  The tail out all over the place.
• 17:48
  No brakes.
• 17:50
  But then we had a phenomenal year with it in 1983 because my first race was
• 17:55
  was at Sandown, the first race of the – it was the morning race, if you like.
• 17:59
  Yep.
• 18:00
  They used to have a morning race and an afternoon race.
• 18:02
  And I met the – I was in sixth or seventh place and I – my first person I ever overtook was Thomas Mazera.
• 18:09
  Fantastic.
• 18:10
  In his old thing down in Ogg Road and carried on from there.
• 18:14
  And by the time we got to surfers, I don't know if this is too much detail, but I was recently on the pace, but obviously very inexperienced, not only driving the car, but I'd never competed in anything really.
• 18:24
  I never competed in motocross or karting or anything else.
• 18:27
  So they're in the ropes there, but I, I'm up at Service Paradise, which is wonderful high speed track.
• 18:31
  There's only third and fourth gear in the Formula Ford.
• 18:33
  Phenomenal place.
• 18:35
  And they used to mix us up due to lack of numbers.
• 18:38
  They used to, we used to qualify with the Formula Two cars.
• 18:41
  I was coming around the S's onto the straight and I saw this guy behind me.
• 18:44
  I thought, well, there's no point letting him past here.
• 18:46
  So I got in his way, took on the straight and got this massive tail off his Formula Two car.
• 18:51
  Howling, it was really funny actually, having a run with Formula 4s, you're pulling behind a Formula 2 car, you can't see anything, you're pulling behind a house, big wide wheels and a wing and everything else.
• 18:59
  But he towed me down the straight,
• 19:01
  and headed off around the sort of flat corner under the bridge there.
• 19:03
  But he was obviously a bit timid because I caught him up again around there and he tapered down the next straight as well.
• 19:08
  So I ended up on pole, which was a bit of a shock.
• 19:11
  And then I won the race, won the race.
• 19:15
  So I won the third round of the championship, then the fourth round at Amaru Park and a few other good – I ended up, you know, Bruce Connelly's a better driver than me and quite experienced.
• 19:25
  He won the championship and I came second and that all looked pretty good.
• 19:28
  So we thought we'd have another crack at it in 84 and seal the deal sort of thing, drive it to Europe.
• 19:33
  But by that stage I was sort of a bit too confident and trying a bit hard and halfway through the series hadn't scored a single point and I crashed the car all over the place and just exhausted.
• 19:44
  I'd run out of money, I'd run out of the will to live.
• 19:46
  It's just like, just ruined.
• 19:49
  So I packed it in and started saving money to go to Europe at the end of the year.
• 19:52
  I just want to underscore that 83 championship if I can for listeners.
• 19:56
  Correct me if I'm wrong here.
• 19:57
  Three round wins.
• 19:58
  As you rightly point out, you ran second in the championship.
• 20:03
  Bruce Connolly would win that crown.
• 20:05
  Was it a Bowen chassis I think you ran back then?
• 20:07
  What was it that you were running?
• 20:08
  Yeah.
• 20:08
  Yeah, Bowen P6.
• 20:10
  I mean, that's very impressive considering no motorsport experience.
• 20:15
  Yeah, weird, really.
• 20:17
  Incredible, really.
• 20:18
  But, you know, we had the best engine.
• 20:21
  I don't know how much Formula Ford engines vary, but we had the best one, which helps.
• 20:26
  And the car was very well sorted.
• 20:27
  You know, it was a proper, it was a well-funded team, properly almost professionally run outfit.
• 20:32
  Yeah.
• 20:32
  And we turned up and did the testing.
• 20:34
  And the bone was a funny thing.
• 20:36
  It was a very knife-edged bit of kit, short wheelbase and tail heavy.
• 20:40
  But with just the right little...
• 20:43
  little tinge of understeer you could get around quite quickly with it.
• 20:47
  Just hope that nothing goes wrong because you ended up in the bush really quickly, which is what happened quite often.
• 21:00
  This comes out after the Australian Grand Prix, and it's currently Friday after First Practice 1.
• 21:06
  Let's see if I predict the result right.
• 21:09
  P1, Charles Le Clarke.
• 21:11
  P2, Max Verstoppen.
• 21:14
  P3, Lando Norris.
• 21:16
  I wonder how wrong this was.
• 21:19
  My programmer also needs to update my pronunciations, come on guys.
• 21:25
  What made you decide to take the punt on going to Europe and how much money did you have in your back pocket for that big move?
• 21:33
  Well, I suppose going to Europe is something we all do, isn't it?
• 21:36
  I'm sure you've been there.
• 21:37
  It's an Australian rite of passage to go and spend some time in the old dark.
• 21:42
  And I didn't have a plan.
• 21:43
  The only plan I had was to ride my pushbike around Europe.
