The Peter Attia Drive - Special episode with Dax Shepard： F1 and the 30th anniversary of Ayrton Senna's death

00:00:00.000 Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. This podcast,

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00:00:53.200 of the subscription. If you want to learn more about the benefits of our premium membership,

00:00:58.040 head over to peteratiyahmd.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to a bonus episode of

00:01:06.800 The Drive. I'm joined today by my friend and fellow car enthusiast, Dax Shepard. The purpose of our

00:01:14.060 podcast today is to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Ayartun Senna's death, May 1st,

00:01:22.560 1994. The idea for this podcast came up a couple of months ago when Dax and I were talking about

00:01:29.900 this upcoming anniversary, and Dax has sort of had a fascination with my obsession with Senna.

00:01:37.000 Dax was not a fan of F1 at the time of Senna's death, but has more recently in the last five or

00:01:42.520 six years become a fan of F1. And so he wanted to sit down with me and better understand why it is

00:01:48.920 that I have such a fascination with Senna's career and remain an enormous fan all these years after

00:01:56.680 his death. So in many ways, that's what this episode really is. It's sort of a discussion

00:02:00.920 between us that focuses on a lot of things that have to do with racing, F1, some of it in the

00:02:06.640 modern era, but really most of it focuses on Senna's life, his death, the circumstances of his death,

00:02:12.760 and his lasting impact and legacy on the sport. So I hope you enjoy this very special episode of The

00:02:19.260 Drive.

00:02:24.940 Oh, this is delightful.

00:02:26.700 Yeah, man.

00:02:27.360 Great to have you.

00:02:28.120 I'm in your house. Yeah.

00:02:29.700 You asked me to come do a Senna episode. I was very forthcoming and said I'm a three out of 10

00:02:35.580 on Senna, but the reason I wanted to do it is so that I could pry and figure out what's really going

00:02:42.380 on with the Senna obsession. Yes.

00:02:44.960 Yeah. And I'm curious how much you're aware of it or not.

00:02:48.180 Probably not. It's probably at this point, sort of like the David Foster Wallace fish in water thing.

00:02:53.380 Like it's the water I swim in. Yeah.

00:02:55.640 So I don't actually notice that I'm obsessed with Senna.

00:02:59.240 Do you remember what year it started?

00:03:01.920 Did it start with the doc?

00:03:02.900 No, no, no, no. I mean, I remember growing up. When you grow up in Canada,

00:03:07.540 for whatever reason, motorsport's actually pretty popular in Canada.

00:03:10.980 Yeah.

00:03:11.260 And I don't know why. It might be because of Gilles Villeneuve.

00:03:14.160 Right.

00:03:14.620 Although I don't have any real recollection of Villeneuve. So Villeneuve died in 1982.

00:03:19.820 I was nine years old. But for whatever reason, like I don't even recall his death

00:03:23.700 being on my radar. But IndyCar was incredibly popular and F1 was incredibly popular.

00:03:30.220 Because you always had the Montreal race. 0.99

00:03:32.420 You have Montreal for F1 and you always had most sport. You always had the IndyCar in Toronto race.

00:03:37.220 And because my dad was in the restaurant business, meaning he was buying beer by the truckload

00:03:42.040 and Molson was the beer in Canada.

00:03:44.840 They would give you tickets and stuff.

00:03:46.100 They would give you tickets or something like that.

00:03:47.460 And did you go to races?

00:03:48.680 Yes. The 80s, right? Which is sort of when I came of age. I also think that there was just,

00:03:53.600 I don't know. I just think there's some boys that get really into cars. Not to say that there

00:03:57.420 aren't girls that do, but I think it's a boy thing. What did you have posters of on your wall?

00:04:01.560 It was cars and boxers. Those were the two things I had posters of.

00:04:06.240 Yeah. I didn't have boxing posters, but I loved those 80s boxers. My dad was super obsessed. You

00:04:11.500 and I have even bonded over like the Tommy Hearns, the Hagler, the Sugar Ray. That whole

00:04:16.300 sweet era of boxing was huge in my house. And I loved cars from the jump. My dad was super into

00:04:23.960 cars. My mom and dad drag raced in high school. My mom had a record at the drag track for the 1.00

00:04:29.780 powder puff series and a 68 Chevelle. So they're crazy car people. My dad sold cars. My mom worked

00:04:37.340 at General Motors. My stepdad was ride and handling engineer in the Corvette group for the 84 Vette,

00:04:44.720 that series. I don't know what that would have been a C3 or C4. Yeah. Yeah. So obsessed with cars,

00:04:53.000 but never overly obsessed with racing. Would go to Belle Isle to see any car. Cause again,

00:04:59.640 cause we, my family worked in the automotive business. We too would end up with tickets

00:05:03.480 and you'd go and it was just, there's no TVs anywhere. There's no coverage. And you virtually

00:05:09.920 just watch the profile of a car for one 10th of a second. And I'm like, I don't know. I can't buy in.

00:05:15.000 Even today, I would say F1 is one of the sports that is infinitely better from a total experience

00:05:22.320 in terms of understanding what's going on on television, especially given how good TV is now.

00:05:26.580 That said, I still go to probably three races a year, sometimes four, because the sound is even

00:05:33.240 though nowhere near as good as it was in the era we're about to discuss. And once the hybrid era came

00:05:39.220 in, in 2014, it sort of, I think forever took a little bit of what purists love about the sport

00:05:47.760 away. Yeah. So I'm so late into the F1 obsession. The first racing I started actually loving was MotoGP

00:05:55.920 probably 20 years ago. So very into MotoGP would watch F1 occasionally. I'm like, this is the

00:06:03.280 stupidest sport. They don't ever pass. Nothing happens. And then I'm a drive to survive convert.

00:06:10.600 Now, have you watched the last couple seasons? Yes. I've watched everything. And do you think

00:06:13.580 it's horrible? No, I love it. Oh my God. I think it's- You hate it. I can't stand how bad it is.

00:06:18.840 Oh my Lord. What's your issue? It's boring as hell. It's like a bunch of nonsense you don't care

00:06:24.520 about. What did the first seasons have that the latter ones don't have? I mean, I think that the first

00:06:30.160 three seasons still kind of focused on the racing. And I feel like they're trying a little too hard

00:06:38.620 now to make it about the off-track drama. The reality show-ness of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think

00:06:45.700 some people, I think there are clearly some people who, like Max, I love Max's approach to it, which is,

00:06:50.840 I don't give a shit. Yeah. I'm not participating. Get out of my way. But then there's too many people who

00:06:55.080 are trying a little too hard. I won't name names, but- Sure, sure. You were just close to one of them

00:06:59.840 recently. So the first season, initially I was like, hold on a second. Mercedes budget is four

00:07:06.520 or $500 million a year. That's the first thing that really got me where I was like, this is enormous

00:07:12.400 on a scale that I didn't even know was possible relative to NASCAR, Indy, or MotoGP, anything. It's

00:07:19.080 20X the budget of any other racing. So I was like, oh, that's really fascinating. Then finding out about

00:07:24.900 the aerodynamicists and how relevant they are in it and just how high tech it is that all that

00:07:29.420 interests me. I love the technical aspect of that sport enormously. What I think this

00:07:36.260 show still does great is it really shows you the drama that's existing between 14th and

00:07:43.380 eighth place, which when I'm watching normal season, I'm largely missing that. It's like

00:07:48.800 I'm vaguely aware that Pierre and Ocon hate each other, but not in the way that like a whole

00:07:55.000 season can give me or a whole episode. And so I think the show's really good at letting

00:08:01.380 you know how much drama still happening below eighth place, how important it is that these

00:08:06.680 teams finish in the points or to get one point. So it's almost like I rewatched the season now

00:08:12.560 caring about all the folks that aren't on the podium.

00:08:16.060 Yeah. I don't know what changed for me. I feel like 2021, 2020 and 2021, where I think it's best

00:08:23.620 seasons actually with Max and Lewis, the Max Lewis season of 21 was exceptional. The perfect time for

00:08:30.000 me to join the last two episodes of that season were two of the finest the season before. I think

00:08:35.640 honestly, man on fire, which was the Grosjean episode, which I think was 2020. Yeah. I think one

00:08:40.580 of the best single episodes ever, obviously for those of us that were watching that live, it was

00:08:46.160 unbelievable. It's something we'll talk about today, which is when you're watching a sport like F1

00:08:53.460 or MotoGP or anything for that matter, like there is a real chance a person could die. And it's really

00:08:59.840 frightening when you see some of these accidents. Yeah. But for the most part, I don't know about you,

00:09:04.380 for the most part, that's not even on the table for me. And then occasionally one of these things

00:09:08.480 happen and I go, oh, that's right. They are going 205 miles an hour. It doesn't really matter how you

00:09:13.600 build this thing. There is some likelihood that something. Well, maybe that's why, because I've

00:09:19.760 been a fan for so long, I still have the visceral reaction to big shunts because there was a day when

00:09:25.740 those were almost all fatal. Yes. Yeah. I don't know what the chart is from the seventies till now,

00:09:33.840 but obviously it's just been in a nose. Yeah. So I can tell you basically in the mid 1960s until

00:09:39.740 the early 1980s. So about a 16 year period of time, F1 was a killing field. And that meant that on

00:09:48.340 average, probably two to four drivers died a year. I want you to think about that in the context of

00:09:55.100 what you watch today. You and I have been talking all week about the many things that have changed so

00:10:01.140 dramatically that it's almost impossible to reconcile that. It used to be that way. We were

00:10:06.520 both watching turning point. Yeah. A great doc you recommended and I'm watching it. And again,

00:10:11.300 I have awareness of this. I remember learning this, but to learn that in one night of bombing of Tokyo,

00:10:17.200 87,000 people died. That's more than all of Vietnam by a factor of 30,000 one night. And you're like,

00:10:24.800 oh, we don't have the appetite for any of that stuff anymore. I don't think if the sport,

00:10:30.040 two people were dying, that would be one in 12 races we would see someone die. I just don't

00:10:34.880 think it would exist now. Right. And again, I wasn't watching the sport during that period of

00:10:40.400 time, but not long after I was going back and watching video of it. Yeah. So when do you start

00:10:45.740 watching it religiously? In the eighties, like in the late eighties. You're a kid. Yeah. Anyone,

00:10:51.980 your friends watching it with you or you're all alone on this? No, not really. It's not my obsession.

00:10:56.500 My obsession is much more boxing. Did your dad watch it with you? No. And then by the way,

00:11:01.860 it was very hard to watch live because again, another thing you take for granted today,

00:11:08.360 cable. Yeah. You can watch things whenever you want. Like back then it was like always

00:11:12.000 odd, bizarre hours and stuff like that. Like you would have to wake up at 2am.

00:11:15.540 Yeah. You catch it on delay. By the way, when I got to med school and became friends with a guy

00:11:18.860 named Paul Conti, haven't you had Paul on your show? I know that name. Yeah. I feel like you might've

00:11:23.040 gotten to that point. 800 people. I'm like starting to forget some names. It's embarrassing.

00:11:28.120 Anyway, Paul, who's no stranger to this show. When we met first day of med school, immediately

00:11:32.900 connected over both our shared obsession for F1 and for Senna. That was like talking to a guy who

00:11:38.680 was going through kind of a similar experience of like, you know, watching things at odd hours and

00:11:42.100 things of that nature. But just as the eighties was kind of a golden period for boxing with the fact

00:11:47.260 that you had Hearns, Hagler, Duran, Leonard, Wilfred Benitez, like all of these guys that

00:11:54.220 each of them are hall of famers. And yet they were all fighting each other all the time

00:11:57.980 in an era where it meant something to be the middleweight champion of the world or the welterweight

00:12:02.440 champion of the world. Julio Cesar Chavez. He was a little bit lighter. Yeah. Yeah. Lightweight.

00:12:07.040 But yeah, a guy who fought 90 fights or something.

00:12:09.740 Yeah. I mean, he was undefeated into his 90th fight.

00:12:12.540 But F1 was like that as well. So when you think about the eighties, you had Nicky Lauda

00:12:17.620 at the end of his career, still winning a championship in the mid eighties. And then

00:12:22.060 the arrival of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, of course, Nelson Piquet and Senna. And so you

00:12:29.100 really have this golden era of F1, I think in the late eighties and early nineties, where

00:12:34.260 it is insane depth of talent. Also for what it's worth, I just think the cars were aesthetically

00:12:41.300 they're most beautiful during that period of time. It's not that I don't think the cars

00:12:45.020 today are masterpieces. They're so tiny. If you're me and you came

00:12:47.660 into the sport post hybrid area and now you go, like I walked through McLaren through the

00:12:53.380 boulevard and I'm like, oh, they're go-karts. They were V10 go-karts. They were just so small.

00:12:59.380 Yeah. They were 500 kilo cars back then, but still could with boost in qualifying could make

00:13:05.940 over a thousand horsepower at a thousand pounds. Yeah. Wow. Which is actually a really funny story

00:13:11.440 that kind of brings us to Senna, which is there are many things that made Senna special, but his

00:13:16.520 qualifying is the most remarkable thing. If you look at his record, so by today's standards,

00:13:24.020 Senna wasn't around very long. Most of the drivers on the F1 grid today have already had more races

00:13:28.520 than Senna did when he died. He died in his 161st race. So Max is only 26 years old. He's long past

00:13:35.200 that number of races, right? Lewis is at more than 2X that number of races. And yet Senna's

00:13:40.900 qualifying percentage, how many times was he on pole position in there? Nobody's within a country mile.

00:13:47.060 He's 65 poles. Yeah. In 161 races. That kind of framed it for me because again, 0.98

00:13:52.560 I only know that he won three titles. Technically four. I'm going to explain to you why he had one

00:13:57.280 stolen from him, but yeah, with the, um, not turning around in the turnoff area.

00:14:01.500 Yeah, sure. Four, but obviously Schumacher's record, Lewis's record, some of these records,

00:14:07.860 it begs the question, why is this the guy everyone's so obsessed with? Cause he, what,

00:14:12.620 had 10 years in? Yeah. Yeah. 10 years. But when I saw that 65 poles stat, I was like, okay, 1.00

00:14:20.140 that's very telling. That says a lot. But before you explain that to me, I want to know,

00:14:25.360 it would appear that, and this is another thing I've come to love about F1 is P1 and qualifying

00:14:31.900 to P20 is often three tenths of a second. Usually a little bit more.

00:14:39.840 Let's just say, and then within the top five, it's the first three are often in the hundreds of

00:14:46.200 seconds. And then maybe six is a 10th. Yeah. Yeah. The margin is so unfathomable. People really

00:14:53.160 just take a stopwatch. If you've ever taken a stopwatch and just try to double click it as fast

00:14:58.100 as you can. And you'll start realizing how tiny a hundredths of a second that you can't even get

00:15:02.700 a hundredths of a second. I used to play this game as a kid. It was one of my favorite games.

00:15:05.860 Me too. On the Casio watch. Absolutely.

00:15:07.440 Sit in class. What was your minimum? I think my minimum was like 11 or 14 one hundredths. I think

00:15:12.000 I could get. I can't even remember. I just remember all of us in a circle, like doing it over and over

00:15:16.760 again, something like 0.08 and us all freaking out. But the notion that you have 10 different teams

00:15:24.140 with 10 different approaches, 20 different drivers. I mean, the amount of variables on the table

00:15:30.280 are incalculable, yet you slam it all together and somehow it's all within a second or it's all

00:15:36.280 within three tenths of a second or hundreds of a second. That part is, I think, almost incomprehensible.

00:15:42.080 I think in the eighties, the Delta was much bigger. Yeah.

00:15:45.220 Not necessarily. And by the way, the Delta between teammates is the Delta that matters.

00:15:51.140 That's where you're seeing the Delta between drivers. Yes.

00:15:54.140 Because let's use my favorite example, which is arguably considered one of the most epic

00:15:58.460 legendary stories of Senna, which is qualifying for the 1988 Monaco race. So at this point,

00:16:04.380 Senna is the rookie on the team. This is in the MP44, the car that to this day is regarded as the

00:16:10.480 greatest car ever in F1. This is what you have a replica on.

00:16:13.720 This is this car here. Yes.

00:16:15.160 Yep. I'm shocked you don't have that tattoo, but we'll talk about that later.

00:16:18.860 At some point.

00:16:20.160 We should discuss that. Imagine that down my back.

00:16:22.700 Yeah. It'd be so sweet.

00:16:24.540 Your wife would be so excited.

00:16:26.000 So that car won 15 of 16 races.

00:16:29.860 Between he and Prost.

00:16:31.060 Yep. And the race that it didn't win, Senna got taken out by a back marker. So it's like they

00:16:36.720 would have won 16 of 16 races. So the closest we've seen to that is last year's Red Bull,

00:16:41.680 which won all but one race. But the reason most people would still argue that that was the

00:16:46.420 technically superior car was the race that Red Bull did not win last year, which was Singapore.

00:16:51.580 They didn't lose because of some fluke. The car legitimately couldn't perform in Singapore

00:16:57.000 because of the bumps in the road and the ride height. So Senna's the rookie on the team.

00:17:02.240 Prost is the two-time world champion, the reigning world champion.

00:17:05.180 They're at Monaco, which is generally regarded as the most difficult circuit. The margin for

00:17:11.300 error is non-existent.

00:17:13.160 Another feather in his cap, right? He's got the most wins at Monaco.

00:17:16.000 He has won Monaco six times, officially seven times, if you include what happened in 1984,

00:17:21.300 which we can talk about.

00:17:22.340 Yeah. This is where he puts it into the wall of the 56.

00:17:24.480 No, that's in 88. In 1984, what happened was he started at the back of the field. He was in a

00:17:29.420 piece of garbage car.

00:17:31.780 In rain.

00:17:32.220 But it was raining like cats and dogs. And of course, the other thing that makes Senna very

00:17:36.340 special, we keep adding to why is he special? No one could ever drive like he could in the rain.

00:17:41.400 That's the real marker.

00:17:42.820 Like a three standard deviation.

00:17:44.040 Yeah. So you've got a field of world champions in superior cars in front of him as a rookie,

00:17:50.800 not just a team rookie, his F1 rookie year, 1984. He's in the Tolman. He's driving a garbage

00:17:56.220 truck back there. But it starts raining cats and dogs. And he is, by two thirds of the way through

00:18:02.520 the race, he is closing in on Alain Prost. And in the final lap of what would become the final lap,

00:18:09.940 he passes him. But raid stewards decide to halt the race at the preceding lap. And he is still

00:18:16.540 awarded second place, which is unfathomable as his first podium.

00:18:20.420 The first major fucking he receives from the FIA, right?

00:18:23.440 Exactly.

00:18:23.880 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:18:24.300 Exactly. This would become a pattern.

00:18:25.880 Well, then we should add to Monaco is the hardest track to pass on in the whole calendar.

00:18:32.820 Today, it's impossible to pass on. Back in the day, you could pass because the cars were smaller.

00:18:37.980 I would not advocate for getting rid of Monaco, but one could make a case that the cars have

00:18:42.860 outgrown the circuit.

00:18:44.140 Right.

00:18:44.820 But Monaco to this day is still one of the most exciting qualifying.

00:18:48.300 Oh, by far.

00:18:49.360 Yeah, because the stakes are so high. So in 1988, Senna not only qualifies on pole,

00:18:56.760 something he would do repeatedly, he does so by a margin that is deemed impossible to comprehend.

00:19:05.240 Now, you have to remember who his teammate is. His teammate is arguably one of the greatest

00:19:09.700 drivers of all time, Alain Prost, driving the same car. And he out qualifies him. Do you know

00:19:15.140 how much?

00:19:15.640 No.

00:19:15.840 1.47 seconds.

00:19:18.360 Wow.

00:19:19.360 1.47 seconds is a day and a half.

00:19:21.820 And consistently through the three qualies?

00:19:23.720 Back then, it quali ran a little bit differently.

00:19:25.840 Okay. 1.4.

00:19:27.680 And so Senna was already on pole when he decided he wanted to go out and do one more lap.

00:19:32.080 It's the stuff of F1 lore because the lap was not captured on camera. So this was back when cameras

00:19:38.120 were on cars, kind of in its infancy. But because, you know, back then you didn't have endless

00:19:44.080 amounts of streaming video. Like the TV station had to decide who were we going to focus on this lap.

00:19:48.780 Yeah. And because Senna was already on pole, they didn't record the lap.

00:19:52.020 Sure. Sure.

00:19:52.560 So all you have is the time sheet. He went this fast and he was out of this world. So then the

00:19:57.440 next day in the race, he is leading by so much that the team is telling him to slow down.

00:20:04.840 Yeah. They're begging him.

00:20:05.640 They're begging him to slow down. They're like, there might've been eight laps to go and he's

00:20:09.360 ahead by 30 seconds.

00:20:11.140 Yeah. I just recently rewatched the thing and at the point he crashed, he was 56 seconds ahead of

00:20:16.940 Prost.

00:20:17.400 Yeah.

00:20:17.760 Yeah.

00:20:18.200 Yeah. He could have pushed the car to the finish line and still won.

00:20:21.300 Yeah.

00:20:21.520 And he lost concentration for a nanosecond, a very rare event in his life and crashed.

00:20:27.780 And then devastated.

00:20:29.100 So angry.

00:20:29.800 She mentioned the self-loathing.

00:20:31.180 He's so angry that he literally got out of the car, threw his stuff and went to his apartment.

00:20:38.100 His apartment.

00:20:38.820 Yeah.

00:20:38.980 For three hours.

00:20:40.340 Yeah. And nobody could find him.

00:20:42.860 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Joe Ramirez, I think eventually went and found him and his housekeeper

00:20:48.020 had to let him in because she was instructed to tell everyone that he was not around.

00:20:53.320 Yeah. That's just an insane example. And the other thing about Senna during qualifying is the

00:20:57.280 reason he was so good at qualifying, especially in that era is the cars in that era ran a much

00:21:03.260 higher horsepower during qualifying.

00:21:05.480 Okay. Right. They dialed them way up.

