Max Chilton - Need For Speed

Full transcript: Max Chilton on London Real

7:06 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Max Chilton, a British racing driver who made his Formula One debut in 2013 racing for the Marussia F1 team. During your first season, you broke the world record for the most consecutive finishes by a rookie driver completing 19 out of 19 races. This year, you took part in the Le Mans 24-hour race and won your debut at the Ovals in Iowa in America, a notoriously difficult race for British drivers.

7:33 You’ve done all this at the ripe old age of 24 years.

7:36 Brian Rose: Max, welcome to London Real.

7:37 Max Chilton: Well, sounds like you’ve done my story, right? Let’s go. That’s it, you’re done, right?

7:41 Brian Rose: Yeah, you’ve said all the highlights. You know, you’re our first racing driver here, and I’m actually here to learn a bit more about the sport myself. I follow it here, I follow it there, kind of like how you follow the UFC when there’s something big. I pay attention. So I got some questions for you, but we all, I think, are brought up with racing from the movies.

8:00 I’m sure you watch movies when you’re a kid. I was trying to think of the racing movies I’ve seen as probably Days of Thunder, Tom Cruise, and I know that’s stock car racing, we’ll get to that. You know, the documentary Senna was very good. Rush was the recent one by Ron Howard, and it was kind of based in Britain, a lot of that. Talladega Nights, okay, that’s a more comedic version.

8:22 But did you grow up on racing movies? Was that always part of something that got you interested in it?

8:28 Max Chilton: Never the racing movies. It was always spending my childhood in the playroom, as I called it. It was just a family living room on a Sunday.

8:35 We’d have a roast usually, and then the Grand Prix would be on, and I’d listen to Murray Walker going, it’s go, go, go, lights are out, and I’d usually watch this red car just dominate, and that was Michael Schumacher, so he’s my idol. You know, a lot of people treat Senna as their idol, but to be honest, I appreciate what he did, but I don’t ever remember him racing, because I was only just born when he sadly passed away. So to me, Schumacher was my idol, and I remember watching most Sundays this red car winning, and that’s where I got my buzz from to take part in it, but it was many years later that I actually started taking part in motor racing and a championship in England and Cadets for eight-year-olds.

9:17 Okay, so it was like four, five, six years old, you were just watching that on the television and Schumacher. Yeah, it was always this red car winning, and it was the Ferrari at the time. He had many years of just continuously winning, and yeah, it might have not been the best thing to watch, but when you’re a kid, you hate losing. All you want to do is win, so he was the one to beat, and I loved him from that moment, and it was whenever that was, I was eight when my brother started racing, and I had to go in the paddock, watch him race, and I loved the sound, the smell of the fuels, the smoking of the tyres, and it was about six months later that I got the chance to go and have a go on a go-kart, because that was the only thing I could do at that age, and that’s where a lot of people in Formula One started.

10:00 Probably 80% started was in go-karts. That’s where you learn your race craft. I always think people that start karting, I can look at sort of Lewis Chilton’s driving style in karting, and it’s still the same now in Formula One. You learn your craft in karting, but then you then adapt that as you go through into the major single-seater categories all the way up to Formula One.

10:22 Brian Rose: Senna was a carter as well, right?

10:24 And in that movie, there’s a point at the end of the movie where he says, you know, I think back to that day when I was karting, but pretty high-level karting, and he said it was all about the racing, and he’s like, I miss that, because it became all about the money and the sponsorships. He’s like, I miss that time when it was just the guys on the basic karts trying to win.

10:43 Max Chilton: Karting is a great place to start at. It’s more of a leather playing field than Formula One, for example, because most people have the same karts.

10:51 There’s different chassis and different engines, but there’s minimal difference. In Formula One, everyone’s got very different machinery, and it’s very much a sort of an unfair playing field. So that’s why a lot of people, best memories being a racing driver is karting, because it was a really close, every corner you’re being overtaken, you’re overtaking someone else, and it’s constant action from the green flag to the checkered flag. And I think when you’re starting off with racing, it’s a real shock to the system, and so you sort of remember that, I know some of the greatest moments of my life were in karting, whether I won or lost.

11:25 Brian Rose: Shocked to the system, why? The turns, the danger, the G-forces, what’s shocking?

11:31 Max Chilton: It’s the noise and the speed. When I started, I was eight years old. That was the youngest you could start back then.

11:39 It’s now younger. And you’re in a thing which is not much bigger than this chair, but eight years old, that thing can do 40 miles an hour, and you’ve got 25 others around you on a grid all pushing each other down to the first corner, the smoke of the engines, everyone’s heart rates are shooting up, everyone wants to beat someone else, and the adrenaline rush is crazy. I was so much more nervous karting at the start of a racing karting than I was at my first Grand Prix in Melbourne in 2013.

12:09 Brian Rose: You said that when you see Lewis Chilton, you can see his driving style from kind of the karting days. Is a great driver born, or is he made?

12:21 Max Chilton: A bit of both. You know, everyone has a natural ability. You have to practice.

12:27 No one’s just going to get in a car and be the best driver in the world. So you do have to learn, but I think when everyone does say everyone did the same number of hours of learning, there would be better drivers than others, and you can see that. Formula One’s not the best for that because, as I said, you have to be in the best car. I think Alonso is one of the best drivers on that grid, but this year he’s near the back in the McLaren because it’s just not up to speed.

12:51 So that was sort of a good thing for a lot of drivers because it proves to the wider audience, maybe people who aren’t so into motor sport can understand that you sort of have to have the car to do the job. But the driver does make the difference.

13:03 Brian Rose: So you’re up against your teammate mainly in Formula One. And when you were eight years old, people aren’t telling you exactly how to drive out there. It’s really, you’re learning yourself, okay, I took that corner too hard, not hard enough, I missed this.

13:15 I mean, is it a lot of self-teaching then, or do you get help a lot of the time?

13:19 Max Chilton: Karting, most people have their mechanic and look after the car, but then they’re on the side of the track whilst you’re going around, practice racing, qualifying, whatever it may be, timing you. And they can see a lot of the track because kart tracks aren’t particularly big. You could have a kart track in a very big car park. And so they can see if you’re missing your apex or you’re going in too tight or going in too wide.

13:40 And so even your, you know, not engineer, that’s in motorsport now, but mechanics in karting have a good racing knowledge. A lot of them have done karting in there, you know, when they were younger. And so they guide you. I did have a driver coach, probably half the grid have a driver coach as well. So you do get taught, but when you’re driving, you’re the best one to learn because you’re there in the moment.

14:03 You can see, oh, I missed my apex. I need to make sure I get that next lap because, you know, if you miss an apex by half a metre in a go kart, that’ll affect your speed down the straight by maybe two miles an hour. But that momentum then costs you a half a second on a lap. And if you’re losing half a second lap over 30 laps, you’re 15 seconds down the road. So it’s, yeah, it’s very much about attention to detail.

14:24 Brian Rose: And that is what racing is all about, right? It’s all about microseconds.

14:29 Max Chilton: Yeah. Millimetres, you know, not millimetres, it’s tenths of a second, can split 10 cars over, you know, four or five mile lap. So if you can just improve by a hundredth each corner, then you’re going to find tenths of seconds, which will then put you up the grid five, six cars.

14:47 So it’s really, really close. And sometimes you can’t feel the difference. Sometimes you go, oh, that was a good lap, and you look at your time, and it wasn’t as good as the previous lap. It is sometimes very hard, but when you’re really in the moment and you’re really settled with the car and the track, you can notice, I can tell you if I’m half a second, a half a tenth or a half a tenth slower.

15:07 Brian Rose: Right.

15:07 Brian Rose: Do you ever think that you’re going to be replaced some day by a computer, you know, by something with all the different gimbals?

