Latest / Rusty's Garage / The Motorsport Brief | Lando building Oscar-grade inner strength and Liam Lawson's done enough

Transcript

The Motorsport Brief | Lando building Oscar-grade inner strength and Liam Lawson's done enough · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:04
  Welcome to the Motorsport Brief.
• 0:06
  Formula One has just 10 races to go.
• 0:09
  This gripping season has got everybody talking and not just about the McLarens up front.
• 0:17
  G'day everyone, Rusty here in the garage.
• 0:19
  I've had a couple of messages recently from people saying they have found the pod.
• 0:24
  Welcome, that's great.
• 0:26
  We started it eight years ago, doesn't matter how long it took you to find us.
• 0:29
  Hopefully you're now discovering all sorts of guests in the library to enjoy.
• 0:34
  And we don't just do feature interviews.
• 0:36
  This is our shortcast, often issues-based and with people who know podcasts.
• 0:41
  talking about it.
• 0:42
  To give you an idea, Nash Morris and Mark Dutton were on last week.
• 0:46
  Nash is the final piece of the Supercars 2025 Enduro lineup.
• 0:50
  He's with Premier.
• 0:51
  And Dutto gave an update on their upcoming move at 888 to Ford and Mustang, plus locking away Brock Feeney and Will Brown on driver contracts until the end of the decade.
• 1:03
  We also had Ryan Walkinshaw on recently too, and he shared the latest on Toyota's Supercars project.
• 1:08
  A lot of you talking about that after the social post we did.
• 1:12
  When Walkinshaw and Dreddy United expects to have their Supras on track, it is super close.
• 1:18
  Plus, the incredible new plant that the group is building at a cost of $100 million.
• 1:24
  How good it will be.
• 1:25
  for the automotive sector here and when the race team is planning to move in and there's a new feature episode with scott pedder too it is fantastic not just for rally fans a two-parter over two hours worth of chat why some early co-driving helps him to this day very funny yarn where his wife carolyn navigated for him let's just say she's very competitive and
• 1:50
  and they nearly broke a record in the Victorian series.
• 1:52
  The reason they didn't, well, that's on Scott.
• 1:55
  Some sage, game-changing advice from Ed Odinsky, a corner that Scott thought was third gear was in fact fifth for Ed.
• 2:04
  And a little-known Trading Places story, he let Brodie Kostecki and Will Brown drive his Skoda rally car before Scott was let loose in a supercar on a wet and wild day at Calder.
• 2:16
  And we also talk about the incredible headers business story.
• 2:20
  Three generations, and each has made their mark.
• 2:23
  Check it out when you finish here.
• 2:25
  Let's get to today's guest.
• 2:26
  With F1 garnering as much interest and more column space against the ball codes on both sides of the ditch, we reached out to Alex Powell, who covers the sport for the NZ Herald, and he's kindly agreed to come on for a chat.
• 2:39
  Hello, mate.
• 2:40
  Welcome.
• 2:41
  Thank you for joining us.
• 2:42
  Morning.
• 2:42
  Thank you for having me.
• 2:44
  Can we start, I think we should, with Liam Lawson?
• 2:47
  Form turnaround, great job at Hungary, best of any of the Red Bull family or Red Bull drivers.
• 2:52
  Is it enough in your opinion?
• 2:54
  In my opinion, yeah, absolutely.
• 2:57
  So I actually spoke to a couple of people at Red Bull and a couple of people in Liam's camp after Silverstone.
• 3:01
  And the mood was definitely that he will be staying in next year, that he's done enough.
• 3:06
  But also that they were seeing what they know he's capable of.
• 3:10
  And I think that's ultimately been the best thing given he's had a pretty horrible year to have worked your whole life for that opportunity to drive for Red Bull.
• 3:18
  next Max Verstappen and have it taken away after two races.
• 3:21
  I think it put a lot of people out of joint.