00:21:07.040 They dialed them way up in a way that they don't do it today. Today, you're not playing

00:21:10.340 with that. Today, you're playing with tires, fuel load, and battery pack. So basically

00:21:15.300 today on a quality setup, you can discharge battery much more and you basically aim to

00:21:20.620 finish on fumes and no battery life. But back then it was a totally different horsepower

00:21:25.740 and you couldn't race at that horsepower because you didn't have the reliability. And truthfully,

00:21:30.420 a lot of drivers, including Prost, including Lauda, were like, it's too freaking dangerous,

00:21:35.120 man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's way too much.

00:21:37.380 Yeah. At some point, right? They're in the 12 and 1400 horsepower.

00:21:41.300 Certainly 1200. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:21:43.460 These are naturally aspirated V10s, V12s.

00:21:46.500 Yeah. The compression must have been ear splitting.

00:21:49.100 I think at some point, these things were redlining up to 18,000 RPM, if you can believe that.

00:21:54.540 No, I can't.

00:21:55.060 Even the physics of that is possible in a car.

00:21:57.400 Out of a V8 or a V10?

00:21:59.020 Probably the V10s were probably the most screaming.

00:22:01.100 I mean, that's more than a motorcycle motor revs too.

00:22:04.320 I don't know. The MotoGP guys told us they were up to 18,000, didn't they?

00:22:08.020 Well, if you recall, there wasn't really consensus when the person said that.

00:22:11.960 Yeah. One guy said 18, another guy said 16.

00:22:15.100 Aye, but I don't know. I don't know. I think it's more around 15, but whatever.

00:22:20.620 Either way, it's just incredible. It's terrifying.

00:22:23.660 Senna has, so there's the record, there's the dying early, that's very James Dean.

00:22:28.960 There's a lot of elements that bolster people's fascination with him.

00:22:33.240 For me, I like him because he seemed like an outsider. The Brazilian-ness of it all makes me like him more. 1.00

00:22:42.100 But also, and I don't know how comfortable you're going to be with this word, he's very sexy.

00:22:47.040 He's a very Mick Jagger kind of rock star, sexy, aloof, always focused and not really a people pleaser.

00:22:54.800 I think there's an added element why we love Senna, these intangibles that aren't about the record.

00:23:02.100 And I wonder what personality-wise you think of him.

00:23:05.740 Well, it's really funny because I would bet that you have examples where you will relate to what I'm about to say,

00:23:12.300 which is I think growing up and through his life and death, it was mostly about Senna the Racer.

00:23:19.740 It's after his death I've learned much more about him.

00:23:22.420 Because remember, he died in 1994. I was in college when he died.

00:23:26.900 When he died, I didn't have an internet to read more about.

00:23:30.680 But so much of what I know about him today is based on things I can read that I couldn't read then.

00:23:37.520 Also, I've become close to people who knew him well.

00:23:41.360 And so I can now learn about him as a person.

00:23:45.020 I know things about him that aren't publicly known.

00:23:47.320 I've met his family.

00:23:48.880 I know his niece quite well.

00:23:50.440 I've met his brother, who is obviously one of the few people that was there when he died in Italy that day.

00:23:56.420 Joseph Leberer, who was his trainer, who was one of the closest people to him.

00:24:01.820 So in many ways, my appreciation for him today is tenfold what it was when I just evaluated him through that lens.

00:24:08.900 The other thing that you alluded to is I didn't really appreciate, as I don't think many people did at the time of his life, what he meant to Brazilians.

00:24:17.440 Oh, yeah.

00:24:17.980 It's outrageous.

00:24:19.220 And at a time where Brazil was struggling beyond belief.

00:24:23.400 Yeah.

00:24:23.760 So just to give you an example of that, as you know, my youngest son is named after him.

00:24:28.600 Anytime we encounter a person from Brazil who discovers that fact, it's like everything changes. 1.00

00:24:36.760 Come into my house for food.

00:24:38.120 Yeah, yeah.

00:24:38.860 And for someone in Brazil, if you're over the age of 35 today, you take JFK 9-11 squared.

00:24:49.720 The challenger.

00:24:50.600 Yeah.

00:24:50.920 Yeah.

00:24:51.440 That's what May 1st, 1994 was.

00:24:54.920 Because the entire country, every Sunday, would stop to watch this.

00:24:59.460 It's not like the NFL here where a lot of people watch it.

00:25:03.060 No, no, no, no, no.

00:25:04.060 This was the religion.

00:25:05.440 Yes.

00:25:05.980 The country stops.

00:25:07.860 Yeah.

00:25:08.120 And everybody watches.

00:25:09.460 There was a Brazilian god on planet Earth.

00:25:11.720 That's right.

00:25:12.180 Yeah.

00:25:12.900 Yeah.

00:25:13.300 In fact, and because of the religious culture of Brazil, right, it's a Catholic country,

00:25:17.780 obviously.

00:25:18.500 There's so much religious symbolism.

00:25:20.680 And I think he is the closest thing to a deity for the people there.

00:25:23.280 And by the way, you know, a close second is Japan.

00:25:26.580 Oh, really?

00:25:27.320 Yeah.

00:25:27.800 Why do you suppose?

00:25:29.000 Because of the relationship with Honda.

00:25:30.540 Because of the relationship with Honda.

00:25:31.220 So all three of his titles were in Honda-powered cars.

00:25:35.160 And the engineers at Honda loved him.

00:25:39.580 He was also other, as I imagine the Japanese felt, entering F1.

00:25:45.860 Yeah.

00:25:46.560 There weren't a lot of Brazilians.

00:25:47.880 Well, he's one of three, maybe, Brazilian F1.

00:25:50.060 Well, it's really interesting.

00:25:51.080 So Nelson Piquet, who is also Brazilian, also a three-time champion.

00:25:56.100 One of my favorite things to do whenever I meet someone from Brazil who's old enough is

00:25:59.820 to say, we obviously got talking about Senna, blah, blah, blah.

00:26:02.480 What did you think of Piquet?

00:26:03.780 And they're all like, a piece of shit.

00:26:05.200 Oh, really?

00:26:05.740 Oh, can't stand him.

00:26:06.600 Because he deserted the place?

00:26:08.680 Yeah.

00:26:08.880 He was like, not proud of what he was.

00:26:10.920 He was also very unkind to Senna.

00:26:12.800 He referred to him as the homosexual from Sao Paulo.

00:26:15.660 Okay.

00:26:16.000 Although he didn't use that word.

00:26:17.280 Right.

00:26:17.600 You can imagine what he said.

00:26:18.640 Sure, sure, sure.

00:26:19.520 Back when you could let those rip.

00:26:21.040 No problem.

00:26:21.760 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:26:21.840 Still have all your sponsors.

00:26:23.120 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:26:23.920 Piquet was very jealous.

00:26:25.380 Of Senna because of how much Senna was loved.

00:26:27.760 But Senna was loved because of how much he loved back.

00:26:30.740 Yeah.

00:26:30.840 He was so proud of Brazil, right?

00:26:32.380 So every time he wins a race, a Brazilian flag is out.

00:26:36.100 And he loved Brazil.

00:26:37.160 And one thing people didn't know about him until after he died was how much money he was

00:26:41.680 pouring into education in Brazil.

00:26:44.360 Yeah, so how did their salaries back then compare to current salaries?

00:26:50.640 When you adjust for inflation, probably reasonable.

00:26:54.400 Well, if you were at the very, very top.

00:26:56.280 So Senna was making a million dollars a race.

00:26:59.800 A race?

00:27:00.480 Yeah.

00:27:01.120 And doing 16 races a year.

00:27:03.160 That's just base salary.

00:27:05.280 That's not that far off from what...

00:27:07.500 I mean, Max is the highest paid guy in F1 today.

00:27:10.200 I believe he's making 50 million euros.

00:27:13.400 Uh-huh.

00:27:14.640 So...

00:27:15.120 And keeping 50 million euros living in Monaco?

00:27:18.660 Yeah.

00:27:19.440 Anytime you hear their salaries, you're like, you really got to double it when you're trying

00:27:22.760 to comp it to like baseball players or football players.

00:27:25.820 Yeah, yeah.

00:27:26.400 Yeah.

00:27:26.820 Senna, of course, also had many sponsors, right?

00:27:29.180 Okay.

00:27:29.360 So...

00:27:29.800 So he was loaded.

00:27:31.040 Yes.

00:27:31.200 But the family was already loaded.

00:27:32.800 He came from a wealthy family.

00:27:34.660 He was not without.

00:27:35.480 But he probably made somewhere on the order of a quarter of a billion dollars in his lifetime.

00:27:42.360 Oh, wow.

00:27:43.080 In the 80s and 90s.

00:27:45.040 Wow, that's impressive.

00:27:46.260 I have to imagine there's some archetype about him that you like beyond the racing.

00:27:53.080 And I'm wondering, is it the outsider-ness?

00:27:55.880 Well, I think it's the fact that he was...

00:27:58.280 Look, if we're going to get really deep and philosophical, I think it's that he's flawed.

00:28:01.780 He's not a perfect person, and nor did he try to represent himself as that, right?

00:28:06.960 Like, he could be overly emotional.

00:28:10.460 And I think even though it's very sad, I'm sure we will talk about his death in detail.

00:28:16.320 I don't believe the most commonly held view of his death, which was that it resulted from

00:28:22.460 the steering column failure.

00:28:23.860 I actually don't think that's what happened.

00:28:25.720 Oh, really?

00:28:26.400 No.

00:28:26.800 You have a different take.

00:28:28.120 I do have a different take.

00:28:29.200 Although I used to, for many years, for probably 26 years, I believed that he died because

00:28:35.720 the steering column failed.

00:28:37.240 I thought I had heard that, like, is it an aileron?

00:28:40.880 What is the piece that was on the suspension that that had come off?

00:28:44.140 Oh, I'm sorry.

00:28:44.920 That's what actually killed him.

00:28:46.440 That's not in dispute.

00:28:47.580 Okay, okay.

00:28:48.300 Yes, yes, yes.

00:28:48.920 Why did he crash?

00:28:50.200 Why did he crash?

00:28:51.380 Yes.

00:28:51.860 Okay.

00:28:52.420 Yes.

00:28:52.600 And people have said, I don't even know this, that the steering column failed?

00:28:56.160 Yes.

00:28:56.800 So, the conventional view, the widely held view of Senna's death, so maybe just to tell

00:29:02.100 people how the circumstances of the death.

00:29:04.520 So, he was in a race called Imola, which took place on a horrible, horrible weekend, April 0.78

00:29:10.340 29th, April 30th, and May 1st, 1994.

00:29:14.080 Going back to something we talked about earlier, there had not been a death in F1 since Gilles

00:29:19.120 Villeneuve died in 1982.

00:29:21.260 Now, 12 years later, on that Friday, during the first practice, another Brazilian driver,

00:29:28.780 Rubens Barrichello, has a brutal crash.

00:29:33.260 He's just laying in the fucking straightaway.

00:29:35.240 Well, what's amazing is he was only concussed and split open, but actually survived.

00:29:41.720 Senna was shaken up.

00:29:43.040 That was in practice.

00:29:44.160 It was an FP1.

00:29:44.960 And Senna was, this was like a kid that he was mentoring, and he saw him in the hospital

00:29:51.100 and was very shaken up.

00:29:52.680 The next day, a rookie, Roland Ratzpenberger, who Senna also had taken under his wing and

00:30:00.980 had actually introduced that weekend to Joseph Leberer, his physio, who was also Austrian.

00:30:07.160 Roland was Austrian, and Joseph was Austrian.

00:30:09.280 And so Senna had introduced them that weekend.

00:30:11.680 Roland was killed in practice that weekend.

00:30:15.500 This was the first death in F1 in 12 years.

00:30:19.820 Wow.

00:30:20.500 I'm going to tell you a weird sidebar to this.

00:30:22.920 So do you know Craig T. Nelson?

00:30:24.420 Yeah.

00:30:25.180 He was racing that weekend there.

00:30:27.200 He was at that race.

00:30:28.860 He raced prototypes for years.

00:30:31.140 Oh, I didn't know that.

00:30:31.780 Oh, he was so, so, he paved Willow Springs at one point when he was on coach.

00:30:37.480 He has a lap record and a prototype there.

00:30:40.700 It was his life.

00:30:42.100 He spent every penny from coach on racing, and he was there that weekend, weirdly.

00:30:47.060 Wow.

00:30:47.440 Yeah, racing.

00:30:48.340 And he said it was quite an eerie weekend as well.

00:30:51.060 Yeah, there are so many things about that weekend that are really upsetting.

00:30:54.480 One of them is that the race should have been canceled after Roland's death.

00:30:57.740 So if a driver dies on the track in Italy, the law is the race is done.

00:31:05.160 Oh, really?

00:31:05.620 Yes.

00:31:06.340 Roland died on the track, but the organizers of the race wanted the race to go on.

00:31:11.260 So they airlifted him out of there to pronounce him dead at a hospital.

00:31:14.400 Oh, wow.

00:31:15.380 But they were doing cardiac massage on him at the track.

00:31:18.380 He was absolutely dead.

00:31:20.540 Senna, against the instructions of the marshals, got into a car, drove to where he died,

00:31:28.140 and was reprimanded terribly for doing so.

00:31:31.900 Joseph told me that night he'd never seen Senna more angry in the entire time he knew him than

00:31:38.720 that evening because of how pissed he was at how the marshals had been so angry at him for

00:31:44.600 going to see Roland at the site of the accident.

00:31:47.340 Which is a pattern of his, right?

00:31:48.900 He also had gone out on P1 and kind of stood where that had happened, and that's kind of

00:31:53.860 a thing he did, right?

00:31:55.080 This is the thing about Senna that's also kind of an interesting paradox, right?

00:31:57.740 Like, on the one hand, he was the most competitive, and he did things at times, and we can talk

00:32:02.620 about things, where he's literally put other drivers and his own lives in danger out of

00:32:07.200 pure competitive drive.

00:32:09.060 And yet he would be the first person to stop and rescue you and help you if you were hurt.

00:32:14.840 Joseph was telling me he was so angry.

00:32:17.120 He said, how dare they tell me I can't go onto track to see a driver who is injured and

00:32:23.560 ultimately dead when they don't care that we're driving around here?

00:32:27.120 Like, in other words, like, don't tell me who's taking the risk.

00:32:29.980 I take the risk.

00:32:30.940 You don't take the risk.

00:32:32.020 You can grant me this.

00:32:33.320 Yeah.

00:32:33.640 No problem.

00:32:34.700 And so, Ratzenberger dies.

00:32:37.060 That should have been the end of Imola.

00:32:39.080 Senna should still be alive.

00:32:40.300 He shouldn't have died the next day because the race should have been canceled. 1.00

00:32:43.940 Is it also relevant?

00:32:44.940 He, this is race number two of the season?

00:32:47.240 Three of the season.

00:32:47.840 Three, and he hates his car.

00:32:49.740 Hates the car.

00:32:50.280 He had gone to Williams thinking he was going to get the electronically adjusted suspension

00:32:55.320 that gets taken away.

00:32:57.260 So, Senna, in 1988, arrives at McLaren.

00:33:00.780 He's driving for what is the best team.

00:33:02.860 By the way, this is another interesting metric.

00:33:04.760 I'll come back to this point.

00:33:05.920 But when people say, well, you got to just look at the stats.

00:33:08.780 Lewis has the most wins and Schumacher and, you know, Lewis have the most titles.

00:33:12.440 I'm like, put all that stuff aside.

00:33:14.100 There are other metrics, even if you just look at the length of life.

00:33:17.660 Senna was only in the best car four out of the 10 years he raced.

00:33:22.700 So, you all have to look at how many years was a driver in the best car.

00:33:26.740 All of these things factor into it.

00:33:28.780 So, Senna's in the best car in 88, 89, 90, 91.

00:33:32.180 He wins three of the titles in those four years, although he should have had four out of the four.

00:33:38.500 And then the tide changes.

00:33:39.740 This is always the case in F1.

00:33:41.340 There's a regulation change and the power shift happens.

00:33:44.240 And at this point, the power shifts from McLaren to Williams.

00:33:47.120 So, in 92 and 93, Williams was so technically superior to not just McLaren, but everyone else on the field.

00:33:55.820 And Senna wanted to go.

00:33:57.340 Frank Williams, the owner of the Williams team, had always loved Senna.

00:34:01.660 Always loved him.

00:34:02.400 He was one of the first people to see Senna race coming out of Formula 4, all of these other lower classes.

00:34:08.620 But there just wasn't a seat on the team at the time.

00:34:11.780 And he got pros.

00:34:13.180 So, what happened?

00:34:14.160 Specifically, I won't race.

00:34:14.840 Right.

00:34:15.240 So, Mansell races for Williams in 92, wins the title, immediately retires.

00:34:20.500 Prost comes out of retirement, takes the seat for 93.

00:34:24.980 Williams says, great, we'll bring out Senna.

00:34:27.320 And Prost says, no way.

00:34:28.620 My contract has a clause that says, I'll never race with Senna as a teammate again.

00:34:33.040 So, Senna spends one more year at McLaren.

00:34:36.360 And funny story there, by the way, is he was having a contract holdup with McLaren.

00:34:42.500 And to sort of flex his muscles a little bit, he came to the U.S., did a day of testing in IndyCar.

00:34:48.160 Oh, really?

00:34:48.840 And actually was driving faster by the end of his first day of testing than any of the IndyCar drivers were driving.

00:34:55.780 Wow.

00:34:56.120 Because that transference hasn't gone as well in the last 20 years when F1 drivers have gone to Indy.

00:35:02.580 It's hard.

00:35:03.320 Yeah.

00:35:03.500 I mean, IndyCar is really hard.

00:35:04.860 Only Alonso has done well.

00:35:05.860 But he didn't.

00:35:06.100 I mean, he didn't win.

00:35:06.720 He didn't do as well as you would have expected, given that Alonso basically won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, his first crack out there.

00:35:12.600 Yeah, yeah.

00:35:12.920 So, Prost retires at the end of 93.

00:35:16.440 We should come back to the last race of 93 at Adelaide with Senna and Prost on the podium together.

00:35:22.560 And then, finally, Senna gets his wish, which is he finally gets to go to Williams.

00:35:27.280 He finally gets to go to the team that has won the last two titles and basically will be the most dominant car for the next four years, although nobody knows it at the time.

00:35:35.060 But, perhaps unbeknownst to Senna, because the F1 that year had taken a pretty hard rule change and removed what's called active suspension, the car for the beginning of the 94 season was an undrivable technical debacle.

00:35:51.980 Yeah, because they're scrambling to reinvent their entire suspension at that point, right?

00:35:56.200 Right.

00:35:56.520 Because they just got to ditch everything.

00:35:58.220 Right.

00:35:58.680 So, I've become really good friends with Damon Hill, who was his teammate that year.

00:36:02.060 And I actually had Damon on the podcast probably five years ago, and he's just such an incredible human being.

00:36:08.760 I think Damon's one of the most underrated world champions in F1.

00:36:12.220 Damon won the world championship in 1995.

00:36:14.640 He's the son of Graham Hill, a two-time world champion, making him one of only two father-son F1 champions.

00:36:21.340 You know, and I've talked at length with Damon about what that car was like at the beginning of the 94 season.

00:36:26.160 Damon drove it in 93, so he knew what that car was like when it was the best car ever.

00:36:31.060 And then he knew what it was like later.

00:36:34.160 And Damon basically said, look, the car was goddamn undrivable.

00:36:38.140 It was so scary.

00:36:39.820 It was like being on a knife's edge every minute of every lap of every drive.

00:36:47.080 He said he just pulled way back.

00:36:49.360 So, again, maybe for people watching us who don't understand what it's like to drive a race car, the goal of driving a race car is to be at the limit of the car.

00:36:56.140 You're always at the limit of what the car can do.

00:36:59.900 And Damon was like, you couldn't drive that car near the limit.

00:37:03.720 It was so unpredictable.

00:37:04.420 Yeah, if you got within 10 yards of the limit, the car would flip you into another planet.

00:37:09.180 But Senna still managed to drive it close to the limit.

00:37:12.720 So in the first race of that year, which was in Brazil, Senna gets on pole.

00:37:17.040 It's hard to imagine how he could put that car on pole, but it was like wrestling that car into pole position.

00:37:23.480 He's in pole.

00:37:24.300 He's leading that race.

00:37:25.960 And then with a few laps to go, he actually spins out on a corner.

00:37:29.820 Just couldn't control this thing.

00:37:32.000 So next race, he again gets it on pole.

00:37:35.560 It's not clear how he could put that car on pole again.

00:37:38.380 And by the way, he's got Michael Schumacher, a young Michael Schumacher, just biting at his heels.

00:37:43.440 And he's in the McLaren?

00:37:44.520 Benetton.

00:37:44.840 Oh, he's in the Benetton.

00:37:46.040 Oh, right.

00:37:46.760 Yeah.

00:37:47.020 And that was kind of the best car that year?

00:37:48.680 Yeah.

00:37:48.960 That was the best car that year.

00:37:50.560 A lot of controversy about whether that car was cheating that year.

00:37:53.400 Right.

00:37:53.640 He had believed it had traction control, right?

00:37:55.820 That's right.

00:37:56.280 And it probably did.

00:37:58.140 Yeah.

00:37:58.400 It's weird that they would be able to hide that.

00:38:00.720 Yeah.

00:38:01.460 Oh, yeah.

00:38:01.900 I know.

00:38:02.460 Yeah.

00:38:04.080 In that race, he's on pole, but he gets hit from behind first corner.

00:38:08.160 He's out of that race. 1.00

00:38:09.300 So now we go into Imola.

00:38:10.680 Remember, this is a 16 race season.

00:38:12.940 Two races are down and he has zero points.

00:38:16.360 Schumacher has won both of those races.

00:38:18.440 He's got 20 points.

00:38:19.580 Yeah.

00:38:20.120 So he's feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders.

00:38:23.480 He has to be perfect for the rest of the-

00:38:25.000 He has to be perfect for the rest of the season.

00:38:26.800 And certainly he has to win this race in Imola.

00:38:29.700 Non-negotiable.

00:38:30.480 Now, up until that point in time, Senna already has the record for most wins at Imola.

00:38:34.440 This is a circuit he knows well.

00:38:36.280 It's a very hard circuit.

00:38:37.760 I actually just started driving it in the simulator a few months ago, getting ready for my trip out there.

00:38:43.600 And it's tough.