15:14 Max Chilton: It’s on its way. It is on its way. There’s a championship called Formula E, which is quite futuristic, should we say. It’s all electric powers.

15:22 The car hasn’t got any electrical, it hasn’t got any combustion engine in it. It’s just purely electric. The issue they have at the moment is they can’t get it to last long enough. So they have to do a pit stop during the race, change cars into a car which is fully charged and then go again. And these cars now do 120, 130 miles an hour.

15:40 But the problem for me is you don’t get that noise. I remember when I went for my first Formula 1 race. It makes your ears sort of bleed. The old V10s were just definitely, you could be five miles from the track stuck in traffic and you could hear the cars. Now it’s sort of being reduced and with Formula E there’s no noise apart from a bit of gearbox noise.

15:57 But they’ve just announced that they’re going to have next year a completely driverless championship, which is on the route to what you were mentioning earlier.

16:05 Brian Rose: Right, but people watch racing for the personalities, right? I mean they watch it to see what’s going on and who does what, maybe.

16:11 Max Chilton: Yeah, no you do. Most sports are weird because you’ve got a helmet on so you can’t really see the person.

16:16 But you can sense what a personality is like of a driver the way they drive. And I think that’s what makes the sport so special is most of the time you don’t know the person that well. But then when they race and they take the helmet off you can see who they are and it’s more of a shock to the system.

16:33 Brian Rose: Right, and then you can equate the personality to the driving type and it starts to make sense.

16:39 Max Chilton: Yeah, completely.

16:40 If you gave two drivers blank helmets and put them round a tight corner, a high speed corner in Formula One I could probably tell you which teammate is who just because of the way they turned in and the aggressiveness of their driving.

16:55 Brian Rose: Okay, let’s talk about the money. I think there was a figure that came out last year saying that Red Bull had spent like $1.2 billion on their Formula One piece. And someone else had thrown that figure out that it costs a company like a billion dollars in total to actually fund a Formula One car.

17:15 Is that true? Because it’s like the crew and the cars and the travel. I mean in a circuit there’s a lot of travel. There’s a lot of racing going on. There’s a lot of money.

17:27 Max Chilton: It is. It’s definitely not a cheap sport. It is a glamorous sport. It’s a really sort of futuristic modern sport where they’re pushing the boundaries of technology. So to push the boundaries of technology in anything, it costs money.

17:43 And yeah, the manufacturers like Mercedes, Red Bull aren’t really a manufacturer but they’re one of the highest spending teams. They can spend huge numbers in dollars, pounds, whatever it may be on developing these cars. I don’t know the exact figures. They sound a little bit high to me but it’s not cheap for sure. Considering there’s only two cars on the track per team, say they are spending $500 million a year.

18:09 That’s $250 million per car. And back at the factories, these top teams have, they should be capped but maybe 1,200 people. So you’ve got 600 people for each car, which is just crazy. You can’t imagine another sport where it was like that. You can’t imagine a Tour de France team having 800 people behind it.

18:29 It’s a bizarre sport. They’re very highly tuned machines. Everything is custom made and it has to be the best of the best. And so that takes a person per part on the car to make the best car in the world.

18:44 Brian Rose: What do you love the most about it?

18:46 Is it the fact that you’re pushing the edge of technology, like really pushing these machines to places you didn’t know they were going to go before and shaving time off here over there? Or is it just the competitiveness of it? Is it that you’re pushing yourself every time you get in that car?

19:02 Max Chilton: Yeah, it’s pushing yourself. The thing that annoys me is how it’s sometimes not a level playing field.

19:07 The bit which drivers really enjoy is when they’re in a car which is quick and you’re driving it to the best you physically can because a good car handles well. You can then drive it even better and then you win and you feel like you’re getting the most out of yourself. It is a frustrating sport at times but it makes it really, really rewarding when you beat everyone else. And it’s a very weird sport in the way that cricketers or tennis players, golfers, maybe you’re out five, six hours a day practicing.

19:37 I haven’t been in a car for like two months and then you’re going to get in it and be straight on the pace driving a car at 220 miles an hour around a corner which each track has different grip levels. Whether it’s hot or cold, you have different amounts of downforce and you’re going to perfect it. It’s a really hard sport for the amount of hours we actually get to practice. But you can’t practice because it costs money to practice. Yeah, and it’s all over the world.

20:00 These tracks aren’t just on your doorstep. There’s in the World Championships there’s one track that we go to in all of the countries that we visit. And you have to fly the cars there, you have to fly all the machinery and telemetry and personnel. This huge, huge organization. You can’t just go out every day testing.

20:20 It’s not the way it is. So it’s a hard sport and that’s why the sport is pushing these technologies with simulations. Because these simulators now are very, very good at replicating what it’s like in real life.

20:34 Brian Rose: I heard you say the simulator is almost just as good and when you get in that thing they’re very, very realistic.

20:41 Max Chilton: They are very, very realistic.

20:43 And the thing is, is when you’re actually in it, when you first get in it for the first time you think, oh this isn’t quite right because it’s giving you different cues from the real car. But when you actually spend an hour in that simulator because each simulator is different, if you learn the cues that it’s feeding you by the time that you’ve learnt that you’re then down to driving the lap that you pretty much will in real life and then it becomes really realistic. And you can only put a good time in if you’re a very good driver.

21:10 It’s the same as real life. It does take a little bit of time because obviously it’s not the real thing but they are very, very accurate and they can try a set up change with different springs, roll bars, downforce levels on the simulator then they can go to the track and try it and it should be right. And so a lot of teams now have a guy or a professional racing driver in their simulator back at their factory whilst they’re racing in say Australia out on track at the same time and they say, oh we need to check if this set up change works.

21:40 And they have some in the other side of the world testing it. If it works then they’ll put it straight onto the car and test it live. So they’re that accurate. They are that accurate, yeah.

21:51 Brian Rose: Wow.

21:51 Brian Rose: And you say not level playing field. You talked about McLaren earlier but they’ve got the money but you’re saying this year they have a bad car or they just don’t, things aren’t clicking for them so it’s not about the driver anymore but they have the money.

22:04 Max Chilton: They have the money. They probably haven’t got the most out of the top three or four teams and you do go in and out of cycles. You look at Chelsea, the best team I think in the world at a point and now they’re struggling to stay up.

22:16 That is sort of like all sports are like that. You have your good days and bad days. McLaren at a time were the best. They’re now going for a redevelopment phase. They’ve just bought Honda on which this is their first year and that’s a really hard thing to do and that’s why they’re struggling.

22:31 But I guarantee you in the next few years they’ll be right back up there again and Mercedes might drop down. It’s very hard to stay at the top and so everything goes in cycles. But with Formula One you can only do what the car will allow you to do and that’s why Jenson Button, World Champion, Fernando Alonso, World Champion, they are limited to what that car can do this year and they’ve been fighting with Marussia’s cars at the back in some races which is four seconds a lap slower than the cars at the top where McLaren used to be a few years ago.

23:03 Brian Rose: Okay, are you going to be back in F1 next year? What’s the plans? Is that somewhere you want to go? And then when it comes to people in F1 is Lewis Chilton kind of the model for an up and coming young driver to kind of look to that or not?

23:17 Max Chilton: I’m not writing off Formula One.

23:19 If I got offered a good car I’d jump at it for sure. It’s the pinnacle of motorsport. It’s where I’ve always dreamt to be. I still dreamt to be World Champion or at least winner of Formula One Race. But you have to be realistic.

23:32 I spent two years in a car which was very difficult to even get points. Jules, my ex-teammate, only did it in one race out of the team being in the championship for five years. It was really hard to do. And that’s hard. You’re training all day to be as fit as you can.

23:51 You’re working as hard as you can. And you’ve got other drivers flying past you who might not be trying as hard. Because technology is blending in. Because the technology is the same thing. Because they’ve got something better working right.