• 21:45
  I still haven't done it.
• 21:48
  40 years later or whatever it is.
• 21:50
  No, I just headed off to see what was going on.
• 21:54
  But I took my driving suit and my helmet anyway in case an opportunity arose.
• 21:57
  Yeah.
• 21:58
  And probably a pair of cycling shorts.
• 22:00
  And when I lobbed over there, my little brother Marco, you know, he'd already teed up a job with Steve Farrell up in Hinkley, right in the middle of England in Leicestershire, to go and work as a Formula Ford mechanic.
• 22:11
  So we bought a car in London.
• 22:12
  My sister was living there at the time.
• 22:13
  We bought a car, and after a week or so, looking around London, headed up to see Steve, and he offered us both jobs.
• 22:19
  So I said, well, that'll do.
• 22:21
  I'll hang around here with Mark and Steve.
• 22:22
  It'll be fun.
• 22:25
  He's running a couple of Formula Fords, and he had a Ford 2000 that the guy was running in the Toledo Championship.
• 22:32
  So anyway, having taken that on, Steve did a deal for me to do five rounds of the Donington Series, like a second string.
• 22:40
  Formula Ford 2000 series.
• 22:41
  So I was driving racing cars again, which is a great, great thing.
• 22:46
  Obviously drive a car with wings and slicks and a bit more power, but British circuits, I never raced at Brands Hatch, but you know, Alton Park and Thruxton and Castle Coombe and Silverstone.
• 22:54
  We drove around Mallory a bit.
• 22:56
  Great fun, great fun.
• 22:58
  In Australia I was on the pace, but I used to crash too much.
• 23:01
  And when I went to England I was off the pace, but I still crashed too much.
• 23:03
  So that was sort of, told me that it wasn't for me really as a career.
• 23:07
  As we get to the kind of design and engineering phase of what you became so well known for, was it in that role, in that job, was it almost like a bit of a barter thing?
• 23:19
  You were working there and obviously you needed a bit of money to live and so on, but that was helping fund the racing side of it while you were doing it?
• 23:27
  Is that how it all came together?
• 23:29
  Working for Steve.
• 23:31
  Well, yeah, in that role, was it not connected?
• 23:33
  Oh, I just turned up and he offered me a job.
• 23:35
  How much he paid me was irrelevant.
• 23:37
  It was just, you know, just living in England and being involved with Formula Ford racing over there.
• 23:41
  It was good fun.
• 23:43
  It was good fun for a while, but I tired off after six months or so.
• 23:48
  Reynard Racing Cars put an ad in the paper for a design draftsman, which I applied for and got, and that was the start of that road.
• 23:57
  Fantastic.
• 23:57
  And a very significant chapter in your work and life generally, Malcolm.
• 24:04
  So how did that go?
• 24:06
  Did you meet Adrian?
• 24:07
  What was the sort of interview process like?
• 24:09
  Yeah.
• 24:10
  Well, it's sort of funny, in England, when you apply for a job, you put in a covering letter and a CV, which is like one A4 page with, hi, this is Malcolm Oster, I come from Australia, I've got an engineering degree, can I have a job, please?
• 24:24
  And one page, this is where I work, this is what I've done.
• 24:28
  But being from Australia, I submitted a resume.
• 24:30
  I had a portfolio, mate.
• 24:32
  It was colour photos, including one of me sitting on the lawn in Bathurst with a lawnmower pulled apart in a nappy with a lawnmower pulled apart and a screwdriver in my hand.
• 24:43
  Hey, I've been at this for a while.
• 24:45
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:45
  And I turbocharged Datsuns and Rebco around Australia rally cars and the Formula Ford and a bit of Formula Atlantic, all sorts of stuff.
• 24:52
  So the fact that I'd...
• 24:54
  I could design stuff and we'd build all composite bodywork for the bow and all that sort of carry on.
• 25:01
  and reinvented a few things while I was with Steve at the Van Diemans.
• 25:05
  I sort of sorted out the suspension for them because it was upside down, basically.
• 25:10
  Okay.
• 25:11
  And so I turned up with this resume went in and Adrian looked at it and looked at the others and said, he actually said to the guy who was doing the job placement, this is the bloke for the job.
• 25:20
  Interview the others, but give him the job.
• 25:22
  Wow.
• 25:23
  I met Adrian briefly and we had a Pally chat and, yeah, started the next week.
• 25:27
  Terrific.
• 25:28
  So what were your first impressions of him and how much did you know about him at that stage and so on?
• 25:33
  Well, not a great deal.
• 25:36
  Rick and Adrian were sort of the smart-ass bad guys of the pit lane to a certain extent in that era because they dominated Formula 4 and gone into Formula 3 possibly a little bit full of themselves with the first carbon Formula 3 car and dominated the first...