00:38:45.760 I remember, was it two years ago, three, it was just an entire yard sale lap one, then a complete restart, then another yard sale.

00:38:55.780 That one has spectacular crashes.

00:38:57.500 Everything goes wrong, right?

00:38:59.440 So you start out with what we talked about.

00:39:02.260 On Friday, you've got Barrichello nearly dies.

00:39:05.840 On Saturday, Ratzenberger dies.

00:39:09.520 Senna is in no mood to drive on Sunday.

00:39:12.780 So that Saturday night is Joseph's birthday.

00:39:16.840 Joseph Leber.

00:39:17.740 His birthday is April 30th.

00:39:19.600 These guys always celebrate Joseph's birthday.

00:39:21.560 And on that night, they're out at a pizza place.

00:39:25.620 Obviously, it's just the most somber mood, and they're not celebrating anything.

00:39:29.720 And Senna is incredibly angry about the scolding he took for going to see Ratzenberger.

00:39:36.320 And he is very unhappy with the car, doesn't feel that the car is safe.

00:39:41.280 That day, he had spoken with Nicky Lauda, and Nicky had encouraged him as now the most senior driver in F1, now that Pross had retired, that he needed to bring back the Drivers Association for safety.

00:39:53.780 Okay.

00:39:54.620 So that didn't exist at that point.

00:39:56.120 It had sort of fallen by the wayside.

00:39:58.160 This is something that Jackie Stewart had led in the early 1970s, when the drivers sort of said, enough is enough.

00:40:04.420 Like, we can't just be dying at this rate.

00:40:06.840 Every other weekend.

00:40:07.400 We have to take safety.

00:40:08.500 We have to make it a high priority.

00:40:09.460 And so Senna agreed that the next race at Monaco, they would reinitiate the driver's safety sort of group.

00:40:18.220 And Senna said to Joseph that night that it was like kind of the first time ever he didn't want to race.

00:40:23.780 Didn't want to really race the next day.

00:40:26.140 And Joseph said to him, he goes, look, no one will fault you if you don't right now.

00:40:30.920 And Senna said, there's no way I can't race.

00:40:33.900 The people of Brazil need this, and they're hurting way more than I am.

00:40:40.440 So you ask me, like, why am I obsessed with this guy?

00:40:42.660 It's kind of like the death wish in a way, but also realizing, like, it's bigger than him.

00:40:47.560 He really felt like, I don't want to do this.

00:40:50.880 I don't feel safe doing this.

00:40:52.700 But there's 100 million people who need me to do this.

00:40:56.640 And they're in worse shape than I am.

00:40:59.280 Did you read The Fountainhead ever?

00:41:01.340 Mm-mm.

00:41:01.940 Mm.

00:41:02.840 Because this would be a good parallel.

00:41:04.260 The people I read The Fountainhead loved it.

00:41:06.440 The lead character is roughly based on the architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.

00:41:12.740 But he is a man who always knew what he wanted, always had a vision, never compromised, pissed a lot of people off.

00:41:22.300 Howard Rourke.

00:41:23.380 But ultimately was always right.

00:41:24.980 And I think that archetype, when you're a young man, is incredibly appealing.

00:41:30.760 It was to me.

00:41:31.980 Like, yeah, maybe I just, I know what's right.

00:41:34.940 I don't have to listen to anyone else, and then I'll be proving I'm right at the end of it.

00:41:38.560 And I just wonder how much of his high level of disagreeability, wouldn't you think?

00:41:44.400 Oh, yeah.

00:41:45.140 Prost was great at playing the political game.

00:41:48.200 The head of the FIA was also French.

00:41:50.060 Which clearly was helping him the whole, with every dispute between he and Senna.

00:41:55.740 And Senna was just so disagreeable and outspoken and didn't give a shit if anyone liked him.

00:42:02.480 Is that part of his personality appealing?

00:42:03.960 Yes, but also there was a, it's, I'm going to win or it doesn't matter.

00:42:08.700 So Prost's nickname was The Professor.

00:42:11.480 The reason for that was, among other things, he was very smart and very strategic and very calculating.

00:42:19.820 And if he was in a race and he was in third place, he would think to himself, logically,

00:42:26.760 I'm playing the long game here, which is, I'm better off coming in third and getting my

00:42:32.160 six or seven or eight points here if I don't think I can win.

00:42:37.380 Senna only wanted to win.

00:42:39.460 He would crash out of a race to take a shot at winning.

00:42:43.540 He just didn't care for second, third, or fourth.

00:42:45.620 Well, the Monaco incident that we already talked about where he was 60 seconds out ahead

00:42:50.720 and puts it into a wall, in his own description of that race, which is kind of appealing, is

00:42:57.520 he was on a perfect drive, spiritually.

00:43:01.900 He was on a perfect drive.

00:43:03.660 Right, he wasn't competing against anybody else.

00:43:05.600 He was competing against what perfection could be.

00:43:07.600 Yeah, he was getting very close to having raced the perfect race and could feel it and

00:43:13.780 could not stop pushing because it was within his touch or grasp.

00:43:18.380 To see that someone is in pursuit of something that's even higher than first place is appealing

00:43:24.980 as a character type, but there's some punk rockness to him that I also think is in the

00:43:30.440 stew for you, I'm guessing.

00:43:33.620 Yeah, look, I...

00:43:34.860 Because if you're just a record junkie...

00:43:36.760 Yeah, yeah.

00:43:37.180 I think if you're a record junkie, you would just have to have Lewis as your favorite driver.

00:43:43.040 If you're just looking at numbers or Schumacher...

00:43:47.480 So here's an analogy.

00:43:48.920 I don't know how much you cared for football when you were growing up, but Barry Sanders

00:43:52.980 doesn't have the records.

00:43:55.040 He's not the leading rusher.

00:43:56.400 He doesn't have the most yards.

00:43:57.940 He doesn't have the most touchdowns.

00:43:59.280 He has no Super Bowls.

00:44:00.560 Like, by any statistic, Barry Sanders is not actually the best.

00:44:06.320 But he was.

00:44:07.400 My son, who's obsessed with football, and we read football books every night, I've already

00:44:11.860 explained to him 10 ways to Sunday, Barry Sanders was the greatest running back of all

00:44:15.400 time.

00:44:15.620 Yes.

00:44:16.060 Because there are intangible factors.

00:44:17.540 And he would bench himself as well, just shy of a record.

00:44:20.340 Yeah.

00:44:20.380 Didn't care about the records, actually.

00:44:21.920 Yes, he truly didn't.

00:44:23.120 Didn't want to be in the public eye.

00:44:25.000 Yeah.

00:44:25.320 Yeah.

00:44:25.900 He's impressive.

00:44:26.640 He's the greatest running back of all time.

00:44:29.060 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:44:29.740 Even though statistically, there were many that were superior.

00:44:32.580 And I think with Senna, there's a characteristic of his driving.

00:44:36.660 And I do think most drivers would agree he's the greatest of all time.

00:44:42.040 I would bet that if you polled current and past F1 drivers.

00:44:47.180 You think Max would say so?

00:44:48.460 You know, it's interesting.

00:44:49.160 I don't know what Max would say.

00:44:49.580 Because I feel like Max would say Schumacher.

00:44:52.200 Well, I know Seb would say Schumacher.

00:44:54.320 I'm close with Seb.

00:44:55.260 And Schumacher, we must acknowledge, is on another planet.

00:44:58.840 Yeah, look, I think you could make a case that the three greatest of all time would be Senna, Schumacher, and maybe Max.

00:45:07.180 Yeah.

00:45:07.560 We might be getting to the point where we can start to say Max is in the top three.

00:45:11.500 I'm new to it, so of course I'm intoxicated with the flavor of the day.

00:45:15.280 But Max, to me, even when I watch different documentaries or learn the history of other drivers, he definitely is ahead of everyone else.

00:45:24.820 I mean, there's a kid who came in a week after his 17th birthday, won a race at 17.

00:45:30.220 I mean, that's inconceivable.

00:45:32.740 Yeah.

00:45:33.060 I struggle to figure this out myself because, like, where does Fangio belong in all of this?

00:45:37.660 Like, it's not just that he won five titles.

00:45:39.880 It's, are you judging a driver against his peers?

00:45:43.080 Because if so, Fangio was really, I mean, five titles in four cars.

00:45:48.820 Right.

00:45:49.240 It didn't matter what car you put him in.

00:45:50.560 He was going to win the title.

00:45:51.540 Well, this becomes the same challenge as evaluating boxers because you really have to look at who they were fighting, right?

00:45:59.780 Yeah.

00:46:00.180 I think Ali gets such a huge bump when you think about how formidable Foreman was at the time or these battles he had with Frazier.

00:46:08.840 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:46:09.040 Like, Frazier was Mike Tyson.

00:46:10.820 Like, you put Mike Tyson and Frazier in a ring, I don't know who wins that fight.

00:46:14.680 They're the similar.

00:46:15.440 So, yeah, the fact that this dude probably took on two of the, out of the 10 best heavyweights of all time repeatedly, I think, is relevant.

00:46:23.280 Whereas a lot of these guys didn't really have a huge.

00:46:26.000 Right, but if you just evaluate them on physical prowess, the evolution of athletes is such that they are clearly getting better as time goes on.

00:46:33.100 Yeah.

00:46:33.420 So, it's always hard to sort of have that discussion about, like, who's the greatest.

00:46:36.460 Now, explain some of these kinks he has because I do end up coming across videos all the time where people are pointing out that, like, Senna had this very unique habit of stabbing the gas, which to me seems completely counterintuitive to what you'd want to do. 0.87

00:46:53.340 And I'm curious, like, if you know what his rationale, what was that getting him and how unique was that?

00:46:58.480 It was very unique, and just so people understand what you're saying, Senna had a habit of when he was coming out of a corner.

00:47:07.200 So, the way the regular mortals like us drive is we come back onto throttle gradually.

00:47:13.360 Roll it on.

00:47:13.880 Roll it on.

00:47:14.620 If you come on too much, you're going to lose the rear of the car, and that's the way you go.

00:47:18.780 So, you're coming off the brake.

00:47:20.220 You're coming onto the throttle.

00:47:21.820 Smooth is fast is the mantra.

00:47:23.860 Smooth is fast.

00:47:25.160 And if you look at the telemetry of Senna, because, of course, in race cars, you're measuring to the millimeter and to the PSI exactly what's happening to each pedal.

00:47:33.800 Senna did something very different, which is when he came on throttle, he was stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, and then on full.

00:47:40.060 Yeah.

00:47:40.980 So, it was hypothesized that this was done because of the turbo lag.

00:47:47.060 Revving the turbo up.

00:47:48.080 Yep.

00:47:48.240 So, you would get rid of the turbo lag, and he would get back to full power quicker than everybody else.

00:47:54.540 Right.

00:47:54.640 So, he was just, like, keeping it activated until he went full power.

00:47:57.760 Keeping the RPMs as high as possible.

00:47:59.740 Yeah.

00:48:00.360 Such that when he got back to full power, there was no lag, and he was gone.

00:48:04.020 Yeah.

00:48:04.820 So, people actually hypothesized that he would struggle when they went back to naturally aspirated cars.

00:48:12.200 Uh-huh.

00:48:13.320 And here's the weird thing.

00:48:15.180 He kept doing it, and he didn't struggle.

00:48:17.900 That's one of the things I don't think I have a great explanation for why he was doing it.

00:48:22.440 Yeah.

00:48:22.620 Other than he had clearly always been doing it.

00:48:25.120 Like, this is how he drove carts.

00:48:27.000 Yeah.

00:48:27.220 If his results were different, it would be so obvious it's just not a good strategy.

00:48:31.120 Right.

00:48:31.280 But somehow, it worked.

00:48:34.000 Yeah.

00:48:34.200 His car control really was remarkable.

00:48:38.220 And that's one of the beautiful things about that era of F1 is the cars were so much harder to drive.

00:48:43.660 Yeah.

00:48:44.400 Less downforce.

00:48:45.820 Less downforce.

00:48:46.960 No power steering.

00:48:48.520 Manual shift.

00:48:49.600 Like, a manual gearbox.

00:48:51.260 In fact, if anybody's just doubting what we're talking about here, you just need to pull up, and we'll probably include it in the show notes, a couple of onboard Senna drives in places like Monaco, where you have to be able to drive the car.

00:49:05.900 Most people would take it within a foot of a wall.

00:49:08.060 He would take it within three inches of the wall to maximize the size of the track for him.

00:49:12.440 And he's doing this one-handed, no power steering while shifting.

00:49:15.540 Yeah.

00:49:16.440 Totally different animal.

00:49:17.200 Were those sequential?

00:49:18.620 Yeah.

00:49:18.880 At least?

00:49:19.380 Yeah.

00:49:19.540 And did they have to use a clutch?

00:49:21.220 Yep.

00:49:21.580 They did.

00:49:22.080 Oh, yeah.

00:49:22.520 He's flipping.

00:49:23.160 So he's clutch.

00:49:23.660 Okay.

00:49:24.060 He's clutch blip.

00:49:24.840 Shift.

00:49:25.520 Yeah.

00:49:25.740 There's also, I just recently saw a great video of him driving in an NSX.

00:49:29.420 Oh, yeah.

00:49:29.760 The loafers?

00:49:30.560 Yes.

00:49:31.100 With the loafers on, and he's just sideways on the pedals, and he's so fucking busy.

00:49:37.020 Incredible.

00:49:37.620 What seems obvious is it might be his first time ever driving the car.

00:49:41.180 He's just driving at 100.1%.

00:49:43.820 Yeah.

00:49:44.540 Well, he helped them develop that car.

00:49:46.240 That's another reason why there's such a love relationship between the Japanese and Senna,

00:49:51.580 is the Honda engineers loved him.

00:49:53.920 I've actually sat in his NSX.

00:49:56.800 Oh, really?

00:49:57.300 He actually had an NSX, and it still sits at his brother's home in Sao Paulo.

00:50:03.700 Oh, really?

00:50:04.140 And when I met his brother, he said, you want to come down and sit in the car and start it up?

00:50:08.400 And I was like, is this a trick question?

00:50:10.300 Yeah.

00:50:10.820 Are you sure?

00:50:11.700 So where does he rank?

00:50:12.820 Because to my knowledge, Schumacher had an incredible engineering mind.

00:50:18.420 He was very, very mechanical.

00:50:19.880 And they say he could help them develop the car in a way that most drivers couldn't do.

00:50:25.320 Where was Senna's technical aptitude for actually developing the car?

00:50:30.920 Yeah, very similar.

00:50:31.580 Footage of him actually building an engine on his go-kart and stuff.

00:50:34.300 Yeah, very, very similar.

00:50:35.920 And he was very, very committed to giving feedback.

00:50:39.540 So where I think the engineers, and I'm hearing this secondhand, not firsthand,

00:50:43.460 but where people would talk about this was the feedback he could give to the engineers was remarkable.

00:50:53.600 There's a great story about him getting injured, right?

00:50:57.040 And not being able to drive the next day during testing.

00:51:00.320 And one of the other drivers having to come in and sort of cover for him.

00:51:05.500 And Senna came in just to listen to how the other driver gave feedback to the engineers to make sure that it could even be trusted.

00:51:14.480 So they didn't mess up the car with that feedback.

00:51:16.300 Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was just that particular about everything you have to be able to say.

00:51:19.980 And as someone who drives a car myself, like it's hard to put in words like how dumb I am.

00:51:24.820 I'll go out in a car and I'll know that it's not right.

00:51:27.700 Yeah.

00:51:28.020 But I can't tell you why.

00:51:29.660 I know.

00:51:30.000 So I raced for a season in the Super Trofeo series in Lamborghinis.

00:51:35.420 And by the way, I have rebuilt engines and cars.

00:51:38.820 I am really mechanical.

00:51:40.560 But actually articulating what I think needs to happen, I find to be like an entirely different knowledge that I don't have currently.

00:51:51.840 I can tell you if it's understeering or oversteering.

00:51:54.120 I can tell you some basic stuff, but to come in and go like it needs two clicks on the suspension on the right rear for turn seven.

00:52:02.820 I'm like, I can't do that.

00:52:04.980 I'm furious that I don't have that knowledge.

00:52:06.600 That's exactly how I feel.

00:52:08.320 I can tell you about the balance of the car.

00:52:10.960 I can tell you if I have too much or too little front grip or rear grip.

00:52:14.680 That's the extent.

00:52:16.240 I know.

00:52:16.760 And it's like 10 years I've been driving and that's the best I can do.

00:52:20.060 And by the way, I think it still exists dramatically in current F1 crop of drivers.

00:52:26.280 I think there's very few that can give them super specific feedback the way that like Schumacher or I guess Senna would.

00:52:34.760 I don't think there's a lot right now that can do it.

00:52:37.020 I know some personally that have admitted that they know very little about what's going on with the car.

00:52:41.860 But again, I feel like Max, even when I hear him communicate on the radio, I'm like, well, he's definitely a grade above everyone else as far as his understanding of what's going on with the car.

00:52:53.200 And then Alonzo also seems to have like a really deep knowledge that he can articulate to them.

00:53:00.380 Yeah.

00:53:00.540 But I feel like that's this big chunk that no one really talks about all that much that I think is really important.

00:53:05.960 Like longtime champs seem to really have that.

00:53:08.700 Yep.

00:53:08.900 I don't know what Lewis's aptitude is.

00:53:11.060 I haven't been able to really assess that.

00:53:13.320 So let's go back to the day of the dreadful race. 1.00

00:53:16.860 So Senna manages to somehow wrangle pole for the third consecutive race of that season.

00:53:23.100 With a terrible car.

00:53:24.100 With the undrivable car that is on a knife's edge that he somehow manages to put on pole yet again.

00:53:30.420 And he has to win this race.

00:53:33.400 And on the first lap, he gets away clean and seven cars behind him.

00:53:38.540 One of the cars stalls on the grid, gets plowed by another car, immediate safety car.

00:53:43.660 This was back in a day when the safety cars were insanely slow.

00:53:48.360 They were like little Pintos.

00:53:50.200 Today, most people would notice that they have the fastest street cars available.

00:53:54.980 Yeah, they got the GTR AMG.

00:53:57.080 Yeah.

00:53:57.360 And the reason for that is these cars have to be kept moving quickly to keep the tire temperature high.

00:54:04.600 Again, this is something that I understand that if you've never driven a race car, you've never thought of.

00:54:09.460 Because when you're driving on the street, it doesn't matter.

00:54:11.680 But the temperature of the tires is everything.

00:54:15.120 If the tires are cool, they are bricks.

00:54:17.920 It's like driving ice bricks under the car.

00:54:21.020 People are watching F1.

00:54:22.540 They maybe notice during a formation lap or during a safety car, the cars will weave side to side.

00:54:28.460 That's to put friction in the tire. 0.93

00:54:30.360 You have to keep the tire warm.

00:54:31.960 And so you want a safety car to be able to go as fast as possible.

00:54:34.540 Can we add one thing?

00:54:35.380 This is one of my favorite things to try to get people to wrap their heads around when they're learning about F1.

00:54:39.720 Which is, you have this team that in some cases may have $400 million at its disposal.

00:54:45.180 They have literally the best aerodynamicists on planet Earth.

00:54:48.320 They're better than, Adrian Newey is better than anyone at NASA.

00:54:51.940 The little tiny bits of carbon fiber wing, if you sit up next to close to a car, it's boggling how advanced and technological this thing is.

00:55:01.180 And then the engine itself, this 1.6 liter motor that's making $1,000.

00:55:04.720 All of it is so next level tech.

00:55:07.100 But then you have to remember, all of it.

00:55:09.720 It has to transfer through four rubber tires.

00:55:12.980 This is a great neutralizing fact about Formula 1.

00:55:16.720 It's like, it doesn't really matter what you do to that car because at the end of the day, you will have the built-in limits of a piece of rubber touching asphalt.

00:55:25.880 And they all have the same tires.

00:55:28.080 Yes.

00:55:28.360 It's, I think it's one of the most fascinating aspects of it is just how much tech leads up to, at the end of the day, four pieces of rubber on asphalt.

00:55:37.320 And you'll never transcend that aspect of it.

00:55:40.200 Yes.

00:55:40.880 And today, it's such a differentiating factor, not because they use different rubber.

00:55:47.480 They don't.

00:55:47.900 They all have the same compound.

00:55:49.100 But the difference between, say, Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc is not necessarily who's faster over one lap, where Leclerc may be actually faster over a lap.

00:55:59.920 It's that Max is way better in terms of getting more pace out of a tire for longer.

00:56:07.860 And that's why, head-to-head, there's no comparison between Max and Charles, is one guy always knows how to maximize the life of his tire.

00:56:16.000 Yeah, they generally give credit to the car design in that situation.

00:56:19.420 You'll hear them go like, oh, Ferrari's rough on their tires.

00:56:22.060 They heat them up really quick, which is why Charles is able to get pole position a lot.

00:56:25.580 But in a race, their tires go out three laps before everyone else.

00:56:29.960 Yeah, so it's hard to parse out, like, what is driver.

00:56:32.120 But then you watch their teammates, I guess, is the only way to really figure that out.

00:56:35.620 And yeah, Max is almost never in tire trouble.

00:56:38.560 Right.

00:56:38.660 And this is actually, I think, during Lewis's prime, because he's obviously on the downslope of his career now.

00:56:44.680 But when Lewis was at his prime, it was probably one of the things he did better than anybody else on the grid.

00:56:51.580 It's not a sexy thing, so you don't get a lot of credit for it.

00:56:55.200 Yeah.

00:56:55.480 But when you can really, quote-unquote, manage your tires, it's a remarkable advantage.

00:57:02.020 And you're right.

00:57:02.940 At the end of the day, it's like all the engineering in the world still has to be transmitted through those four contact points.

00:57:09.220 It's kind of comical.

00:57:10.780 Yeah.

00:57:11.000 So, safety car comes out, and this is, again, back in the era when safety cars were slow.

00:57:16.340 Senna was a very big critic of this.

00:57:19.000 So, he was a very vocal critic of how slow these safety cars were.

00:57:22.400 And he would be on his radio yelling, saying, that thing has to go faster.

00:57:26.120 It has to go faster.

00:57:26.860 It has to go faster.