24:01 Max Chilton: Yeah. Because the team is bigger, the funding is bigger It’s like me, but it’s like us being in a 50cc moped against guys in the superbikes. You’re not going to be able to be as quick as them.

24:11 Brian Rose: How frustrating is that when they’re just blowing by you and you’re like, I know I’m a better driver.

24:16 Max Chilton: But you have to be realistic.

24:17 I was lucky to be in Formula One. I was still on track with these World Champions and we had our good days and bad days. And so I was lucky to even have the chance. But there’s more to life than Formula One. There’s other places where you can make a name and enjoy racing.

24:32 So I’m not writing off Formula One, but I think I started doing a bit of racing in America this year. And we all know that America is a good place to making dreams come true. They’re very welcoming over there. The racing is very competitive, but they help you make a living out of it. The sponsors love coming behind you and supporting you the whole way.

24:52 The fans out there are incredible. It’s a different type of most sport that I’ve been used to, but it’s very enjoyable. And so I’m looking to do that next year, but nothing’s signed as yet.

25:04 Brian Rose: Okay, and in America, it’s IndyCar racing. That’s oval track.

25:08 So you’re going from, I’m going to throw this thing out, you’re going from, say, Monaco F1 races with yachts and champagne out to Indianapolis where it’s barbecues and beer. There’s completely different audiences, right? What’s that like, the difference between those two?

25:26 Max Chilton: It is different. And obviously in America you have a race in Long Beach, LA, which is a pretty glamorous race, but then you have the race I won this year, the Iowa 100 in the middle of nowhere.

25:39 You’re just in the middle of thousands of miles of cornfields, basically. So you do have your good races, and it’s the same in Formula 1. You have the Monaco Grand Prix, which is to me the best race in the world. And then you go to places, I don’t want to give any countries bad names, but Bahrain’s a great trap, but there’s just no one really there watching it. So you have different types of racing, but there is a difference in America.

26:02 The fans now have a good time. There’s all these massive RVs with big barbecues. You can smell the food sometimes when you drive past. It kind of whiffs up into the helmet, and, oh, nice burger. I’ll have one of those when I get in.

26:14 How much does the crowd affect you when you’re racing? Because I think you’re in this car, shut off, you’re obviously concentrating. At the oval track, you’re over 200 miles an hour, right? This is no joke.

26:26 Brian Rose: How much does the crowd influence you?

26:28 Max Chilton: Obviously, if it’s your home race, it makes a big difference. You can sort of hear them roar every time you go by. And I had that experience in Silverstone in 2014. I was chasing one of the Catrons to catch them up. And I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

26:42 I was in a Formula 1 car, which was pretty definitely loud. But I was in a slow speed corner where the engine wasn’t really revving. And I could just see arms in the air in the stadium, the grandstands on the outside of a corner called Luffield. And I could hear a roar, and I looked, and everyone was there with their flags up, because they’d seen me hunting down this other driver, and I got past him. And there was only three of us British drivers on the grid at the time, me, Lewis, and Jensen.

27:09 And so that empowered me to then keep pushing and try and catch the next car. So the crowds can make a difference. I haven’t experienced that yet in America, but the Indianapolis 500, which is the biggest oval race in the world, is 2.5 miles, an average of 225, 230 miles an hour.

27:26 Brian Rose: I can imagine that being electric. They have a half a million people there watching the race live.

27:32 It’s the biggest sporting arena in the world. I can imagine that’s a pretty electrifying place to be. Yeah, I used to watch that as a kid. And don’t ask me why. It’s a 2.5 mile track, 200 laps, 500 miles.

27:47 It’s in Indianapolis. Like you said, half a million people there at a live event. Who’s ever heard of anything like that? And I remember being fascinated as a kid. It’s very high tech, talking about shaving seconds.

27:58 There’s crashes. It’s dangerous. It’s a big race.

28:02 Max Chilton: It is a big race. I don’t know if I’m going to take part in it yet, but I’d hope to do it at least once in my life.

28:11 It’s one of those races which it just sucks you in. You want to have a go at it. I had my first oval experience this year, and it was terrifying. But you get used to it, and my second race I won. And that was a big thing for a European driver to do, because ovals is very un-European, shall I say, because we don’t have them.

28:33 But I was talking about fine detail in F1. There’s fine detail in F1, but then there’s fine detail in the Indianapolis 500, because you can change the angle of your wing by the smallest of measurements, and you can fill that out on the track, because the car is so on the edge, you get into these corners where you’re trying to keep it flat at 230 miles an hour. It’s an amazing feeling. It’s so much faster than the Formula 1 races. Monza, or actually new to Formula 1 this year, was Mexico, and they were hitting 228 miles an hour.

29:08 Indianapolis 500, they hit 230, 235. So actually there’s only about 6 or 7 miles in it, miles an hour difference in it. But the difference is F1 are doing that for a matter of seconds in a straight line, then brake. Their Indy cars are doing it as an average basically for 500 miles in a corner, with other cars below your high side and the G-force. So it’s very different even though you’re doing similar speeds.

29:37 Brian Rose: Okay. Do you worry about crashing?

29:39 Max Chilton: Yes. But you have to, you know, you worry about it at times, but you put your helmet on, you have to just get rid of that, because there’s no point in being worried and going out on track. You’ve just got to put that helmet on and forget about it.

29:55 You know, Indy car’s not great for that, for sure. But your time’s up when your time’s up. There’s some silly things you can do as well, and I like to think I’m quite sensible, but everyone makes mistakes at a time. So hopefully, you know, I touch wood, I don’t have a big one because I’ve always been pretty lucky with that.

30:17 Brian Rose: Silly things as in you can make the move that hurts you, being too aggressive or not being careful enough.

30:24 Max Chilton: Yeah, some people don’t think about things too much. And there’s a point where great racing drivers just get the move done. But some people go for moves which, you know, there’s not even a gap there, and it’s just going to end up being a crash. There’s certain people in Formula 1 without mentioning any names who are just known for crashing because they sort of just do silly things. But you can’t really get a way of doing that on ovals because they’re so much faster, and you just have to think about things.

30:50 But I like to think I think about my moves, and I’ll plan it, I’ll be following someone for lap after lap, and I go, right, this is my time, I’ll get it done. And if you do it that way, it’s the best way to do it.

31:00 Brian Rose: Yeah, I mean, it’s funny because in the movie Rush, you know, there’s a point where the character, is it James Hunt, right? Who, you know, is striking and resembles to you a little bit. Do you get compared to him at all?

31:10 Max Chilton: No, but I’ve been spending quite a lot of time with his son, Freddy. And he’s like the mirror image of him. When he puts James’ old suits on, he’s got the long wavy hair, he smokes as well, he’s just spitting image. So I sort of feel like I know James, but I don’t. Okay.

31:26 Brian Rose: Well, in the movie, he’s the good-looking English young racer, brash, and he’s out there taking chances and upsetting some of the drivers by what he’s doing. And he’s like, look, the reason people like race car drivers is because we put our lives on the line every day. Is that what racing’s really like, or is that the Hollywood version of what racing is?

31:48 Max Chilton: I’d say that’s more of what the Hollywood type is. You know, you do sort of, you do some outlandish moves sometimes, and it was definitely putting your life on your line more back then, for sure, because the safety has increased hugely.

32:02 And so, yeah, it was slightly different back then. But when you were speaking about the movies earlier, I didn’t have the chance to say, but the best movie for me for racing is the Senna movie, because it’s not really a movie, it’s a documentary, and it shows firsthand how it actually is. When you go into films like Rush or Days of Thunder, they’ve always got an extra gear. And a racing car, yeah, you might have an extra gear, but if you go to it early, you’re just going to reduce your revs and then the other car’s going to pull away.