• 3:22
  So to see him doing this, I don't think anyone could be too upset.
• 3:25
  I know that across on your side of the ditch, having been there at the expense of Daniel Ricciardo, that might not sound too good, but I think Liam's doing what he needs to be doing.
• 3:33
  It's made him, I think, stronger too.
• 3:35
  I mean, I'm getting messages from...
• 3:38
  school students in New Zealand who want to pass on emails to him of support and so on.
• 3:44
  Clearly, between all of that and whatever he has done to regroup, it's certainly, I think, it's working well for him, isn't it?
• 3:51
  Absolutely.
• 3:52
  You listen to what he says, and Liam's messaging is that he was never really hit in his confidence.
• 3:58
  You know, he has been very much saying, you know, I know what I'm capable of.
• 4:01
  You think of the results he's had this year.
• 4:03
  He has actually had a lot of misfortune.
• 4:05
  You think back to Bahrain, and he has a DRS fault in qualifying.
• 4:10
  That means his rear wing shuts, and he loses a couple of tents, and he's knocked out.
• 4:13
  You think back to Imola, and there's two red flags in qualifying, and he's lower down the grid on a track where you just can't pass.
• 4:19
  So I think he's justified himself in knowing what he is capable of, and now he is actually producing it, which he'll be thrilled about.
• 4:28
  Hindsight's a wonderful thing.
• 4:29
  I think racing Bulls is clearly a better place for him.
• 4:33
  I mean, you talked about it at the beginning there, two races.
• 4:35
  That was brutal, what they did at Red Bull.
• 4:38
  What's Yuki been there for now?
• 4:39
  12 GPs.
• 4:41
  And that second seat is no better, is it?
• 4:45
  Well, I mean, you'd even argue the first seat's no better.
• 4:47
  You look at what Max Verstappen's doing and it's been the underlying message the whole season, hasn't it, of the car is actually tailored to Max Verstappen.
• 4:55
  And the longer we've gone on, I don't really think that's the case.
• 4:59
  And Max has even said it himself that the car is just what it is, but he's the only one that can actually get anything out of it.
• 5:05
  But you do feel for Yuki, it's very easy to have a sort of a binary in these instances and say, Liam is the good guy and Yuki is the bad guy.
• 5:12
  But that's not the case.
• 5:13
  Like this is a guy who's really just been thrown under the bus by Red Bull and is probably going to leave next year when the Honda deal expires and have to find somewhere else to go.
• 5:22
  So let's come then to the kind of Red Bull rebuild, the upheaval following the shock departure of Christian Horner.
• 5:29
  Laurent Meckies is there now.
• 5:31
  There's a story in the last 24 hours about Zac Brown meeting with him in Hungary and so on.
• 5:37
  And I think try to settle the waters, if you will, in the rivalry that's been there between McLaren and Red Bull in recent time.
• 5:44
  Are the ingredients, I hate overusing that word, but are they there now for a rebuild for this team?
• 5:49
  Not this season.
• 5:50
  I think Red Bull are very much accepting now that they don't have any chance.
• 5:55
  I mean, they've been adamant the whole season that they can't win the Constructors.
• 5:58
  And now I think Verstappen's conceding that the Drivers' Championship's gone.
• 6:02
  I mean, to bring it back to Liam Lawson quickly.
• 6:05
  If you remember in Brazil last year, when Max was at the back of the grid and came through and won the whole thing, there was a very clear instruction from Red Bull to Liam, you let Max pass.
• 6:13
  And then you look at Hungary over the weekend, and Liam holds Max off for 20 laps.
• 6:17
  So that instruction clearly didn't come because he's not fighting for a championship and they let both drivers drive their own race.
• 6:23
  So I think next year will be really interesting to see how Red Bull come back and if they can actually build a competitive car for, for me, the best driver we've ever seen.
• 6:32
  Lewis Hamilton is being tough on himself.
• 6:35
  That is clear from some of the things on socials.