• 25:53
  half dozen races and then went off went off on holidays to Greece or something and took the middle of the year off and meanwhile Ron Turenac sorted out the problem with his it was the first year of Flat Bottoms and there was a production problem with the rockers on the front of the Rolt or something you know they got the Rolt working and the Rolt started winning races and Adrian Rick came back from holidays and it wasn't such a rosy patch anymore and
• 26:14
  I think Guzman ended up winning the championship in a role.
• 26:16
  So anyway, they didn't have the best reputation.
• 26:19
  I think they – I shouldn't say – their reputation of the pit lane was bullshit in stereo.
• 26:25
  Okay.
• 26:25
  Tell people anything to sell a car or something.
• 26:27
  Yeah.
• 26:28
  So – but what the hell?
• 26:29
  It's a job, you know.
• 26:30
  And Adrian, very experienced designer, very successful.
• 26:34
  He was – and a good driver.
• 26:36
  He was 1979 European Ford 2000 championship and dedicated, you know, much of his early life to, you know, sort of –
• 26:43
  100-hour weeks to being a racing car constructor, and it had a quite nice setup there.
• 26:48
  I mean, it's an incredible opportunity for me.
• 26:49
  The company was only about 30 people when I joined, and it was 300 when I left.
• 26:53
  Crazy, crazy.
• 26:55
  What was the first car you worked on for then?
• 26:57
  The very first...
• 26:58
  I inherited, because the focus was on Formula 3 with Adrian and Rick, and trying to get back into the Formula 3 market.
• 27:06
  Nobody wanted to buy their cars in 86.
• 27:07
  They'd done well in 85 and 86 cars,
• 27:11
  Nobody wanted them.
• 27:12
  In spite of that, Andy Wallace had one and went out and dominated and won the championship.
• 27:15
  Championship, yeah.
• 27:16
  Yeah.
• 27:17
  But one of six cars running.
• 27:20
  So I was handed the Formula Fords, the Ford 2000 and the 1600.
• 27:25
  The Ford 2000 was the – when I – actually the other thing, we got 85 when I first went there, the Formula Ford and the Formula 2000 – sorry, the Formula Ford and the Formula Ford 2000 were –
• 27:37
  disastrous Raynards.
• 27:38
  They were just terrible.
• 27:39
  And there were only six of them running after two races.
• 27:42
  They were just hopeless.
• 27:45
  But when, and they wasn't going to be a Formula Ford for an 86, but Adrian looked around the stores at all the chassis and bell housings and bits of bodywork lying around and uprights and said, well, we better use this up.
• 27:54
  So he got a couple of the car together with a bit of this and a bit of that and pfft.
• 27:59
  It put me in charge of sorting that out and getting it running and doing a bit of development work on it.
• 28:03
  And for the Formula Ford, the 85 Formula Ford 2000 championship was run by an 84 Raynard.
• 28:13
  So they reinvented that, put the nice wheel bearing package and stuff out of the 85 car and turned the 84 car into an 86 car and that was a great bit of kit, just the same old car.
• 28:24
  But it had to be flat bottom so it's got a lot of different bits of body work and stuff here and there.
• 28:28
  Did it become all consuming for you at this point and like cold turkey on your own driving and racing and any of that stuff?
• 28:34
  Or you were just immersed in this?
• 28:36
  Oh, no thoughts of driving cars.
• 28:37
  Well, I did – when I designed my first car, I was the first one to drive it.
• 28:41
  Were you?
• 28:41
  There wasn't a plan, yeah.
• 28:43
  But see what happened?
• 28:45
  So I looked after the Ford –
• 28:47
  the Formula 4 and the Formula 4 2086.
• 28:50
  But the FAA very kindly did one of their rule changes.
• 28:54
  So for 87, you had to have the driver's feet behind the front axle line for safety.
• 28:59
  And if you remember the old 84 Raynaud's, you sort of hung out the front like an old
• 29:04
  Formula 1 car, you know, sort of package shoved in there between the front suspension.
• 29:08
  So that car couldn't go on.
• 29:10
  So my task was to keep all that car's vehicle dynamics, weight distribution, wheelbase, geometry, all that sort of stuff, but package it so that the driver was further back.
• 29:20
  Yes.
• 29:21
  And so I designed a car from scratch, which is an amazing opportunity, and that thing, it did, funny, they say good cars are always quick out of the box.
• 29:28
  This thing wasn't.
• 29:29
  We struggled to get a lot of time out of it for three or four outings, you know.
• 29:33
  But eventually, with no changes, it went really fast, and we finished 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the first race, and game, set, and match.
• 29:41
  It was all over.
• 29:42
  That car ran for three years.
• 29:44
  I think the only part we changed on it from the original design was the rear rocker blade that bent, so we took the lightning pocket out of it.
