[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As well, maybe as well, because then we had to go and focus more on mechanical items. But I think the main difference was the aerodynamics. We did lose a bit of performance due to aerodynamics.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a very hard time for me, you know, my, the Heinz Harald Frensen driver market or market value was a bit lower, yeaah. Unfortunately, because although I had a much better chance in 98 against Jack, some qualifier, we, we, we more or less did the same qualifying ratio, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My market value was bad and there were not many teams interested in me. Only, uh, Eddie contacted, uh, us or me and my manager.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But what he didn't know is that, uh, if we made, uh, we made the deal like he wanted, so he gave me a very low base salary.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, a lot of point money. And I don't know if he was happy about that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Finishing third in the championship. 54 points. Or paying so much money, yes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the end of the season because it would have been better off for him to give me a better high price, basic salary. But okay, the end of the day, we were all happy. Eddie was happy with the first season and I was really happy with the new circumstances in the team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were quite open to me and coming from Williams probably also were interested in the input I was able to give. And what I've learned at Williams was very helpful to, let's say, improve the car or get the maximum out of the car.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can give you an example. We were talking about dampings on the car and I said, well, I said, but I like to change damping, no?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I like to use damping settings for balancing the car, especially in qualifying, to play with the rebound and the bump force and so on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I don't really mind about, uh, load fluctuation. Of course, you can have much better load fluctuation on the tire if the damper is working perfect. That's the main reason the damper is on the car.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it doesn't really help if you have a bad balance, better balance is on the car, makes the lap times better than a bad load fluctuation in the damper. And they didn't believe me that, so I bet with them, with Sam, and I said, listen, we were in Barcelona testing, I said, take the dampers out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I said, no way, we can't do that. I said, take the damping out and have a go. And you'd say how much lap time we lose. And they were impossible, you can't do that. And Trevor Foster shouldn't have known that, you know, because it's impossible to take damping out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they did that, Sam did that for me. They said, you can do it only one run. I said, that's enough, just to check, you know. Took the damping hours, used the same tires on the lap we did on normal conditions. And what happened? I was only two to three tenths slower a lap than with damping. We had no damping at all on the car.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And everybody was scratching their head and said, shit, how is that possible? You see, the damping


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] System is totally overvalued. Just changing the balance, I could prove them that damping is overrated part of the car.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Correct, yeaah, and with this little things, uh, I could then had a bigger window to prepare the car and get the best out of it. Because the Jordan 99 car was not really, especially on high downforce configuration, was pretty average, yeaah. We had a bit of an advantage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If we came, we were coming to low downforce circuits, the car was more efficient there. But we had also a big issue on the brake ducts on the front. If you use the standard brake ducts for heavy downforce configuration, we lost tremendous amount of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Efficiency in the car. We used the small brake ducts, the car was nearly seven tenths a lap quicker.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Something which was unbelievable, surprising and for us limiting our possibilities. And that's why we ran in Canada for example.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We ran the smaller brake ducts. We were meant to run the standard brake ducts, but we took the risk. I also took the risk, of course. And is that why you had the crash? Why we had the crash, yeaah. So we had then the following races to make many compromises because of that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We got really stronger and stronger mentally, and the team really get better and better. On the other side, Damon was getting more frustrated. It's the same like the opposite situation with me and Jack, you know? When us joining Williams, if you get frustrated, you get under pressure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't really function as normal as you would do. Being negative on the pressure, psychologically, is very difficult. But if you have the opposite situation where you get a toe, whatever you say, then you get faster, more confident, and then when you get more confident, things are happening much easier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I'm afraid I was knowing that 99, that this may be the best season ever. Yeah, I have to say, somebody said to me that if we would run the same point system like Formula One would run today, I would have been world champion with the current


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Point system. I couldn't figure that out, but somebody sent me a message about that. That he calculated it. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, of course. I mean, if you view it that way, not only the performance we had, if you would have won the world championship, that would be a completely different life for me afterwards. So like that, I'm maximum the second position I achieved in Williams in 97 and not the world champion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Our anti-stall system came in and I didn't realize that. It was basically a recommendation from the FEI and generally we spoke about if, for example, you have a, if you go off the circuit, you have a crash or you are on the circuit and having a spin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's helpful, more helpful that the engine keeps running. So the good thing about the anti stall system was that if the RPMs of the engines goes low, then you get this security system getting in. So you have a, just a automatic throttle function.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And on the other side, that was helpful to make a start on low RPMs, yeaah. Because in Formula One, you're just nailing the RPMs, the throttle down, and, and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you release the clutch, you have an incredible high speed difference between the engine and the gearbox and the tires, yeaah. So then you have a lot of speed difference in the clutch and it's very difficult to control the clutch. Either it slides for a moment and then gets stucked, yeaah, gets sticky and then bop and then the engine


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dice, yeaah, or you have too much wheel spin because you accelerate too fast, yeaah, or let this clutch slip, uh, not slip long enough.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that was, is always an issue in Formula 1. Imagine, yeaah, if you run first gear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You could run up to 120, 130 kilometers in first gear. It's the same like you wouldn't use a normal car at the traffic light when you start at fourth gear. So you see the challenge here. And the anti stall system was there to help the engine not dying. So you could start


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The only problem was, you never know when the anti-stall system is active or not. So, at the pit stop, for example, normally you don't really go so low with the RPMs leaving the pits, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If that was the case, you have to press the clutch. That was the necessary function from the FIA to say, listen, the anti stall system has to go off the engine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just in case, but it's reset it when you press the clutch. So that what happened to Damon at the start. He came in the anti stall function and he didn't use the clutch for shifting up. That was the plan and I missed it in the pit stop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I knew immediately that was the problem and I was, I was so furious about myself as well because we have a sign on the steering that you have to use the clutch. And normally Sam would also come on a radio.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the end of the day, it wasn't worth it to use it, you know? Yeaah. I can see that memory is still painful. Yeaah, it is so painful because that would have made a huge difference.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, well because my, my, my headrest came off. I had to use a T-car. Everything went wrong in Malaysia as well. I finished sixth in the race, but uhm, we missed the opportunity to stay, stay in the front and plus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We were running high downforce levels. We were running the big brake ducts on the front. That was the worst race basically for us in the configuration that Jordan was, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, like I said before, he was on one side he was happy, but on the other side he wasn't so happy he had to pay so much money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Normally yes, I mean, uh, in, in normal circumstances we had, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Very warm relationship, I mean, he was a very funny person most of the time, always full of jokes. I was so impressed when we were going for sponsoring events and we were so impressed with the things he was telling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he was a good salesman, no? He was a very good salesman and I was so impressed that I never could do this what Eddie was doing, yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, it, it started a little bit in 2000. In my second year with Jordan, I was facing the point that uhm, where they had to talk about, uh, uh, because my contract was going to expire. Eddie and me, we knew that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a point that we had to talk clearly about it, but Eddie came very late with this moment and then he said, what is your terms? What do you want to do next year? And I said, listen, I would love to stay with the team. I got somebody who's interested, but if I have this same combination with


