Latest / Rusty's Garage / The Motorsport Brief - quarterly report card

Transcript

The Motorsport Brief - quarterly report card · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:04
  Welcome to the Motorsport Brief.
• 0:06
  An Aussie on top of the F1 ladder and some speed humps for the international governing body.
• 0:11
  All that and more on this edition of the Shortcast.
• 0:14
  Shortcast.
• 0:16
  G'day everybody, Rusty here.
• 0:18
  Paul Gover, respected motoring and motorsport journo from outlets like Wheels Magazine and his own Race News, is about to join us to kind of bounce around various things that have people like you talking in the world of motorsport right now.
• 0:33
  Before we launch into it, thought I'd let you know that the Garage is no longer just an audio experience.
• 0:39
  That's our main way of sharing episodes with you, of course.
• 0:42
  But there are now video versions that we're going to release from time to time on our listener YouTube channel.
• 0:49
  You can find last month's Max Pappas feature episode, for example.
• 0:53
  You can go to the listener YouTube channel, which is L-I-S-T-N-R, and then search for Rusty's Garage or Max Pappas.
• 1:02
  easy to find it.
• 1:03
  Some awesome discussion in there around Max making it briefly to Formula One and then thinking it was all over before taking a punt on the United States and then opening the door to Champ Car.
• 1:16
  And what a chapter that was during a golden era for the sport.
• 1:20
  Plus,
• 1:21
  what he's doing now with his Max Pappas Innovations.
• 1:24
  And he shows you around the headquarters there in Charlotte, North Carolina too.
• 1:28
  That's a video version of that episode.
• 1:31
  And we've very nearly finished polishing the edges of the Steve Horn feature episode too.
• 1:36
  Some great feedback on the audio version of that one, which has been out for a couple of weeks.
• 1:41
  But the vid...
• 1:43
  is brilliant, including all sorts of Tasman motorsport memorabilia, meeting Enzo Ferrari and what he thought of that, and then going on to build the Ferrari IndyCar project, which never fully got off the ground, plus working with Tony Canaan, Elio Castroneves, Bobby Rahal, Scott Pruitt, and more.
• 2:00
  Keep an eye out for that one.
• 2:02
  It's a beauty.
• 2:03
  Let's get into today's convo.
• 2:04
  Paul Gover has reported on some of the biggest stories in automotive and motorsport for decades in our part of the world.
• 2:11
  We invariably see each other at race meetings, car launches and more.
• 2:15
  He's got a knack for having a finger on the pulse and a rounded, very balanced view of things.
• 2:21
  Great to get you back on, mate.
• 2:22
  Welcome.
• 2:23
  Yeah, it's good to be talking to you instead of rushing past you at a racetrack or trying to make you laugh when you're doing something on the TV and trying to be serious, Rusty.
• 2:32
  Well, steering me is all part of the deal, Paul.
• 2:34
  I love that.
• 2:35
  Now, Oscar Piastri has got everybody, even outside our sphere of motorsport, talking.
• 2:40
  Yep.
• 2:40
  Leading the Formula One World Championship now, first Aussie in 15 years to be in that position.
• 2:46
  It's very early in the year, I know, in asking this.
• 2:49
  Do you reckon McLaren are going to have a problem kind of managing this as they go forward here?
• 2:53
  And how do they best do that?
• 2:57
  I think they let the best man win, which will be Oscar.
• 3:00
  I think the other bloke is being exposed as a bit of a whiny sport boy, whereas Oscar has been groomed.
• 3:07
  Well, groom's the wrong word.
• 3:09
  Oscar's had a far tougher run to Formula One than the other bloke has.
• 3:14
  What people tend to forget is that Lando was actually a pay driver.
• 3:19
  Lando's daddy is a billionaire.
• 3:22
  And yes, the Brits all love him, which has me throwing rubber balls and things at my TV when we're watching the coverage of the races.
• 3:32
  But from the first day I talked to Oscar, when he was about 15 or 16, he had a maturity about him.
