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The Motorsport Brief - The Race of Champions · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:04
  The race of champions is heading down under, and today on The Motorsport Brief, we're talking with the driving force of this stadium spectacular.
• 0:15
  G'day, it's Rusty here.
• 0:16
  Every once in a while you'll get asked who's the best.
• 0:19
  Rally drivers, circuit racers, and what if they went head-to-head in the same equipment?
• 0:23
  The Race of Champions does just that, and it's been to some very cool venues over the years.
• 0:29
  Now it's heading our way for the first time.
• 0:32
  Frederick Johnson founded the Race of Champions back in the 80s with rally hero Michel Mouton, and I thought we'd get him on to talk about it.
• 0:39
  The drivers who will be taking part, including some F1 stars, WRC legends.
• 0:44
  They've announced...
• 0:44
  supercars champion will brown recently too the build is massive it'll cost two million dollars to transform a core stadium at sydney olympic park 50 trucks of sand 300 trucks of asphalt in just eight days the track will be about a k in length side by side and it features a crossover bridge too it's on march 7 and 8 let's find out more frederick is almost on our doorstep as we record this joining us from bali welcome to the show
• 1:13
  Thank you very much.
• 1:15
  Pleasure to be on this show that I've heard a lot about from my Australian friends.
• 1:19
  I hope it's all good.
• 1:20
  Your background, I understand it, if I've done my homework right, is journalism, mainly around motor racing.
• 1:25
  How did the idea of race of champions come about all those years ago?
• 1:30
  Oh, if you have a lot of time, I can give you the full story.
• 1:33
  But basically, I'm from Sweden.
• 1:35
  And in Sweden, when you're 15 years old, you have to do two weeks of work experience somewhere.
• 1:41
  Usually, the kids wind up in a supermarket being exploited in the warehouse.
• 1:45
  Yeah.
• 1:46
  I was lucky enough and persistent enough to convince the president of the basketball club that I played for to allow me to do the work experience at Sweden's biggest conservative daily in the sports department.
• 1:59
  And after two weeks there, the boss paid me and asked me if I wanted to work summer holidays and weekends.
• 2:06
  And after the army, and I was employed full time and I was following Formula One and world rallying for the newspaper.
• 2:13
  And I just thought it was quite a poor experience for the fans.
• 2:17
  And, you know, you see one corner and you don't really follow what's going on, especially in world rally at the time.
• 2:23
  The team with the best car, they did all of the events.
• 2:27
  And the others, like a Toyota, for example, they would cherry pick the Monte Carlo rally, the Safari rally.
• 2:33
  So you knew before the season started who was going to be world champion.
• 2:36
  So I came up with the idea to bring together all the best drivers, make them compete on identical cars, and do it on an exciting track where the fans could see every instant of the action and television could cover it.
• 2:49
  And together with my partner at the time, Michel Mouton, we started Race of Champions in 1988, and it's been growing ever since.
• 2:57
  Well done.
• 2:57
  Great story.
• 2:58
  And you've been to some iconic locations, both from a city standpoint and the venues that you've run them in over the years.
• 3:05
  Can I come to Sydney?
• 3:07
  First time in the Southern Hemisphere.
• 3:09
  This is huge.
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  Give Aussies who are listening an idea of what they can expect when Race of Champions comes to Accor Stadium there.
• 3:17
  Well, first of all, we'll transform Accor Stadium into a full-blown tarmac racetrack.
• 3:23
  One kilometre long, we're bringing in...
• 3:28
  2,000 tons of base layer and 1,200 tons of tarmac and all recycled afterwards.
• 3:37
  And it is a proper project, like building a motorway or racetrack.
• 3:42
  And we're bringing some of the world's most iconic racing drivers there.
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  For the moment, we've announced four-time Formula One world champion Sebastian Wettelt.
• 3:51
  nine-time rally world champion Sebastian Loeb, 11-time extrins gold medalist Travis Pastrana, seven-time supercar champion Jamie Winkup, and Johan Christoffersson who just clinched his seventh and world rallycross title.