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With Sam Michael, with my team that we work so good together, I would be happy to stay, yeaah. We have to make sure that...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This combinations will be ready for me for next year. Yeah, yeah. Everything we can do and arrange for you. So I was happy. So first thing when I signed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sam said to me, oh sorry, I'm not, uh, for Jordan next year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was shocked. I was so upset with Eddie because he promised me that Sam would stay. We had our first complicated situation there. I was really upset and the team was really upset that I was upset here. They said, oh no, we're going to look for a good race engineer and so on. I said, isn't it, isn't it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Very bad situation, yeaah. I was really disappointed, uh, because, uh, I was looking forward for my terms. So what happened was that we got a new race engineer and Eddie John came with David Brown. And so we had our chat together and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was quite impressed from David. He was a really smart, experienced race engineer and, uh, and somehow we get going in this situation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Since then, Eddie and me, we had a bit of a difficulties.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it was not the same. And then we went to Melbourne and we started basically as good as we really started or went through average 99, finished fourth on the grid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The car was superb, it was the best, uh, Jordan car ever driven. I was very happy. I mean we had a little bit of a struggle in some areas, but we were able, I think I was very motivated and optimistic that we could achieve that. Started well in Melbourne.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Had a good start, was I think second or something, no, third, I don't know, uhm, can't recall perfectly, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There the problem started. There was Barrichello coming up and making a very motivated move to overtake me, but at the end he, he just pushed me off there. Went to the back of the grid, but managed to finish sixth. So I think, okay, not too bad. We're finishing the points. We made it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Something must have happened after that day in Melbourne.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know what happened, but since then nothing was the same anymore. We arrived to Malaysia and since then I was really struggling. I don't know what happened. Everything was different. Even to this day, you have no experience.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have no explanation. All of a sudden it was like somebody pulling the plug.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had no more, let's say high moments, yeaah. I was struggling to beat, uh, Jarno. In fact, Jarno was starting to get regularly faster than me. And, uh, well, I, I managed to be stronger in some races than him in a race because Jarno was a, was a guy who was really quick.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he also did like to have the best qualifying setting. He was very motivated to get the car for qualifying run. But I did take more care about race distance performance. I was running generally a softer diff for example, yes. I was generally running


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The car more, more for endurance, yeaah. So that's where, where Jarno basically got me, catched up in, in qualifying at least. But anyway, after Melbourne, didn't get the qualifying right, get to manage somehow the, the race, but something was not running round anymore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And until that famous day after Maknikur, where Eddie then sacked me, no? What reason did he give?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bah, it was really no reason. It just out of the blue came up as a...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With this, uh, letter with the lawyer and, and informed me. So that was a big shock. But it was a little bit anticipated because Eddie was getting strange every time, more strange each race towards, uh, McNicol, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I didn't understand the world. I mean, I have no explanation. I don't know what Eddie would have to say that, but I listened to him of some of his comments about that, but, uh, but I never understood what he really meant.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, not at all, because uhm, at that time I was running in Formula 3000 in Europe, but not that successful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wasn't really on, on, on the clock and, and I left Mercedes the year before. In fact, I left Mercedes in 1990 because I said I would like to be a Formula One driver and I would like to concentrate in Formula 3000. Sports car. Even I did go through all the lessons in sports car racing. Sports cars was not my intention to do. But this is another story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, Mercedes program was, uh, created, uh, from Jochen Erpasch and Peter Sauber.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The intention which I realized those, I mean, you have to imagine those days, me, I'm a single digit intelligent quotient. We did not much experience, or I did not have much experience of sports politics here and so on. But what I understood is that this program was introduced to us driver.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To help Mercedes join into motorsport. That was a very, uhm, comprehensive work to bring back Mercedes into motorsport.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] with BMW in touring cars so he had


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This experience from that and that was very successful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it was again very successful, this concept with Michael, Carl Wendlinger and me to introduce a junior team. And there we did a lot of testing and Jochen Maas, Jean-Louis Schleser, Mauro Baldi.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really good guys to work with. Good teachers. Yes, good teachers. And for us it was the first experience in fast cars.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And giving the situation uhm, it was new also for me and that's where I learned to save fuel because in sports car you have a...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that means you cannot run as much power as you want, you have only as much power available you have in fuel. So the trick was at those days to be fast but not using so much fuel and that's where


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that was also one of the tools we had in 99, because in 99, the Jordan had the biggest fuel tank. And also by saving fuel, we could really extend our first stop so far in the last part of the distance of the race.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The negative side was that my races were really, uhm, let's say uneventful because I was always holding up anybody and everybody then or after the race people were saying, where did, where did Franzen come from?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We haven't seen much of him in racing, in the race. He was being overtaken by Michael a few times, by Michael overtaking him, or David Coutard. Yea, I was always being overtaken, but all of a sudden I was in front of them and finishing in front of them at the race. So it was not spectacular stealth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, the speed, I mean, the speed, the, we were teached, uh, to be gentle with the car, to make precise gear changes, to, uhm, save the tires and save fuel. Just handle the car with, uh, with all feelings you have.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It didn't seem to be that big when I was driving at Sauber, but very concentrated, and uhm, it was my first experience to work with a top team, yea, with Sauber, you know, experienced team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the way of professionality, working with daters and working with the engineers, that was a big step, of course, from Formula 3.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that was my first shot into the future, how it would be like in Formula One one day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We had a socially very nice relationship, I have to say, because we were part of the team and we, we were not competing each other. Maybe only in lab times it worked. Of course we tried to be better than the other ones, to beat the other ones, but in a nice way, you know, and we went always together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the same hotel and we did things together, we went together for lunch, dinner, whatever, when we had free time. We did many things together and exchanged information as well. It was really uhm, a harmony situation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can recall it as one of my nicest times in racing, but I really enjoyed it because we had the chance to drive the whole day with the sports car and learn as much as we had as a possibility.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Michael was really motivated, not only being fast on the track, but when we went out for playing billiard, I couldn't get any decent conversation with him because he was so focused on beating me and Carl that we couldn't make any jokes, you know? And I said one day, come on Michael, just give it a break, just talk of something else instead of always competing each other, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and he had his moments when he had a distance to his job or, or, let's say the competitiveness. Then he was a really funny bloke, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, it's hard to say. I mean, we, we had the situation that we were pushing each other all the time. So in case I was faster or set the fastest lap, so Michael was just doing everything and the next run he had to beat that time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We had also to do long distance, uh, tests, you know, like 20 laps in a row. So it was clear that everybody of us was on, um, on the benchmark. Everybody looked at us. We had our teachers, Jochen Maas, Mauro Baldi in your journal in Schleser and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We wanted to do better than them. Yes, that was our motivation and we did everything. You know, we had a really, I think that was the idea maybe, or let's say it was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Beating each other or touching each other, but you've never been upset after or before the race to each other. Race was always a different story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sort of, because uhm, it was so fantastic to sit together with these guys and they were telling the stories from their stories, you know. Jean-Louis Schleser was a really funny bloke, he really told so many good stories and we were listening there, we were sitting there, Michael


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Carl and me and just said nothing because either it was Jochen Maas telling his stories