• 6:37
  What did you make of that cryptic Instagram post too with the match and the kind of extinguished flame and 8.8.25?
• 6:45
  So we're recording this only a couple of days before that.
• 6:47
  What does that all mean in your opinion?
• 6:50
  I know what I hope it's not.
• 6:51
  I hope that's not foreshadowing some sort of announcement.
• 6:54
  But, I mean, that's the thing with Lewis Hamilton.
• 6:56
  He has so many extracurriculars that when you have a date like that, it could actually be anything.
• 7:00
  It could be some sort of, you know, fashion drop that he's very involved in.
• 7:04
  But it's hard to see Lewis Hamilton.
• 7:06
  Like, I mean, no athlete has ever beaten time, have they?
• 7:08
  And I think it is just now catching up with Lewis Hamilton.
• 7:11
  He was the main man at Mercedes for a long time.
• 7:14
  And now he's gone to Ferrari, a new team, which is always hard to do if you think when you change jobs, you do take about a year to really find your feet in your new one.
• 7:22
  And now he's gone to a team where he has to be one of two.
• 7:25
  He was always one of one at Mercedes, definitely when it was him and Bottas, then him and Russell.
• 7:31
  But it's just, does he have the time left to actually find his feet and then maybe push for an eighth title?
• 7:36
  The other element to this discussion is Ferrari, obviously.
• 7:39
  James Allen said to me on the pod recently, he's the former Formula One commentator, as you know, and works for motorsport.com, that if the ingredients are right, they are capable of wins for him this year.
• 7:51
  They've got Fred Vasseur re-signed, trying to get a bit of stability there, but it doesn't entirely feel like everything they need to deliver is there.
• 8:01
  It never does with Ferrari.
• 8:02
  They always find some way of almost screwing themselves out of wins.
• 8:07
  You know, you look at what Charles Leclerc's put up with for, I mean, a number of seasons now.
• 8:11
  It feels like any time they're in a position to actually push on, for whatever reason, they just don't do it.
• 8:17
  And now that they've got...
• 8:19
  I mean, if we're talking about Max Verstappen as the best driver all time, Hamilton's definitely in the conversation.
• 8:23
  So there's no reason why they shouldn't be up there.
• 8:25
  But for whatever reason, even though they're second in the constructors, they're just not anywhere near McLaren.
• 8:30
  With that story of Max Verstappen staying at Red Bull, obviously Mercedes has moved to lock away George Russell for next year.
• 8:37
  You'd have to say, you know, some recent form...
• 8:40
  from him vindicates that decision too doesn't it it's been really interesting watching george this year because like i said before he is he has for his whole time at the stadium he's been lewis hamilton's number two and then when we got the announcement last year that hamilton was going to leave george takes on more of a leadership role and now that you've put an 18 year old next on that's again he's he is the leader in that team now and you think back to his junior career
• 9:03
  He has shown he is a driver who can compete for titles.
• 9:06
  And even though it's not really happening this year, he has won a race.
• 9:10
  And that's more than anyone outside of McLaren or Max Verstappen can say.
• 9:14
  I hope we give Kimi Antonelli time.
• 9:16
  I mean, we're in a world now where we expect instant results.
• 9:19
  This is a young kid with a lot of talent.
• 9:22
  We have to give him the space to grow here in Formula One, don't we?
• 9:25
  They absolutely will do that, won't they?
• 9:27
  You hear Toto Wolff talk about him.
• 9:28
  He absolutely loves him.
• 9:29
  I don't know if you saw the clip before Imola where they were talking about what to expect over the weekend and Toto was basically consoling Kimi and saying, look, you know, just take everything naturally.
• 9:40
  This is your home race.
• 9:41
  Enjoy it.
• 9:41
  And then George says, what about me?
• 9:42
  And Toto goes, you're 27 years old.
• 9:44
  You're the leader of this team.