• 4:05
  And,
• 4:06
  And on top of that, you got great stars like Valtteri Bottas, etc.
• 4:11
  We just announced a few days ago Will Brown, who won the Supercar title 2024.
• 4:16
  And there's plenty of more sensational names that we would announce in the lead up to the event.
• 4:21
  And when these guys put on the helmet,
• 4:24
  And it's identical cars.
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  There's no excuse.
• 4:26
  You can't say that the other guy had a better car than me.
• 4:28
  And they want to win to a degree that's even bigger than in some of the usual championship.
• 4:34
  It is crazy.
• 4:35
  And heats are often decided by a fraction of a second.
• 4:38
  I think we had the closest ever finish with like one ten thousandth of a second separating the two drivers.
• 4:45
  So never gets boring.
• 4:47
  There's a winner and a loser every few minutes.
• 4:49
  And then the tension just builds as you go from group stage, quarterfinals, semifinals, final.
• 4:54
  Friday night, it's the Roc Nation's Cup to crown the world's fastest nation.
• 5:00
  And on Saturday, the individual race of champions and to crown the champion of champions.
• 5:04
  So teammates on Friday.
• 5:06
  enemies on Saturday.
• 5:08
  I love that.
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  And a big party on Saturday night.
• 5:10
  Of course, of course.
• 5:11
  The thing I love about that is that if you were going to a rock concert, for example, you know, Friday night show might be very similar to Saturday night show.
• 5:18
  But in fact, it's quite different, isn't it?
• 5:20
  The offering for fans, as you say, because of the...
• 5:23
  whole notion of the patriotic national following on Friday kind of thing.
• 5:28
  And then Saturday, it's about your heroes and how they're perhaps individually doing.
• 5:33
  I can, Frederick, I can vividly remember the Sydney 2000 Olympics, right, and what a great event that was.
• 5:39
  Over the years, that stadium has hosted, you know, significant rugby tournaments, all sorts of things.
• 5:45
  I think it's got seating, by the time you finish the build here, it's seating for 50,000 people today.
• 5:51
  But that's something different.
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  To think that Race of Champions is going to be inside that stadium.
• 5:55
  It's going to be a nice little tick for them.
• 5:58
  Something new coming to that venue.
• 6:00
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:01
  So the bosses of Accord Stadium, they were in London meeting the NFL.
• 6:06
  And they were touring Wembley Stadium.
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  And I got a text message from Stephen at the Accord Stadium saying, hey, I'm just seeing this iconic photo at Wembley of the Race of Champions track.
• 6:15
  The Wembley Stadium transformed it to a racetrack.
• 6:18
  I'm so looking forward to have that same photo in Accord Stadium.
• 6:21
  Excellent.
• 6:21
  So, you know, you'll never see a core stadium like this again.
• 6:25
  It's going to be something totally unique.
• 6:26
  And when it's all done, you've got to dismantle it pretty quickly too because the National Rugby League's on, I think, in six days' time after that.
• 6:33
  Yeah, I think some of the guys wanted to keep the track a little bit like the Prince...
• 6:39
  Abdulaziz did in Saudi Arabia when they decided to keep it for a month and drive on it and the football team could go play somewhere else and I don't know if that's going to happen in Sydney though I think we promise to be out of there in 72 hours afterwards and as I mentioned we try to recycle all the material as part of the brief after the track construction so and trying to be as sustainable as possible.
• 7:00
  Well done.
• 7:00
  Five different types of vehicles.
• 7:02
  Just share with us what you can about those.
• 7:05
  So, I mean, we wanted the drivers to experience a variety of cars.
• 7:10
  And for the moment, I mean, we haven't made the cars official, so this is kind of a scoop for you.
• 7:14
  But we will bring one of the absolutely most exciting rallycross cars.
• 7:21
  It's the FC2, over 500 horsepower, and accelerates from zero to 100 kmh.
• 7:27
  And in just over one and a half seconds and absolutely sensational.