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, Jean-Louis Schlesser. Mauro Bali was a bit more quiet. He also was listening to this both, but both Jean-Louis Schlesser and Jochen Maas were so funny to listen. That was entertainment for us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, basically we lost more or less contact, yeaah, because running in different teams, you just hardly get any situation together, maybe at the drivers briefing or...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In that moment, when you, when you are separated or driving against each other in different teams, there's basically, you are isolated as, haven't got much chances to talk about, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, of course we can have a chat here and there, but uhm, but then we had, no, we had a competition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeaah, yeaah, I remember he wanted to know everything when I did my first set at Sauber.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 93, Peter Sauer called me. I was racing in Japan and asked me if I would like to do the test. And I said, of course, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I went to Mugello and did the test with Sauber, two days, I remember in summer. And Michael was, I found out later, the guy said, he was ringing all the time, calling Peter or calling a journalist, what is he doing, what's that, and this and that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He really was interested to know what's, uh, what's happening. Because I think he was very happy that finally I did make it as well, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean after he did, uh, he was surprising everybody when he went to Jordan in Spa. No, he did such a cool impact, yea, in Formula One. And shortly after at Benetton when he was then immediately finishing on the podium.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was giving all of us, you know, Karl and me, a big push to know, listen, if we can do that, so can I.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was really a big difference and I think the biggest, the biggest help Michael did for all of us at the end helped me and Karl as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And all other young people is that Flavio Berrettoro giving him a chance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In Formula One, at those days, experienced drivers was more valuable than young drivers. It was so difficult. Look at the age, you know, the guys in the nineties, in the eighties and nineties, they were mostly experienced guys. The team bosses at those days, they didn't like to have young drivers to crash the car.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because it was very expensive and it was the habit to have experienced driver. So putting a young driver in a Formula One team was really like a big risk for the teams. And Michael opened the door for all the young drivers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Open the door for me at the end because Peter Sauber obviously saw, look, he saw what Michael did and I did and Karl Wendliger did in, in Mercedes, Sauber Mercedes Times. That's why also Peter then said, if Michael is doing such a good job, I have to call Franzen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, I was, it was really like a family coming together. For me it was, wow, can you explain it? It was the nicest thing on earth for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To be in Formula One, I never really thought I would eventually make it, yeaah. And I was so happy, I was so happy to be in Formula One, you can't imagine. I was, and also with Carl and with Sauber and Sauber was really,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was very difficult not to love Peter Sauber. Even though he was a quite respectful person, but he was a very warm personality. So I felt really nice welcomed at Sauber. I had the feeling, at least.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More or less, yes. Quite a paternal relationship. I could feel that he was giving a lot of confidence to us drivers. He treated us very respectful and giving us the confidence that we can, yeah, we can go for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was very down. I mean, like I mentioned before, I was so mentally high, pumped up and happy, you know, the first races driving for Sauber and so on. And then all of a sudden.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Imola, this shock, you know, this, this, it was such a shock. It was unbelievable. You thought you were in a different world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're coming from a high and all of a sudden you are absolutely in a, in a completely low.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then you question yourself, is it really necessary, the sport we are doing and taking so much risk? How did you justify it in your mind?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I went, I packed my stuff and went to Willydangel in Austria, myself, to sort it out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I, I didn't want to go home. I wanted to go to, to Willydangel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And at the end of the day I said, listen, this is what I like, this is what I love, and at the end of the day, when is your time, is your time. But you cannot, for that experience, give up all your dreams you had built up before. This is a risky job, and we have to do it, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Partly has to do with, uh, with the situation at Sauber 94. Sauber became under pressure, uh, with the results, yeaah, in 94 because I think Norbert Haug got involved and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was rumors that Mercedes might go somewhere else, yeaah. And I have to tell you that story because it's quite special regarding to my career because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What happened was, after the, what happened in Muller, after Ayrton Senna died.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I got a call from Frank on saying, asking me to come to Williams in 94.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was just before the race, you can start it now, before Thursday, when we had the practice. I was meeting Frank and Frank was asking if I would join Williams. I was 94.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And imagine that was only three races into the season and I was so happy that I was going to Sauber and staying with Sauber. I didn't know anything about the politics around and so on, what's going on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the end of the day, I was so happy being a Sauber, and I said to Frank, Frank, I cannot leave the team. I had such a difficulty in times, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They contract me at Sauber only if I would have a trainer all the time with me. And the trainer was called Karl Fresner. He was a ski national trainer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And his nickname was The Iron Carl. Can you imagine? He's a hard man. What a hard man. I had order all the time with me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I got only the driver Mercedes because I had somebody around me to kick the ass from early morning to the evening. And Peter was doing everything that I get the job in Formula One. So I said to Frank, Frank, I.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm so grateful that I got the chance that, uh, Sauber gave me the chance in Formula One. I cannot do it. I cannot just leave the team after three races or four races and join you. I cannot break my contract.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was, it was very hard. I looked in the mirror and I said, can I do that? Because for me that was impossible to, to slack somebody in the face.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To Peter, to give me so much trust and confidence and what else he did. It was not possible. I said to Frank, it's not possible. I cannot do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He got to know that. Somebody told him later.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because, uh, after that, uh, that season, Peter gave me, after the 94th season, and it was clear that Mercedes was leaving to McLaren.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He gave me as a present this, uh, this, this, from my Formula One car, my first one, as a gift and as a, as a thank you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My mission was clear, I was staying with Sauer no matter what, even without Mercedes, I was sticking with them. And then we had this very difficult year in, in 95 where we were basically in Norway in the start of the season where we had the Ford engines, but the car was so terrible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we weren't able to be in the top 10, but we managed eventually with hard work and the team did really a big effort. We managed to get the first podium in, in Monza in 95.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And towards the end of the season be regularly in the points. And that is the point I wanted to say. You know why I never got a chance at McLaren? In 94 in Adelaide.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My manager, Odwin Potles, came to me. It was the celebration, uh, Sunday race. All Formula One teams were celebrating end of season. And then I had a call, uh, Ron Dennis wanted to see me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At those days I was a person who made a lot of fun. I had come from Mönchengladbach and these guys from Mönchengladbach, they are always doing jokes and funny. I think they have a lot of sense of humor, yes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, Ron Dennis came to me and I said, hey, Heinz, how is your English? And I was talking a bit. Oh, I said, there might be some improvement in your English. And then I said for fun, and how is your German?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because we knew that Mercedes was coming to, to McLaren.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have to learn German as well, I said to Ron Dennis. He had a stone face. I was thinking I was funny.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And my manager just pushed my arm like, what the fuck did you say? And I saw the face of Ron Dennis and he never ever spoke again with me. He was so upset that I made this joke.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unbelievable, and that's why I never really had a chance at McLaren, yeaah. Because Ron Dennis for some reason didn't like my sense of humor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, I can't recall. He just, what he does, and you know what he does, this is taking out his cigar, and then, yes, enjoying the cigar. That was the indication that he was happy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uhm, yeaah, I really enjoyed the time with Sauer. We had a few occasions where it was a bit tough, but in the end of the day,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You need to have also tough situations, you know, it cannot be so easy for racing drivers to, to have sunshine all the time, you know, because it's better that you get pushed by someone and they were looking hardly for, for driver who could push me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because it was, everything was running for me so easy. Well obviously Carl had this problem with the crash and after the crash it was not the same. I felt very sorry for Carl that he couldn't


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had to come back at the end of, uh, in 95 again, yes, but he couldn't do it because he got so much headache when he was running a car physically and so on. I've, I was really sad for Carl because we, we raced so many years together in Formula 3. It was my,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My main competitor in the Formula 3 season, he won the championship in 1989 and he was very strong those days, but after the crash he was never the same.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think in you more or less because we're starting to talk each other.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we never really finished the start of the conversation. So basically new, that's going to be probably a different time coming. So if we fast forward.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More or less, I mean, reviewing all the years, sometimes you realize that little details makes a big difference, yeaah. When Eddie sacked me, I was really motivated to kick asses to the Jordan team and go to, to Prost, because Alesi obviously was happy to leave Prost.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I created a massive understeer and because I was so motivated, I tried everything to get the maximum out of the car.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A nice guy who was a race engineer at that time for, for the ProScar and we looked at the data and we couldn't find the problem. We figured out it's not aerodynamic issue. It must have been something else, but it was like a secret treasury, no?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I spent so much energy to analyzing the problem. It was such a challenge and I, I did give everything, but I knew the situation was, Alan was, because he was under pressure. I knew that this might be his last year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if, if there's no soon more good results, then he will be, um, giving up his dream running the team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I started to get Alan to know in that short time I was racing with Prost, yeaah, with his team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I was in favor of Ayrton always because I was since a young kid, I was a fan of Ayrton. But when I got to know Alan Pross, I found out that he's a really nice guy too, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do you ever tell, Alaa, that you are an Aetern fan?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not really. I, I, I, I was a bit upset sometimes because I was on the, on Ayrton's side, you know, that he was doing games. But anyway, they are racing drivers, yea, and they do all kind of tricks they have. It was a personality. I, I really,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I admired Alan and the way he talked and the way he thought and I was giving everything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wanted to be there desperately and I was so motivated and looked everything in the car, every single screw. I was spending hours in the factories going through the data, so finding the mistakes, but we couldn't find it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I was also very disappointed that, uh, after that I had only the option to run with, with, uh, Tom Walkencho and Eros, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, but I started with Arrows testing the car and I got exactly the same problem, but only on the rear axle. It was the car that had fantastic results in downforce.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really good downforce level. Aerodynamic was fantastic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The car was really, had great potential, but as soon as you hit the throttle, the car was oversteering like hell.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's where I start to investigate more in suspension, in the geometric of suspension.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I said, listen, it's a similar problem as prost. And I spent so much time and about April, May, after we had two, three races done, I found the reason what it was. And I found the reason why the prost was not working and the reason was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For example, it's a combination of how you have the suspension.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Very few situation I've seen cars who did that. And I remember the 2000 Jordan had that as well and just realized it was a big mistake and had similar characteristic problems like the Prost. The moment where the car starts to roll