• 3:41
  And since that day, every person I've spoken to said he will be a world champion.
• 3:46
  I still remember the first time he was at Albert Park with Alpine and the global boss of Alpine, not just the Formula One team, the actual boss of Alpine cars.
• 3:58
  I got him quietly on his own.
• 3:59
  He said, no, Oscar will be a world champion.
• 4:02
  Amazing.
• 4:03
  There'll be people that listen to this that are naturally Lando fans.
• 4:06
  It'll say that he's got longevity at McLaren on his side.
• 4:09
  He's been there for some time and so on.
• 4:12
  And that we're only, Paul, five races into a 24-round season.
• 4:16
  He's not going to give this up easily.
• 4:18
  So that's kind of point number one.
• 4:20
  The other point which you're, I think, alluding to there is something that Greg Murphy talked about with Elliot Barber and Scott Pye on their pod during the week.
• 4:27
  And that is kind of the Mark Webber factor.
• 4:31
  Him in his corner is a little bit of an ace in what is an already strong hand for Oscar in car, team, his attitude, approach and so on.
• 4:42
  How beneficial is Mark going to be, even just from a sage advice point of view at this time?
• 4:49
  Well, I think Oscar wouldn't be where he is if it hadn't been for Mark.
• 4:53
  Mark's the one who got him to McLaren in the first place.
• 4:55
  And the advantage that you have with Mark is he's his manager, but he's also been there and done that.
• 5:01
  He's been crushed inside a team in a similar situation to this, so he knows what it looks like.
• 5:07
  But the other thing about him is that...
• 5:12
  Just Mark knows his way around.
• 5:13
  And the other thing is Oscar doesn't have to have an argument with the team.
• 5:17
  Mark can go and do it.
• 5:18
  And that makes a big difference.
• 5:19
  You know, it sort of isolates Oscar a little bit from the internal politics and he can do what he needs to do and leave Mark to do any of the heavy lifting.
• 5:29
  Sprint race win for Lewis Hamilton in Shanghai.
• 5:32
  Do you reckon that is going to be the rare highlight that we end up talking about in an otherwise tough year for him at Ferrari?
• 5:40
  Um, well, yes, I wrote at the time that he won that, that, that one race win justified everything that's happened.
• 5:48
  You know, the, the amount of extra cash that people would have been investing in Ferrari and their merchandise sales would have gone through the roof.
• 5:56
  Um, yeah, I think he, I think it was the, what, you know, it's the, I can't remember the, the, uh, the expression, but basically...
• 6:04
  False dawn is obviously the thing that comes to mind.
• 6:07
  Now, but what that proved is the bloke has still got the hunger and can still do it if the car's there.
• 6:12
  The problem is, same as a whole lot of people, let's talk about Liam Lawson for about 23 seconds, if you turn up in a new team and you don't get on with the car, you're in trouble.
• 6:23
  And that's one, turning back to Oscar, that's one of the advantages he has.
• 6:27
  He's learned the car and team.
• 6:29
  So this year, he won't have that same problem.
• 6:32
  He knows what to expect from a car.
• 6:34
  He knows what to expect from a team.
• 6:36
  He knows what to expect from racing alongside Lando.
• 6:39
  All doesn't seem well at Red Bull.
• 6:41
  Max still is able to punch and deliver superhuman things.
• 6:47
  He's poured water on this topic, right?
• 6:49
  Will he stay at Red Bull short term, do you think?
• 6:51
  Or is there smoke there and perhaps a move on the cards at some stage?
• 6:55
  Well, he'd be stupid not to talk to...
• 6:57
  I mean, it's Formula One.
• 6:59
  And as you and I both know, there's no point in asking him if he's talked to anybody.
• 7:03
  You have to say, have you or your uncle or your dad or anybody associated with you who's ever mentioned your whole life spoken to anybody who's ever been associated or involved with anybody from another team?
• 7:13
  Because they can just say no, and it's just BS.