• 9:45
  I don't need to tell you anything.
• 9:47
  So that just shows how Mercedes viewed Kimi Ancinelli.
• 9:50
  He is definitely one for the future, but unfortunately the future does have to be now.
• 9:54
  We are not done yet on this edition of Rusty's Garage.
• 9:57
  More with F1 journalist Alex Powell on the 2025 season in just a few moments.
• 10:05
  A few of you asking to get young Aussie Taylor Gill on the pod too.
• 10:10
  He is literally flying under the radar and doing great things as a junior, climbing the World Rally Championship ladder.
• 10:16
  We will do that in the weeks ahead.
• 10:19
  Now, though, it's back to Alex Powell and some thoughts on Formula One, the season so far, and the storylines in the paddock as they headed into the summer break.
• 10:28
  This championship is going to seesaw, Alex, between now and Abu Dhabi.
• 10:32
  There's no two ways about it.
• 10:34
  How are McLaren going to manage this?
• 10:37
  I've asked this question of a couple of people.
• 10:40
  I love the freedom that they currently have and allowing them to race, but with...
• 10:44
  less than a dozen races, whatever it is, 10 races to go now.
• 10:47
  At some point, that's going to get difficult managing that, isn't it?
• 10:51
  I think it might already be starting to.
• 10:52
  You hear Oscar Piastri talk, and he does just have that elite mentality that you'd think Lando Norris might not have.
• 10:59
  But you remember back to Canada when Lando sort of showed his hand in trying to get around Oscar, and he ruined his own race, and they know how many points he lost there.
• 11:07
  That proves to be the difference between the two of them.
• 11:09
  But you're right, it's incredible what they're having to do in managing both drivers.
• 11:13
  They did it last year when Oscar Piastri sort of took a step back and said, I'll do what the team needs me to do.
• 11:17
  But we don't know how that came because they said, next year you can be the main guy.
• 11:21
  And now he is doing that.
• 11:23
  It's incredible.
• 11:23
  We've not seen a title race between two teammates since 2016.
• 11:26
  I remember how good that one was with Lewis Hamilton versus Nico Rosberg.
• 11:30
  And if we get anything close to that for the end of the year, I can't wait.
• 11:34
  That's a great parallel, and I think it's going to be epic for those reasons.
• 11:37
  Just on your point there around mental strength, I mean, Oscar clearly has that ice, cool, calmness, great under pressure.
• 11:46
  But I think Lando has demonstrated in recent races, however he's found it, that aspect which people thought was a deficiency, if you like, of his, he has sharpened that up, hasn't he?
• 11:58
  You hear Landon Orrish, or you used to hear Landon Orrish talk, and he's very good at being self-deprecating.
• 12:02
  It's always, you know, everything's his fault.
• 12:04
  And whether or not he's doing that ironically or that's how he actually thinks, he's not doing that anymore.
• 12:09
  He genuinely knows he is a shot at this title.
• 12:11
  You think back to last year, by the time McLaren got to the point where they could compete for race wins, Red Bull and Maxxist Abel were so far out in front that it was going to take a lot to catch him and they just couldn't do it.
• 12:21
  But now...
• 12:23
  I think we are actually seeing the driver that McLaren have always known Lando can be, and more importantly, that he knows he can be.
• 12:29
  And so, you know, strap yourself in for the end of the season because neither of these McLarens are going to give an inch, especially to each other.
• 12:36
  Right, a couple to finish here, and we'll spread...
• 12:39
  our questions here a bit more broadly on the Kiwi pool of motorsport talent, because there's a, you know, the per capita stuff that comes out of your country is unreal.
• 12:47
  Firstly, Louis Sharp, the drive that he had in Formula Three at the weekend.
• 12:52
  I know we haven't seen him enough at the pointy end of the field this year, but a great young talent.
• 12:57
  And hopefully that progression keeps going for him.
• 13:01
  He's certainly one to watch.