• 7:33
  The drivers that had a chance to try it are just blown away by the car and it looks sensational.
• 7:38
  And the sound of that engine, we run them on biofuel, 100% fossil free biofuel once again to try to be sustainable.
• 7:45
  But the sound and the acceleration of this car is phenomenal.
• 7:49
  I think that the drivers will love it.
• 7:50
  And then we have a variety, some of the traditional cars from Race of Champions, like the open KTM crossbow car, which is great because the fans can really see the drivers as they work inside the car.
• 8:03
  And another unique feature with Race of Champions, of course, is that
• 8:08
  A few lucky fans have the chance to get the absolute ultimate seat upgrade.
• 8:14
  You can buy your ticket up in the high section and find yourself in a race suit, helmet on, as a co-driver to one of the world's best drivers in the race, live on television all over the world, high-fiving a four-time Formula One World Champion as you cross the finish line.
• 8:30
  That's part of the things that makes the race of champions so unique.
• 8:35
  Imagine that being alongside a Sebastian Loeb or something like that for the ride of your life.
• 8:39
  That'd be huge.
• 8:41
  Ultimately, New South Wales and Sydney won out here, right?
• 8:44
  Did you get some interest from other states?
• 8:48
  I wondered whether, you know, because in Australia, we love to be competitive and sport is such a powerful thing that different states like to try and own these sort of things.
• 8:59
  Did you get interest from other places for this?
• 9:01
  Yeah, so we have been looking at coming to Australia for over 10 years.
• 9:05
  I went to visit the Accord Stadium over 10 years ago.
• 9:10
  We had meetings in Melbourne with Victoria.
• 9:13
  I went to see some of the most iconic stadiums there.
• 9:16
  And we were in Perth looking at the Optus Stadium.
• 9:19
  And it was very, very close that we went to Perth, but in the end,
• 9:23
  And it's Sydney's TG Sport and the venues New South Wales that won out.
• 9:29
  And we're very happy for our first ever event in Australia to be in Sydney, which I think has this appeal for everybody, all the drivers we speak to and so on.
• 9:37
  They're really happy to come and discover Sydney and Australia.
• 9:41
  Now, you've got a journalist background.
• 9:42
  I'm a broadcaster.
• 9:43
  So between the pair of us, we probably won't give too much away here, but I'm going to ask the questions.
• 9:47
  You see how you go.
• 9:48
  I'll leave that with you.
• 9:49
  Firstly, on the Australian side, as you said, Will Brown, current Supercars champion, greatest of all time, Jamie Wincup there.
• 9:56
  You've announced as well a good friend of our show in Molly Taylor.
• 10:00
  We are eagerly awaiting Frederick, the next Aussie.
• 10:04
  Now, at the time of recording, you probably can't tell us who that is.
• 10:07
  Have you got a wish list?
• 10:08
  Is it a
• 10:09
  Is a Daniel Ricciardo on there?
• 10:10
  Is a Toby Price on there?
• 10:12
  Is a return of a Mick Doohan or a Chad Reed in there, for example?
• 10:15
  I mean, all those phenomenal guys are on the list, of course.
• 10:20
  And three of those four are good friends that have been at Racing Champions in the past.
• 10:27
  So, we're definitely on the list.
• 10:30
  Too early right now to say more than that.
• 10:34
  But we've got great experiences with all of them and have enjoyed catching up with them over the years.
• 10:41
  So, we'll see.
• 10:42
  Watch this spice.
• 10:43
  Okay.
• 10:44
  Incidentally to you, I know that you're continuing the search on the US side because you've mentioned Travis Pastrana there.
• 10:50
  So we're looking forward to seeing a little bit more there.
• 10:53
  The podcast has a good footprint in New Zealand as well, Frederick.
• 10:58
  So they'll be keen to know who might join Hayden Padden.
• 11:01
  Am I right in saying though, that IndyCar has a test around that time and that might make it a little tricky for a Scott McLaughlin or a Scott Dixon, for example?