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The steering arms are holding the force or stopping the car rolling. So it works like a very stiff anti-roll bar. And the more the car rolls in a corner, the stiffer


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It gets like a progressive anti-roll bar. And the same problem the arrows had on the rear axle. I figured it out and I said to them, listen, the steering arm was at the middle on the upright. And I said, take the bloody steering arm off there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because we had the steering arm, they used it in the middle to extend the rear floor to get more downforce. And I said, this bloody steering arm is acting as an active anti-roll bar.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Take this off. No, no, we cannot do that. Impossible, because your suspension will fall apart. I said, no, please.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we were trying in, in Le Castellet and I said, come on, let's put it off. It's only two screws each side, no?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he said, no. I said, come on. I convinced Tom Walkingshaw. I convinced everybody. Let's do it. Come on. I would drive for free next race if you do that, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He did it for one run, and the car was completely different. The car was one and a half seconds faster.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I said, listen, you have to take this off for Monaco and then we will blow them all away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they were shitting themselves in the pants because nobody of the engineers had the balls to take this steering arm out because it was not calculated, it was missing one piece in the calculation and it wouldn't last, they said. They said, you're gonna crash, you're gonna kill yourself, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And what we did, we did a compromise. So they did another steering arm additionally, so they increased the force and decreased the force of that middle arm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And prompt in Monaco we did really run. Straight in the points. In the points, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I said, dammit, if we could have fixed that problem with Prost, Prost would have been still in Formula 1.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I asked Henri Durand, I said, how come that one guy builds the rear suspension because it came from Ferrari?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, and one guy builds the front of the car, you know. Why you don't make it together? I said that's the way it was. It was probably cheaper for Alan to do that combination. But at the end of the day, it killed the performance of the car for such a silly problem.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because everything else was running well. The engines was running well. The downforce was running well. Even in the prost. But mechanically it was a disaster. It was a built-in mechanical disaster.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and that's why I stopped after Sauber in 2003.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I come back or came back to, to Sauber, which I was grateful and happy, I found a car.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which has a very small window for drivers input.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really, Ram said to me, you cannot touch anymore any construction side of the car. The only thing you can touch is the anti-roll bar, the stiffness of the diff, or the front wing, or the rear wing, yeaah. But you cannot touch caster, roll centers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anti-dive, anti-lift, you cannot touch the dampers. Why not? Because he didn't want to do that. He said, it's not the job of the driver to make this input. And I tried to explain Willy, I said, Willy, I've gone through all these discussions. Believe me, trust me, we can make the car much better than it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He said, no way you're going to touch one single crew on this car. He just at the end of the day, he showed me the way to go, either I go home or accept the terms. And that's where I completely lost the motivation. He didn't want to know all the experience I had in the past with the teams like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bloody fuck the dampers, you know, just throw them out if necessary, but do something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was before because, uh, I said, listen, that's going to be my last year. I mean, Eddie came into Suzuka 2003.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And tried to convince me to do another year with Eddie Jordan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How long was that conversation? Very short because for me that, I couldn't do it. I, I just, I, today we would call burnout syndrome. At those days it didn't exist that word. I was absolutely finished and I was already looking forward to do DTM because I thought DTM might be a different story and just pulley racing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Making some money and having fun. That was my idea. I didn't want to start again from zero, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How was it? No, nothing bad. I loved all the challenges but at the end what I felt at Sauer in my last year that I was basically overpaid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because me, I was capable to get a lot more out of the car because I knew the difficulties of the Sauber car. I knew there was something wrong. If you make a few changes to the car, the car would go one second quicker. I knew that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But every other driver could do the same job as me. Nick was beating me occasionally. Nick Heidfeld.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, because that was the best example. If you, if you can't touch anything on the car, if you have similar cars.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's not much difference you have, yeaah, in the settings you can do to do from the intelligent point of the driver to make this, this forward steps to increase the car's performance. I wasn't able to do that. I wasn't, I wasn't allowed to do, to touch any screw which was necessary to touch.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I felt so, because I was coming to the race weekend just being paid for driving and not starting the brain, you know, not using the brain. So I was only allowed to use the brain to keep my foot down and nothing else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And basically what I have learned in DTM is a completely different story. Joanne, you are a team with not only your teammates, the whole manufacturer drivers. So Joanne, it's Audi. We had, I had 10 teammates, yea, 10 drivers. And after the first race it was decided who's going to win the championship. So we had to race to help him to win the championship.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I thought, Jesus Christ, where did you end up here? You know, I love more the selfish type of racing driver that you race for yourself and give a shit about the other drivers because it's your race, you know? And all of a sudden I found myself in a DTM. It's like football, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I thought this DTM racing is like a soccer game, you know, it's like, it's quite a good analogy actually.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, it's hard to say. This you cannot answer because there's so many things in life you can say doesn't deserve it. Some people deserve it or not. This question is very difficult. When I finished 2003 I wasn't happy like I finished because I thought I could have done more, achieved more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was blaming myself that I was not politically strong enough, like dealing the situation with Eddie when he kicked me out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In late 1994, I was afraid to open my mouth because clearly I closed my door at McLaren, yes. And I thought, I realized, shit, I cannot, I cannot talk too much. It's better to keep quiet like Kimi Raikkonen and don't tell too much.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Best example, my last race year at Sauber, I could not convince Billy Rumpf a different approach to racing. And I blame it myself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There I found myself not being a complete racing driver, not capable to, to get the people behind me, to convince them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, but that's what you are as a racing driver. You know, you have the codex as a racing driver, we learn quite quickly. You never blame the team for, or somebody else for your poor performance or whatever mistakes you do and so on. You never blame anybody else but you, if.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's better to shut, shut your mouth, yes, and not saying the truth, but not blaming everybody else. So you don't go there and, and, and, and blame the team, yea, as a driver. You can't do that. It's a codex. And that means also you are always very, uhm, harsh to yourself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, what I needed at Williams would have been somebody who knew the car perfectly and be able to teach me because when I joined Jordan, I was a completely different racing driver.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then when I back joined Williams, so I came with all the loaded package or full of information to Jordan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I could give a lot of informations to Sam, so how I did work and I had a completely different approach of how about running my car, yeaah. So the difference was only that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Sam wouldn't necessarily would help me. Maybe Jock Clear would have been the right person for me to add Williams.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because he knew this bastard, he knew all the tricks, yeaah. He knew what to touch. But he didn't tell me, of course not, because he was working for Jack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Very hard to say, I did a few occasions, I did some racing DT3 and uhm, and I found myself