• 7:16
  And we know it's BS.
• 7:17
  Yeah.
• 7:20
  Uh, I think Lawrence Stroll will be after him.
• 7:24
  Um, I think he would offer him whatever he thinks he needs to get.
• 7:29
  And if you're, if you're, uh, if you're Verstappen, um, you just listen.
• 7:34
  He doesn't have to do anything.
• 7:35
  He's got a, he's got a dream seat where he is.
• 7:37
  He's in a one car team.
• 7:40
  Um,
• 7:40
  everything happens for him he's got see but the other change that's happening obviously his helmet Marco um is going to be sliding out the bloke's 82 years old you can be Mr Grumpy when when the boss is Dietrich Matasic but now he's dead he's lost sort of his power base um the son though obviously is showing more commitment to Formula One we thought because he bought all the
• 8:04
  Bernie Eccleston's collection of cars, 69 Formula One cars.
• 8:07
  So he's got some sort of interest, but I don't think he has the same connection.
• 8:11
  Well, there's no way he could have the same connection to the Marco that his dad did.
• 8:16
  A very cool collection of cars, those two.
• 8:19
  Now, a little bit of kind of tension around the FIA, right?
• 8:23
  The driver's unhappy with the swearing penalties, which has been a talking point for many months now.
• 8:28
  Some of them don't seem like they have a lot of time
• 8:31
  for Mohammed bin Salim when it's post-race or whatever.
• 8:35
  There's been some changes in the hierarchy of the body.
• 8:39
  Now, I should preface this question.
• 8:40
  As you and I both know, the top people in that organisation don't tend to worry outwardly what the troops or the constituents think, but does there need to be a bit of navel-gazing here, you know?
• 8:52
  Absolutely.
• 8:53
  And it's not just Formula One.
• 8:54
  The rally drivers were also...
• 8:56
  The first guy to actually get fined for swearing was a rally driver who dropped the F-bomb at the end of a stage.
• 9:02
  Now, the FIA has made a concession to the rally drivers after the rally drivers all grouped together and said, this is not fair.
• 9:09
  But, you know, there's an awful lot of smoke for there not to be any fire at the FIA.
• 9:14
  Robert Reid, who I've known since he was co-driver in the World Rally Championship with Richard Verne's, lovely bloke, FIA Vice President for Sport, quit.
• 9:26
  David Richards, who I've known since 1978, I think, had Ford Performance Racing in Australia, very, very shrewd operator.
• 9:36
  Basically, he's quit the FIA as well.
• 9:39
  You know, the number of people that have left the FIA, the stuff that they're going on with, you know, it started with Lewis Hamilton having piercings, then it was wearing the correct underpants.
• 9:50
  You might remember when Vettel said he would wear his underpants on the outside to prove that he was wearing the right sort of underpants.
• 9:55
  Yeah.
• 9:56
  You know what I mean?
• 9:56
  The drivers in F1 have tended to make a joke out of it.
• 10:01
  Now, I've been, as you know, covering Formula One for a very long time.
• 10:04
  And I can tell you, we've had a succession of interesting, is a good word, leaders of the FI, Jean-Barré Ballest.
• 10:12
  who was a French guy, a complete bombast of a bloke who once walked across the track during a race and then complained that the officials hadn't done the right, you know, should not have had the authority to ban him from walking across the track.
• 10:25
  We had Max Mosley and we know how that came unstuck.
• 10:29
  Jean Todd, who was probably the best administrator they've had in a very long time.
• 10:34
  And then the current bloke.
• 10:37
  It's a job which seems to come with immense power
• 10:41
  It needs navel gazing, I think.
• 10:42
  Closer to home, supercars are on the hunt for a new CEO.
• 10:45
  Shane Howard's been in that role since January 2022.
• 10:48
  He's going to be their director of motorsport when they reshuffle there.
• 10:52
  Should they go for someone internal, external?
• 10:54
  What sort of person does the sport need right now?