• 11:09
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 11:10
  So, I mean, I spoke to Scott, for example, and he was like, yes, I'm in.
• 11:14
  And he's like, I've got the okay from the wife, the most important thing.
• 11:18
  And then a little bit later, it came like, oh, shit, I've got this commitment that I can't get out of.
• 11:23
  And I mean, I've always wanted to do Race of Champions, but I can't get out of this commitment.
• 11:28
  And they've got their first race in St. Pete the weekend before.
• 11:32
  And then apparently there is a test.
• 11:35
  on the Monday after Race of Champions, which makes it tricky for the IndyCar guys to make it to Sydney.
• 11:42
  Technically, I think you're able to do it.
• 11:45
  You can take a flight early Sunday morning and get into the US on that Sunday.
• 11:50
  But IndyCar are quite notorious for changing the test last minute if it's rain, etc.
• 11:55
  And they only have two tests during the entire season.
• 11:59
  So that first test after the first race is extremely important.
• 12:03
  So unfortunately, a lot of the IndyCar guys who would have loved to be there are going to struggle to make it to Sydney this year.
• 12:11
  A break now on this ep of the Rusty's Garage Shortcast.
• 12:14
  More on the race of champions right after this.
• 12:21
  You're listening to the Motorsport Brief.
• 12:22
  We're chatting to Frederick Johnson for this episode.
• 12:24
  The man behind the race of champions, a star-studded line-up from all sorts of disciplines, is coming to Australia in March.
• 12:33
  Let's get back to the chat now.
• 12:36
  Few to finish here.
• 12:37
  You have pulled some incredible names for this over the years.
• 12:41
  Frederick, is there a unicorn?
• 12:43
  Is there someone that you haven't had yet that you would love to get to come along and compete at Race of Champions at some stage?
• 12:50
  I mean, the list of drivers that we've had, you know, from Michael Schumacher.
• 12:54
  Schumacher, yeah.
• 12:56
  who won the Roc Nation's Cup six times together with Sebastian Wettelt.
• 13:00
  You know, the memories that we have with Michael and Sebastian are just unbelievable.
• 13:05
  Most of them, unfortunately, I can't tell you on air.
• 13:10
  But the racing was 100% on track and the evening party after the race was also world class in every way.
• 13:21
  I mean, we would love...
• 13:22
  I mean, Lewis Hamilton came to Race of Champions in Wembley when he was world champion the first year in 2008.
• 13:30
  Ron Dennis didn't want him to race and he had just become world champion.
• 13:34
  He's invested a lot of money and he didn't want to risk Lewis getting beaten by some rally guy or touring car guy.
• 13:41
  So we'd love to have Lewis back.
• 13:43
  We'd love to have Max.
• 13:45
  We understand the pressures of...
• 13:47
  Formula One certainly at the moment with so many races, the season finishing this weekend in Abu Dhabi and then they have to go off to Rwanda for the FIA awards on top of that.
• 14:01
  So I understand the pressures of that and that it's difficult to justify coming to Sydney.
• 14:07
  so far earlier and make the season even longer.
• 14:10
  But once again, we haven't given up hope.
• 14:12
  We've invited them and you never know.
• 14:15
  Sometimes you get a positive surprise.
• 14:18
  As you say, in the same breath, very hard to top the likes of Michael Schumacher and others over the years, but it's great that you're approaching that.
• 14:24
  that caliber of driver.
• 14:27
  It's a battle of all sorts of disciplines, as you've said over the years, right?
• 14:31
  Is it rally drivers?
• 14:32
  Is it circuit drivers?
• 14:33
  Who seems to have the best talent?
• 14:35
  Or is it because, as you described, because you have this great leveller that sometimes you see someone rise to the occasion that you might, you know, for example, a circuit racer might, in Michael or Seb, might upstage a rally driver, when on paper you think it might suit the rally driver and so on.
• 14:53
  I think that with the stadium tracks on tarmac, it is indeed the great equalizer.
• 14:59
  When we were on the snow and ice in Sweden, we were expecting the rally guys and rally cross guys to have an advantage, and the Nordics certainly.