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In danger because the moment i'm sitting in the car.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The moment I start the engine, I'm back in this situation where I'm 100% focused and I shut up everything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, what's around me and it's only me, the car and the racetrack. And that was for me a perfect situation for disconnect. And now you know where I find this since a year I'm doing motorbiking and generally you have to have a lot of respect for motorbiking. But when I go on a motorbike and cruise around,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have the same sense, yeaah, to be shutting up or let's say a disconnect from the world for all the things you are carrying on, all the baggage you have behind you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A disconnect, and that is a similar feeling I had in racing, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, no, I'm not doing racing. No, I'm just doing cruising around, cruises, and that, uh, that helps me to, uh, to relax, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thanks Tom for giving me a chance to talk about the past. I hope I'm doing it for a lot of people who followed racing and wanted to know stories behind it since I'm back thinking about motorsport because I'm completely disconnected now for several years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know how it is like if you are a motorsport fan, so I hope I can give people some information they wanted to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This then was how they'll line up. Sebastian Vettel, pole for Red Bull. And in the pit lane...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Karen Chandock finishes his first Grand Prix, he's only managed nine laps in one...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Stint. Down here, he's managed to get round 53, finished five laps down on the winner Jenson Button.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that's a real shot in the arm for Hispania Racing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your whole life, your whole career, you're working towards that one goal of, of getting to Formula One and then suddenly


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you're in Formula 1, and it's not going the way that you've kind of imagined it going. That's quite tough to take.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would say the mood is good. Obviously last season in 2023 was a pretty good year for the team. Huge progress made and achieving quite a lot of podiums during that year, which was maybe a little bit unexpected. Fernando joining the team as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, uh, it was obviously, yeah, kind of the start of, uh, of a, of a, of a new project, let's say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Up on that foundation and uhm, and yeaah, hopefully.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, fight for more podiums and try and get a, get a first win. Although, you know, this year we've seen in the first couple of races that the grid is very compact and one or two tens can just make a, make a huge difference.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, the sim is obviously a very important part of development these days because testing is just becoming so, so limited and yeah, it doesn't really give the teams a lot of track time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but the car does feel, it obviously feels better than, uhm, than last year. Everything about it, there's more downforce, it's better on the brakes, better in the corners, but so is everyone else. Everyone else is improving as well and it's, it's kind of this continuous development that you need to keep, uh, keep a track of. And I feel the car that we have this year, what is a little bit different compared to last season is the platform or the base car.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, or we brought a couple of updates and, and they didn't really work. So hopefully this year that's gonna, gonna be kind of the game changer, let's say, where we bring updates to the car and we can clearly see, uh, see a step in, in performance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so yeaah, obviously back at base, a lot of things have changed with the new campus buildings going up. Uhm, it's, you know, really something that the team needed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, because the team has just grown so much over the last couple of years. Uhm, I think, you know, we started with about 300 people, we're now more than 700 people, so we've outgrown the building a little bit, but with the new campus,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, it really puts everyone under the same roof. Um, everyone is much closer together with, uh, within their own departments. It enables everyone to have kind of a normal discussion, to talk to each other, to be closer to each other. And, and, and I think in the long term, it will be a huge benefit for the team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it's, it's, it's very important. I mean, obviously a lot of things in Formula One, they get decided through data and through computers and stuff like that. But there is, with all these regulations in Formula One, I think there is still this kind of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that's how IDs get thrown up and, and come up, let's say. And, and I think that's very important in, um, in any business, uh, it's the coffee machine. It's the coffee machine effect, you know, where people just, um, I think that, you know, when that happened, you feel in a much more relaxed environment. Um, you bring things up and then suddenly you have.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Something clicking in your head that, you know, might be beneficial for the car as well. So I think those moments are very important for the team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For myself, very important, uhm, but equally for the team, because I do spend a lot of time in the simulator, and uhm, you know, I had the test in August, and of course I was a little bit unlucky with the weather to drive the car in the wet, but all those first races of the year that I was attending,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm listening to Lance and Fernando's comments, but I have nothing to really


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, compare that to because I haven't driven the car myself. So to get those laps in, in spa was just very valuable to then go back to the simulator and kind of correlate the real car with, uh, with the virtual world. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, testing is so limited these days, which is unfortunate for, you know, test and reserve drivers because we don't have a lot of opportunities to drive the car, but every little


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, lap or mileage that you get in those cars, they're, you know, they're very valuable to us, but also for the team because it enables us to, yeah, to correlate things much better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it, it had been a few years, but, um, I've still been active next to, um, to my formal one test and reserve driver also still racing informally racing in endurance racing. And I think that helps me a lot to, to stay sharp and to still drive racing cars to kind of have that feeling for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but a Formula One car is different. It's, it's, you know, the most powerful cars. It's the cars that have the most downforce, the most grip.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so it takes a little bit of time in the beginning to get used to that, but...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's still a racing car. It's got a steering wheel. It's got four tires on it. And ultimately that feeling came back pretty, you know, pretty quickly. Um, although it was wet and you know, you need to take a little bit of margin in the beginning. Um, I felt, um, yeah, I felt at home pretty, uh, pretty quickly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, what changed with the car since 2018 is the weight of the cars, so you can feel in, in like lower speed corners, they're a little bit heavy, uhm, they're, you know, less...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is a little bit more lazy in those low-speed corners, uhm, because that's where you feel the weight the most. Uhm, I would say in high-speed corners, they're pretty similar. Uhm, they're, you know, there's tons of downforce on these cars. They go super fast in the high-speed corners and that's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Probably still the most impressive thing about, uh, about this generation of cars is how fast they can go through, uh, through high speed corners. But low speed is, yeah, it's kind of where the weight has a, has a big impact.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, on intermediate tires, at some point, yes. Yeaah. I mean, the track conditions were varying so much through the day, so at some points you could and some points you couldn't, but, uh, yeaah, I was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 17, 18 were very fast cars also, and there were


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In terms of actual feeling, they were not too dissimilar. Uhm, I think the overall, like the lap times that we're doing a lap is actually pretty close. If anything, maybe this generation of cars is maybe even a touch slower than what the cars were back then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One thing I noticed was the, the purposing a little bit more. And, and, you know, we've heard a lot of drivers complaining about that, obviously over, over the last, you know, two years with, with the ground effect cars. And that's something, yeah, you could feel a little bit more, you're being shaken a little bit more in the car than, than we may be used to in 2017 or 18.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not necessarily, and I think it's probably quite track specific as well. Um, Spas is one of those old school tracks where...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you're, you can't really abuse the track limits too much anyway. You know, it's one of those old school ones. If you, if you go off, you're, you're off. So you kind of had to stay within, within the limits.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It, yeaah, looking back at it, it, you know, obviously it was the two most difficult years in the history of, uhm, of McLaren.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of, you know, technical failures, uhm, a car that wasn't very competitive at all, uhm, and, and a lot of change within the team as well, uhm, on, on the management side, let's say. So there was a lot of, you know, kind of turnover, uhm, and, and just, yeah, very.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tricky conditions, let's say, to be able to perform at the highest level.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when you get an opportunity to race for a Formula 1 team, you can't...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ask yourself, is it the right time? Is it the right moment to join that team? And at the time...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I felt like it was the perfect timing because, you know, McLaren and Honda had been working together for a couple of years. Yes, they struggled for the first couple of years, but you could


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe feel well, we're on the right track. We're getting there. I might be actually joining at the time where the team is, is, uh, is performing well. Um, and unfortunately it didn't turn out to be that way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alone, it's maybe not the right word, uhm, I think...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What I was struggling a little bit with in, in the beginning was I had been through the junior.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, when you're fighting for a victory or for a championship, then to go to a race weekend knowing that 12th or 13th is, is maybe the maximum you can do. So I think in the beginning I was trying to figure that out, how to motivate myself in the right way to, to still deliver a hundred percent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think I couldn't, for some reason I didn't enjoy it the way that I would enjoy it now. And I would definitely enjoy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would be, I would be a more complete driver as well because I've, you know, I've got a little bit more experience since, since then as well. I've raced now in Formula E, I've raced in endurance racing and I think I'm