• 10:58
  Tony Cochran.
• 10:59
  You think?
• 11:00
  Would he do that?
• 11:01
  I mean, I think I'd do it.
• 11:03
  No.
• 11:03
  But they need a Tony Cochran.
• 11:05
  What they need is a fire starter.
• 11:08
  Shane's a ripper bloke and he's fantastic with the broom walking along behind somebody creating chaos.
• 11:14
  Yeah.
• 11:14
  So he can keep the ship stable and moving along well.
• 11:18
  But what they need is somebody who's got a vision of where the sport needs to go and who has the connections and the bluster and the commitment and the power to actually take supercars forward.
• 11:30
  It's in a holding pattern at the minute.
• 11:33
  I don't know what's happening with the TV deal.
• 11:35
  I don't know that anybody knows what's happening with the TV deal.
• 11:38
  But they need somebody...
• 11:41
  who can drive the thing forward.
• 11:43
  Do they need to go overseas?
• 11:44
  What tracks they need to go to?
• 11:46
  How they deal with Tony Quinn on the New Zealand situation.
• 11:51
  Shane's very, very good at what Shane can do, but there's a lot of things that Shane hasn't been able to do.
• 11:57
  And I don't know that there's anybody actually in the current orbit who could do it.
• 12:01
  The only one I could think of is David White.
• 12:05
  formerly Channel 10 guy, really big global, you know, understands global sport and how it works.
• 12:12
  If I was in charge of supercars, that'd be the first telephone call I'd make.
• 12:16
  And if he didn't want to do it or wasn't able to do it, then I'd ask him who he recommended.
• 12:20
  My old boss from the Channel 10 Days and a very, very good operator too.
• 12:24
  I actually haven't even thought about whether he would want to do that or whether they have spoken with him.
• 12:30
  On the competition side, cracking year so far, given the variety of winners that we've enjoyed in supercars.
• 12:36
  Triple 8 say that the Ford switch for next year or the legwork they're doing around that isn't affecting them.
• 12:42
  Do you feel like it will have an impact and maybe is?
• 12:46
  I think it has to have an impact.
• 12:48
  And the reason it'll have an impact is Jeremy Moore.
• 12:51
  So Jeremy Moore's the technical whiz kid who actually designed, developed, engineered the Gen 3 car, was effectively led the homologation plan for 888 for the Camaro.
• 13:05
  leaving, but depending on it, you talk to how he's going to leave and when he's going to leave.
• 13:10
  But basically, he is the Chevrolet homologation team going forward.
• 13:14
  It doesn't matter what they say about Team 18 being homologation team.
• 13:17
  Under the rules, you have to have a homologation team.
• 13:21
  But JJ is the guy who's going to drive the whole thing.
• 13:23
  Now, at some point, he will disconnect or they will disconnect him from what 888 are doing.
• 13:32
  And that must affect what they're doing.
• 13:36
  And the other thing is, see, the other thing about 888 is it's not just the current situation with the forward thing.
• 13:44
  If you look up and down the pit lane, Rusty, Grove Racing, unknown as 888 South,
• 13:49
  Right?
• 13:50
  So there's stuff happening there.
• 13:51
  The same as I also now call DJR, Dick's term, I call them Erebus North because they've got an Erebus driver, engineer, chief mechanic, and Erebus cars.
• 14:08
  So there's a lot going on, and there's only so much talent that can go around the place.
• 14:12
  Now, 888 has had a history under Roland Dane,
• 14:16
  fantastic succession plans.
• 14:18
  You know, somebody would win the championship, let's call it David Couchy.
• 14:22
  You go, wow, they couldn't go without him.
• 14:23
  Well, he's gone.
• 14:24
  You know, there's a whole lot of people going, but JJ, Jeremy Moore, splitting from a team and not just physically splitting, but through this year, them disconnecting with him, him disconnecting with them has got to have some sort of effect.
• 14:38
  We'll get PG to stick around for a moment.