32:30 So it’s very hard to get that overtake done. You can’t go, oh, let’s go down the gear, let’s overtake and go around the outside. That doesn’t happen. So for me, the Senna is the best film to explain how we go about our business.

32:43 Brian Rose: Okay, and that showed the rivalry between Senna and the…

32:46 Max Chilton: Is it German guy?

32:47 Brian Rose: Yeah, Nick Lauda. Nick Lauda. And they were arguing over similar things, you know, you’re being too aggressive, you’re going for gaps that aren’t there, you’re ruining things for me, you’re missing an etiquette that must be out there when you race in the same track, right? Yeah.

33:01 Max Chilton: You’ve got to think about things, and, you know, at the end of the day, you’ve got quite a big grid of young drivers that all want to do well. You know, if you’re being overtaken, you defend and you’ve got a guy who wants to overtake, sometimes it ends up with a crash and you’re both out of the race, and you can disagree for the rest of your life who’s fault it was, but that’s going to happen. You can sense how other drivers are going to work, though. There’s certain drivers that you go, oh, no, I know he’s going to shut the door on me, I’m going to have to get past him in a straight line, or there’s drivers which sort of let you go down the inside pretty easily, but they do it purposely because they want you to brake late, go deep, and they’ll get you back on the exit.

33:41 So everyone races differently, and this goes back to the racecraft I was telling you about earlier. A lot of the moves done in Formula 1 now, I can guarantee they were replicating similar back in the day when they were 10 years old in karting, because everyone has their own style of driving. It’s like seeing a Tiger Woods swing compared to a Jim Fury, they’re completely different, but they have been the same for the last 20 years, basically.

34:04 Brian Rose: Okay, back to the movie Rush.

34:06 What is your life when you’re off the track? Is it all glamour? Is it popping bottles? Is it supermodels? Is it private jets?

34:13 Brian Rose: You can tell me.

34:14 Max Chilton: I’d like to think my girlfriend’s a supermodel. She’s pretty gorgeous, so I’m lucky on that side. Yeah, you have some good nights out in Formula 1. The thing is, you’re very busy in Formula 1, but there’s certain events like Monaco, after the race, it’s just the best place in the world to go out.

34:30 It’s electrifying. I thought Austin and America was always a great place to have a good night out. And so, yeah, I have a few big nights in the year, but realistically, at the end of the day, we’re athletes, and athletes can’t get away with just constantly necking their beers and having late nights, which comes across in the movie Rush, which they might have done back then, but it is changing now. You just can’t get away with doing stuff like that.

34:52 Brian Rose: Talk to me about the training.

34:53 I don’t think most people understand the training you have to do as a driver. Even like the Indy guys, like the G-forces, the length. I mean, what’s an Indy car race? It’s hours, right?

35:03 Max Chilton: Yeah, it’s 500 miles doing…

35:05 Max Chilton: Well, if there was no yellows, so you don’t have to slow down, 230 miles an hour, it’s going to be just over two hours, but it ends up being about three hours with the yellows. So you’re sweating, it’s in the heat.

35:17 Brian Rose: You had a race recently where it’s going to be two hours in the heat. G-forces, stress levels, how do you train for that?

35:24 Max Chilton: Yeah, you’re right.

35:25 It’s difficult. And this is the one thing with motorsport people don’t really understand is they don’t understand why we need to be fit because they think at the end of the day they get in their road car in the morning with their suit on, they put the seatbelt across, start the key, off they go, first gear. And it’s not physical. But when you add another 200 miles an hour to that, you’re doing it in a cockpit where you can hardly move. You’re doing it in a country which is really hot, humid.

35:49 You’ve got an engine behind you with brakes that are like 800 degrees and an engine which is at 200 degrees, you know, soaking through to your cockpit. So you’re boiling hot. You’ve got five layers of far-proof underwear and overalls on. You’ve got the concentration of driving. You’re in control of this machine.

36:08 You’re not on a computer game where if you crash you just, you know, click restart and off you go. You’re in control of this. You’ve got the added pressure that you’re being watched by a lot of the world. You’re also trying your best to perfect things. And all these things put together, put your heart rate right up so you’re working really hard.

36:27 You’re sweating a lot. You can sweat two, three kilos in a race. And I remember I had a heart rate belt on for the Singapore Grand Prix which realistically is why every driver in Formula 1 trains. Yes, a lot of the races are hard but the Singapore Grand Prix is the hardest one. Everyone would admit that.

36:44 So that’s why everyone trains. It’s hot, it’s humid. It’s a street race so the average speed is slower so it takes longer to do the distance. So the race is always two hours basically. It’s in a city so it’s weird.

36:57 You wouldn’t think it makes a difference but in a city with the concrete walls there’s no sort of fresh air. Whatever air you get is hot and it is just the hardest race. You get out and you’re absolutely depleted. And when you get out of the car after most races everyone is trying to play it cool and wipe the sweat off their face and go on to the weighing scales, chat to your fitness trainer and actually go back and meet the team. And they’re trying to play it cool.

37:21 After the Singapore Grand Prix no one gives a flying, what’s it? They’re just on the floor pouring water over them trying to soak up as much energy as they can because it just exhausts you.

37:33 Brian Rose: When you’re 90 minutes into that race do you get into a zone in your head where you’re just kind of meditating or so focused that you can try to forget about some of that stuff?

37:44 Max Chilton: I’m not really one for meditating but I’ve always been a bit sort of office not office, what’s the word?

37:51 Sort of a bit blind to the fact that sports coach, sports mental, sports psychologist work. I should have started them younger but what I learnt is it’s not them trying to hypnotise you and putting you into this place which doesn’t really exist. It’s more a method of being organised and being routine. The best racing driver might not necessarily be the quickest on each lap, every lap. It will be, well say that again, it’s not necessarily he can put a quick time in but then a slow time.

38:21 It’s been consistently fast. So if it’s a 50 lap Grand Prix he can try and mirror image that lap every single time and not make a mistake. Whilst you have other cars around you it might start raining and each corner has different grip levels. That’s the hardest thing. With a sports psychologist they can put you into a place where you have sort of resets and I started using one and it made a difference.

38:46 I had a place, not always the start finish line but most of the time I come across the start finish line and I forget everything I’ve just done and then do it again. It was like a reset point and it made things go quicker and it made me more focused. If you just get into a rhythm, a rhythm is good but if you get into a rhythm you can very quickly lose concentration and make a mistake in the form of one car. Your race is over. There are certain procedures you can do at the start of the race to get yourself into a relaxed environment and just blank everything out.

39:15 So there’s definitely bonuses to having sports psychologists which I can see helps other sportsmen.

39:21 Brian Rose: But you don’t meditate per se.

39:23 Max Chilton: No.

39:24 Brian Rose: But you do get yourself into a state before you go in there. Yeah.

39:28 Max Chilton: I try to focus. It depends what you call meditation. I don’t sit there in the morning with my legs crossed going I can shut my eyes and lie in bed and try and replicate a lap. If I’m racing at Spa in Belgium in a week’s time, I’ll wake up every morning, shut my eyes, try and image me braking, doing the gears, turning in each corner. And if I do this ten times every morning for a week I can guarantee if you timed me on one of my laps when I wake up on like a Friday I will be within a second of the lap I’m going to do.

40:01 It takes a bit of practice but you can pretty much mirror image the lap in your head. So you can rehearse that thing in real time in your head. And that goes back to helping what I said earlier, motorsport’s a very weird thing for actually having a chance to practice what you do. And so this way you make the most of being rehearsed, you know, organised and prepared to get in the car and then do it. Instead of getting in the car or doing ten laps trying to learn where to turn and do your brakes, do your gears, you now do it on a simulator.

40:31 Try and perfect it there. Then you come away from the simulator try and practice it in your head so it’s there. And then when you get in the car your body can do it straight away first lap instead of waiting ten laps to learn.