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Much more decisive in terms of what I want and what I don't want. Like I, I just know much better to make my mind up than I did back, uh, back then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just accept it more. I think at the, at the time I was trying to find solutions to something that couldn't be solved. And I think right now would, I would probably accept that more and just, uh, yeah, just deal with certain things a little bit better than, uh, than I dealt with back in the day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, my, my strengths I would say is that whatever car I kind of jump into, I, I usually don't need a lot of time to, uhm, to, to get used to them and to be, to be competitive. Then, okay, there's a whole, uhm, thing about being at 100% with them, but I think I can get to 99% very quickly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and then, you know, that last little percentage to get is always a little bit more complicated like it is with anything, but uhm, I do believe if the car back then would have been a bit more competitive and you suddenly start fighting for, you know, top fives and maybe a podium every now and then, then


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, well, I was actually, so it was 2016 and I was doing kind of a year in Japan racing in super formula. So at that time, when I got the call, I was testing in Okayama. So somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Japan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uhm, I remember very well, it was Eric Boullier who was uhm, who was calling me. Uhm, I think it was on the Thursday.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it was on a Thursday because that's when Fernando had his medical checkups with the doctors in Bahrain and they didn't clear him. So Eric called me and said, look, we've booked you a plane to Bahrain. You're having to drive this weekend. Fernando didn't get cleared.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I didn't really have much time to process it. I left the test in super formula. I remember my dad was there as well because he came to visit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I left him behind, jumped on a plane to Bahrain with a lot of emails, a lot of technical emails, you know, with the steering wheel, the dash and stuff that I had to try and get up to speed with before, before getting there. So it was an overnight flight landed on Friday morning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, and, and I think practice one was like around one or two PM or something. So landed, took a shower, went to the track and, and yeah, a couple of hours later I was, um, I was in the car. Had you tested that car? I didn't, no. So your first


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, the first left were FP1 in Bahrain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I had literally just driven a super formula car before. I had to calm myself down because the cars in 2016 were, they weren't actually that fast. They, they,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were quite slow. They were, I mean, they were fast on the straights, but the cornering speeds were, they were slower than the super formula car that then I was driving. So in the beginning, I just remember I was locking up. I was running wide in a few corners for the first couple of laps because.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just had less potential than I had with the super former car. So actually those first couple of laps were more about myself calming down and, you know, kind of, um, drive it back to, uh, to its own limits. And how much F1 experience had you had at that point?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, F1 experience, I maybe had one or two test days prior to that with uh, with McLaren.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, it wasn't too complicated because I was, I was used to drive the simulator and stuff. So I kind of had done my, you know, my, my preparation and my homework. Um, so it kind of felt pretty natural from the moment I jumped in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had no expectation. I knew after the practice sessions that I was kind of close and that I needed to put everything together to be able to do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, when Q1 started, it was a lot of pressure. Uhm, you know, you have all the people watching you, you have one lap on the tires.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, so, so there was a lot of pressure involved in that, but, um, I managed to, yeah, to put in a good lap and to do, to do slightly better than, than Jensen. So, um, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's probably what kind of gave me the opportunity or gave me my contract, let's say, for, uh, for the next season to do that well in qualifying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That lap. Uhm, maybe not qualifying, but also what happened on the Sunday in the race.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it was, uhm, it was a very good race. I think we started 12th or something, uhm, and, you know, McLaren hadn't scored any points up until then, during the season.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember Fernando was there, obviously. So he was helping me before the race to, uh, to give his, his, his feedback on strategy, what we should do and when to put, um, you know, the new tires, how many pit stops we should do. Um, and you know, to be honest, I was so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I knew that I kind of, I listened a little bit to what the team had to say to what Fernando had to say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was just nice to kind of go into the race with, okay, this is the plan we're doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's stay in the race because it's going to come towards me at the end. And that's kind of what happened. Um, we, I think we did one more pit stop than a lot of the other people, but it meant I had fresh tires in the end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I could, yeah, I could attack and drive back through the field. And I think we, yeah, we just managed to score one point in the end, which for the team was, yeah, it was, was very valuable at the time. And, and for myself as well in the first round.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone was obviously very happy, uhm, you know, for the first race to come in like that and uhm, it felt like I wasn't, I wasn't like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, lost, let's say, so I felt like I could race with everyone without a, without a problem. I had some, some good overtaking moves. So it, I think that was kind of comforting for myself as well to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yeaah, I think that probably the only person that wasn't too happy about it was Jensen actually, uhm, which he, he unfortunately retired that race, but uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think he was probably the only one that wasn't too happy about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's always difficult to say in hindsight. I think probably some things would have been.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, Eric was there, then Zach came in. Uhm, I think actually Jost Capito was there for like the shortest amount of time. Uhm, so there was, yeaah, there was a lot of...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of things actually happening in the background, uhm, with, you know, on the top management level, uhm, also on the shareholders level. So yeaah, it wasn't the most stable conditions, I'd say, and a lot of change.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Felt like needed to happen for the team to actually get back on track.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I remember very well, I signed, uhm, in Monza that year. Was it quite late? Yeah, so that was September. It was around September, I think, Monza.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had obviously between the Bahrain race and the moment I signed, I had my regular discussions with Ron and seemed like things were going in the right direction. But.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it wasn't signed yet, so there's still a little bit of doubt, like is it gonna happen? Is it not gonna happen? And then suddenly, I think it was the Thursday in Monza, Ron called me and he said, look, it's gotta happen. It's gotta happen now. And I was like, okay, well, I'm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm in Monza, I'm here. Well, it's like, get your lorries on the phone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll handle it now within the next two hours. Like, okay, call my lawyer. I was sat in the back of a, of a truck with, um, you know, where the mechanics usually.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, but I, that was Ron's way of dealing with things sometimes, like, uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I didn't ask myself too many questions like, why does it need to happen so quickly? And like, I'm not prepared for this. I was like, okay, well, this is, um, this is my opportunity. Let's just, you know, deal with it and, and we'll make it happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it's more the expectations that were on McLaren as well, because McLaren is one of those teams that you expect McLaren to win, you expect McLaren to be in the front, and I think


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, with Fernando being there as well, obviously I had a, you know, one of the most difficult benchmarks probably as a, as a, as a teammate. And I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I wasn't actually that far if you look at the statistics and, and you know, what the gap was between myself and Fernando. It's just that sometimes we were just, you know, 14, 15, 16th and, and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think people were maybe expecting us to be, you know, first and second or second and third or fourth and fifth, let's say a little bit higher up the grid, but that's unfortunately only what the car was capable of back in the day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, definitely I didn't feel as well prepared as a, as a, as I wanted it to be. Uhm, but yeah, same for Fernando as well. Of course he had a lot of seasons of experience in Formula One, but uhm, yeah, I just remember being in Barcelona and, and,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not doing a lot of laps. There was always, you know, you go out, um, the car was having, having an issue. We spent a lot of time in the garage and, um, yeah, we didn't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not sure exactly, uhm, what, uh, you know, what changed there, but uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember there was, there was kind of this, this turning point a little bit, which was probably around, around Monaco where I think things just clicked a little bit more. I think there was maybe a small upgrade on the car that, you know, helped to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To, to get a bit more confidence with, uhm, with the car, with the way I wanted to, to behave. And, and then we had a very, actually quite a strong second, uhm, second half of the season. Uhm, especially the Asian races, we, we performed quite well. Uhm, and yeaah, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What people forget, I was still a rookie at that time as well, you know, so the first couple of races are always you're learning, you're learning the ropes of Formula One, you're learning to deal with the team, to deal with the media, to deal with your car setup.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And all these things, so I was, you know, still figuring that out a little bit in the first couple of races and then got much more comfortable towards the end of that year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whether it was the right thing to do, uhm, uhm, you know, looking back at it, I don't think it was probably the right thing to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, probably a lot of people would say it wasn't the right thing to do. Uhm, because then also once we got the Renault engine, it actually