• 13:03
  Absolutely.
• 13:03
  He came through the same sort of school, if you will, of Asli and Lawson, that road and pathway.
• 13:08
  I
• 13:09
  first year in Formula 3, which, I mean, it can be a big step up, especially when you're racing outside of that circuit.
• 13:14
  But, like, it's all there with Louis.
• 13:15
  We know it's there, and it's just how quickly can he find his feet.
• 13:20
  And I think if he's given the time, which he sounds like he will be, there is a real special talent there.
• 13:25
  I spent a bit of time with him at the Race of Champions, Alex, and even out of the car, I think he's a very polished athlete.
• 13:31
  Shane Van Gisbergen, it's been tough for him on the ovals, but we are certainly...
• 13:36
  getting more and more proof that he is getting his head around that and just reminding us of the kind of broad talent that he is in motor racing.
• 13:44
  Shane may guess they can drive anything.
• 13:46
  I don't remember during COVID, but we had the New Zealand Grand Prix and a lot of the Kiwi drivers that were based overseas came back.
• 13:51
  And Shane actually won that race from pit lane.
• 13:54
  He's great.
• 13:56
  Like you say, the ovals are going to be a bit of a struggle because, you know, NASCAR is just so different to what you get down in supercars.
• 14:03
  But I think it actually really does show how good supercars is.
• 14:06
  Like even with Scott McLaughlin as well, like these guys are stepping into America and they're winning early.
• 14:11
  There's little time to adapt.
• 14:12
  So for Shane...
• 14:14
  I mean, he is getting on an age.
• 14:16
  I think he'll be the first to admit he has sort of more yesterdays than tomorrow's, but it's there.
• 14:21
  We know it's there.
• 14:22
  And if he can get a few bits together, there's no reason why he can't be fighting at the front of the field every week.
• 14:27
  Finally, to McLaughlin, who you brought up there a moment ago, it's been a hell of a year for Penske, for him generally in racing terms.
• 14:35
  That could really be the making of him in IndyCar.
• 14:37
  I think he's
• 14:38
  He's shown that he's a race winner, an Indy 500 contender, and certainly a championship contender as well.
• 14:45
  Hopefully 26 is better for him.
• 14:47
  Hopefully.
• 14:48
  But you know that Penske do have such a strong lineup of drivers that he has to fight in his own team before he can fight everyone else.
• 14:55
  But you're right.
• 14:56
  We know how good Scott McLaughlin is from the second he came through in supercars, how dominant he was there.
• 15:03
  And now he's just taken it around the world.
• 15:05
  Yeah.
• 15:07
  Yeah, for me, he is one of the best drivers we've produced out of New Zealand, and that's saying something.
• 15:12
  Awesome.
• 15:13
  Great to get you on the podcast today.
• 15:14
  Thank you very much.
• 15:15
  Nice one.
• 15:16
  Thanks for having me.
• 15:17
  Supercars returns to Queensland Raceway this weekend.
• 15:20
  Final stop before the Enduros.
• 15:23
  Bathurst is not all that far away.
• 15:25
  F1 resumes at Zandvoort for the Dutch GP at the end of August and then it is busy right through until things conclude at the beginning of December.
• 15:34
  We'll be on the ground in Singapore again too.
• 15:36
  Cannot wait for that.
• 15:38
  Now I'm catching up with Larrikin's superbike rider Robbie Phyllis in the days ahead for a new feature episode too.
• 15:44
  He was kind of
• 15:45
  ahead of his time when it came to the World Championship.
• 15:48
  And it won't just be a two-wheel conversation either.
• 15:51
  I am told that he had a great relationship with the late Johnny Harvey and Peter Brock.
• 15:57
  We will ask about that and a whole lot more.
• 16:00
  Keep an eye out for notifications on that one.
• 16:02
  That is it for today.
• 16:03
  We will catch you next time.
• 16:04
  Bye for now.