• 15:07
  But even there, you have the surprise, like the first year in Sweden on the snow and ice, you have Jimmy Johnson and Colton Herta, seven-time NASCAR champion and one of the big rising stars in IndyCar, making it to the final in the Nations Cup.
• 15:21
  So...
• 15:22
  It's always surprises.
• 15:23
  There's always somebody that you don't expect.
• 15:26
  If you're looking at the last pure stadium event we did was in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
• 15:31
  That's also a funny story, by the way.
• 15:33
  We were the first big international event in Saudi Arabia where women were allowed to be spectators in the stadium.
• 15:39
  We had to help them build women's toilets in King Trout Stadium in Riyadh two weeks before Race of Champions.
• 15:44
  And then, of course, after us, the transformation in the country is incredible.
• 15:48
  And they brought in Formula E, Formula One, Dakar, and our World Rally at the end of next year.
• 15:54
  But anyway, going back to the racing in that stadium track, which is a little bit similar to what we're doing in Sydney.
• 16:01
  It was David Kulkar, the retired 13-time Formula One winner, who came and surprised everybody and won the event, knocking out Jean-Pablo Montoya, Atelier Castroneves, Peter Solberg, the World Rally and Rallycross champion in the final.
• 16:18
  So you never know who's coming in.
• 16:22
  Someone like David...
• 16:24
  He's not racing much these days, but he's still bloody fast.
• 16:27
  So you've got these legends, and Race of Champions is a unique chance for fans to see these guys that have been their heroes in the past come back and race, and they're still racing at a very, very high level.
• 16:40
  So damn cool.
• 16:41
  Right.
• 16:41
  Roll call of winners over the years, and you've just bounced around a number of great names.
• 16:45
  They're very impressive, but...
• 16:47
  Can Australia or New Zealand do it?
• 16:50
  That would be a bit of a breakthrough, wouldn't it, if we could get something happening there with them?
• 16:55
  Yeah, we would love that.
• 16:56
  I mean, once again, the home team, with the support of the home fans, is always in a good position to create a surprise.
• 17:04
  And I think you've got so many great drivers in Australia and in New Zealand.
• 17:10
  And so I'm absolutely thinking that either Australia or New Zealand can pull a surprise.
• 17:18
  It's been nice to chat with you about this.
• 17:21
  Good luck with the news to come in the weeks that follow our episode here with names that you'll no doubt announce for the event.
• 17:28
  We're excited about it.
• 17:29
  We can hear it in your voice.
• 17:30
  You are too.
• 17:31
  It'll be great to get you down under.
• 17:33
  Thank you for talking to us today.
• 17:34
  Thank you.
• 17:35
  Pleasure having the opportunity to be on Rusty's Garage and look forward to meet you in person and have you at the event as well.
• 17:43
  Now, the event happens just two weeks after the Supercars season opener and a week before the Formula One Australian Grand Prix, round one of the 2025 World Championship.
• 17:52
  Broadcast details will be released soon, along with more driver announcements too.
• 17:57
  You can get your tickets from tickertech.com.au.
• 18:00
  March 7 and 8 are the dates you need for the calendar.
• 18:04
  And for more info, go to raceofchampions or one word.com.au.
• 18:07
  Before we go, a quick reminder of our most recent feature episode too, with former Supercars champion and Bathurst winner Mark Winterbottom.
• 18:16
  He opened up and had this candid conversation, unlike any other that I've had with him when we've worked together in television.
• 18:24
  How he feels about exiting Team 18 now that there's been a little bit of time to let the dust settle.
• 18:29
  How genuinely excited he is about returning to Tickford for the Enduros and the new role that he'll have with the team.
• 18:37
  Plus a little known story of what it was like to work on the movie Cars 2 and why the producers had to call Owen Wilson back to the voiceover booth.
• 18:46
  for frosty hope you enjoy that chat might be good listening for you or your motorsport mates over the holiday break we'll catch you next week bye for now