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It didn't have more power. It was just a little bit more reliable than, than the Honda back then, but, um, it didn't really give us much more performance. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, it also meant that changing from Honda to Renault during that winter, the team couldn't focus on, on, on really improving the chassis side of things because just changing the power unit took so much.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, resource is a way to just fit in, uhm, the Renault engine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That uhm, you know, on the car itself, we didn't really make any step forward.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, you're never fully satisfied. Like there's always things you, you want to do better. Is that the nature of being a racing driver? I think that's the nature of anyone. Like there's always, um, you know, we see Max on the radio, you know, he loves, he loves complaining when things don't go right, even though he's winning by 20 seconds. So I think that's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just the nature of an athlete. I would say in general that you always look to, uh, to improve, but, um, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think, you know, having had a good second half of the season, then I felt more...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Comfortable, let's say going into a new season where, you know, you've had time to look back at the previous year. You've had a bit of time together with the, with your engineers to switch off, to not think about racing, to then come back in, um, yeah, in, in, uh, in a much, uh, much better position.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It, it, it was not easy, yeaah, uhm, because you could feel, you could feel the tension in the team, uhm, on, on every level. Like, okay, yes, the management was changing, uh, a lot and there was, you know, there was things going on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You could definitely feel that tensions within the team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Obviously as a lot of Formula 1 teams are, you're quite ambitious going into or out of the winter, into winter testing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We, we actually knew that the first couple of races were going to be a bit difficult because like I just said, the change from Honda to Renault took a lot of resources away from the chassis side. So we kind of started with the car more or less as it was in 2017.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, but then we had this big upgrade planned for Barcelona, which was gonna, you know, give us a lot of lab time and that's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The upgrade that was going to push us to be competing at the front.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the first couple of races we were, I think we scored a couple of points, we were around 10th, 9th, 11th.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and we thought, okay, well now this big upgrade is coming. We're going to be, you know, we're going to be in a mix. And the upgrade came in Barcelona.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Basically gave us zero lap time, so that was, that was a difficult moment for the team, uhm, to, yeaah, to kind of realize that we didn't take the jump that we needed to take, uhm, to, to really be fighting at the front, so,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That car that season was a little bit numb. Everything we brought, it didn't really bring performance and we just kept kind of slipping back the order whilst the others, you know, managed to, to improve through the year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It, it, it was, uhm, it was kind of like the, the bad sister of the, you know, the previous year's car where it was kind of behaving in a, in a nicer way in 2017.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do much more with it, what I, what I wanted it to do. Uh, the 2018 cars just, you know, we kept throwing updates at it and, and it never really had, had a big impact. So, um, yeah, it was just much more complicated to make it work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wouldn't say so, it was more the external factors with the management. Suddenly I could feel that they were losing a bit of trust, they were looking at changing things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or I could certainly feel that they wanted to change things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was very supportive through the first, you know, couple of races. Um, but then I could feel that that suddenly changed a little bit and he was, um, you know, not giving that same belief, that same confidence. Um, and that's kind of where, you know, things started to go, uh, to go wrong a little bit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Already before that, to be honest, uhm, I think Silverstone was probably one of the, you know, one of the, the races where things suddenly changed and, uhm, it kind of,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wouldn't say it came out of nowhere, but like it, it was like a very sudden change in approach, let's say. Um, and, and I just remember from, from then on the second part of, uh, of, of that year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wasn't myself. I wasn't feeling loved within the team. Uhm, I struggled to, you know, to motivate myself to even, to even go to the race, let's say. Uhm, so that, yeah, that was just


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It took me a little while to kind of get my confidence back to get my mojo back to, to love the sport again. Um, so yeah, that was just a very dark space to be honest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, it's, it's challenging, because it's, uhm, you know, your whole life, your whole career, you're working towards that one goal of, of getting to Formula One, and then...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Suddenly, you know, you're, you're in Formula One and it's not going the way that you've kind of imagined it going. That's, that's quite tough to, to, to take.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's also why I said, like, I wish I enjoyed my time a little bit more is because, you know, you get there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your brain is, is so taken over by the whole Formula One world, by the engineering side of things, the media, everything that comes, that comes with it that you actually can't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I actually wanted to go away from it a little bit, uhm, and that's where...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, I was quite close with Toto, Wolf, uhm, back then and he gave me an opportunity to, to join Mercedes in, in Formula E, uhm, which, uhm, which is ultimately the route that I, that I pursued. Uhm, and I felt like I needed a bit of change back then as well. I needed to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kind of get away from it a little bit. Um, rebuild myself. I needed to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To have results again to, you know, to feel that, uh, to feel myself that I was still capable of, of, of doing it, let's say after, after two tough years with, um, with McLaren.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so that's why I decided to go the Formula E route with Mercedes. I was very confident that they were, you know, gonna be a good team there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and yeaah, I just needed a little bit of a change in my career path.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was, there was a little bit. We started quite slowly. I was just doing a little bit of simulator for them. Uhm, you know, not too, too involved in the team, but I was, yeaah, I was still.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Doing kind of the usual simulator days with them, helping with some race support stuff. But I wasn't travelling too much to any races back then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, it, it, it was a little bit of a conversation. Uhm, I, I mean, I was dealing with James Fowles back, uh, back then. Uhm, and he called me before and he said, look, well, because they knew that Lewis was out so long in advance, like, look, we've got,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A driver problem for the future as well. And this might be our only opportunity. We get to test George, um, next to next to Valtteri. Um, this is the way we want to, we want to go the route we want to take. And, and, um, you know, I'm also old enough to understand their, um, you know, their future plans.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Obviously, you know, you wanna, you always wanna see what's going on in the Formula One world, and there were maybe a couple of discussions, but at the same time, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, people, people move on very quickly and there's always the next guy in line that is, that is waiting as well. So, um, I would say there was never really.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Any, any proper or serious discussion where there would have been another opportunity to, to kind of come back, even though I feel like I would probably be a better version of myself right now if I, if I would have a chance to come back. Um, that opportunity was never really, never really there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I could, yes, uhm, 100% and, and, I mean, that's also why I'm, I'm, I'm here with the team is to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To be ready in case something, uhm, something like that happens. And I think, uhm, you know, I'm still racing other championships. I'm driving competitive cars, uhm, doing a lot of sim work with, uhm, with Aston Martin as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's uhm, you know, if anything, I'm much better prepared than I used to be back in 2016 when I first jumped in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's probably the hardest part, uhm, because there's only so much you can do. Uhm, you know, I think racing is still the best thing to, to stay fit. Uhm, because there's nothing else that can give you the same g-forces, especially on their neck. That's the, you know, the hardest part. I think we've seen