00:57:28.300 So, they spend through the fifth lap cleaning out these cars.

00:57:32.460 So, as the safety car pulls in, it is the end of the fifth lap.

00:57:38.180 So, the sixth lap is the first flying lap of the race.

00:57:42.700 On cold tires.

00:57:43.560 On cold tires.

00:57:44.940 Yeah.

00:57:45.560 Now, there's another important concept that needs to be explained, which is the fastest lap of the race.

00:57:51.660 It's always documented.

00:57:54.020 Today, a point is actually given for it.

00:57:56.760 For qualifying.

00:57:57.960 No, no, no.

00:57:58.540 In the race.

00:57:59.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:57:59.740 Oh, yeah.

00:58:00.180 Of the race. 0.93

00:58:00.860 Yes.

00:58:01.140 In the race, the person who does the single fastest lap gets an extra point, provided they were in the top 10.

00:58:07.200 Back in the 80s and 90s, they weren't giving points for it, but it was still noted.

00:58:11.080 You can still go back and look up any race and say, who had the fastest lap?

00:58:14.360 It shouldn't be surprising to people that the fastest lap is almost always in one of the two or three last laps of the race.

00:58:20.080 Yeah.

00:58:20.180 Why?

00:58:21.260 Because the cars have the lowest amount of fuel.

00:58:23.680 Also, they're not conserving anymore.

00:58:25.500 Yeah.

00:58:25.880 They're all out.

00:58:26.760 So, a car today might weigh 700 kilos.

00:58:30.400 So, they're much bigger than they were back in the day.

00:58:32.380 But they start the race with 100 kilos of fuel.

00:58:35.540 So, just give you a sense of how much of the weight is fuel at the beginning of a race.

00:58:39.400 So, at the end of the race, they're down to two kilos of fuel or one kilo of fuel.

00:58:42.800 So, think about the relative change in weight.

00:58:45.520 And obviously, that's why if you look at any race over the last 20 years, the fastest lap is going to occur in the last couple laps.

00:58:51.200 Yeah, it's like 15% reduction in weight.

00:58:54.100 So, here we do flying lap number six, first flying lap of the race.

00:59:00.040 And Senna is off like a dart.

00:59:02.940 To put that lap in context, a couple things stand out to me.

00:59:06.780 So, Damon Hill explained this to me in great detail.

00:59:09.280 The curve where ultimately Senna would die on the seventh lap is called Tamburello.

00:59:14.060 It's a curve that no longer exists at Imola.

00:59:16.560 It's deemed too dangerous.

00:59:18.240 There were too many bad accidents there.

00:59:20.940 Senna's being the final and most deadly.

00:59:23.480 It's a high speed.

00:59:24.740 It's a very high speed left-hander.

00:59:26.980 And it's an all-out corner to death.

00:59:30.200 It's today a chicane.

00:59:31.680 Okay.

00:59:31.760 Which means they have slowed it way the hell down.

00:59:33.400 So, every corner has a driving line, meaning there is a line you take to get the best angle.

00:59:40.220 And there are a few times when drivers do not take the driving line.

00:59:44.480 As Damon explained to me, nobody took the driving line at Tamburello because it was too bumpy.

00:59:49.900 Oh, okay.

00:59:50.540 And to be on a bumpy line when you're going probably 205 miles per hour, you would just choose to go a little slower and drive on a smoother part of the track even though it's a longer distance.

01:00:05.180 So, Tamburello is near the beginning of the lap.

01:00:07.040 So, Tamburello is like the first big curve of the lap.

01:00:10.200 So, as they come past the start-finish line to lap six, Damon notices that even though they're on really cold tires, Senna takes the racing line through Tamburello.

01:00:20.800 And he's thinking to himself, what in the hell is he doing?

01:00:24.160 Why would you take this risk?

01:00:26.380 And his car is bottoming out.

01:00:28.660 So, it is sparking like crazy.

01:00:31.100 Now, we will never know if indeed Senna had a slow puncture in his tires, meaning that he run over some debris during the four laps when they were going over where the crash was that was leading to a slow loss of pressure in his tires.

01:00:46.540 Or was it just that his car, the tires, didn't have enough temperature in them?

01:00:50.660 That's why the pressure was so low.

01:00:52.340 But either way, he is sparking like crazy, taking the racing line through Tamburello.

01:00:58.420 And right behind him is Schumacher and right behind him is Hill.

01:01:01.580 And, of course, they're not going to take the racing line.

01:01:03.100 They're offline taking the smoother part of the curve.

01:01:05.160 Well, at the end of the sixth lap, Senna has driven what will be the second or third fastest lap of that race.

01:01:11.340 Really?

01:01:11.860 On a full tank of fuel and ice-cold tires.

01:01:14.700 Wow.

01:01:15.020 That just gives you a sense of how hard he was pushing.

01:01:17.040 Yeah.

01:01:17.480 Do you almost think it's in response to having been rattled going into the race?

01:01:25.000 Because I certainly have experienced this where you're scared and then the inner monologue starts going,

01:01:30.760 fuck you, you fucking pussy. 1.00

01:01:33.560 You're going double hard.

01:01:34.880 Like, as a response to the fear, do you think there was an all-in-ness to it?

01:01:40.200 I don't know that it was in response to the fear.

01:01:42.220 I think it was he had to win that race.

01:01:44.900 And there's something that people didn't know.

01:01:46.860 Or the season would be gone.

01:01:48.720 There was that.

01:01:49.600 But also, when he died, you know what they found in his car?

01:01:53.840 An Austrian flag to honor Ratzenberger, who died the day before.

01:01:59.520 So he always carried a Brazilian flag in his car every race.

01:02:03.740 And he would wave the Brazilian flag.

01:02:05.640 And he wanted to win that day, not just because he needed to for his season,

01:02:09.320 but he wanted to be able to wave an Austrian flag for Roland.

01:02:12.240 Oh, fuck.

01:02:13.280 So I don't think there was any way he was going to lose that race.

01:02:16.680 Yeah.

01:02:17.040 He was going to win that race at any expense.

01:02:21.640 And this is a guy who's normally possessed to win every race.

01:02:25.540 So you just take that up a notch.

01:02:27.540 Yeah, yeah.

01:02:28.660 And so as they finish lap six, he's now pulling out from everybody.

01:02:33.060 They enter lap seven.

01:02:35.200 And this is the footage that people have seen a thousand times before.

01:02:38.540 It doesn't matter how many times I see it.

01:02:39.760 I keep waiting for a different outcome.

01:02:41.260 And it never happens.

01:02:42.660 And as they're entering Tamburillo, he drives straight off the track.

01:02:47.400 Really?

01:02:48.200 Straight off.

01:02:49.200 Do you see him attempt to turn?

01:02:50.800 So now I've watched this a hundred thousand times and I will tell you what I believe is

01:02:54.460 happening.

01:02:55.040 Okay.

01:02:55.320 And I will also tell you what Damon believes is happening.

01:02:58.920 And I think that in many ways, even though Damon's view, which is now my view, and by

01:03:03.640 the way, it's also Adrian Newey's view.

01:03:05.920 Adrian's written an amazing book for people who are interested called How to Build a Car.

01:03:10.200 Okay.

01:03:10.540 Which is the definitive book on car design.

01:03:13.580 He goes through every one of his cars that he's built.

01:03:16.120 So it's a chapter per car.

01:03:18.040 We should add for fun.

01:03:19.300 You can debate all day about who was the best driver, whether you think it's Schumacher.

01:03:24.260 Right.

01:03:24.480 You can't debate who the best designer is.

01:03:26.340 He has 14 titles or something.

01:03:29.260 That's the most winningest human being to ever do this.

01:03:32.240 Yeah.

01:03:32.440 It's sort of like I was telling my son, like we can debate who the best quarterback and

01:03:36.200 running back and things are.

01:03:37.260 You can't debate who the best wide receiver is.

01:03:39.260 It's the only position in football for which there actually is no debate.

01:03:42.460 And that is?

01:03:43.120 Jerry Rice.

01:03:43.940 Jerry Rice is so in a league of his own in football that it's really a question of who's

01:03:47.640 second or third.

01:03:48.580 But you're right.

01:03:49.220 Adrian is in a league of his own.

01:03:51.260 So when you read the chapter on the FW16, which was the car that Senna died in.

01:03:56.660 Was that an Adrian car?

01:03:57.920 Yes.

01:03:58.360 Oh, it was?

01:03:58.940 Oh, yeah.

01:03:59.500 Oh, wow.

01:04:00.580 Oh, wow.

01:04:01.340 I mean, Adrian has talked at length about how difficult it was to carry on.

01:04:06.480 What does it mean when you lose a driver in your car?

01:04:08.140 And by the way, Patrick had Adrian Newey to this day, if not for the statute of limitations

01:04:15.460 in Italy, would be in jail because the Italian courts found them liable for that.

01:04:21.640 Really?

01:04:22.280 Yeah.

01:04:22.780 But by the time they got to that decision, the statute of limitations had expired for whatever

01:04:27.280 it was deemed manslaughter.

01:04:28.640 So draconian rule, but really short statute.

01:04:32.040 Yeah.

01:04:33.820 Counteracted by.

01:04:34.560 But the view of the Italian courts was that this was a design failure of the car.

01:04:38.680 So let's maybe back up for a moment.

01:04:40.120 When Senna got to Williams, he hated the car, not just because of how it handled, but he

01:04:46.380 didn't like how he fit in the cockpit.

01:04:48.520 Okay.

01:04:49.140 So again, it's like all these things that he kind of took for granted at McLaren, which

01:04:52.240 was having a car that was built around him.

01:04:54.100 He gets to Williams and he doesn't fit in the cockpit.

01:04:56.620 Right.

01:04:57.120 And he doesn't like where the wheel fits.

01:04:58.980 He's taller than most?

01:05:00.180 No, no, it's just his style.

01:05:02.240 He wants the wheel in a certain place and it's not.

01:05:05.040 So they actually have to extend the steering column by some six inches to put it where

01:05:10.540 he wants it.

01:05:11.260 Okay.

01:05:12.020 Well, in doing so, they had to make the steering shaft narrower than what the spec was called

01:05:17.520 for.

01:05:18.360 Really?

01:05:18.980 Yeah.

01:05:19.120 To keep weight down?

01:05:20.120 Because they were adding length?

01:05:20.940 No, to keep it at an angle that got it out of the cockpit, got it where he wanted it.

01:05:26.260 So what both Adrian writes, and I have spent so many hours discussing this with Damon, and

01:05:32.280 I have gone back and watched onboard footage so many times, and the best onboard is from

01:05:36.900 the car behind him, which is Schumacher's car.

01:05:39.540 This is what I truly believe happened.

01:05:42.640 As he entered Tamburello, which is a left-hander, he lost rear grip of the car when it bounced.

01:05:49.280 So the way these cars work, they have a huge Venturi effect.

01:05:52.900 Like there's a perfect amount of air that must be between the floorboard and the ground.

01:05:57.540 And when you bottom out, you momentarily lose all of that aerodynamics.

01:06:02.680 The downforce.

01:06:03.600 That's right.

01:06:04.000 Yeah.

01:06:04.180 And so what happened is he's going into Tamburello, and because the car is bottoming out, either

01:06:10.620 just because of how bumpy on the line that he is, or, and or, because his tires are cold,

01:06:16.740 and or, because he has a small, slow leak of air due to running over debris, the bottom

01:06:22.380 of the car slides out.

01:06:24.280 It's possible I am convincing myself I can see this on the Schumacher onboard, because

01:06:29.400 I now am believing this.

01:06:31.480 But I really believe there's a split second where you can see the rear move.

01:06:35.580 Uh-huh.

01:06:36.300 Now, it's worth explaining to people what that's called.

01:06:39.500 That is called oversteer.

01:06:40.980 Oversteer is when the rear wheels of a car are moving or turning faster than the front

01:06:46.340 wheels of the car.

01:06:48.060 Oversteer is a phenomenon that a driver will feel long before you see it.

01:06:54.080 So you will see oversteer because you're spinning this way, but you feel it in your butt before

01:07:01.380 that, and you can almost hear it in the tires.

01:07:04.220 You hear the loss of traction.

01:07:05.660 So it's not surprising to me that you don't have to see much oversteer for Senna to have

01:07:11.780 felt it.

01:07:12.660 Right.

01:07:13.240 So what do you do when you oversteer?

01:07:15.300 So when a car is oversteering this way, you course correct by countersteering into it.

01:07:21.580 So if the car is oversteering to the left, you countersteer right, and that snaps the back

01:07:27.240 of the car in direction, and then you're backing a little bit off throttle, and you're coming

01:07:31.840 back to throttle, and you're going.

01:07:33.200 You don't have to be doing the throttle correction if you catch it quick enough.

01:07:36.820 So you could stay full throttle and countersteer back.

01:07:39.940 What I believe happened is the car oversteered due to a loss of rear traction, Senna countersteered,

01:07:45.800 and it immediately regained grip and shot him straight off the track.

01:07:50.940 What the telemetry shows is that he went on max brake and hit the wall.

01:07:57.820 Okay.

01:07:58.180 Now, the steering column was broken when the car was recovered.

01:08:03.900 And so the question is, did the steering column break from the collision, or did it break beforehand?

01:08:10.660 It's very hard to know.

01:08:13.700 But if you look at the lights, and I have the steering wheel that he used the day before

01:08:18.980 in qualifying.

01:08:20.060 So I actually have the steering wheel, so I can see what the lights were.

01:08:23.960 And if you look at the video of the lights, you can see that he was countersteering before

01:08:29.580 he left the road.

01:08:31.240 Now, I have heard very confusing reports.

01:08:36.400 Some say that the wheel had no torque in it when he left the track.

01:08:41.500 And that would certainly suggest that the steering column was broken.

01:08:44.940 But what you don't see is you don't see him turning the wheel.

01:08:49.760 Also, just the odds, even though it was a smaller diameter than it was supposed to be, the notion

01:08:55.980 of torque braking through steering a steel rod seems really unique and weird.

01:09:05.260 There would have to have been some metallurgical issue with the piece of metal to begin with.

01:09:11.900 I don't think in a million years, he could turn it hard enough to snap.

01:09:15.860 Well, and he wouldn't be at that point.

01:09:17.740 It's a delicate move when you're countersteering.

01:09:19.980 It's not hugely abrupt.

01:09:22.000 But again, if it were the wheel braking, you would see his hands doing this as he's going

01:09:28.960 straight off.

01:09:29.700 And you do not.

01:09:30.720 Also, perhaps some unintended, the front wheels could go in any direction that they wanted.

01:09:36.800 So he hits the wall.

01:09:39.800 Gosh, I'm blanking on the exact speed that he hits.

01:09:43.320 It's in the ballpark of 150 miles an hour by the time.

01:09:46.600 He's in full brake.

01:09:47.860 He's fully braking on the way to the wall.

01:09:50.160 I didn't see Tamburello for the first time in person until five years ago.

01:09:54.040 It was my first time going to Imola.

01:09:55.360 And to see the wall that he hit after watching that crash 87,342 times, I was blown away how

01:10:05.680 much closer it was than I would have expected.

01:10:08.200 Really?

01:10:08.360 On the TV, it looks really far.

01:10:10.520 That's where you sort of lull yourself into a sense of, oh, God, I just can't believe he

01:10:15.440 wasn't able to slow himself down enough that it didn't matter.

01:10:17.460 But it turns out there's a ravine right behind Tamburello.

01:10:21.080 And so Senna had many times petitioned for the wall of Tamburello to be moved out.

01:10:27.240 One of his best friends, Gerhard Berger, had crashed there nearly fatally a couple of years

01:10:32.100 earlier in 91 in the Ferrari.

01:10:34.660 And they were like, we're going to abort this race if you guys don't move the wall out further.

01:10:39.780 And they said, we can't move the wall.

01:10:41.240 Like, there's a ravine there.

01:10:42.400 So the dryers were like, all right, well, I guess we have to keep this wall here.

01:10:45.380 What was the surface of the wall back then?

01:10:47.400 Was there anything to absorb any energy?

01:10:49.120 Nothing.

01:10:49.600 Concrete wall.

01:10:50.760 Just a concrete wall.

01:10:51.640 Yeah.

01:10:52.060 Nothing by today's standards of F1 safety.

01:10:54.780 Just literally a concrete wall.

01:10:56.680 Yeah.

01:10:57.020 Oof.

01:10:57.380 And so he hits the concrete wall.

01:11:00.560 The right front wheel comes off, and it's actually the suspension rod of that wheel that

01:11:08.460 punctures his helmet.

01:11:10.140 It's clear that he actually died at the track.

01:11:13.080 I mean, died a brain death at the track.

01:11:14.740 His heart was beating.

01:11:15.800 They were doing CPR on him, and they airlifted him to the hospital.

01:11:19.060 And he was not pronounced dead until that night with a beating heart, but brain dead.

01:11:23.060 You know, I've talked with Joseph about that as well as when Joseph got to the hospital,

01:11:28.060 Sid Watkins, who at the time was the medical physician of F1.

01:11:33.220 How good were those guys?

01:11:34.740 I'm always trying to figure that out.

01:11:36.320 Yeah.

01:11:36.520 No, Sid was the real deal.

01:11:37.820 And he was a part of F1 in the 70s.

01:11:40.140 He was certainly a part of making F1 safer.

01:11:42.300 I think Bernie Eccleston brought Sid Watkins in to F1 in the late 70s, and he had done

01:11:48.840 a lot to improve driver safety.

01:11:51.160 The drivers had enormous respect for him.

01:11:53.700 Legend has it, although, again, Sid is no longer alive, so I don't know if this is true,

01:11:57.900 but there's an interview where Sid talks about how the night before the race, he and Senna

01:12:03.660 were talking, and he told Senna, you should just retire.

01:12:07.140 You got nothing left to prove.

01:12:09.480 This is after Ratzenberger had died.

01:12:11.140 He could tell Senna was distraught.

01:12:12.800 He said to Senna, you should just retire.

01:12:15.240 Let's you and I both retire and go fishing.

01:12:18.120 And Senna said, I can't.

01:12:20.080 And so when Joseph got to the hospital, Sid was walking out of the ICU and didn't say a

01:12:26.120 word, just looked at Joseph, but didn't say a word.

01:12:28.720 And that's when Joseph knew he was dead.

01:12:30.400 He went in to see him, and he said there was not a scratch on his body.

01:12:36.360 Not a scratch on his body, other than obviously the head trauma.

01:12:40.740 Where did it go through his helmet?

01:12:42.420 It's not clear.

01:12:43.980 Fortunately, there are no images of it.

01:12:45.800 This is one of the nice things about it is nobody's ever taken a photo of his body.

01:12:51.320 God knows what happened to that helmet or anything like that.

01:12:54.020 So I don't know what part of the helmet was punctured.

01:12:56.660 But I know this.

01:12:57.580 Sid said that when he arrived at the body and they pulled him out of the car, he knew he

01:13:03.580 was dead.

01:13:04.340 He knew that this was an unsurvivable head trauma.

01:13:08.280 And I can tell it's heartbreaking to you that that happened.

01:13:13.540 What is your overall assessment of athletes dying?

01:13:19.400 What is your relationship with that?

01:13:20.880 Because I have a very specific compartmentalized view of all that.

01:13:26.000 And it may seem sociopathic on some level.

01:13:31.200 Well, I can imagine what you're about to say, and I don't know that I would push back

01:13:35.320 on it.

01:13:36.340 Look, let's take a step back and think about things, right?

01:13:38.560 You alluded to this earlier.

01:13:39.920 There's something about James Dean and Marilyn Monroe and JFK that creates a legend status

01:13:45.880 in them.

01:13:46.360 And part of it is like they died in their prime and they were at the peak.

01:13:51.120 We never saw them get old.

01:13:52.760 We never saw them decline.

01:13:55.420 They didn't have to adjust to a non-exciting life.

01:13:58.280 That's right.

01:13:58.660 They didn't have to fight.

01:13:59.900 And Senna was truly at his best.

01:14:02.060 He died at the third race into the 94 season.

01:14:05.280 Most observers, myself included, would say Senna peaked in 93.

01:14:10.740 His best season, even though he didn't win the championship in 93, he was in a very inferior

01:14:15.680 car, still managed to win five races and give us some of the most heroic performances

01:14:21.160 we've ever seen, including Donnington.

01:14:23.500 And so when you have a person who dies at their prime doing the thing they love, there's a

01:14:30.440 part of you that says there are worse ways to go.

01:14:33.400 The context is such that it is sadder than I think it would normally be in that one guy

01:14:38.700 already died.

01:14:39.420 Another guy almost died.

01:14:40.780 And he had those reservations about driving.

01:14:43.280 That complicates my verdict on the whole thing.

01:14:48.220 But in general, I find that I sometimes I'm talking to people and the singular measure

01:14:55.500 of life for a lot of people is just longevity.

01:14:58.500 It's just duration.

01:15:00.060 Duration.

01:15:00.880 And I look at some of these people.

01:15:02.600 I remember when Paul Walker died and this is...

01:15:05.380 Did you know Paul?

01:15:06.540 I never met Paul.

01:15:08.660 Shockingly, because we were like...

01:15:10.160 It's amazing.

01:15:10.560 Yeah.

01:15:11.300 Intersecting car culture-y stuff.

01:15:13.160 It seems like I would have.

01:15:14.160 And I have friends that were friends with him and adored him.

01:15:16.980 But when he died, obviously, it's super sad.

01:15:19.920 But there was some part of my brain that was like, if you were to have measured somehow

01:15:26.520 the amount of experience he had had on planet Earth in that period, I would argue very, very

01:15:34.580 few people had lived a bigger life or more of a life or had traveled more and met more

01:15:39.760 people and had more experiences and had more heightened everything.

01:15:42.600 So what I would not want is a very boring, subtle existence with no mountains and valleys

01:15:52.220 for 130 years.

01:15:53.680 That just doesn't appeal to me at all.

01:15:55.860 And then I also am not overly saccharine about death in general in that I always remember,

01:16:02.720 I remind myself, it's sad for the people left behind.

01:16:06.400 I mean, if I believed in a higher power and stuff, maybe I would have a different view.

01:16:11.560 But for me, it's like, you're alive and then you're not.