40:41 Brian Rose: Sounds like Hollywood, sounds like making a movie you like practice, practice, practice and then the day of you got one take.

40:46 Max Chilton: Yeah, practice makes perfect.

40:47 Max Chilton: Everyone knows that.

40:48 Brian Rose: I did this, there’s one guy out there that says ten thousand hours it takes to be the ultimate sportsman. You’ve probably heard that before. Yeah, do you believe that?

40:55 Max Chilton: In motorsport that’s impossible.

40:56 I don’t think there’s any driver in motorsport that’s done ten thousand in the same car, you know, on the same track. The thing is we have different tracks. It’s not like going on a tennis court which is exactly the same size. We’re going on tracks which are so different, different lengths, different corners, different, you know, hills and it’s so much to throw in the boat with motorsport it’s impossible to be ten thousand hours practiced.

41:19 Brian Rose: Right, so just go with the time you have, meditate on the other times.

41:23 Make the most of what you have and then take that up and put it into the car.

41:27 Brian Rose: Right. It’s interesting when you’ve been described as being a bit OCD, excessive, compulsive but you say that’s an asset for me because that means you’re the one that’s doing all those little checks. I used to fly helicopters and you have a checklist and you go around that thing and you check everything or you fall out of the sky and you’re happy to be on the OCD spectrum in that same way.

41:50 How do you find your piece helps you as far as OCD?

41:53 Max Chilton: I think it really helps me. Day to day it frustrates me because there’s certain things I just have to do because I can’t go out of the house until I’ve done it or, you know, I have a certain procedure it takes me about ten minutes to have a shower and a certain way I get out of the shower and all this sort of stuff but when it comes to it realistically my life is very organised and I don’t spend time going, you know, looking for things or being unprepared everything has a place I can relax because I know everything’s sorted and it’s the same when I go to motorsport and I go to the track everything’s in its place it’s already I’m never going where’s my earpieces trying to get into the car and I haven’t got my earpieces to hear my engineer it’s all ready it’s all organised it’s the same with the preparation you know I’ll do the simulator I’ll write my notes and then when I wake up every morning I’ll make sure I’ve practiced the lap ten times in my head so it’s there fresh in my mind to then when I go to the track and it’s all these different things organisation can never hurt you I don’t think and it makes you enjoy life it’s the same when you get in your aeroplane chair you get some people that have all the magazines wedged down the stair down their side pillows sort of in between their legs bags here drinks falling over and I couldn’t relax like that to me you’ve got as much space as you can

43:03 To relax everything has a place you have your iPad on your lap and your earpieces and you’re done I can’t relax until everything has its own place and it’s sorted basically

43:13 Brian Rose: and have you had races where you’ve shown up and it’s been chaotic and races where you’ve shown up and everything is smooth and are you a different driver?

43:21 Max Chilton: Yeah the annoying thing is you can’t always put your finger on why you have a good weekend you know in GP2 I’d have a weekend where I’d put it on pole position and I’d win and then I’d go to the next race and I’d work even harder and I’d qualify tenth and I’d finish seventh you can’t work out week to week what you’ve done different so that is frustrating but the main thing is you be prepared and you give you 100% all the time because that’s an asset

43:46 Brian Rose: I like how that mental reset in your brain that’s a really interesting way of thinking about how you race and I bet people listening could apply that to different parts of their life and it’s a real a mental discipline because like you said you could just get routine and then you’re going to make a mistake on lap 17 because you’re not paying attention but if you reset and treat each new lap as a new game then you stay focused you try to perfect each one you’re not thinking about three laps ago when you did this wrong and that’s a way to win

44:16 Max Chilton: it does take practice for sure you can’t you know because rhythm is a good thing and all sport rhythm is good but you can’t get into an un-conscious rhythm

44:25 Where you start then not being alert and making mistakes I also got taught this thing called the monkey mind where you know everyone has doubts there’ll be someone in the back of your head now saying oh I wish that I asked that question differently the best thing you can do is you can’t change that you picture throwing out the back of your head and so I pictured when my psychologist told me about this monkey mind he said listen to what he’s saying you know picture it being bagged up and then being thrown out the exhaust pipe and it’s you know it’s hitting the cars behind you you can’t do anything about it it’s happened move on and focus on what’s in front of you and when I start doing that I start winning races and it really helps

45:01 Brian Rose: that’s wild you have more to do you think from a psychology standpoint in your future to win is that something you want to keep working on?

45:08 Max Chilton: Yeah you can never stop you can never be perfect you can always just get better and better and better and so yeah I won’t ever give up on trying to be a better person I practiced my monkey mind thing when it comes to golf I used to play a lot I can’t play as much now because I’m seem to always be on an aeroplane or in a racing car but you know it goes back to think golf is 90% mental and the best thing you can do everyone hits bad shots but the worst thing you can do is picture the last shot in your head when you’re taking the next shot because you’ll just mirror image it you’ve got to put it out of your mind and that’s what Tiger Woods was the best at he hit a bad shot he completely forgot about it and then he hit a perfect shot right so you can do that you can take that over to your racing as well and just stay present everyone makes mistakes no one’s perfect

45:54 Brian Rose: back to just Lewis Chilton when you see him as a personal brand do you ever think okay you know it’s his personal brand that also gets him the sponsorships and gets him at the top and these kind of things I mean do you see that from your own personal perspective that you have to build you know the brand Max and then that also gets you the cars I mean it’s a whole different way than it was say during the rush years 30 years ago where you would just really rely on the brand

46:19 Max Chilton: it is different and certain drivers are better than others Lewis is in that dream world he’s stupidly fast

46:25 He has world titles behind him he came up the ladder perfectly to Formula One and he’s just a household name now and he comes across really well you know everyone has their haters and you know likeers but you can’t fault Lewis he is when he puts that helmet on he’s one of the quickest on that grid and when he’s put the helmet off and he’s in front of a camera he comes across really well and that’s what you need to be now Sport isn’t technically all about the sport now you’ve got to have your own brand and you’re right certain drivers are better than others

46:58 Brian Rose: We were talking about David Beckham earlier are there people that you look at and think okay I like how they use their personal brand I want to be thinking of them and some of the moves I make that kind of thing do you have kind of role models when it comes?

47:13 Max Chilton: Yeah everyone has I guess there’s certain people I take bits from you have to be careful with your own brand you don’t want to put it out in the wrong place you watch a film like Yes Man and you think right I’m just going to do every single interview and you end up sort of cheapening yourself so you have to do the right things and that’s the reason I’m here this is a good place to tell my story and this is a good thing to do but there’s certain things you want to avoid because the article will come across the wrong way and it’s the same with your branding you can sort of come up with some weird merchandise which doesn’t go down too well you’ve got to think about every single thing now and do it to the best of your ability

47:58 Brian Rose: yeah I mean think of Beckham he hasn’t probably played great football in a long time and I remember the World Cup in 1998 or something when he was booed off the field and no one wanted to say his name and yet he’s bounced his back and he’s like a wine, he gets better with age and yeah he’s done a very intelligent way of keeping himself relevant the right product placements, the right media the right everything

48:23 Max Chilton: you can do anything now to become a better person and David is the perfect example he’s a really genuinely nice guy and yeah I remember after that World Cup when he tripped that person up he was disliked by a lot of people but now I don’t really want to say a bad word against him he’s such a genuine person

48:42 He’s the perfect marketing person he’s a great sportsman he’s sort of a lot of people’s idols when it comes to sport and outside of sport he’s fashion just genuinely one of those guys but they’re one in a billion whatever they’re rare and the best thing I can do is be the nicest person I like to think I have a good heart when you’re on a racetrack you’ve got to have a good heart but you’ve also got to stand your ground sometimes and be aggressive and that’s another thing Lewis is good at he won’t take any crap and he’s fast,

49:12 Brian Rose: I mean you said a lot of it’s the car but you said he’s stupid fast look at Lewis sometimes and you’re like what’s going on there or he did that turn or he did that pass what do you see?