• 14:41
  More on this edition of Rusty's Garage in just a few moments.
• 14:47
  You're listening to Rusty's Garage, chatting with award-winning journalist Paul Gover for this edition of The Shorty.
• 14:52
  It's been a while since we've had him on.
• 14:54
  Last time we debriefed a very tense weekend in Newcastle for supercars, you may remember, around the debut of the then new Gen 3 machines and a pretty unhappy Shane Van Gisbergen at that time.
• 15:08
  Let's continue with Paul and a kind of 2025 state of the motorsport nation now.
• 15:16
  Broadly speaking now, beyond even supercars, do we have too many categories?
• 15:20
  I mean, supercars, the pinnacle, obviously, but there's all sorts of things underneath it.
• 15:23
  You know, we had the Ford family in Australia very recently, and as a part of the 100th anniversary celebrations for the company, we learned about a one-make Mustang series.
• 15:32
  I mean, I've seen the car, it looks really cool and so on, but just do we have too much?
• 15:36
  Do we need to streamline it rather?
• 15:38
  I feel like we do.
• 15:40
  Oh, there are too many categories.
• 15:42
  What's that single-seater thing with the weird-looking cars, you know, the home-built things built by John Crook?
• 15:47
  You know what I mean?
• 15:47
  Like, every time you turn around, there seems to be another category.
• 15:51
  And it seems to be, and I shouldn't say this because it's not very nice, but there seem to be a lot of people who come up with an idea that they're going to find a category that they can win in, so they go and push that category.
• 16:01
  Yeah.
• 16:02
  you know, Oh, I've got three of my mates.
• 16:04
  Let's go and do this.
• 16:05
  But yeah, motorsport Australia as a governing body needs to sit down and look at all the categories and do, you know, do the thing like the family tree, where do they all connect and what do they lead to?
• 16:18
  You know, if we're talking about young kids, what,
• 16:21
  Motorsport Australia tried to kill Formula Ford and instead have Formula 4.
• 16:26
  And now there's another Formula 4 category that's supposed to be an Asian Pacific thing, except they haven't seen that actually kicking any goals.
• 16:34
  And you've got a situation where you've got two Trans Am categories.
• 16:39
  which now have the same ownership, but they're still going to have two categories, two chapters.
• 16:42
  Why?
• 16:43
  It looked fantastic, 40 cars on the grid at Bathurst.
• 16:46
  Well, let's take those 40 cars and take them everywhere, not split them in half.
• 16:50
  I'm a fan of exactly what you just said.
• 16:52
  41 cars at Bathurst over the six-hour weekend looked incredible.
• 16:56
  Keep it by and large together.
• 16:58
  And if it needs a few...
• 17:00
  regional championships or something.
• 17:01
  I don't know.
• 17:02
  I don't know.
• 17:02
  That's fine.
• 17:03
  You can do that.
• 17:03
  Let them run with something else.
• 17:05
  Let them run with something else.
• 17:06
  You know, the production car race at Bathurst, 70 cars.
• 17:10
  Fantastic.
• 17:11
  Unbelievable.
• 17:11
  Where are those, where are those cars?
• 17:13
  70 cars.
• 17:14
  Where are they next racing again?
• 17:15
  Hmm.
• 17:17
  Right.
• 17:17
  No, but I know what you mean.
• 17:19
  Like, you want to build something that is streamlined, that has...
• 17:22
  It has a clear understanding of what you're doing.
• 17:24
  GT3 racing in Australia, there's over 100 GT3 cars in Australia.
• 17:29
  How many turned up at Phillip Island the other day?
• 17:32
  I still feel like...
• 17:33
  I mean, I have to...
• 17:34
  I raise my hand here, right?
• 17:35
  I do a bit of work on that, as you know.
• 17:36
  I still feel like that has good momentum.
• 17:38
  From the moment you rolled in the door at Phillip Island...
• 17:41
  It looked good as a championship, and I think it plays to an enthusiast.