01:16:14.560 And you don't know you're not.

01:16:15.520 So there's no period of being sad that you're no longer alive.

01:16:19.700 So when I just put all these things into evaluating, I don't know that I'm as sad as

01:16:25.240 other people are, because I think a lot of these people ended up living 10x the life

01:16:30.160 of someone that lives to be 110.

01:16:31.940 If you presented me with the options, if I live like Senna to 34 or I live like some

01:16:38.580 of my neighbors growing up to 105, I would pick Senna.

01:16:42.580 I think I would.

01:16:43.640 And I even, I engage in a lot of behaviors that are dangerous and people scratch their

01:16:49.160 head at.

01:16:50.060 And I just feel like this is the only version I want of it.

01:16:54.700 So whatever the consequences, I am knowledgeable of it.

01:16:59.440 I accept it.

01:17:00.860 Obviously, a family complicates that.

01:17:05.440 I was just about to ask you that question.

01:17:07.760 The legend has it that Enzo Ferrari used to keep tabs on his drivers based on different

01:17:15.380 milestones in life.

01:17:16.540 And he would discount their lap times based on that.

01:17:18.960 So once a driver had a girlfriend, two-tenths slower.

01:17:22.720 Once he got married, five-tenths slower.

01:17:25.500 Once he had a kid, one second slower.

01:17:28.840 And it's just, as the stakes get higher, you naturally just can't be all out anymore.

01:17:36.000 It's interesting.

01:17:36.880 So there's things I do or that crosses my mind.

01:17:39.580 And there are other things that simply don't.

01:17:41.680 I think maybe from years of being an addict, my compartmentalization is very strong, psychopathically

01:17:48.440 strong.

01:17:49.000 So I can be doing one thing.

01:17:50.380 It's like, I can rule out the whole rest of the world if I choose to.

01:17:55.060 So when I'm driving on the 405 in Los Angeles on my Multistrada and I'm lane splitting and

01:18:02.340 I'm fucking flying like I did when I was a motorcycle messenger, those times I go, slow

01:18:08.540 down.

01:18:09.440 I want your little girls to have a dad for as long as they can.

01:18:12.820 But when I'm on the track just Monday at CODA, that's why I like the activity is not only

01:18:21.660 did no one in my life enter my mind, none of my problems entered my mind, none of my

01:18:25.780 anxieties entered my mind, none of my goals in life were on the table.

01:18:29.560 It's turn to turn, turn to turn, present, present, present, present.

01:18:33.740 And in the present, it's just me and the motorcycle and the track.

01:18:36.520 And for me, that buys me so much in the rest of my life.

01:18:41.180 It is like, I imagine what people who do three month retreats in India get from meditating.

01:18:46.960 It's just this very specific, elevated moment of clarity and presence that I don't know how

01:18:55.560 I would get otherwise.

01:18:57.220 In that situation on the track, I don't ever think about it.

01:18:59.760 I had a single moment where I had a race in Fontana and it was when our oldest daughter,

01:19:06.740 Lincoln, was probably only about 11 months old.

01:19:11.300 She had never had a big cold yet or a sickness.

01:19:14.960 And so she was really sick, which made her, if you have kids, you know, extra snuggly, extra

01:19:21.540 docile.

01:19:22.700 And I remember like picking her up out of the crib and I was holding her and she was so

01:19:26.900 snuggly and I did think, I got to get on the road to get to Fontana.

01:19:31.600 And I thought, I really should stay here the rest of the day and snuggle this little girl.

01:19:35.560 And the whole ride to Fontana, which is pretty far from where I live in LA, the conversation

01:19:40.780 was, okay, you've gotten five trophies this year.

01:19:45.600 What are we after?

01:19:46.640 What is the number of trophies before the ego feels like you did it?

01:19:51.200 You're a big boy.

01:19:52.240 You're a man.

01:19:53.460 What's the number?

01:19:54.380 We should at least know, are we after 20 trophies?

01:19:57.480 Are we after three?

01:19:58.700 Is four enough?

01:20:00.120 And I do think that line of thinking does enter my mind on many topics.

01:20:05.200 Like how many movies did you want to direct?

01:20:07.340 You should kind of know.

01:20:08.640 You shouldn't just kind of aimlessly be doing it.

01:20:10.720 Or so it's interesting.

01:20:13.120 I bounced back and forth, but I did decide after Fontana, I'm like, I'm giving this a rest.

01:20:17.740 Also a dude in the same series died in Europe.

01:20:20.300 It runs the Super Trofeo series, I think ran in three continents and a guy burnt to death

01:20:25.340 that same weekend.

01:20:26.620 And so I was like, all right, we're not doing this.

01:20:29.340 We did it.

01:20:30.040 We're proud of ourselves.

01:20:31.240 We're a man.

01:20:32.320 We're all grown up and we're going to stop this.

01:20:34.540 And about two years ago, I was like, I think I'm ready to race again.

01:20:38.540 So it just changed.

01:20:40.100 What's your analysis?

01:20:42.280 I completely hear that argument. 0.65

01:20:44.860 And yes, Senna lived 10 lives in his 34 years.

01:20:49.860 And not only that, I mean, he's one of the few people who still matters in his death.

01:20:54.300 Yeah.

01:20:54.740 He truly matters.

01:20:55.900 Yeah.

01:20:56.100 Meaning you almost don't go through a single telecast of a race currently where you don't

01:21:00.460 hear his name once.

01:21:01.500 Yeah.

01:21:02.100 And even beyond just that, in terms of what he stood for still matters.

01:21:06.200 If you look at the Senna Foundation, before he died, he had spoken to his older sister

01:21:11.600 and said, I really want to get more formal in my giving.

01:21:15.940 Up until that point, he had just been very quietly giving mostly to education, mostly

01:21:21.480 because as you can understand, the poverty in Brazil was so significant at that time.

01:21:25.920 But he said to his sister, Viviane, I want to make this more structured.

01:21:30.480 I want to create a foundation where we do this right.

01:21:33.820 And of course, he would go on to die very soon after that.

01:21:37.440 But his sister honored that wish.

01:21:39.180 And now the Senna Foundation, which has probably given over half a billion dollars to education

01:21:44.780 in Brazil, is one of the most important foundations.

01:21:48.960 And so in that sense, like he does live on.

01:21:51.900 He lives on in the sense that anybody who thinks about this sport knows what greatness

01:21:59.040 was.

01:22:00.140 Even if you don't like him.

01:22:01.020 Believe me, I have a friend who doesn't even really like him that much.

01:22:04.900 It's hard to be friends with him sometimes.

01:22:06.340 No, I'm just kidding.

01:22:07.040 But he's adamant that Lewis is better than Senna.

01:22:10.340 And he sort of has a negative view of everything Senna.

01:22:12.820 He thinks of, oh, Senna was horrible when he crashed into Prost in Suzuka in 91.

01:22:18.540 Or it was 90, actually.

01:22:20.060 But that said, his impact on the sport is...

01:22:22.840 The other thing that's worth mentioning, and I don't think anybody would dispute this,

01:22:26.420 his death did change the sport forever, in the sense that it changed safety instantaneously.

01:22:33.120 It's not that he was the first driver to die.

01:22:35.880 And you could even argue that there was a comparable death in the 1960s when Jim Clark

01:22:40.860 died.

01:22:41.360 Jim Clark was the reigning world champion when he died in 1960, God, 1967, I believe.

01:22:47.560 But the death...

01:22:48.680 First of all, he died in a Formula Two race.

01:22:50.560 Back then, drivers would drive all series.

01:22:52.980 Even if you were an F1 driver, you still drove F2 to pay the bills.

01:22:55.460 The sport was so much smaller back then.

01:22:58.280 So Jim Clark actually died in an F2 race, but it wasn't seen by the world.

01:23:02.840 By the time Senna died, the sport was much bigger, and it completely changed everything.

01:23:11.020 Meaning the sport got so serious.

01:23:13.780 It was like Earnhardt dying in NASCAR.

01:23:15.600 That's right.

01:23:16.100 You get a Hans device immediately.

01:23:18.180 Yeah.

01:23:18.520 Although, wasn't the Hans available before Earnhardt died?

01:23:20.220 It was available, but it wasn't mandatory.

01:23:21.860 It wasn't mandatory.

01:23:22.580 Yeah.

01:23:22.820 And Earnhardt refused to wear it, right?

01:23:24.340 They all did.

01:23:25.460 They got goalies that wouldn't wear a face mask.

01:23:27.580 It was like, again, this male pride macho-ness.

01:23:30.140 Yeah.

01:23:30.700 Hans would have saved him.

01:23:32.100 Yeah.

01:23:32.220 He had a Baszler skull fracture.

01:23:33.620 Yeah.

01:23:34.640 So upsetting.

01:23:35.480 You know, it's interesting.

01:23:36.360 There's a really eerie interview of Dale Earnhardt the day Senna died.

01:23:41.160 So it's May 1st, 94, and Earnhardt's being interviewed, having won a race, and they're like,

01:23:46.180 hey...

01:23:46.680 Even though it's NASCAR, totally different series, they're like, hey, we just want to acknowledge

01:23:49.800 Senna's death.

01:23:50.420 And, you know, Earnhardt said a lot of nice things.

01:23:52.040 He loved him, too.

01:23:53.020 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:23:54.140 He seems to be very unifying in people's love.

01:23:58.560 Yeah.

01:23:58.980 It would be incomplete to say it's all statistics-based, because it's not.

01:24:05.480 Dare we say in public why we both aren't drawn to Lewis?

01:24:10.240 I wonder if in exploring that, it would reveal why we like the ones we do.

01:24:14.700 Well, I mean, it's all different for me.

01:24:18.100 Obviously, I have a very close personal connection to Sebastian Vettel.

01:24:21.860 And also, I had stopped paying attention to F1 after 1997.

01:24:26.900 Okay.

01:24:27.180 So in 1997, Jacques Villeneuve, also Canadian, and the son of Gilles Villeneuve.

01:24:33.260 So I grew up paying a lot of attention to Jacques Villeneuve, because he was racing IndyCar before

01:24:38.020 he went to F1.

01:24:39.340 When Villeneuve won the title in 97, I was in medical school.

01:24:44.420 And that was kind of a period of my life when I just decided, like, I'm going to start paying

01:24:49.780 more attention to school than sports.

01:24:51.620 Like, I stopped watching football.

01:24:52.820 I didn't pay any attention to F1 at all, beyond a little bit.

01:24:57.100 So here we entered.

01:24:58.180 So Hocken and won 98 and 99.

01:25:00.900 And then Schumacher had that run of five victories.

01:25:03.920 I will say this.

01:25:04.920 Deep down, there was a tiny, tiny part of me that didn't like Schumacher and held him.

01:25:08.720 And this is going to sound ridiculous.

01:25:10.240 Held him partially responsible for Senna's death.

01:25:12.940 Because he was the one applying the pressure.

01:25:14.960 And he was driving a car that I felt was illegal.

01:25:17.920 And Senna believed was illegal.

01:25:19.180 Well, Senna also believed he was outrunning a car that had traction control when his car

01:25:24.160 was undriveable.

01:25:25.300 Yeah.

01:25:25.560 Well, we must also admit, Senna had gone to Williams to drive a car that was going to have

01:25:29.800 a huge technological advantage over everyone else.

01:25:32.100 So it was like anyone would have used whatever.

01:25:34.220 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:25:35.040 But the difference is active suspension was fully legal.

01:25:37.460 Williams just had a better...

01:25:38.460 Sure, yeah.

01:25:39.040 Although, you know, it's really interesting.

01:25:40.440 If you go back and look, the active suspension of Senna's car in 93 was probably just as good

01:25:46.440 as the Williams.

01:25:47.100 The reason the Williams car was so dominant was it had the Renault engine that was incredible.

01:25:53.420 And the Honda engine in 93, the Ford Cosworth engine was nowhere near as good that year.

01:26:00.000 And so Senna, I mean, again, because he still managed to win five races in a season where

01:26:05.100 his car was clearly outclassed.

01:26:08.140 But the point is, everybody could have active.

01:26:09.960 It's just McLaren and Williams had a better active than everybody else.

01:26:12.360 Williams also happened to have the best engine by far.

01:26:14.600 So it was hands down the best car.

01:26:16.120 But the detuning of the active was hardest on them to recover.

01:26:20.920 But I didn't come back to paying attention to F1 until Vettel's years.

01:26:25.640 Okay.

01:26:26.040 So Vettel won his first title in 2010.

01:26:29.080 He won four in a row.

01:26:30.800 Also Adrian Newey's cars.

01:26:32.140 So 10, 11, 12, 13.

01:26:36.380 And then what happened is you had that huge rule change into 2014 and that created the

01:26:42.180 new...

01:26:42.660 So every time there's a rule change, right?

01:26:43.920 That's typically when you create a new dominance.

01:26:45.620 And that's when the dominance shifted from Red Bull to Mercedes before it's now coming back

01:26:50.420 to Red Bull.

01:26:50.940 Because they nailed the engine, right?

01:26:52.220 They nailed the engine.

01:26:53.560 Absolutely nailed the engine.

01:26:54.580 And Red Bull spent the next six seasons with a lawnmower engine.

01:27:01.000 And then it was only in 2020 that they got the Honda back.

01:27:04.080 And then by 2021, Max wins, even though Lewis actually has a better car in 21.

01:27:08.580 He does.

01:27:09.300 I would argue a much better car.

01:27:11.240 Yep.

01:27:11.380 If I had to say, first of all, what I like about Lewis is something I also like about

01:27:18.120 Senna, which is this is an outsider.

01:27:20.780 He brings like a rock star quality to it.

01:27:24.200 He's like fashionable.

01:27:25.920 He transcends the sport.

01:27:27.780 I think all those things are cool.

01:27:29.500 It's awesome that there's a black Formula One.

01:27:31.840 Like I can't help but love that.

01:27:34.280 But by the time I started watching it, the Mercedes was just so dominant.

01:27:39.180 And Alonso was someone who came out last year and said this publicly, which is like, you

01:27:44.700 have to kind of evaluate these people by, did they win first against their teammate or

01:27:49.940 did they win first against another team?

01:27:52.460 For Alonso, it's more significant if you win against another team.

01:27:55.900 And if you just look at where Mercedes was finishing all those years, it's one, two, it's 0.73

01:28:01.920 one, two, it's one, two.

01:28:03.440 And the fact that Lewis was complaining last year that Red Bull was so dominant when in fact

01:28:08.020 there's just reams of data of him qualifying 1.4 seconds ahead certain times of second place.

01:28:15.660 You know, Max was the underdog.

01:28:17.960 Like when I entered, it was just very easy.

01:28:20.920 This dude's won seven years in a row.

01:28:22.660 I don't want to see that again.

01:28:24.040 And the car is so significantly better.

01:28:26.480 It's not even remotely fair.

01:28:28.520 I would come to learn it's never remotely fair.

01:28:30.840 But at that time I was shocked.

01:28:32.320 Well, this is an interesting point, though, that people ask me a lot about, which is what's

01:28:37.620 the difference between F1 today and F1 in the 80s?

01:28:40.820 And one of the biggest differences is F1 has always been a sport about the limit of mechanical

01:28:47.100 potential and the limit of human potential.

01:28:49.580 And how do you merge those?

01:28:50.900 But the difference is, in the 80s and frankly into the late 90s, or at least the mid 90s,

01:28:59.360 the balance between driver and car was about 50-50, just to put a stake in the ground.

01:29:04.680 Meaning it was 50% the car and 50% the driver.

01:29:08.640 That's unimaginable right now.

01:29:10.720 Correct.

01:29:11.320 Today, it's probably 75-25, maybe 80-20.

01:29:15.520 Yeah, I mean, with certain drivers, you could put it up to 25.

01:29:19.840 But in general, right.

01:29:21.940 In other words, the difference is, if you put Max into the Al-Williams car today, he

01:29:28.260 wouldn't win a race.

01:29:29.520 He can't win.

01:29:30.200 He can't win a single race.

01:29:31.580 No.

01:29:32.100 But unless it's raining.

01:29:33.740 Right.

01:29:34.160 But here's the point, right?

01:29:35.060 You go back into the 80s, Senna's in a Tolman that first year, and he basically wins

01:29:40.640 Monica.

01:29:41.400 Schumacher's originally right in the Benetton car, which is not competitive.

01:29:45.020 And he's podium.

01:29:46.520 Yeah, but he eventually did win in that.

01:29:47.780 But again, if you just go back and look at how much Senna was able to do before he got

01:29:53.300 into the McLaren.

01:29:54.860 Perfect car, yeah.

01:29:55.260 Before he got into the perfect car, he was still clobbering it.

01:29:58.660 Yeah.

01:29:59.040 Not every race, but there's also, there's another set of variables, which I think made

01:30:03.160 the racing back then more fun too, is that reliability was an enormous factor too.

01:30:07.600 Huge.

01:30:07.680 So like you could have the best car, but every car is going to DNF two races a season because

01:30:13.260 the reliability just wasn't there.

01:30:15.300 So that threw things into a much more unpredictable.

01:30:19.440 Now, when you see Max retire because of a mechanical failure, you're like, how did this

01:30:24.820 happen?

01:30:25.340 Someone's getting fired.

01:30:26.540 This doesn't happen.

01:30:28.020 Right.

01:30:28.100 But back then it was like every three races, you lost a handful of cars, grenaded their

01:30:32.820 motor and did all kinds of stuff.

01:30:35.380 Yeah.

01:30:35.660 So that made it more interesting.

01:30:37.420 I think it's, you look at the Donningtons, you look at these races where Senna's ability

01:30:43.340 to drive in the rain was so magical.

01:30:47.960 There's a few dudes in MotoGP currently that are that way.

01:30:50.960 It's like, it starts raining and you're like, okay, Jack Miller, you're up.

01:30:54.500 You're going to destroy today on a way less competitive bike.

01:30:59.640 Angelo Pirello, who just passed away exactly a year ago, but Angelo, who I never knew in

01:31:05.700 person, but I got to know him through video.

01:31:07.540 So I FaceTime with him a few times and had the chance to speak with him several times over

01:31:12.460 the last five years prior to his death.

01:31:14.340 Angelo was the team principal for DAP, which was the premier karting team of the seventies

01:31:22.220 and eighties.

01:31:22.680 So Senna and another guy, Fullerton, were sort of the two biggest names in European karting

01:31:29.160 in the late seventies and early eighties.

01:31:31.120 I remember him saying that as good as you think Senna was in an F1 car, he was even better

01:31:38.480 in a kart.

01:31:39.840 He said he was so good in a kart and so good in the rain.

01:31:44.340 That when it was raining, he would usually try to petition the marshals to cancel the

01:31:49.060 race and just give Senna the trophy.

01:31:50.480 He's like, why bother ruining the karts today?

01:31:53.480 We know who's going to win.

01:31:55.000 Just give Senna the trophy.

01:31:56.640 And then of course they would say no, they race, Senna would win.

01:31:59.880 I mean, double lap everybody.

01:32:02.360 And it's a cool aspect.

01:32:03.700 Yeah.

01:32:04.080 I'll say this, like as a really, really lousy driver, it's hard to put in words how much

01:32:10.500 more difficult it gets in the rain.

01:32:12.880 And yeah, I immediately go straight to the motorcycles watching MotoGP and watching them

01:32:18.760 in the rain and admitting to myself, they're turning faster lap times at that track than

01:32:25.620 I can on drives is so humbling.

01:32:30.040 And yes, Senna on any track in the world, full downpour would destroy you on the perfect

01:32:37.240 day, which is so humbling.

01:32:39.520 And again, it's like watching what he's doing and you can see there's some amazing video

01:32:45.040 when he's in the John Player special in 85, his first livery every, by the way.

01:32:49.900 Yeah, it is.

01:32:50.940 When he wins his first race in Portugal that year, it is pissing rain.

01:32:57.340 He is driving down the straights and the car is doing this hydroplaning, literally dancing

01:33:03.340 as he's going down the straight and other drivers are spinning everywhere and anywhere.

01:33:09.000 Yeah.

01:33:09.640 That's a very special feel.

01:33:11.500 And by the way, you look at Max in the rain, he's head and shoulders above the others.

01:33:15.420 He don't care.

01:33:16.380 Back to Lewis.

01:33:17.340 So I can acknowledge that he is absolutely brilliant.

01:33:22.060 I mean, the guy's absolutely brilliant.

01:33:25.000 He's so smooth.

01:33:26.960 He's so savvy.

01:33:28.820 If I'm critical, he doesn't fight.

01:33:33.180 And so who I've ended up loving in MotoGP is like Valentino Rossi's the god of all gods.

01:33:38.860 I think he's the god of all motor sports.

01:33:41.280 What he did, I don't think any car driver's ever done.

01:33:43.760 And his willingness to fight, literally kick his opponent while they're in a turn, is that

01:33:51.120 X factor that I'm so drawn to.

01:33:53.420 And how many people don't like him for the same reason?

01:33:56.820 Because again, there are people who would say, look, nobody fought harder than Senna.

01:34:00.640 But then there's a subset of people that would say, well, they don't like that.

01:34:04.260 Yeah.

01:34:04.520 Yeah.

01:34:05.000 Now, he has those two incidents where A, he was crashed into to take him out of winning

01:34:09.820 a championship.

01:34:10.480 And then he also crashed into somebody to secure his championship.

01:34:14.160 For me, I get it.

01:34:16.440 That's what he's there to do.

01:34:17.860 I have defended Max.

01:34:20.400 Now, listen, when Max would not let Checo, he wouldn't help Checo at all, which was such

01:34:28.100 a bummer.

01:34:28.640 If any driver in the history of F1 deserved the help, it was Checo because Checo fell on 1.00

01:34:35.040 his sword in 2021 over and over again to help him beat Lewis.

01:34:39.720 The last race of the year, he sacrificed his quali lap to tow him.

01:34:44.320 And then he held up Lewis.

01:34:45.800 I mean, this guy did everything.

01:34:48.300 Did Max do that because he believed Checo had purposely crashed in Monaco that year in

01:34:53.120 quali?

01:34:53.620 No.

01:34:54.380 Well, personally, I've not asked Max this, but for me, it's so crystal clear.

01:34:59.760 He's even been on the radio saying it out loud.