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of new people jumping in and, and I think that's probably the thing they struggle with the most. Like the good thing is I've experienced that in the past. So I know what it is to be, to be in pain, but when you haven't done it for so long, you know, you just have to survive, but you know, I'm, I'm a tough warrior, so I'll survive.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I'll, you know, I'm fair play that way, so no games have been played.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, it's a, it's a different world. It's a different, well, first of all, different cars, but also a complete different mentality of, of going racing because you're sharing, sharing a car with two other drivers. So it's less, um.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The one race that uhm, everyone in endurance racing wants to, wants to do well at and, and wants to win. Uhm, you know, Fernando's won it. He had a year off and, and did it with Toyota.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that's, that's, I would say for now, you know, whilst I don't have an opportunity in Formula One, that's, that's kind of where my target lies. It's to be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Able to fight for a victory in Le Mans because I think outside of Formula One, it is the biggest race in motorsport.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do like it. Uhm, it's a very different feeling, especially after a long distance race and especially one that's gone well, like where you've had a good result.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone is, is so drained, so mentally exhausted, physically exhausted from those 24 hour races that the emotions are just running very high. And, and it's, um, yeah, it feels like one of the biggest accomplishments when you, um, when you manage to finish on high.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not too concerned, no. And you can't be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, like you have to give the confidence to them as well, uhm, because that's what a team works about, is to make your teammates feel comfortable, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But then there's still this little bit where you're always thinking, well, if I'm in the car, maybe I can do better, you know? So there's still a little bit of competition going on, but I think that's a healthy competition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I hope Spa. I mean, you know, for some reason, if, if it's Spa, that's, that's great. I'm from there. Obviously it's my home track and it's my favorite track as well. So, um, yeah, if I have the opportunity there, that would be, that would be fantastic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I need to know your 10k time. My 10k time is 39 minutes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was a hero for, for many of us. So it would have been, it would have been cool to share lift ride with him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll get back to you at a-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it would be cool to kind of have like a conversation with him or like a proper conversation with him and kind of run back through all the memories we've, uh, we've had together since, uh, yeah, since the very beginning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, we went, we went karting together. Um, obviously I, you know, he was always with me, driving me everywhere when I was, um, you know, when I was younger, um, it was him and my uncle that were kind of the mechanics as well for my little go kart. So yeah, we had a lot of fun memories to, uh, to start with.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There is no doubt that for people I know or people I meet, that the Netflix program has done maybe more than anything to improve the fortunes of Formula One in the United States.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And of course he came to Indianapolis and won. And I always took pride in that because, um, you know, that was a road racer showing of oval track guys, what it's all about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Collect items that were never his or what have you just cause he just meant that much to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Until later on when there started being more and more road courses on the schedule, at which point that's when I headed in that direction, and that was not until 1982. So, Europe was where I wanted to be, and there's no doubt in my mind that that also had something to do with my taking on the Jaguar program for Ford.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think that's important for sure because, I don't know, it reaffirms or confirms


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And said, uhm, you know, Walter wants to run a Formula 3 team with Mr. DeLauro and we're going to basically have a test. So we'd like you to come to the circuit in Verado, which is this little


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One mile long road course there. And you know, basically it was going to be a runoff. You know, whoever was going to be quickest was going to get the, get the nod.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, by a Swedish driver, I flattened my tires, so I had to come in, get the chains, so by the time we got it all done, I was half a lap down, uh, they'd already started the race.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By halfway through the race, I was second and catching the leader. I was right on the leader's tail and a drive shaft broke. So I didn't finish the race, but after the race, of course, I'm disappointed naturally.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I was hoping that our Long Beach would be like Monaco is to Formula 3. At that time, anybody who won the Monaco Formula 3 race was going to end up with a Formula 1 contract. So I was hoping Long Beach would do the same.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, he had watched the race with Jackie Stewart and I guess Jackie had made some nice comments and, and Walter was impressed enough, said no. So next thing you know, I'm on my way to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I think I finished, I was running about fourth or fifth when I got.


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[Assistant] I banged wheels with another fellow and my car broke, so it was out of the race, but then finished third at the Nurburgring. That was the first time I'd ever been to the Nurburgring.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it was a great experience. Built a lot of friendships. They remain even today, some 40 some years later. So, uh, uh, yeah, it was a great experience.


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[Assistant] You know, here I am, I'm driving this, this Wolf Formula 3 car.


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[Assistant] And again, the whole idea had been by doing these races, they would prepare me for maybe the following year in Formula One, I'd have knowledge of the circuits.


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[Assistant] And the following Bob Sparshot, BS Fabrications, was running a McLaren M26 for, uhm, Brett Langer, who was an American driver.


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[Assistant] So I sat in it and yeah, you know, it fit and right fit it.


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[Assistant] I would have thought by September 1, maybe a month or so prior to that official word was given. And I did a test at, uh,


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[Assistant] And uhm, I wanted to finish. And we did, we finished 12.


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[Assistant] But it was kind of a, you know, it was a very careful race. Like I said, I just didn't want to make any mistakes. And again, the idea was that,


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[Assistant] We'd do those two races and then, uh, do Formula One full-time in 1979. Of course that didn't happen. But, uh, anyway, finished okay at Watkinsland. Actually had a much better weekend in Montreal in terms of competitiveness. Unfortunately didn't finish that race, but.


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[Assistant] I think showed the pace that we could generate. And of course now it's, you know, you got one race under your belt. You knew what to expect, I suppose.


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[Assistant] The best thing about Montreal was that, uh, my friend Gilles Villeneuve won his first Formula One race in front of his home, uh, his home country, which was tremendous.


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[Assistant] FIA rated race before you could have a Grand Prix.


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[Assistant] So, you know, a big crowd, a hometown crowd, as they say, and he, he certainly responded.


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[Assistant] He'd been in Atlantic the year previous, uhm, had an accident, broke his leg.


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[Assistant] And uhm, you know, Jill's wife was American, Joanne. So there was a little bit of a connection there for us.


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[Assistant] Atlantic was like Formula 3 in those days. Very, very competitive and everybody traveled together. It was like a big circus. So Jill and I, and you know, we developed a nice relationship. You know, Jill was


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[Assistant] And I forget one race we were running one, two in heavy, heavy rain and I was right behind him and, and this was up in, uh, in Manitoba.


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[Assistant] And I thought, oh great, he's going to be out of the race now. So I'll have it as I have it for my own and.


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[Assistant] I don't think anybody could doubt Jill's bravery. And he had tremendous car control, uh, which I think most people would attribute to a snowmobiling.


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[Assistant] In 76, which is the year that really put him, sent him on his way. His, his manager, the guy ran the team for him was a guy named Ray Wardell and Ray had been


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[Assistant] A March Formula 2 team manager, he'd been in Formula 1 with March.


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[Assistant] I really give Ray a lot of credit for kind of taking this rough diamond and polishing it and getting it to where it was. And together, Jill and Ray were a very formidable combination. And I think if Jill


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[Assistant] In 76, the Poirot-Bierre, which was a race we all looked forward to over here because.


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[Assistant] It was our chance to race against Formula One drivers, Formula Two drivers, what have you from Europe and our chance to show the world that we were just as good as they were. I mean, Jill dominated the race and that's when James Hunt was there, went back to McLaren and said, you got to look at this guy. He's something special and which they later did.


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[Assistant] We're just as quick, but you know, Jill, he found himself in 1976 and he stopped crashing.


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[Assistant] That's where you found out that those guys are really human after all, because you can compete with them, but it was still a thrill to say you race against those guys and, and uhm, everybody over here really looks forward to that four year weekend.


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[Assistant] And uh, anyway, I went off and hit the guard rail and tore off the right front corner, which damaged the monocoque, uh, the way they fixed the suspension.


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[Assistant] I don't think anybody anticipated that they were going to, uh, get it ready for a race. And, uh, anyway, I put a motor engine in it. I qualified in and actually in the race, uh, I passed, uh,


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[Assistant] Ask some good guys and you know, we're running with some good people.


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[Assistant] I'm not sure he was a big fan anyway, to be honest. So I was kind of in limbo for about another month or so.


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[Assistant] And so yours truly was on the street as I say. So, you know, that was the end of my formula one career. I did end up going back to Europe to race in formula two, hoping that, uh, opportunity would, uh, would arise over there. Uh, it never did. And also by that midway through 1979, I was hired to replace George Palmer.