• 17:46
  It's a different market.
• 17:47
  And I get that, but the fact of the matter of the fastest growth in GTs has been in GT4.
• 17:53
  That's stunning.
• 17:53
  And the reason for that's very simple.
• 17:57
  It's people my age and my talent level, brackets not too much, who are not scared of the cars.
• 18:04
  Can we just pick up on your whole point about Trans Am there a moment ago?
• 18:07
  I mean, should that continue to operate in its own space?
• 18:11
  Would it, should it better coexist alongside supercars?
• 18:16
  I don't think supercars will want it.
• 18:19
  because their commitment is to Super 2, and clearly it's a different...
• 18:24
  I think it's a different group of people.
• 18:26
  You know, what's his name?
• 18:28
  The sprint car guy turned up at Bathurst.
• 18:30
  Robbie Farr.
• 18:31
  Robbie Farr.
• 18:31
  Who I've known for quite a long time.
• 18:33
  It's a different group of people.
• 18:34
  They are tending to be older blokes who like the idea of hotdogging around.
• 18:38
  Those cars are relatively easy to drive because they've got a big baggy Hoosier tyre on them.
• 18:43
  So they slide.
• 18:44
  They're a cross-play tyre, so they're easier to drive.
• 18:47
  But that's the thing.
• 18:49
  If you and I sat down for a couple of hours with some pieces of paper and some pen, you could work out which categories are going forward.
• 18:56
  Couple to finish here.
• 18:58
  Where is TCR at globally, in your opinion?
• 19:01
  You think it's dead?
• 19:02
  Even globally?
• 19:03
  Even globally?
• 19:04
  Even globally.
• 19:05
  Yeah, even globally.
• 19:06
  Which car companies have committed to it going forward?
• 19:09
  None of them.
• 19:10
  And the category, you have to put my other hat on as a motoring journalist.
• 19:14
  How many people are buying hot hatches in the world?
• 19:17
  which is what that category is, right?
• 19:18
  It was designed to be hot hatches.
• 19:20
  So basically, Ford no longer do Focus or Fiesta.
• 19:25
  The Honda Civic is just about dead.
• 19:29
  And yes, there is a Type R, and they do still have them.
• 19:32
  But in terms of actually having a marketing budget to actually build something that you want to do, Lincoln Co. Who's ever heard what a Lincoln Co. is?
• 19:41
  You know, Barry Morecambe's a ripper bloke and he's got 18 or something Hyundais in Australia.
• 19:46
  You know, he's got a lot of cars, but how many are they going to get?
• 19:49
  So the category has changed.
• 19:51
  The calendar keeps getting smaller and they'll be lucky to get 10 cars for the first round of the TCR championship.
• 19:58
  And that means it shouldn't be there.
• 20:01
  It's as simple as that.
• 20:02
  Why it's still there, I don't know.
• 20:05
  But again, somebody from Motorsport Australia should be...
• 20:08
  making a quiet phone call and going, do you think this is a good idea?
• 20:11
  Or put them in with something else, put them in with production cars.
• 20:15
  I hope the international at the band later in the year is a good thing because, I mean, admittedly it was two years ago now, but in 2023 when they came to Bathurst and to Sydney Motorsport Park, I thought that was fantastic.
• 20:24
  Yeah, that's right.
• 20:24
  But even if you look at how many teams there are still at the world level, there's nowhere near what they were a few years ago.
• 20:30
  And I loved it.
• 20:32
  It was fantastic.
• 20:33
  Nesta, Gerolami and all those guys turning up, fantastic in the early days.
• 20:38
  But there wasn't enough money to sustain it.
• 20:42
  And now if you take the Rodgers team out,
• 20:46
  how many cars are actually genuinely there.
• 20:49
  That's what worries me.
• 20:50
  And rather than see it end up like S5000 and all these other categories, Formula 4, all of those, instead of watching them wither, somebody should just go, this is not a good idea and we need to have a think about it.