01:35:01.680 So we've heard him say it.

01:35:03.120 He's like, no, no, I told you I'm never doing that.

01:35:05.500 And it's true. 0.56

01:35:07.220 Max gets in a car and he's going to finish as high up as he can, period.

01:35:12.120 Nothing else in the world matters.

01:35:14.200 No other humans.

01:35:15.440 There's no paying back a favor.

01:35:17.680 He can't not try to drive as fast as he can at all times, period.

01:35:22.100 I love it.

01:35:22.900 If you hate Max, of course you would hate that.

01:35:25.580 It's deplorable, but I love him.

01:35:28.020 So I'm like, he is a cyborg.

01:35:29.980 He gets in the car and he's got to get the very best outcome that's possible, period.

01:35:34.780 Yeah.

01:35:34.940 It's like the scorpion who asks the turtle for, you know, the story of the scorpion.

01:35:39.960 So a scorpion and a turtle are on one side of the river and the scorpion says, hey, can

01:35:44.240 you help me get to the other side of the river?

01:35:45.880 And the turtle's like, are you kidding me?

01:35:47.820 Like you're a scorpion.

01:35:48.680 You're going to kill me.

01:35:49.400 Yeah.

01:35:49.820 And he's like, why would I do that?

01:35:51.740 Like, you're going to help me to the other side of the river.

01:35:53.240 And this turtle thinks to himself, well, it's true.

01:35:55.600 He can't kill me because we'll both drown.

01:35:57.620 And sure enough, the scorpion hops on the turtle's back.

01:36:00.360 They're going across the river and halfway across the turtle's like, ow, what the hell

01:36:03.600 is that?

01:36:04.500 And he turns and he says, you stung me.

01:36:06.460 And the scorpion says, I'm sorry, it's my nature.

01:36:08.700 Like, you know, he just can't, you know, it's like this.

01:36:10.800 And yes, I think there's something to your nature.

01:36:13.720 So I guess I overlook it because I don't think he has the capacity to be generous.

01:36:18.300 I think he has a single focus.

01:36:20.680 And that's what I love about him.

01:36:22.100 That's why I love watching him drive.

01:36:23.620 And he'll die.

01:36:24.840 It's so obvious.

01:36:25.840 He'll fucking die in any given turn.

01:36:28.080 That 2021 season is the greatest thing ever.

01:36:30.680 What a time to like, I had only watched maybe two years up until that point and to land at

01:36:35.100 that moment.

01:36:35.940 And of course, I love Max.

01:36:38.240 People love Lewis.

01:36:39.300 I fought with many people over that last race, which is so ridiculous.

01:36:43.460 I find it.

01:36:43.980 So do we have the same explanation, which is like, we always unlap cars.

01:36:47.620 What is everyone talking about?

01:36:48.720 The weird thing that happened was that they didn't unlap the cars quicker.

01:36:51.880 Sure.

01:36:52.280 Yeah.

01:36:52.680 And that the purists would argue, yes, you should have always unlapped the cars, but

01:36:57.180 they should have unlapped all the cars. 0.80

01:36:59.420 Yeah.

01:36:59.800 So let's say they would have unlapped all of them.

01:37:01.680 We're in the same situation.

01:37:02.800 They didn't do them all.

01:37:04.000 Great.

01:37:04.280 But what is absolutely standard is they should have been unlapped and probably earlier than

01:37:08.380 they were.

01:37:08.800 And so the other issue that everyone likes to neglect is that people refer to that as

01:37:14.100 the greatest injustice in F1.

01:37:15.960 It only tells me how shallow their history is of F1.

01:37:18.900 Well, also, it's very reminiscent, in my opinion, of the Prost-Senna battles.

01:37:25.900 They always went to Prost.

01:37:27.900 He got the call every time.

01:37:30.360 And sorry, but from my point of view, Lewis had gotten every call that year.

01:37:35.060 Absolutely.

01:37:35.460 Every time they went into the turn at the same time would have been ruled a racing incident

01:37:38.880 any other time.

01:37:39.680 Max had to give up his spot to Lewis 10 times that year.

01:37:43.780 And certainly if the roles were reversed, he would have been going in with more points

01:37:48.060 to begin with.

01:37:49.440 Also, he would have not given up a lap earlier in the race.

01:37:52.560 Like, there's a lot of things, I think, actually what you saw is like him succeed in spite

01:37:57.640 of the fact that every call went to Lewis that whole season.

01:38:00.600 Yeah, to me, that's the most interesting season because the better driver beat the

01:38:05.980 better car.

01:38:06.920 That's the first time you really saw that in a decade.

01:38:11.460 Yes, totally.

01:38:13.060 The evidence is clear through, what's his name?

01:38:16.300 Our favorite Finnish man, his teammate.

01:38:18.960 Oh, Valtteri.

01:38:20.060 Yeah, Botas.

01:38:21.380 Botas is winning races.

01:38:23.160 He's getting pull.

01:38:24.140 I love Botas, but I think his post-Mercedes career gives us a sense of where he's at in

01:38:30.320 the pack.

01:38:31.680 And so the fact that he was regularly winning races and getting a pull position, it's hard

01:38:36.380 not to want to see them on the same team, but I don't even think it would be that fun

01:38:40.320 to watch.

01:38:41.720 Yeah.

01:38:42.660 If you had to order who you think the fastest drivers are right now, what would you dare

01:38:47.100 say out loud in public?

01:38:49.400 I think Max is the fastest by quite a bit.

01:38:52.380 I think Fernando is the second fastest.

01:38:55.240 Again, you're asking me who the best drivers are, not taking into consideration their cars.

01:38:59.500 Correct.

01:38:59.980 Yeah.

01:39:00.300 Yeah.

01:39:00.780 I think Max is-

01:39:01.200 Like they're all in the exact same spec model.

01:39:04.120 That's even a difficult question for the following reason, right?

01:39:06.940 Which is different cars have different styles.

01:39:09.140 Sure.

01:39:09.480 The Red Bull is really built around Max's style.

01:39:12.800 Yeah, he likes oversteer.

01:39:14.400 There's certain things he loves.

01:39:15.460 Yeah.

01:39:16.020 And the way Max drives, again, this is another reason why I think Max is so good.

01:39:22.900 Is he drives a car that has a couple of features.

01:39:27.920 It's a car that can be driven very fast, but has a very narrow operating window to be driven

01:39:34.580 fast.

01:39:34.880 Very hard to drive fast.

01:39:35.920 It's very hard to drive it fast.

01:39:38.180 I think in many ways, it's a testament to how far Checo has come that he is now at least

01:39:43.320 three races into this season.

01:39:45.360 He's doing well this year.

01:39:45.980 He's doing quite well.

01:39:47.020 Yeah.

01:39:47.380 And I think he deserves credit for that.

01:39:49.080 Yeah, yeah.

01:39:49.320 Because a lot of other drivers got spit out.

01:39:51.840 Gastly and Albon got absolutely aggressor rated.

01:39:54.820 I love Checo.

01:39:54.860 I couldn't love him more.

01:39:55.840 I think he is the most stand-up guy out there.

01:39:59.300 I love Alonso for so many obvious reasons.

01:40:01.840 Yeah, so I think Alonso is the second best driver on the grid.

01:40:05.620 My question marks are, I think it's possible Lando is insanely talented.

01:40:13.880 Yeah.

01:40:14.360 I mean, I would love to see Max and Lando in the same car to see what would go down.

01:40:20.060 I think that Lando is overachieved in that McLaren every single year and does things that are

01:40:26.860 impossible.

01:40:27.920 I also love Charles.

01:40:29.920 It's interesting.

01:40:30.840 Science is dominating him this year, but in general, I think, and again, we look at the

01:40:35.940 pole position, why we would say Senna is so great.

01:40:38.860 Charles' one laps are some of the best I've ever seen where you're like, oh, how did he

01:40:44.340 just pull that out?

01:40:45.680 I think he's so special.

01:40:46.820 So for me, I'm confused whether I think Charles or Lando's faster.

01:40:50.900 Well, I mean, the problem is Charles, I think he makes too many mistakes in the races.

01:40:55.260 If you asked me three years ago, look at all the guys on the grid, how many of these guys

01:41:00.960 will win a championship in their career?

01:41:03.020 I would have said Charles.

01:41:04.100 I would have said Lando.

01:41:05.040 I would have said George.

01:41:06.620 I'm not positive it will be any of them.

01:41:09.700 I mean, it should be.

01:41:10.860 It's hard to imagine at least one of them not winning a title.

01:41:14.140 I don't think it's a guarantee anymore.

01:41:16.040 I don't either.

01:41:17.300 It just really drives me mad to see them in such different cars, especially Lando in

01:41:24.280 the McLaren.

01:41:25.060 It's just like, it was a dog.

01:41:27.260 It was garbage.

01:41:28.780 It was good for a few races last year.

01:41:31.260 You're like, are they back?

01:41:32.640 And then this year, there's no consistency, so I don't know what it is.

01:41:36.020 But I was shocked to see how much faster he drove the car than Danny, who I love.

01:41:41.900 What do you make of Danny's stint at McLaren?

01:41:43.760 I've never asked him, and we're friends, and I think that's why we're friends.

01:41:47.280 I don't ask him any questions about F1, but my armchair expert analysis would be, A, the

01:41:55.480 car was built for Lando in the same way that the car is built for Max.

01:41:59.660 I think that's very obvious that the car is solely designed for Lando's strengths.

01:42:04.700 I think that's a big issue.

01:42:06.020 I also think that third team in two years is unsettling and disruptive, and I just don't

01:42:14.960 know that he ever found his rhythm there.

01:42:17.860 I think some of it was mental, but I was shocked.

01:42:22.120 I was quite shocked.

01:42:23.520 I mean, he did win a race in Lando, didn't it, which I love, and that gets into this other

01:42:27.720 weird thing, the magic of people who can win and not win.

01:42:31.160 It's like there have been basketball players that are as good as some of the guys that won,

01:42:35.520 and there's some people are winners and some people aren't.

01:42:37.680 I don't know what that magic thing is, but Lando, as good as he is, he just can't finish

01:42:42.960 above second, it's so interesting, and that Danny, who has won disproportionately for how

01:42:50.180 consistent he's driven, of course he got in there and won, and it's just interesting.

01:42:55.740 And it was a great race to win at Monza.

01:42:57.720 Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was exciting.

01:43:01.240 Carlos, I think, is having a great year.

01:43:03.700 I want him, because Carlos has been so inconsistent.

01:43:08.160 If there's something we can be critical of Carlos, it's like he drives like a striped-ass 1.00

01:43:12.740 eight, three races in a row, and then he crashes three races in a row, and you're like, what

01:43:16.440 is going on with him?

01:43:18.380 But somehow the consistency seems to be there, and I think the cosmic joke of all jokes, which

01:43:25.040 is happening right now, it's the only thing I think is interesting about this season, is

01:43:30.820 that Ferrari is getting rid of their fastest driver to overpay for the second fastest driver

01:43:37.560 on Mercedes.

01:43:38.900 It's so Ferrari.

01:43:40.600 It should be a t-shirt.

01:43:41.700 What are they thinking watching this season?

01:43:45.160 Yeah, who knows?

01:43:46.920 I'm also surprised that Lewis is going to Ferrari, because I believe Mercedes will be a better

01:43:56.780 team in 26 than Ferrari.

01:43:59.520 In other words, I have more confidence in Toto than anybody else to turn that team around,

01:44:06.160 and I just think the Ferrari of the Schumacher era is a totally different team.

01:44:12.780 It has nothing to do with the team today.

01:44:15.680 You know, I think Fred is more competent than his predecessor, but I still think that culturally

01:44:21.020 that team struggles.

01:44:22.060 Well, someone was saying, which I thought was kind of an astute observation I didn't realize,

01:44:27.040 is they said, you have to realize Ferrari operates as a national team.

01:44:32.800 It's not like any of the other teams.

01:44:35.040 That is the nation's team.

01:44:37.540 It's in the newspapers what they should do.

01:44:40.200 There is some sense there that is much, you know, it's very unique to Ferrari.

01:44:44.380 That's why Ferrari was so successful in the Schumacher era, which is it was not an Italian 1.00

01:44:48.980 run team.

01:44:49.980 It was a French run team.

01:44:51.080 Oh, really?

01:44:52.080 Yeah.

01:44:52.580 All the leadership was German, French.

01:44:54.920 Like, it wasn't being run by Italians.

01:44:57.020 A lot of people say that, yeah, it's more of a committee than any other team because of

01:45:01.200 it being the national symbol of Italy.

01:45:04.100 My WhatsApp group, my F1 WhatsApp group, the thing that gives that group the most joy is

01:45:09.680 watching how bad Alpine is doing right now.

01:45:11.860 No, that's like, that's the source of the most amusement.

01:45:14.920 And why did they previously hate Alpine?

01:45:18.400 Look, I-

01:45:18.920 That's been the biggest drop in performance I've seen since I've been watching it.

01:45:22.800 Alpine last year to this year.

01:45:24.480 Yeah, but even last year they finished.

01:45:27.080 I think they really underperformed last year for what was expected.

01:45:30.080 Right.

01:45:30.440 But those two were like getting into the points every other race.

01:45:33.840 Now they're like 19 and 20 every race.

01:45:37.000 They're worse than Williams or Haas.

01:45:38.720 Yeah, I don't know.

01:45:38.980 No, I think there's just, it's very confusing why Alpine would do so poorly because they do

01:45:43.340 well in other series.

01:45:44.880 They're supercars and hypercars and prototypes.

01:45:47.980 These other cars, they do a pretty good job.

01:45:50.180 So that's interesting.

01:45:51.740 And I just love how much those two hate each other.

01:45:53.660 That's amusing as well.

01:45:54.860 It is.

01:45:55.500 I think they're the most hated teammates.

01:45:56.960 And my wife is obsessed with Pierre.

01:45:59.340 She loves him.

01:46:00.480 Loves Pierre.

01:46:01.040 Yeah, he's got a following.

01:46:02.540 Girls love Pierre.

01:46:04.660 He's having fun.

01:46:05.580 My wife loves her some Pierre.

01:46:07.880 Is that number one for her?

01:46:09.180 Yeah, it is.

01:46:09.780 Really?

01:46:10.280 Yep.

01:46:10.620 And she's got a Pierre signed hat.

01:46:12.300 It's to Jill from Pierre.

01:46:15.080 The tripod.

01:46:16.080 Did he sign it?

01:46:16.660 The tripod?

01:46:17.480 No.

01:46:18.100 You know that famously last year.

01:46:20.000 He was in an interview and they said, what's your nickname?

01:46:22.260 And he said, tripod.

01:46:23.320 Stop it.

01:46:23.900 Yes.

01:46:24.360 Stop it.

01:46:25.120 In an interview on TV.

01:46:25.720 And my daughter loves Danny and she's got a Danny autographed hat and it's to Olivia and

01:46:33.300 it's like, oh, she's obsessed with Danny.

01:46:36.860 And I'll tell you something really funny.

01:46:38.440 I don't know Danny, but I've met him a few times.

01:46:40.180 And the last time I bumped into him, which was last year, well, he knew who I was.

01:46:44.820 So he said, hey, Peter, we got chit chatting, blah, blah, blah.

01:46:46.960 And then he said, how's Olivia doing?

01:46:50.220 And I was like, what?

01:46:51.780 No.

01:46:51.980 How do you know?

01:46:53.420 And a year earlier, he had met my daughter, taken a picture with her and signed a hat for

01:46:58.540 her.

01:46:58.900 That's impossible.

01:46:59.420 And I was like, how do you remember that?

01:47:03.380 No.

01:47:03.600 I couldn't believe.

01:47:05.280 And I even asked my friend Luke, did you tell him?

01:47:09.080 And Luke was like, no, Danny's like that.

01:47:11.280 He remembers details.

01:47:13.440 That's freakish.

01:47:15.160 I will say this.

01:47:15.900 So I interviewed Danny and we got along really well.

01:47:20.240 And then we set up a hang.

01:47:21.660 And then he loves motocross.

01:47:22.960 So every time he's in LA, I take him to ride motocross.

01:47:25.600 And we definitely developed this friendship and it's been lovely.

01:47:29.000 But then he came over to the house for dinner and he shows up with like three presents.

01:47:34.260 He brought my wife a candle.

01:47:36.100 I show up and I've barely remembered to be fully dressed when I go to parties.

01:47:40.200 You bring gum.

01:47:41.080 Yeah.

01:47:41.680 I bring all my nicotine products and that's it.

01:47:44.400 But the thoughtfulness, the manners.

01:47:46.660 I think he has a persona on Drive to Survive, which is awesome.

01:47:51.040 It's very entertaining.

01:47:52.240 It's cocky.

01:47:53.140 It's arrogant at times.

01:47:54.760 But real life, Danny is like insanely sincere, incredible manners, clearly raised perfectly.

01:48:01.940 Like the fact that he remembers your daughter's name is impossible, but also not shocking for him.

01:48:08.440 He's a really fucking good dude.

01:48:12.520 Impossibly good dude.

01:48:14.060 And by the way, I think on average, that's probably true of more F1 drivers than it's not.

01:48:19.460 Well, you know what I've learned from him that I really enjoyed finding out is that I think Max also has a persona, which is very different from who he actually is.

01:48:28.840 And I've learned this from Daniel and a couple other drivers and then mostly the girlfriends of these drivers.

01:48:35.040 I'm always mining for Max details whenever I'm talking to someone.

01:48:38.260 And across the board, they're all like, he's just the shyest, sweetest guy.

01:48:44.700 He's like an introvert and he's shy.

01:48:47.940 And him being on camera or having to be anything public, it's just not for him.

01:48:53.700 So I think it brings out this protective side of himself.

01:48:57.100 But in general, unanimously agreed that he's a sweet, shy boy, which is so counter to Yost. 0.93

01:49:05.420 It's hard to imagine.

01:49:06.540 I know you think about the trauma of growing up under that guy.

01:49:10.880 Oh, my God.

01:49:12.140 You know, we did a whole on the F1 podcast.

01:49:14.440 We did a whole episode on Yost.

01:49:16.840 We're obsessed with Yost.

01:49:18.960 The amount of criminal activity he's been a part of is impossible.

01:49:23.560 Like convicted for fracturing a guy's skull at the go-kart track with his own father.

01:49:29.400 So dad and grandpa beat a guy to the point where they fractured his skull.

01:49:33.760 He was momentarily arrested for attempted murder, T-boning an ex-girlfriend in an intersection at full speed and claiming that it was just an accident.

01:49:42.780 The hostility that's just purpling out.

01:49:46.300 It makes me really compassionate to Max.

01:49:48.620 I'm like, God, this kid really survived this.

01:49:51.000 He adores him clearly.

01:49:52.780 Yeah.

01:49:52.900 They have this incredible relationship.

01:49:54.940 I'm like, my dad was really nice and I could barely get along with him because I had so many issues.

01:49:58.920 I've never met Max, but a good friend of mine knows him very well and has said like, because you could sort of think like, what is Max's superpower?

01:50:06.140 Because he's so good in a car.

01:50:07.900 Yeah.

01:50:08.180 It's outrageous.

01:50:08.780 So he's so head and shoulders above everybody else that you don't realize it.

01:50:12.800 But he said part of his superpower is just that nothing phases him.

01:50:17.420 That's hard to put in words how big a deal that is in driving.

01:50:21.340 Before we were recording, I was showing you some video from my driving this week.

01:50:25.780 I was telling you like, it was like worst day I've ever had on a track, right?

01:50:28.540 Like spinning nonstop.

01:50:30.020 And the problem is I've never done anything in my life where the psychology of performance compounds more geometrically.

01:50:39.360 When you start making mistakes, they pile up in a way that is unique.

01:50:43.940 Yeah.

01:50:44.640 Intellectually, you understand I have to be a goldfish in this moment.

01:50:48.360 I have to forget what just happened.

01:50:50.820 Yeah.

01:50:51.240 At least for me on this particular day, I couldn't.

01:50:54.100 And it started in my first session.

01:50:56.000 So first session out, I had a lockup.

01:50:58.660 And for people who don't understand what that means, it means the tires were a little too cold.

01:51:03.540 I hit the brakes a little too hard.

01:51:05.140 They locked.

01:51:06.100 We don't have ABS in these cars.

01:51:08.020 And now you can't turn.

01:51:09.000 I can't turn.

01:51:09.800 I can't stop.

01:51:10.440 I can't do anything.

01:51:11.340 And this circuit I'm on has no runoff.

01:51:15.220 So it's like when you lock up, I had three nanoseconds to realize it.

01:51:20.060 By the time I realized that I was actually off the track.

01:51:21.900 Right.

01:51:22.760 And I just never got out of that funk.

01:51:25.380 Because you were beating yourself up for that?

01:51:27.640 Partly beating myself up for it, but then partly not wanting to lock up again.

01:51:31.760 Because now you have a flat spot on the tire.

01:51:33.740 So now you're more susceptible to a lockup.

01:51:35.320 So now I had to pull my braking further back.

01:51:37.980 So now every session I'm comparing my telemetry of this day to my telemetry the last time I was on the track.

01:51:43.920 And my coach is like, look, dude, you are braking 50 feet too early.

01:51:49.000 Yeah.

01:51:49.360 And it's costing you literally eight tenths of a second on this lap.

01:51:53.540 And I'm like, okay, I'll go out there and I'll brake 50 feet later, which is where I used to brake.

01:51:58.280 I get there and I'm like, nope, you're going to brake a little earlier and a little lighter because you don't want to lock up again.

01:52:03.020 And it's like, that's just one example of how the psychology of it just destroyed me.

01:52:08.660 And then what happened was like, now I'm second guessing myself here, second guessing myself there, spin the car here, spin the car there.

01:52:15.180 It gives me an enormous appreciation for how awful this sport is.

01:52:19.760 It's a very lonely sport.

01:52:21.180 It's kind of similar to golf.

01:52:22.600 It's like tennis, yeah, or golf or boxing.

01:52:24.560 I do want you to start riding motorcycles because the interesting thing about the motorcycle is it really can only go through one way.

01:52:34.640 Like you can't go slower through because now you can't hang off the bike as much.

01:52:40.220 Like there's all these things that are kind of built into they have to happen the same way.