49:22 Max Chilton: Yeah, you’ve got to have the car but at the end of the day Lewis deserves to be world champion this year because he beat his teammate and that was his only competition realistically so if you beat your teammate and you’re in the best car you deserve to be world champion it would be different, I’m not saying you wouldn’t have won but to me Alonzo is one of the best drivers on the grid I said that earlier that might have been different if he was in Rossberg’s car everyone has their good years and bad years but at the end of the day you do the best job you can with the machine you’ve got and if you’re in the right car at the right time you’re going to have a world champion no one’s become world champion because they haven’t been in the right car

50:04 Brian Rose: That is one thing, it’s very hard it’s like trying to win the Tour de France on a unicycle Talking about the Americans when you’re going around that oval track in Iowa how do you find that as far as the danger and the aggressiveness of the drivers do they not know what to make of you is it mostly Americans on that track and how does it feel different is the style different?

50:25 Max Chilton: The style is very different at the end of the day you’ve got two pedals a couple of pedals and a steering wheel so it’s not drastically different hopefully you’re going forward and yeah, that’s the same but the way you approach it is very different because you’re always turning left you’ve got to use as much of the bank as you can then drop down and then it will want to suck you up to the wall and you’ve got to try and carry as much speed that you can that you end up doing the corner perfectly so there’s more to it when you then mix other cars in that and you’ve got a car on your high side and you’ve got a car on your low side you all sort of wedge between two cars and obviously you can’t then go down low and then come up high so you’re going to have to slightly lift off a little bit more to take the turn because it’s tighter you’ve also got a spotter which is very new to me I’ve never had that, that’s a very American thing where he’s called a spotter he’s talking to me directly from a really high viewing point you can see the whole track and they’ll say car 5 back, 10 back

51:24 He’s high side and so you’re basically always looking forward you can see your mirrors but you can’t see the cars which are there because your head’s completely wedged so your spotters are telling you where these other cars are and this is very bizarre you would never have that informed line telling you you’ve got 10 backs, closings, down your inside or you’re closing, you’re closing it’s a very new thing for me to get used to but that’s why people are amazed when I won in Iowa in my second ever oval race they were blowing away the Americans I think the Americans were a little bit frustrated by that these teams that had been doing it year in and year out and I was there with a new team, Carlin, British team the Obels are new to that and they managed to get these spooky set ups which you have the cars staggered at angles to take the turn perfectly and they obviously had given me the car to do the job and I’d done the right job because I’d beat my teammate put it on pole position and won the race so I think there was a few upset Americans at the time

52:19 Brian Rose: What are the Americans making you? You could be the next James Bond the way you look, the way you talk what are they making you?

52:26 Max Chilton: I’m not wearing my polo net or round net everyone’s told me to enter the milk tray advert for the new man on that but Americans, I think it’s the same, it doesn’t matter if you’re going to Australia or whatever as long as you’re a nice guy and you mean well then they’re going to take you on board

52:44 Brian Rose: Yeah, and Americans love a winner they love a success story and they’ll welcome you open arms they love a personality and a success story so I think you’ll do well there On that race when you won in 2015 I know you got some bad news about your former teammate you mentioned earlier Jules Bianchi he passed away due to injuries from a race I asked you earlier about the danger when you know someone that well and that kind of thing happens where do you put that? Do you try to de-compartmentalise it?

53:14 I know you said in certain races you were thinking about him every 5 or 10 laps tell me about it

53:20 Max Chilton: Yeah, one of the hardest moments of my life and in fact that race I did the day after he passed away there wasn’t a lap I did with that where I didn’t think of him I constantly had him in my head because he was such a great driver I was up against him for 2 years and to me he would have gone on to be a real success story in Formula 1 and I had my days I beat him at times but he was one of those drivers that very rarely got it wrong he was always inch perfect and when you’re trying to beat someone for that long they have a lasting memory on you and so when he passed away and I was already qualified on pole position for that race the day he passed away I wanted to get that win for him and the race went to plan but then I got overtaken for 10 laps in the middle of the 100 laps because I caught a back marker didn’t get past him first time my team then got past and I was absolutely livid I was effing and blind down the radio going this is rubbish because the blue flags in Formula 1 they get out of the way, if there’s a back mark holding you up they have to get out of your way but in oval racing you have to get past I caught this car out then got stuck behind him allowed my teammate to pass and he got past so I was livid but I worked really hard and you’re swearing during the race so you get emotional during the race I was really angry

54:40 Because I wanted to win that race and I think Jules made that difference for me to win that race because I thought hang on, Jules wouldn’t be doing this he’d be focusing on catching and I did that and soon got passed him and pulled away for the last 40 laps of the race and won he’d have a lasting memory on me and Jules would have taken the emotion out of it and worked on the inches is what he would have done

55:05 Brian Rose: and that’s what you did you can’t change what’s happened you can’t go back it’s happened so you might as well just work on doing what you want by overtaking he died from complications from a crash is that right? do you ever look back at that and thought there was a mistake here or a mistake there what happens when you think about that?

55:25 Max Chilton: I try not to think about it even though I think about it every day I try and not think about it because at the end of the day getting on a horse and going riding is more dangerous or playing rugby is more dangerous than motorsport and as I said your time is up when it’s up it is difficult but you just can’t think about it it’s not much more else to say you wouldn’t be a racing driver you start worrying about the dangers when you put the helmet on and I do worry about them when the helmet isn’t on and I want to improve safety as much as I can I think there’s more we can still do there’s still vulnerable areas in a racing car but getting on your road bike and going cycling is probably more dangerous

56:07 Brian Rose: Right, statistically it is when you watch the movie Seina and you watch that footage where we all know it’s coming at the end but it’s still hard to watch because it’s almost a documentary you watch in real time think about that movie so you feel like it’s happening even though it’s not what are your thoughts when you see something like that is that a time when standards were different back then or could that have been prevented?

56:33 Max Chilton: Yeah, it would have been prevented now 20 years on but yeah there was more they could do and that was when Sir Jackie Stewart deserved his knighthood because he stood his ground along with the GPDA, the Grand Prix Drivers Association to make the sport safer for the time, it was a long time ago but there was still more they could have done and that’s what they were frustrated about and so they improved Formula One hugely then and there wasn’t a definite Formula One for 20 I don’t know the exact year, 22, 23 years until Jules’s one and Jules’s one was very much more a freak accident it was the one area in the car you can’t afford to take a hit it was an absolute freak accident but yet again it happens there’s more we can do I’m pushing for changes in the sport because I think the safer there is the better there’s some people out there that think motorsports excite because of the crashes yeah, that is fun, I agree it’s not sometimes fun to see a crash but only if it’s safe so why can’t you make it even safer now

57:35 By putting the copper over so that you have a crash so you can just get out and off you go to the next one I think you’re an absolute mentalist if you actually like watching motorsport for the chances of serious injury sometimes you want to see the crash but you want to see everyone’s okay so you want to see that, the spin out but you want to see people walk away if you don’t want to see people walk away then you should be the person in that car because that’s just not on I think it ruins the race when that stuff happens

58:03 Brian Rose: with Jules, did he hit straight on or was there a certain angle where it was less safe?

58:08 Max Chilton: this is where you’re better off asking another driver my way of not trying to remember it too much I’ve still to this day never seen the footage most drivers out there have seen the footage but to me I just couldn’t physically I know it’s on YouTube but I don’t see why you would ever want to watch that it just blows my mind because as soon as you watch that then if you’re in a similar situation you’re just going to have that flashing in your mind whilst racing and as I said to you earlier you can’t change what’s happened you’re better off just focusing on the road in front of you so I don’t want that in my head the whole time

58:42 Brian Rose: fair enough I’ve seen you in training I’ve seen you in the simulators you’re doing G-force things with your neck you’re pulling on the wheel some of the things that you put yourself through

58:52 I know you’re in AVID you do a lot of cycling as well you train really hard is this like a 24 hour a day piece for you like diet, training, you don’t drink, is that right?