• 29:50
  And I think it won every race for three years in the British Formula Ford 2000 Championship until the series got replaced by the first Opel Lotus Raynard GM car, whatever.
• 30:02
  the first of the scourge of one-mate formulas.
• 30:05
  That's immensely rewarding.
• 30:06
  Did it become then that you had an involvement in various different cars and different classes?
• 30:12
  I mean, I think you raised there before about Andy Wallace, and wasn't it a triple?
• 30:16
  I think Johnny Herbert and then JJ Leto won, respectively, 86 through to 88 in the British Formula 3, didn't they?
• 30:22
  So were you involved in that side of things too?
• 30:25
  Almost not at all.
• 30:27
  Okay.
• 30:28
  I happily managed to skip over Formula 3.
• 30:31
  I don't like the things.
• 30:32
  Okay.
• 30:32
  Overgripped and underpowered.
• 30:35
  This is a horrible falling torque curve with the restrictor on there and just terrible things.
• 30:43
  So I did the Ford 2000 and Adrian and John Thompson and people were doing the Formula 3 car.
• 30:51
  and having done the Ford 2000, Adrian put a deal together and wanted to do Formula 3000.
• 30:57
  Yes.
• 30:58
  So a year on from starting in March on the first Formula Ford 2000, I was starting on the first Reinhardt Formula 3000.
• 31:05
  2000 car.
• 31:05
  So I hopped straight over it.
• 31:06
  People that follow the podcast or even drive to survive and things will know Formula 2 now.
• 31:11
  And I guess back then Formula 3000 was the tier below F1, wasn't it?
• 31:16
  It was sort of the final rung on the ladder, if you like, before you got to the big league there.
• 31:21
  Can I just, because you've talked about, we've mentioned a few drivers there, who were some of the drivers you were starting to work with?
• 31:28
  And did your experience as a driver and then in the crossover with design and engineering and so on, did that work well?
• 31:33
  Did you gel well with some of the drivers?
• 31:35
  Yeah.
• 31:36
  I think it was very useful, extremely useful.
• 31:39
  Everything I did prior to getting a job as a designer, as I think even building minibikes out of lawnmowers and wheelbarrows and Wurrunga, it was all learning curve, it was all useful, but having raced a car gave me a good feel for the scale of importance of the different factors you're dealing with for the driver to go fast, which I don't think you can get without driving a car.
• 32:02
  What's important to you to go fast?
• 32:05
  So, yeah, very useful, very useful.
• 32:07
  Who were the drivers then that you were starting to come into contact with?
• 32:09
  Because sort of mid-80s, it was a bit of a legendary period for the game and the emergence of some names people will still be familiar with now.
• 32:15
  Yeah, I was really lucky.
• 32:17
  I wrote all the way through to Formula 1.
• 32:18
  I wrote a crest of this wave that went through various formulas and was involved in the formula in its most healthy period.
• 32:25
  So before one made formulas and the sort of dilution that that caused.
• 32:31
  if you wanted to be a serious racing driver, you went to England and raced Formula Ford 1600.
• 32:35
  So all the Gachos and Blundells and Karkaskis and JJs and everybody you care to mention was there thrashing it out.
• 32:44
  And then Ford 2000 was the next step, so that was just as vibrant.
• 32:48
  You had Marlborough sponsorship all the way through and Camel and various people.
• 32:52
  And then Formula 3000 you mentioned, it was Formula 2.
• 32:57
  But when Formula 1 went turbo, there were all these beautiful DFE engines sitting around, and Bernie Eccleston invented this new category to replace Formula 2 and use up all these DFE's.
• 33:08
  Formula 3000 instead of Formula 2, but that was the next step below Formula 1.
• 33:15
  And everybody was doing it, all the well-financed Italians and French, the Elf and Marlborough and Camel were into it and everybody else.
• 33:25
  It was in big fields, pretty serious.
• 33:27
  They did that while it was at its best.
• 33:28
  And then into IndyCar when it was really healthy with the entire war going on,
• 33:35
  three or maybe four engine manufacturers.
• 33:38
  Loads of money, great time doing it and great drivers all the way through.
• 33:48
  That's the end of part one of my podcast with former F1 technical director and respected race car designer Malcolm Osler.
• 33:56
  But the good news is there's more in the garage, and it's ready for you to enjoy right now.
• 34:01
  Fire up part two when you're ready.
• 34:03
  There's insights on working with drivers like Jack Villeneuve and the late Nicky Lauder and fellow Aussie Mark Webber.
• 34:09
  The garage project he worked on while on gardening leave from BAR, plus the wild motorcycle he's building now...
• 34:17
  Just because.
• 34:18
  How he shoehorned the most unlikely engine into a bike frame.
• 34:29
  Listener.