01:52:44.440 So even if you had a moment on a previous lap, you can't enter slower because then you can't lean as much because you don't have enough centrifugal force pulling you out.

01:52:52.540 So it's almost like you don't really have the option, if that makes any sense.

01:52:57.080 Like in a car, you could skate through a turn.

01:52:59.400 But on the bike, the way it works right is it has to be going through at a certain speed so you can be off it as much as you need to be and all these things.

01:53:08.020 Otherwise, you're just kind of driving it straight up and down.

01:53:11.080 Yeah, I thought about that a lot after we got back from Cuda.

01:53:13.640 I talked to my wife about it.

01:53:14.800 I even sent her a picture of the bike that you want me to get.

01:53:17.760 It's really funny.

01:53:18.840 She didn't even entertain it.

01:53:20.100 Her only response was shut it. 0.83

01:53:21.820 Like, no way.

01:53:23.440 Yeah, like, this is so dumb.

01:53:25.200 We're not even going to talk about it because you're so stupid that you would even think to add another dumb hobby to your life.

01:53:32.040 Okay, that's fair.

01:53:32.320 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:53:32.940 I don't even think she was opposing it from the standpoint of danger.

01:53:36.360 It's just you got too much shit going on.

01:53:38.180 You got to pick something.

01:53:39.640 Yeah, like you have too many things that you do and waste time and money on.

01:53:44.460 Why would you add another one?

01:53:46.580 Because it exists.

01:53:48.560 I have to do everything.

01:53:49.720 No, but then I thought about it.

01:53:50.960 I was like, well, in five years, I will have a lot more free time.

01:53:54.520 In 10 years, the kids will all be gone.

01:53:57.300 But then I was like, oh, but, you know, will I be too old to do it?

01:54:00.540 And there are some old dudes out there.

01:54:01.960 I'm kind of encouraged.

01:54:02.920 I'll see some.

01:54:03.560 Yeah, but they probably started younger, right?

01:54:05.480 That's for sure.

01:54:06.260 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:54:06.660 Yeah.

01:54:07.340 It is quite special.

01:54:08.780 The best example I have of it is I was at Laguna and I was there for three days.

01:54:13.480 And the third day they were mixing cars and bikes.

01:54:17.300 We were sharing the track with some driving club.

01:54:20.700 Literally at the same time?

01:54:22.040 No.

01:54:22.400 Or just trading off sessions?

01:54:23.100 Trading sessions.

01:54:23.640 And I had driven my AMG E63 station wagon up there for the track days.

01:54:30.680 So I was on the track for two full days on motorcycles and then half the day, the third day.

01:54:36.160 And I talked to the club guy.

01:54:38.440 I was like, can I go out in a session in my car?

01:54:41.440 And he's like, yeah, of course.

01:54:42.320 So I go out and I'm in the E63.

01:54:44.700 That's a great fucking car.

01:54:46.300 That's not a boring car to drive on the track.

01:54:49.140 It's 600 horsepower and dual clutch trans.

01:54:52.200 It's awesome.

01:54:53.640 And I did three laps and I was like, this is so boring.

01:54:59.240 I can't even believe it.

01:55:00.940 And the acceleration is so weak up the hill.

01:55:04.420 And the breaking down the hill is so laborious because the car weighs so much.

01:55:08.600 And I was like, never again will I mix those two days.

01:55:12.660 I can go do a track day in the car if I start there and it's fun.

01:55:15.920 But the comparison between the two is shocking.

01:55:18.880 Are you going to come drifting again before COTA this year?

01:55:21.140 Oh, I would love that.

01:55:22.200 Yeah, we had a lot of fun.

01:55:23.640 You should bring Danny.

01:55:24.980 Oh, yeah.

01:55:25.420 Yeah.

01:55:25.900 I brought Seb two years ago.

01:55:28.420 Yeah.

01:55:29.220 And it was incredible.

01:55:33.820 So you recall-

01:55:34.520 Did he do almost as good as me?

01:55:36.800 You did great.

01:55:38.640 But even Josh Robinson, who leads the Drift Academy-

01:55:42.240 Does it professionally.

01:55:42.920 Yeah.

01:55:43.260 He's a professional formula drifter and he runs this awesome school that people should all sign

01:55:48.400 up for called the Texas Drift Academy.

01:55:50.860 By the way, it's the main reason I still have YouTube ads on my YouTube.

01:55:55.660 Like why I haven't subscribed to YouTube to eliminate ads is I'm holding out hope that

01:56:00.600 I will see another ad as transformative in my life as that one.

01:56:03.780 Oh, because that was just four years ago.

01:56:05.680 So I'm watching car videos on YouTube and an ad comes up for the Texas Drift Academy.

01:56:09.780 Uh-huh.

01:56:10.060 I watch the ad.

01:56:10.940 I go to the site.

01:56:11.900 I sign up for a class.

01:56:13.280 I meet Josh.

01:56:13.920 The rest is history.

01:56:14.780 Yeah.

01:56:15.160 So now I'm a driftaholic.

01:56:16.340 Yes.

01:56:16.660 And sure enough, I go out with Seb.

01:56:19.960 So the holy grail of drifting is doing tandems.

01:56:23.140 One guy's drifting in front and the other guy behind him is doing everything.

01:56:27.640 Matching.

01:56:27.940 You know, they're two feet off each other.

01:56:30.220 And it might take a year to get to the point where you can do a lead follow tandem.

01:56:35.620 Yeah.

01:56:36.780 Seb was doing it within three hours.

01:56:40.180 And they let him-

01:56:40.900 Lead and follow.

01:56:41.700 Yeah.

01:56:42.180 Yeah.

01:56:42.960 And it was really funny.

01:56:43.760 At one point, I wasn't doing my lead follows.

01:56:46.800 I was out there doing my thing, which is pretty cool.

01:56:49.460 Like, I'm doing the full circuit, doing all my thing.

01:56:52.160 It's so fun.

01:56:52.840 And then Seb comes out with me and he's like, let me sit in passenger while you go and haul

01:56:57.140 ass. 0.70

01:56:57.400 So I'm out there doing this.

01:56:58.780 And then the funniest thing he said, he goes, is it okay if I give you a pointer?

01:57:02.860 Yeah.

01:57:03.160 And I'm like, dude, are you kidding me?

01:57:05.740 Yeah.

01:57:06.380 Yeah.

01:57:06.840 It's okay if you give me a pointer.

01:57:08.220 My ego can handle receiving advice from-

01:57:10.600 From a four-time F1 world champion, I can handle-

01:57:13.220 Three times?

01:57:14.000 I don't know, but four?

01:57:15.500 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:57:16.020 Right, right, right.

01:57:16.520 And he's like, lay off the throttle a little bit more here and just do this and then counter

01:57:20.640 steer a little bit more this way.

01:57:21.680 And I'm like, the fact that he could figure this out-

01:57:24.280 Yeah.

01:57:24.600 In three hours and it's taken me three years and I'm still not that good.

01:57:29.700 You also realize like there are people that are just so much better.

01:57:33.640 It's actually part of why I enjoy my hobbies is I actually really enjoy being so lousy at

01:57:40.420 these things.

01:57:41.180 You do.

01:57:41.540 Oh, I need to aspire to that.

01:57:43.400 It's frustrating.

01:57:44.040 But you're constantly in a state of, the learning curve is still so steep for me.

01:57:49.760 I suffer greatly.

01:57:51.900 On the bike, I recognize it.

01:57:54.200 The bike is one thing and I'm good.

01:57:57.000 And then I am in no way ever approaching the AMA guys or the super bike guys.

01:58:02.060 But it's just staggering and I have no illusion I could do it.

01:58:04.920 My ego in the car is I could do whatever they can do if I had the time and had been encouraged

01:58:14.640 to do it.

01:58:15.140 The car thing I have in my mind that I could have been capable of anything.

01:58:18.960 I don't and I don't know.

01:58:21.940 Maybe it's possible when I was younger, it's different.

01:58:24.080 But I have too much built in self-preservation to ever be a good driver.

01:58:28.660 I am destined to be mediocre for the rest of my life.

01:58:31.680 I think that's the healthiest version.

01:58:34.060 Yeah, perhaps.

01:58:34.940 When I'm with Daniel, it literally goes through my mind where it's like, I can almost not accept

01:58:40.720 that of course he would be much faster if we got in an F1 car.

01:58:44.740 I go, but why?

01:58:46.020 We have hands and feet and I understand it.

01:58:48.560 What could it be?

01:58:49.780 The motorcycle, I am fear limited.

01:58:52.300 I am not going to go through some of these turns at 135 with my elbow dragging.

01:58:57.380 I don't have the gumption to do that.

01:58:59.800 But in the car, I have that erroneous sense of safety.

01:59:03.080 I don't ever consider I can get hurt in the car.

01:59:06.060 So it's like, I don't have a fear thing.

01:59:08.260 So then what would it be?

01:59:10.380 Yeah, but don't you have some concern of like just shunting and trashing the car?

01:59:15.480 Yes.

01:59:15.840 Even if you're going to be okay?

01:59:18.100 Yeah, I'm real big on Hit and Run.

01:59:21.120 This movie I directed, I did all the driving in that.

01:59:24.080 And yeah, the stunt guys threw away like four cars.

01:59:26.440 And the pride I had was like, yeah, I didn't throw any cars away.

01:59:29.620 And I never threw away the Lamborghini.

01:59:31.960 Yeah, I have a big thing that I, my story about myself is I don't crash.

01:59:37.380 And the notion of having to pay for a race car I was in is a real bummer.

01:59:42.720 But I don't even consider it's a possibility.

01:59:45.700 I have some delusion in that department.

01:59:47.980 I have a hard time rapping.

01:59:49.440 Like I even had the arrogant fantasy.

01:59:51.660 I'm going to try to do a TV show with Danny and I where we go drive everything.

01:59:57.000 Yeah, snowmobiles, motorcycles, dirt bikes, everything that you put gas in, he and I are

02:00:03.600 going to race.

02:00:04.320 And in my delusional mind, I'm like, I'm going to get him.

02:00:07.800 It could be close.

02:00:08.200 I'm going to get him on six of these tonight things.

02:00:11.040 There's no way he can ride a snowmobile as good as I do.

02:00:13.460 You've ridden bikes with him though.

02:00:15.280 Dirt bikes.

02:00:15.920 Yeah.

02:00:16.660 Yeah.

02:00:17.300 He's slightly better on a dirt bike than I am, but I'm not good on a dirt bike.

02:00:21.280 I recognize that.

02:00:22.800 So where my fear kicks in is like being 30 feet in the air, already having several shoulder

02:00:27.840 surgeries.

02:00:28.440 I'm out.

02:00:29.420 I like to trail ride.

02:00:30.820 I like to ride little tracks, but I don't have that.

02:00:34.060 I know my limits, but snowmobile, razors, let's go, Ricardo.

02:00:40.840 I feel like I'm just going to stick with cars.

02:00:42.660 You're going to.

02:00:43.320 Have you ever ridden a snowmobile?

02:00:44.800 Never.

02:00:45.040 Even though I grew up in Canada.

02:00:46.560 Oh, so fun.

02:00:48.680 So fun.

02:00:49.700 Really good one for husband and wife.

02:00:51.600 The learning curve is very quick.

02:00:53.980 Yeah.

02:00:54.200 My wife has no interest in speed period. 1.00

02:00:58.780 She won't get in a car with me.

02:01:00.700 We were laughing a lot when we were at the track this weekend.

02:01:04.060 Yeah.

02:01:04.540 But the bummer of your wife, not appreciating how valiant and skilled you are behind the

02:01:09.580 wheel that when she watches a drifting video, she's not like, Oh my God, Peter, how are you

02:01:14.240 doing this?

02:01:15.040 I know.

02:01:15.300 I bring all these videos home of me driving and drifting.

02:01:18.420 And all she says is, why would you wreck all those tires?

02:01:22.080 Yes.

02:01:22.480 It makes no sense.

02:01:23.300 That seems wasteful.

02:01:24.260 Yeah.

02:01:24.440 And she's right.

02:01:27.440 Well, what else can I tell you about Senna?

02:01:29.500 Well, let me just tell you something really quick.

02:01:31.660 Hold on.

02:01:32.100 If you know me, you know who my wife is.

02:01:34.720 I think that's standard.

02:01:36.920 This is what happened.

02:01:38.360 My wife was perusing Etsy.

02:01:40.840 Does Jill go on Etsy?

02:01:42.060 Oh yeah.

02:01:42.720 As does this one.

02:01:43.740 She loves Etsy.

02:01:44.760 I've never gone and looked around myself.

02:01:46.540 Oh, I could spend hours on Etsy.

02:01:48.180 Okay.

02:01:48.440 So she found these for me and I felt like I didn't deserve them.

02:01:54.460 And I insisted that she get them so that I could give them to you.

02:01:58.140 Is that an MP4-4?

02:02:01.060 Yeah.

02:02:02.960 These are Senna cups.

02:02:05.080 Wow.

02:02:06.240 That's beautiful.

02:02:07.540 Pretty cool, right?

02:02:08.760 Etsy.

02:02:09.120 So cool.

02:02:10.000 And then I bought this for myself.

02:02:12.360 But my arms are too ape-like and long, so I've decided to pass it on to you. 1.00

02:02:18.780 Whoa.

02:02:19.440 Look at this glorious item.

02:02:21.540 Look at that.

02:02:24.140 Someone made this.

02:02:25.520 You got this on Etsy as well?

02:02:27.240 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:02:28.460 How great is that?

02:02:29.480 That is so-

02:02:29.980 I put it on.

02:02:30.500 I was very bummed that the arms only came up to midway down my wrists.

02:02:35.280 I mean, are you sure you don't just want to do sleeve roll-up?

02:02:37.520 I'm positive.

02:02:38.340 I want you to have that.

02:02:39.360 Thank you so much.

02:02:39.800 And the glasses.

02:02:41.560 And that was a third of my suitcase I brought.

02:02:44.040 And now I have room to amass something else.

02:02:49.220 That's cool, though.

02:02:49.960 Well, you know what's really interesting?

02:02:51.700 Because I'm a real stickler for detail.

02:02:55.280 This is the season that he died.

02:02:58.480 Really?

02:02:58.900 That's the helmet from the season he died.

02:03:01.160 He always ran the Brazil colors, right?

02:03:03.600 There was no deviation.

02:03:04.660 He always ran this color going back to his karting days.

02:03:08.060 Okay.

02:03:08.320 But this is the Renault engine, the Rothman's sponsor.

02:03:12.540 So he only would have had this helmet for three races.

02:03:14.200 Three races.

02:03:15.320 Yeah.

02:03:15.620 Wow.

02:03:16.640 It's a beautiful-

02:03:17.040 Well, there you go.

02:03:17.580 You got a couple more bits of Senna.

02:03:19.820 How does Jill respond to the amount of stuff that's in this house? 0.68

02:03:26.000 I would want anyone who's listening to walk through your house at some point.

02:03:30.160 You can't go six feet without something significant from the Senna collection.

02:03:34.220 Yeah.

02:03:34.980 I think I've won the wife lottery, obviously, in terms of just, you've met my wife and you

02:03:41.000 understand, like, incredibly supportive and understanding.

02:03:44.680 Yeah.

02:03:45.020 Look, I thought it was going to be a bridge too far when I wanted to name our son after

02:03:48.900 him.

02:03:49.380 Yeah.

02:03:49.540 That's a big swing.

02:03:50.400 That is.

02:03:50.700 That was a swing.

02:03:51.740 Yeah.

02:03:52.060 Yeah.

02:03:52.260 Did you, like, set the perfect evening?

02:03:55.260 Did you try to, like, wine her and dine her before you broached it?

02:03:58.840 Or did you throw it out randomly?

02:04:00.260 Believe it or not, I had a harder time with our previous son, whose middle name is Feynman.

02:04:05.660 Okay.

02:04:05.840 That was a harder sell.

02:04:07.260 I understand.

02:04:08.100 But for that one, I had a subtle ploy, which was, I started with a name that I knew she would

02:04:15.640 never go for.

02:04:16.860 Okay.

02:04:17.300 But that was plausible that I would like it.

02:04:19.460 Okay.

02:04:20.260 Which was?

02:04:21.560 Secretariat.

02:04:22.260 Because I love Secretariat as well.

02:04:25.980 And so I was like, look, the greatest horse of all time, right?

02:04:32.820 Even if another horse wins the Triple Crown, at that point, American Pharaoh hadn't yet

02:04:36.120 won the Triple Crown again.

02:04:37.080 I was like, no horse will ever win by that margin again.

02:04:41.360 To be able to negative split five quarter miles in the Kentucky Derby, to win the Belmont

02:04:47.380 by 30 lengths.

02:04:49.380 Like, we could do a whole podcast on Secretariat.

02:04:51.460 Okay, great.

02:04:52.040 I hope we do.

02:04:52.800 So it's a really fitting name.

02:04:55.180 And she was like, let me see how clear I can make this for you.

02:05:00.060 There is no fucking way we are naming our kid after a horse.

02:05:04.200 A horse.

02:05:04.400 So then when I pivoted to Feynman, she was like, okay.

02:05:10.000 Okay.

02:05:10.300 I can live with that.

02:05:11.140 As a middle name.

02:05:11.800 As a middle name.

02:05:12.620 Yeah.

02:05:13.340 And also my brother had just named one of his sons after Pat Tillman.

02:05:18.860 Okay.

02:05:19.480 Which I thought was awesome too.

02:05:21.200 Great book, right?

02:05:21.900 Yeah.

02:05:22.020 Read the Krakauer book.

02:05:23.040 Yeah, of course.

02:05:24.140 So I think she was just probably a little beat down between the Atiyah brothers.

02:05:28.400 Yeah.

02:05:28.840 Yeah.

02:05:28.960 By the time our youngest was born.

02:05:31.480 And also by that point, she had become aware of all the stuff we talked about, right?

02:05:39.460 Yeah.

02:05:39.620 Like she, you know, at that point, not only had she seen the documentary, but there are

02:05:43.420 a whole bunch of other really cool things.

02:05:44.920 My wife loved the documentary and doesn't care about racing. 1.00

02:05:47.520 Yeah.

02:05:47.780 It's a very good documentary.

02:05:48.640 It's not a doc.

02:05:49.320 I mean, I would encourage anybody who's gotten, who's still listening.

02:05:51.640 It's possible there's nobody listening to us anymore.

02:05:53.720 Yeah, these things happen.

02:05:54.840 But if anybody is still listening and they haven't seen the documentary, it's a no brainer

02:05:58.280 that you would go and see it now.

02:05:59.400 Yeah.

02:05:59.680 You'll fall very head over heels in love with Senna.

02:06:02.280 And you don't have to be a racing fan.

02:06:03.740 No.

02:06:03.880 It's not a racing story.

02:06:04.660 It was nominated for best documentary, I think.

02:06:06.520 Yeah.

02:06:06.740 For the Academy Award.

02:06:07.780 And so, yeah, it turned out to not be that hard to sell.

02:06:10.860 Her biggest concern was, will people know how to pronounce his name?

02:06:14.380 Well, that would be a concern of mine because I, every time I say Ayrton, I'm nervous as

02:06:19.140 I'm saying it, that I'm not going to get it right.

02:06:21.240 I struggle with it.

02:06:22.460 How do you say it?

02:06:23.420 Well, it's funny.

02:06:24.320 We mostly call him Aery.

02:06:25.940 Right.

02:06:26.280 Because that's just easier.

02:06:27.280 But it is Ayrton.

02:06:29.480 Ayrton.

02:06:30.040 Ayrton.

02:06:30.780 Yeah, forget it.

02:06:31.380 I can't do that.

02:06:32.240 She has a very legitimate concern.

02:06:33.860 And we're very, very lucky that we have had two Brazilian nannies in the entire time that 1.00

02:06:40.760 he's been alive.

02:06:41.840 Oh, so they have a particular shine to him.

02:06:44.480 Well, like they just had an immediate affection for this little kid named after the deity.

02:06:49.000 Yes.

02:06:49.560 Yeah, yeah.

02:06:50.000 Well, we named, I pitched Lincoln for our first daughter after my Lincoln Continental,

02:06:59.480 which is like my most.

02:07:00.540 Oh, so it's not an Abe Lincoln.

02:07:01.840 No, it's not.

02:07:02.660 Although very worthy of naming someone or Lincoln, Nebraska or whatever.

02:07:07.640 There's some options, but I have a relationship with this 67 Lincoln Continental.

02:07:13.460 It's just the most profound of any vehicle I have.

02:07:16.500 I've had it forever.

02:07:17.700 I've done everything to it.

02:07:19.020 I made a movie about it.

02:07:20.560 It's just very important, this car.

02:07:23.280 And we thought for no real reason that she was pregnant with a boy.

02:07:28.260 We were both certain of it.

02:07:29.320 I don't know if you guys have ever proclaimed this without any reason, but we were like,

02:07:33.780 yeah, it's a boy.

02:07:35.300 Lincoln, no problem.

02:07:36.460 It's going to be Lincoln.

02:07:37.520 And I pitched, let's do Lincoln Bell Shepard.

02:07:40.960 They might lose Shepard, but they'll always have Bell.

02:07:43.620 That was my kind of horse trading.

02:07:45.280 And we were at an ultrasound appointment and the technician said, well, it's a girl.

02:07:54.840 And we were both like, no, that's not possible.

02:07:58.820 And a very long time went by without either of us saying anything.

02:08:04.080 And the technician said, is that okay?

02:08:07.360 And we're like, no, fine.

02:08:09.100 We'll be happy to have whatever.

02:08:10.380 And then after that, it was like dealing with the adjustment of, okay, it's going to be

02:08:16.060 a girl.

02:08:16.500 And then I said, oh, and then the name, I don't know about the name.

02:08:19.740 And then I will say to Kristen's credit, she's like, Lincoln's an even cooler name for a

02:08:24.440 girl.

02:08:25.200 And I was like, oh, you're right.

02:08:27.160 So then once we named Lincoln, Lincoln, my friend who you just met on Sunday, Steve DiCastro,

02:08:32.800 who's a stunt coordinator and a stunt man.

02:08:34.640 And when Kristen got pregnant a second time, he jokingly sent a text, you name the first

02:08:40.400 girl Lincoln, what are you going to name the second girl?