59:02 Max Chilton: this is where I’m going to be honest with you a lot of drivers say we do 4 hours a day fitness training and we never eat any bad carbs like chips and pasta and pizza of course we do I’m not tea total but the only thing I drink is beer and that’s probably once every few weeks I’ll have a couple of beers if you do everything in small amounts it’s fine but yeah we’re not going to go sit and have a McDonald’s 3 times a week you’ve got to be the best athlete you can but sometimes you’ve got to give yourself treats otherwise you’re mentally not with it you’re constantly thinking about having a holiday and wanting to eat a chocolate brownie when you’re off just having a chocolate brownie you can go out training and so yeah I like my food I do watch what I eat the most important time to watch what you eat is the build up to a weekend so on a Thursday or Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday of a race weekend eat really well hydrate yourself with the right amounts of thing salts and everything that you need to be the best person but when you have a Monday and Tuesday at home then you know have a little picket have a cup of brownies and a couple of burgers if you want it’s not really going to hurt as long as you’re fitness training and you’re keeping yourself fit and clean

1:00:14 Next five years for you what are some of the things that you kind of want to hit is this a young man’s sport I’m asking that to a young man but I mean you’re 24 so like the next five years a number of things could happen to you what is number one on the list I mean is it the win at Monaco or is it other things that you want to explore

1:00:33 Max Chilton: yeah this is all very new to me this has changed in the last year a year ago I was in Formula One and now you know my goals are different there is more to life than Formula One and there are other things that I can achieve

1:00:45 Brian Rose: well in the team went bankrupt right?

1:00:47 Max Chilton: yeah so that was off

1:00:49 Brian Rose: and then you started doing the race in America right

1:00:52 Max Chilton: yeah at the same time I also got a contract to be the works Nissan driver for Le Mans so that was another special race I did this year that was one race I’ve always wanted to do I don’t think there’s many racing drivers out there that wouldn’t want to do Le Mans 24 hours it’s the most iconic race with you know Indy 500 the Le Mans 24 hours and for me the Monaco Grand Prix are the most iconic races and I’ve done the Monaco Grand Prix I’ve also done the Monaco track in GP2 I’ve had a couple of seconds I haven’t won which is you know it hurts but you know I’ve been on the podium at Monaco which is an amazing feeling the one I haven’t done is the Indianapolis 500 but Le Mans is amazing, it’s grueling we lasted 23 hours this year the car broke down on us a number of times

1:01:35 But it gave up the ghost and we couldn’t get it back to the pits with an hour to go and you know that’s pretty hard when you’ve been going for 23 hours giving it your all doing you know two hours then getting out feeling exhausted feed yourself have a quick nap and then you’re back in the car again for two hours and it’s you know the last 23 hours was hard but I’ve learnt from it it’s made me love the race even more than I already did I want to do it again that’s one race I’d love to win and the good thing with motorsport there’s endless things you can win and that’s another one I’ve added to the list that I want to at least race in again

1:02:11 Brian Rose: we’ve all heard about the Le Mans 24 hours race why do people race for 24 hours? like why did that originally start?

1:02:17 Max Chilton: it tests man and machinery you can have the machinery which lasts 24 hours but can the man concentrate for 24 hours and be quicker it’s not just last 24 hours you’ve got to be quicker than all the other cars on the grid then it comes down to building a car which can be you know reliable for 24 hours but then be high performance and we all know performance you end up losing reliability you get in your Ford Transit outside it’s going to be more reliable than getting in your probably without any names a supercar because they’re just more high end and they tend to break down so there’s an art now of trying to make the most fast reliable car and that’s very hard the teams now and that are spending similar budgets

1:02:57 To Formula One if not more because it’s a 24 hour race you can’t just change your brakes half way through because change your brakes takes 4 minutes that’s a whole lap of Le Mans you’re behind now so it’s amazing it’s actually pushing the boundaries in a weird sort of way more than Formula One

1:03:14 Brian Rose: and you’re staying up for 24 hours to do that?

1:03:17 Max Chilton: yeah the car it comes in for fuel wheels, tyres and a driver change so each driver will get in for 2 hours usually and that will consist of usually 3 stints, 2 pit stops so change your tyres maybe once but you need to refuel every time you do a stint and yeah you do that for 24 hours

1:03:34 Brian Rose: which hours are harder because I can see yourself getting all excited, getting all prepared and then like hour 6 you’re like oh my gosh this is really hard or hour 14 you’re like this is really hard

1:03:45 Max Chilton: the hours are different because I didn’t start the race this year I got an hour like 5 and did 5 and 6 I think and so it was just I think I was pretty lucky I think I got the best hours my first one was late afternoon to evening so the sun was setting and that was amazing everyone was sort of getting ready for the night of Le Mans which is just amazing and then my next stint was at 4 in the morning because I got in the car it’s sort of it’s silent and peaceful but it’s not you’ve got endless 50, 60 racing cars screaming past you but there is this sort of silence and I got in and did my stint I did a stint had to come in, fueled tyres

1:04:23 Went out again towards the end of that next stint before I needed to pit I just started to see the sky start to light up came in, changed the tyres and fueled and then I started that next stint my last stint and the sun was coming up you come down the Molsan doing 230 miles an hour and the sun was coming up and you’re in this amazing place you’re so relaxed and calm it is peaceful yet you’re on a machine which is just roaring behind you you’re sweating it’s an unforgettable experience I’ve never done a race where you experience what you do at Le Mans it’s very unique you’re on roads as well with forests around you and you’re going sometimes through a park where there’s no spectators and you’re just on your own it’s a magical experience

1:05:08 Brian Rose: are you the happiest when you’re driving?

1:05:10 Max Chilton: Yeah I don’t know if I can swear on this when you put the helmet on the bullshit stops you just get it on and then you go and that is when you’re at your best you don’t have to worry about all the other gossip and news that goes on you’re just focusing on yourself and getting that car around the lap the quickest

1:05:28 Brian Rose: are we going to see you at the Indy 500 sometime?

1:05:31 Max Chilton: hopefully nothing signs but that is the one I want to tick off the list

1:05:35 Brian Rose: and again is this a young man’s game do you think you have until you’re 30 in this sport or is that not true? because a lot of Indy racers are a bit older right?

1:05:44 Max Chilton: Yeah Indy cars are a little bit older actually it’s probably pretty similar to Formula 1 you can get away with doing it until you’re sort of mid the most sort of mid to late 40s but on average Max Verstappen in Formula 1 this year came in at 17, 18 that’s more of the coming infield now low 20s and then you’re out by sort of mid 30s but if you’re exceptional and you can continuously be fit and fast then you can go on to your sort of mid 40s but usually it’s sort of late 20s, early 30s you then have to venture off doing other things like touring cars or there’s many types of motorsport

1:06:24 Brian Rose: have there been any English winners of the Indy 500?