• 21:03
  Finally, we are recording, we are doing this chat on the 80th birthday of the great Richard Johnson.
• 21:09
  Dick Johnson, have you got a fond memory of the great man, a funny memory of the great man, something recent, something old, as we tip the hat and say happy birthday?
• 21:19
  I've got so many Dick Johnson stories.
• 21:22
  Why doesn't that surprise me?
• 21:23
  No, no, no.
• 21:25
  You know, like, I can remember being in Perth one year and we were having dinner and people kept coming up to him and wanting his autograph, right?
• 21:33
  And Peter Brock was in the same restaurant in the hotel.
• 21:35
  He said, why don't they go and harass him?
• 21:38
  You know?
• 21:38
  And I said, because you're a good bloke and you're approachable and he's Brock.
• 21:43
  Oh, yeah, he wasn't happy about that.
• 21:44
  But, you know, I can remember there's a movie called Face Off where the two leading characters swap their faces.
• 21:50
  Nicholas Cage, is it?
• 21:51
  Nicholas Cage, isn't it?
• 21:51
  I can't remember who's in it now or John Travolta or something.
• 21:54
  Yeah, John Travolta.
• 21:55
  Well, there was a point at which Dick Johnson had his face off.
• 22:00
  They pulled his – because he had a very, very bad sinus problem for a lot of years.
• 22:03
  Yeah.
• 22:05
  And eventually they ripped the front of his face off and completely gave him what he called a decoque and re-bore.
• 22:11
  And after that, he was fantastic.
• 22:12
  But sadly, that took the edge off his last few years because his fitness wasn't good and he could barely breathe in the car.
• 22:22
  But what you see with Dick is what you get, you know.
• 22:26
  You know, I can remember being at DJR one day talking to Ryan's story and all I could hear from Dick's room was, sell, sell, sell.
• 22:35
  I was told you it was.
• 22:38
  Dick hasn't changed.
• 22:39
  Dick's exactly the same bloke I first met, you know.
• 22:42
  He still swims.
• 22:43
  He likes to drink at night.
• 22:45
  He's got a great sense of humour.
• 22:47
  He's still with Jilly.
• 22:48
  They get along fine.
• 22:49
  You know, I saw him a couple of weeks ago.
• 22:50
  He was a bit crook.
• 22:53
  Um, he'd been over in America and, uh, found out, oh, lucky Dick.
• 22:58
  Talk about, talk about, um, not handling things well at the announcement.
• 23:02
  Well, Dick was being honored with the highest Ford accolade for his lifetime achievement by the Ford family the same day that they announced that they were going to Triple Eight.
• 23:13
  And I think Dick didn't get the credit he deserved when he was over for that because he's been... Yeah, okay, he started off in a hold and then he raced.
• 23:20
  I'm old enough to remember watching him racing the XU1, but he is just...
• 23:25
  He's just there.
• 23:27
  He knows what's going on and he calls a spade a shovel.
• 23:31
  We love that.
• 23:32
  We love that.
• 23:32
  Should be more of it in motorsport.
• 23:33
  You've been great with your time.
• 23:34
  I've gone on too long.
• 23:36
  I owe you some Kiwi milk bottles.
• 23:38
  I will bring them with me on my next trip.
• 23:40
  Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
• 23:42
  It's been a pleasure, Rusty.
• 23:44
  Anytime.
• 23:45
  That is it for today.
• 23:47
  You can find Paul's race news at www.race.news.
• 23:53
  Launched in 2020, it is an independent site for all sorts of yarns on the sport.
• 23:59
  Check it out and subscribe, as they say.
• 24:01
  Miami F1 next week.
• 24:03
  I'll be at the GT Festival as the Speed Series hits Sydney Motorsport Park, Under Lights, Night Fever, GT3, GT4 and a whole lot more.
• 24:13
  Go to the Speed Series site.
• 24:15
  for tickets and information.
• 24:16
  We'll catch you next week, everyone.
• 24:18
  Bye for now.