02:08:43.220 Navy SEAL, Delta Force, Airborne, you know, making all these jokes.

02:08:47.960 And I'm reading this to Kristen and then I go, hmm, Delta is a pretty bad-ass name for

02:08:53.680 a girl as well.

02:08:54.780 And she was like, I hate to say it, but he's right.

02:08:57.720 So then Delta came out of a joke, but also Bell.

02:09:00.780 I was smart enough to give her last name in the middle for a little added, you know.

02:09:07.760 I have a friend who's got a Lincoln, a Kennedy, a Reagan, and one other president is the first

02:09:15.060 name.

02:09:15.400 And spanning the political divide too.

02:09:17.360 I like that.

02:09:17.720 Just going for great presidents.

02:09:19.360 Have you read the Grant biography by chance?

02:09:21.920 No.

02:09:22.240 The Chernow one?

02:09:23.680 Amazing.

02:09:24.400 Couldn't recommend it more.

02:09:25.180 My sort of U.S. presidential obsession kind of mostly is like LBJ is a huge fascination.

02:09:33.720 Have you read those Carol books?

02:09:35.220 Yeah.

02:09:35.240 Yeah.

02:09:35.600 Those are great.

02:09:36.300 Especially living here.

02:09:37.580 Yeah.

02:09:37.780 It's really relevant.

02:09:38.440 Having LBJ library and all that stuff.

02:09:40.520 Yeah.

02:09:41.160 And even what he did to the Hill Country and all this stuff.

02:09:44.440 Yeah.

02:09:44.780 Fascinating.

02:09:45.740 But it ends there at LBJ.

02:09:47.820 No.

02:09:48.480 It's a lot of LBJ and forward, like LBJ, Nixon, the last 150 years, I suppose.

02:09:54.520 Yeah.

02:09:55.800 Grant's super fascinating because he's an abject failure at everything in life except

02:10:01.800 for war and his presidency.

02:10:05.020 Terrible with money, insolvent, duped many times, but he had a genius and it was just so

02:10:11.740 specific and it was unrivaled.

02:10:14.420 Like, it's such a good book.

02:10:16.040 I think you and I are similar and like, I want to be kind of good at everything.

02:10:20.260 I have my appetite to want to do stuff.

02:10:22.520 It's just so enormous.

02:10:24.000 That I'd rather be like pretty good at or even moderate at a bunch of things.

02:10:28.940 The notions of specialists really interest me because I'm just so not that way at all.

02:10:34.200 I want to be able to like talk to anyone I meet and hopefully have a hobby in common

02:10:38.560 or something.

02:10:39.300 I'm not trying to get super esoteric with like your brain surgeon friend that's over.

02:10:44.940 And I think there's some drawback to that.

02:10:46.840 But I am fascinated by people who just do Max.

02:10:50.460 I doubt Max can balance a checkbook or go grocery shopping.

02:10:54.400 He's probably not a great boyfriend.

02:10:56.600 But boy, he can do that thing.

02:10:59.140 Yeah.

02:10:59.320 Speaking of Max, I think a lot of drivers don't like to spend that much time in simulators.

02:11:03.960 Like when they're away from the car, they're away from the car.

02:11:06.160 Yes.

02:11:06.660 And that's not Max.

02:11:07.980 Literally after he wins a race in the highest division of the highest sport when anybody

02:11:16.360 else would be out partying, he's on a sim race competing against the sim racers around

02:11:22.800 the world.

02:11:23.380 Yes.

02:11:23.940 Within hours.

02:11:24.980 Yeah.

02:11:25.140 And he'll spend three hours sitting there doing it.

02:11:28.240 And that's just another aspect to it.

02:11:30.400 It's like, I don't think anyone on that grid spends as much time thinking about racing.

02:11:34.900 You know, it's funny, you know, that we've talked about it.

02:11:36.940 I really would love to know what Max thinks of Senna and how much he is historically aware

02:11:44.960 now that Max's own legend grows.

02:11:49.420 By the end of this year, he's going to be a four-time world champion.

02:11:52.360 Yep.

02:11:52.520 And even though he's only 26 years old and he could easily race another 10 years and 0.78

02:11:57.560 eclipse every record ever, if he chooses to, I wonder where he sees his place.

02:12:05.200 And I wonder if he has an appreciation for the legends of the sport.

02:12:09.640 Yeah, that's an interesting question because he regularly threatens to quit all the time.

02:12:14.980 That's the other really contradictory thing about him is he's really haphazard about threatening

02:12:20.700 to quit.

02:12:21.220 He doesn't like sprint races.

02:12:23.160 He hates those.

02:12:23.900 Well, I think Max quitting doesn't mean he wouldn't drive.

02:12:27.240 It just means he wouldn't drive F1.

02:12:29.280 Max and Alonso are probably the two people who I think will drive forever.

02:12:34.660 Just a question of where.

02:12:36.160 Yeah.

02:12:36.860 Alonso for sure.

02:12:38.340 It makes me think one more time of Valentino Rossi.

02:12:40.640 In his last season racing, he was like Alonso.

02:12:43.720 He was maybe 44 still racing against these 19-year-old kids.

02:12:48.440 And he was going through a turn and a guy had crashed just before the turn and came off

02:12:53.980 the bike and the bike was just flying unmanned.

02:12:57.500 And then another guy crashed.

02:12:59.720 And so two bikes, he's in the turn already committed.

02:13:04.340 There's nothing he can really do.

02:13:05.780 One bike goes right in front of him and one goes behind him at the same time.

02:13:09.720 It's like the most impossible moment in all of racing motorcycles.

02:13:13.340 He's a foot away from the one in front of him and a foot in front of the one behind him.

02:13:18.000 Both of them flying would have T-boned him, would have killed him. 0.79

02:13:20.940 And everyone in the real world, normal people are like, what's he doing out there?

02:13:26.460 He's already 44.

02:13:27.920 Nine championships.

02:13:29.520 Yes, nine championships.

02:13:30.860 He's done everything.

02:13:31.860 Why would he be in that situation?

02:13:33.920 And his response was, yeah, that was close.

02:13:37.140 But, you know, if I'm not there, I'm doing something else equally dangerous.

02:13:40.800 I'm somewhere going to be, it won't stop.

02:13:44.220 To him, it's like, yeah, it would have been in a rally car or it would have been there.

02:13:47.480 It doesn't matter.

02:13:48.200 That's what he does.

02:13:49.400 Everyone else is like, oh my God, he just barely avoided death.

02:13:52.440 And for him, it was nothing.

02:13:54.120 He's like, yeah, this is what I'll be doing until I'm dead.

02:13:56.620 I'll be in some situation that scares the shit out of me.

02:13:59.780 I can't help but wonder, and I know that I'm far from alone in this,

02:14:04.040 been wondering what would have been had Senna not died that day.

02:14:07.320 I think most observers believe he would have driven another four years

02:14:12.100 until the next regulation change and at the end of Williams dominance.

02:14:17.280 So Williams ended up being the most dominant car the year he died.

02:14:20.900 So despite the fact that it was an impossible to drive vehicle for those first three races,

02:14:26.480 the brilliance of that team did figure it out.

02:14:30.060 And his teammate, Damon Hill, almost won the championship that year.

02:14:34.560 In fact, he was one point behind Schumacher going into the final race of the year.

02:14:41.740 Schumacher crashed him out of the race, crashed himself out of the race.

02:14:45.940 And in doing so, Damon actually looked like he was going to win the race,

02:14:49.480 but it broke his suspension rod.

02:14:51.520 So Damon ended up finishing that year one point behind Schumacher.

02:14:55.920 So he would have definitely won.

02:14:57.080 He would have absolutely won.

02:14:58.420 Yeah.

02:14:58.900 Schumacher won the next year.

02:15:00.340 It was close.

02:15:01.240 Damon Hill won the next year in the Williams.

02:15:03.220 And Jacques Villeneuve won the next year in the Williams.

02:15:06.240 So I don't think it's an enormous stretch to say,

02:15:09.080 look, Senna probably would have won four consecutive championships in 94, 95, 96, and 97.

02:15:15.360 Putting him at seven.

02:15:16.920 Putting him at seven or eight, if you include the one that was stolen.

02:15:20.340 There's talk that he always had a soft spot for Ferrari, like every driver,

02:15:24.820 and would have maybe gone to Ferrari.

02:15:26.640 But he also would have been 37, which not that old,

02:15:30.020 but I could have seen him retiring.

02:15:31.260 But what a lot of people question is,

02:15:33.220 given his absolute love for Brazil, would he have gone into politics?

02:15:38.040 Right.

02:15:38.600 And would it have made a difference in the presence of Brazil?

02:15:43.940 This is a guy that was so loved.

02:15:45.560 Yeah.

02:15:45.740 There's no example we can point to of someone who turns to politics with that much of the

02:15:51.340 support of a nation.

02:15:52.380 Now, you know-

02:15:52.960 Pacquiao.

02:15:53.180 Now, I don't know if Pacquiao was even as loved by the Philippines as Senna was by Brazil.

02:15:58.640 Really?

02:15:59.200 Well, because again, I don't think people took Pacquiao as seriously.

02:16:02.460 I don't think people took him-

02:16:03.800 I loved him.

02:16:04.600 Yes.

02:16:05.060 As a fighter.

02:16:05.520 No, no, I'm an incredible fighter.

02:16:06.920 Yeah, what a warrior.

02:16:07.600 But I don't know that the people of the Philippines took him as seriously as people would have

02:16:11.060 taken Senna.

02:16:12.260 And who knows?

02:16:12.840 Like, there's no reason to believe Senna would have been a good leader in that regard.

02:16:15.200 Like, we have no idea.

02:16:16.420 It's just kind of an interesting game of like, what if?

02:16:18.960 How involved would he have still been in Formula One after?

02:16:22.300 Would he have been an ambassador of the sport?

02:16:24.040 I've seen these AI-generated images of what Senna would look like today.

02:16:29.000 To me, going back to your original thought of like, to have somebody who dies in their

02:16:33.580 prime doing what they love, okay, it's not a tragedy in some ways.

02:16:38.320 It is in some ways.

02:16:39.340 But I always wonder what the counterfactual is.

02:16:41.820 What other spell would have been cast by this genius?

02:16:44.920 Yeah.

02:16:45.480 As I said, I think kind of prepping for this and stumbling upon the pole record, I think

02:16:52.360 it did elevate my assessment of him.

02:16:55.860 I always thought he was definitely one of the greats.

02:16:58.480 But again, you get into all this hypothetical.

02:17:01.360 It's like, yeah, I don't know what the next four years is.

02:17:03.440 You play the car lottery.

02:17:04.860 The point you're making is valid, which is the team was great and he was on the team.

02:17:08.700 But I do think that pole thing for me really pushed it in a direction of like, I can concede

02:17:16.080 that he was likely whatever that tie is.

02:17:20.640 Yeah.

02:17:20.680 For you, he's clearly above.

02:17:23.600 Yeah.

02:17:23.960 I will concede that I think it's very difficult to compare drivers across eras.

02:17:28.600 You know, if you asked Senna who was the greatest, he would have said it was Fullerton, was the

02:17:33.580 greatest guy he ever raced against in karting.

02:17:35.820 And if you asked him in F1, he would have said Fangio.

02:17:38.340 That was his hero.

02:17:39.940 We have to give Schumacher a lot of credit.

02:17:42.000 The fact that he goes to Ferrari, which is a shitty team, and just sticks it out and develops

02:17:46.900 that car.

02:17:47.560 And then when, I mean, it's hard to undercount him.

02:17:50.100 Yeah.

02:17:50.700 I would say, look, if you put a gun to my head and said, who's second best, I'd put

02:17:56.340 Schumacher.

02:17:57.740 Yeah.

02:17:58.520 But that could be Max.

02:17:59.960 Yeah.

02:18:00.400 Right.

02:18:00.700 Like give Max another five years and maybe it's going to be Max number two.

02:18:04.660 And you never know.

02:18:05.560 Maybe one day I will even say Max is the greatest of all time.

02:18:08.920 Yeah.

02:18:09.500 The fun thing ahead, and I don't want it for him because I want him to just be the most

02:18:13.540 winningest champion of all time.

02:18:15.120 But Red Bull will have an evolution with the rule changes.

02:18:18.720 And I'm actually most excited about seeing Max driving the second fast car once again, because

02:18:25.960 I think that was the most exciting thing ever, that he just had to outdrive Lewis and did

02:18:31.020 consistently.

02:18:32.060 Yeah.

02:18:32.660 Yeah.

02:18:33.000 Well, my friend, thanks for having me to learn more about Senna.

02:18:38.920 Yeah.

02:18:39.140 It's bigger than a driver.

02:18:40.520 He's got some kind of a rhythm to him.

02:18:43.460 That's really intriguing.

02:18:45.140 There's an artistry to him that Schumacher doesn't have.

02:18:48.920 There's some kind of artistry for sure to Senna that captivates the emotions a lot more.

02:18:56.720 Yeah, absolutely.

02:18:58.120 Have you ever been to Sao Paulo?

02:18:59.160 No, I have not been to anywhere in South America.

02:19:02.700 That's where they keep the cocaine, so I've stayed away.

02:19:06.620 They have farm-to-table cocaine.

02:19:09.680 Guys are stomping on it in the background, and then it comes right in the door.

02:19:13.460 I want to go.

02:19:14.260 I want to go desperately.

02:19:15.440 You've got to come to Interlagos with us one year.

02:19:17.020 Yeah, yeah.

02:19:17.520 Every single year, it is the most incredible experience.

02:19:21.540 And we also usually go to the cemetery every year as well.

02:19:24.340 Oh, okay.

02:19:24.820 He's buried there.

02:19:25.520 He is buried in Sao Paulo in a beautiful cemetery in the middle of the city.

02:19:29.680 Sao Paulo is so big, it's hard to believe.

02:19:31.740 We don't have a reference for that.

02:19:33.480 It's not like LA, Chicago, New York big.

02:19:36.360 Geographically?

02:19:36.820 Yes.

02:19:37.060 Or just popular?

02:19:37.540 Okay.

02:19:37.940 Both.

02:19:38.620 Was there like 25 million people there or something?

02:19:40.140 Yeah, probably close to 30 million people.

02:19:42.520 We always stay at a hotel in the middle of the city.

02:19:44.740 And when you're in that hotel, and you're in the top floor, which is where the gym is,

02:19:48.600 and you're looking out, for 360 degrees, you cannot see the end of a city.

02:19:52.960 Oh, wow.

02:19:53.580 It's so big.

02:19:54.780 Wow.

02:19:55.360 And yet, you see the highways named after him.

02:19:58.800 You see the murals of him on the wall.

02:20:00.780 Yeah.

02:20:01.560 And then, here's the most amazing thing, is when you go to where he's buried, it's the

02:20:05.380 most unassuming thing.

02:20:07.300 It's just a plaque in the ground.

02:20:10.060 And are there always people there?

02:20:11.900 Usually not.

02:20:12.760 Oh, really?

02:20:13.100 Every time I've gone...

02:20:14.520 Now, there's always hats there, flowers, pictures.

02:20:18.500 It's clearly a place where fans go.

02:20:21.180 Yeah.

02:20:21.560 But it's very quiet.

02:20:23.040 Yeah.

02:20:23.580 Every time I've gone, I've been alone, just with the people I've gone with.

02:20:27.200 Yeah.

02:20:27.360 I've taken my daughter a couple of times, and it's really...

02:20:30.840 I mean, I know that sounds so weird.

02:20:32.580 It sounds like I'm too obsessed, but it is the closest thing I would have to a religious 0.70

02:20:36.560 experience.

02:20:37.920 Where do you place all his religious stuff?

02:20:40.820 I mean, you can't find audio of him not talking about God at some point.

02:20:46.380 Yep.

02:20:46.620 I think he drew strength from it, right?

02:20:48.640 Clearly.

02:20:48.960 Like, he really believed in his God-given right to win every race.

02:20:55.520 Yeah.

02:20:55.740 But there's a duality to it.

02:20:57.460 On one hand, it presents his humility, which is he's like regularly thanking God for this

02:21:03.940 gift.

02:21:04.340 So, that's humble.

02:21:06.060 But then for me, as the cynical atheist, I'm like, but you're also saying God cares more

02:21:11.800 about you than anyone else.

02:21:13.200 So, there is also like a deep arrogance to it that like God has picked me to win a race.

02:21:17.680 It's a push for me.

02:21:18.880 Yeah.

02:21:19.260 That's interesting.

02:21:19.920 I have a hard time figuring out what I feel about that.

02:21:22.820 If you believe in God and you feel chosen by God, is that super humble?

02:21:27.700 I don't know.

02:21:28.380 I don't know.

02:21:28.880 I can't relate.

02:21:29.780 I definitely don't feel chosen.

02:21:31.800 But, you know, speaking of listening to things that he talked about, it's amazing how often

02:21:36.060 you hear interviews of him and you hear him talk about mortality.

02:21:39.860 He did not have a view of immortality.

02:21:42.760 Right.

02:21:42.880 He always knew that he was on the limit and his time could come.

02:21:48.000 And he spoke very modestly about that.

02:21:52.980 Well, and the mom was super vocal as well. 1.00

02:21:55.840 Almost all the interviews she's in, she's saying she hopes he quits after he wins or he

02:22:01.720 said he's going to quit if he becomes a world champion, but I don't believe him.

02:22:05.280 That's a bit of a bummer too.

02:22:06.560 It seems like she was very fearful of that and that was the outcome.

02:22:10.840 Yeah.

02:22:11.300 At his gravestone, one of the things it says there is quotes a verse from the Bible that

02:22:16.980 he had called his mom the morning he died.

02:22:20.240 He hadn't had a good night's sleep.

02:22:22.060 He was not in a good headspace to race that day, but he called his mom and shared with

02:22:25.760 her something he was reading in the Bible about God looking after him and protecting

02:22:29.600 him.

02:22:30.180 That sort of verse is there on his stone.

02:22:33.580 So it would be hard to make a movie that would live up to his life.

02:22:38.460 I know that Netflix is actually working on a docudrama.

02:22:42.860 He wasn't married when he died, was he?

02:22:44.440 No, he had a girlfriend.

02:22:45.140 He loved women, right?

02:22:45.840 And the doc, he's with another, he liked blonde. 0.93

02:22:48.820 Yeah.

02:22:49.140 And he likes meeting people on talk shows.

02:22:52.220 He seemed to date many of the people that interviewed him on a talk show.

02:22:56.260 Yeah.

02:22:56.460 At the time he died, he was dating a very, very famous Brazilian model.

02:23:00.560 He had a Kennedy thing too.

02:23:02.120 Like him out on the boats and everything.

02:23:04.140 The family's kind of rich.

02:23:05.180 There was also some kind of Camelot-y vibes to the family.

02:23:09.640 Yeah.

02:23:10.520 40 years?

02:23:11.380 30 years.

02:23:11.900 30 years ago.

02:23:13.720 Which is another thing, by the way, I guess you don't remember the day he died because

02:23:17.260 you weren't a fan, you didn't follow the sport.

02:23:19.000 The very first Formula One driver I became aware of by name was Schumacher and mostly

02:23:25.980 because Valentino Rossi rode in the two-seater with him and said it was mind-blowing.

02:23:30.480 I was like, oh, wow.

02:23:31.240 So, I think another example of feeling old is I still remember the day he died very clearly.

02:23:41.200 I remember every detail of the room.

02:23:43.400 Like I remember hearing it on the radio.

02:23:45.460 I mean, I remember what my radio looked like.

02:23:47.540 Right.

02:23:47.920 I remember everything.

02:23:50.140 That's a little odd.

02:23:51.300 I'm sure anybody can relate to an experience like that where you think, how did 30 years

02:23:56.100 go by so fast?

02:23:57.780 Oh, yeah.

02:23:58.240 And then I think, well, in 20 years, when it's the 50th anniversary, that's not that

02:24:02.720 far from now.

02:24:03.440 No.

02:24:04.000 Two seconds.

02:24:04.900 Yeah.

02:24:05.460 Unfortunately.

02:24:06.200 We'll be sitting right back here.

02:24:07.740 Yeah.

02:24:08.180 We'll look a little different.

02:24:09.600 Well, hopefully not with your help.

02:24:11.320 We'll still look jacked and ready to race.

02:24:16.540 But this has been a blast.

02:24:18.060 I think it's funny for people, like now that you and I are buddies and people go like, what's

02:24:22.240 the thing?

02:24:22.740 Is he your doctor?

02:24:23.520 I'm like, oh, no, no.

02:24:24.600 I interviewed him.

02:24:26.180 Cars didn't come up once.

02:24:27.380 We step outside and all of a sudden he's like, what cars you got?

02:24:29.580 Okay.

02:24:29.780 I got this.

02:24:30.340 And I'm like, oh, yeah, it's all motorsports.

02:24:32.440 It's like the greatest connector, isn't it?

02:24:34.420 Yeah.

02:24:34.800 Yeah.

02:24:35.760 It's been fun.

02:24:37.120 Well, thanks for making time, Dex.

02:24:38.420 Yeah.

02:24:38.680 I appreciate it.

02:24:39.180 It's such a pleasure.

02:24:40.020 And thank you for these awesome gifts.

02:24:42.500 I mean, Jill can complain, but there's room for a little more. 0.72

02:24:46.260 She has yet to complain.

02:24:47.700 To answer your question, I still have leash.

02:24:50.060 What a woman. 1.00

02:24:50.800 I know.

02:24:51.220 She's also gorgeous. 0.99

02:24:52.660 You really knocked it out of the park.

02:24:55.920 Yeah.

02:24:56.320 We both got lucky.

02:24:57.320 You're fortunate when you have a wife that can tolerate your obsessions.

02:25:00.680 Yeah.

02:25:01.480 Anytime I watch videos of you talking about the questions you ask her, I'm like, okay,

02:25:05.600 yeah, we got a very similar thing happening at home.

02:25:09.300 Thanks for having me.

02:25:10.500 Thank you.

02:25:10.900 Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Drive.

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The Peter Attia Drive - April 29, 2024

Special episode with Dax Shepard： F1 and the 30th anniversary of Ayrton Senna's death

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