1:06:28 Max Chilton: yeah there has been a few and hopefully I’ll have my name to that if I take part it’s weird, it’s a race which is known around the world for sure it’s most known in America but there’s not one British driver who wouldn’t want to win the Indy 500 it’s just the most amazing race and yeah I’m dreaming already of winning that

1:06:50 Brian Rose: does it have some endurance aspects to it like Le Mans because it’s those laps, repetitive laps really pushing the envelope

1:06:58 Max Chilton: yeah as we said earlier it’s only sort of three hours so is that endurance or not but that would seem a long time when you’re doing 250 laps or 200 laps of Indianapolis that each lap you’ve got a oh I’ve got 199 to go, I’ve got 198 to go and each lap will suck energy out of you and so if you get to the end and you’ve got no one in front of you

1:07:22 That’s going to be the most magical experience

1:07:25 Brian Rose: such a mental game isn’t it family business, your brother Tom races your dad owns a racing team, what’s it like growing up around that I know you said when you were younger you went to the races to see Tom, you guys have different personalities you and him completely, if he was here he’d be sort of dancing around or doing something wacky

1:07:44 Max Chilton: he’s a very sort of different person from me but we get on like a house on fire he’s a different build, he’s more like a rugby build so he’s taller than me, he’s a bigger build so he’s suited to the touring car route which is basically your road going cars souped up and he’s in the World Touring Car Championship so at one point I was in the World Championship for Formula 1 and he was in the World Touring Car Championship which was a pretty cool thing for two brothers to be in World Championships but sort of completely separate he’s continuing doing that he’s had race wins the scary thing is he’s now in his I think he’s in his 14th year of touring car racing and he’s only 30 which is pretty mental but I appreciate what he does if I got in a car he would whip my arse, if he got into a single seat to a downforce then I’d whip his arse so I appreciate what he does and he appreciates what I do

1:08:36 Brian Rose: Does it help to have a smaller frame in F1?

1:08:38 Max Chilton: Yeah, you’ve got to be light you can’t go away with being more than probably 80 kilos at the most in Formula 1 ideally the lighter the better because if you’re 60 kilos and your team makes 80 kilos there’s 20 kilos to play with here and it’s not like you just put the 20 kilos in the car you can put 5 kilos on each corner of the car to balance the car out even more and have the weight as low as possible instead of the 20 kilos being a new high up in the car and that’s then performance so it’s like jockey racing the lighter the better

1:09:10 Brian Rose: And what’s it like having your father in the game? Was it strange? Does he push you guys? How does he get involved with your careers?

1:09:18 Max Chilton: My dad is to me my idol he’s the best person in the world in my opinion and my mum he’s really really supportive but he doesn’t push it too far he knows that the will to win comes from inside you not anyone else and so he gives us the ability to try and succeed but he’s just the perfect support he’s always there good days, bad days egging us on we’ve had some great times over the years having pole positions and winning and setting that record in Formula 1 a lot of people sometimes might just think it’s just a pointless record in Formula 1 just finishing every race in your rookie year but at the end of the day Formula 1’s been around for 65 years it’s had hundreds of drivers to it, world champions and no one’s managed to do what I did by finishing every single race in their rookie year so that was one record which could never be beaten because obviously that record if they have 21 races in the year yeah they might have done more races in the year but the record is finishing every race in your rookie year but then I set another record because the record was 16 races from your first rookie race to a DNF and I then took that to 25 races so I’ve got two records that 25 one can be beaten but that’s going to be hard to beat because in 65 years it was at 16 for a long time and I’ve taken it to 25 it could be another 20 years until that record’s beaten so I’m proud of those that’s something which has come from inside because ever since I started karting

1:10:53 And my first steps in a racing car I’ve always been consistent I’ve always brought the car home touch wood and the way I go about things is I think about things and yeah I can overtake but I’ll do it in a place where I know it’s not going to cause an accident because at the end of the day if you’re not in it you can’t win it and it’s harder said than done to just finish 25 Grand Prix with that DNF so we’ve set that record together and you know it’s a proud thing for me whether it’s not for other people that’s another matter

1:11:24 Brian Rose: You said the will to win and your dad saw that you had the will to win because it takes money to get into this business and it took money to get you into the business originally do you see racers sometimes that are racing that you’re like it’s the money, they want it for the wrong reasons but they don’t have that real will to win

1:11:44 Max Chilton: yeah, most of sport is one of those things it’s an expensive sport and so you’re not just going to be at home and you get asked to just come racing you’re going to need backing and I was backed by my family like probably 95% of people were to get into the sport I was lucky that they could help me further than some other people but most sport hasn’t changed there’s people that have been in World Champions Formula 1 40 years ago where their family bought an F1 team and did it that way things haven’t really changed it’s the same thing there’s drivers on that grid at World Champions now

1:12:19 Of bringing 30 million in sponsorship through one of their big sponsors at the end of the day something has to be paid for somehow and I was lucky enough that I could be supported quite a lot of the way and then I got to a point where as we were talking about earlier built a name for myself and a branding where I could then bring in sponsors and private investors that got me to the top so I was lucky in that way but everyone has their own way to the top somehow or not it’s got to be paid for

1:12:50 Brian Rose: and the will to win do you sometimes see that it’s not there and some drivers do some drivers do it for the wrong reasons for the glamour?

1:12:58 Max Chilton: there’s some people on there like to party for sure everyone’s different but at the end of the day I don’t know many people that put a race helmet on don’t want to win, if I put a helmet on you now I gave you a go-kart and 10 of your mates on a track you’re not going to want to come last, you want to win so everyone wants to win but it’s how much they want to win because if you really, really want to win you’ll be really prepared, really focused it’s everything and you’ll do anything to win

1:13:29 Brian Rose: How do you feel about being a role model for kids and things like that?

1:13:33 Max Chilton: It’s an honour, I looked up to drivers and I’m sure there’s people that look up to me and I’m touched when people look up to me because I know there’s better drivers out there you’re never the best person in the world but if I can do anything to enthuse them and give them inspiration to succeed then I’m all for that and it’s all about the next generation so if I can get the next world champion sort of psyched up to want to go racing then that’s a great thing

1:13:59 Brian Rose: What comes across for me most is you’re a methodical and you really think and plan these pieces out and I think when people see race drivers and you think and plan these pieces out I think when people see race drivers and I think when people see race drivers and movies about race car drivers they assume it’s all kind of seat of the pants I’m doing it at the moment but the great pilots, the great astronauts are probably a lot like race car drivers if you see them it’s because they know the science they’ve studied, they’ve done all the tests they know the car well and they know where they can push it and that’s how they get that result

1:14:34 Max Chilton: It’s knowing your sport inside out your car Some drivers, a lot of motor sport needs to do with the car I was telling you this earlier but your teammate doesn’t have the same car as you you have different set ups I like a car which oversteers I have less rear wing on it but more front wing so the front’s really pointy and the rear will oversteer

1:14:53 My teammate might like going into corner wear he has understeer but the rear never lets go and so everyone has different things but it’s trying to work out what way to make the car the quickest and your engineer speaks on the radio saying I’ve got understeer sorted out and he’s the guy that knows the car better than you do and he’ll try and do a change to fix that and I’m all for that, there’s drivers out there treat themselves like engineers and they know I want stiffer rear springs, the car’s not handling the way I want it If you’re out there thinking I want a different rear spring, you’re not focusing as I said earlier on the road and front you’re better off saying what your problem is and letting the expert choose you can also get out the car and chat and say I think this, but too many racing drivers try to think they’re engineers and their engineer knows the car better than they do let them set it up, you just drive it tell them the issues and they’re fixing

1:15:50 Brian Rose: Good advice for life as well Max, can I ask you a few questions about your success and if there’s any kind of secrets behind that success, is there anything that you remember changing about yourself, maybe your morning routine or a certain way that you changed your mindset, say in your teens or even early twenties that gave you market increases, like better racing or better sponsors or better something These success secrets are only available on the London Real Academy

1:16:17 Become a member and get access to live shows, exclusive courses my webinars, bonus content, meetups, live events, an amazing community and much, much more Now back to the rest of the show Do you miss the adrenaline when you’re not racing?

1:16:34 Max Chilton: No, because you can get adrenaline doing anything these days as long as you’re sort of, you know, pushing the boundaries, you can get adrenaline from just doing crazy things at home

1:16:46 Brian Rose: I want to ask what those are, Max I always ask everyone the question at the end, I’m going to ask you I might adjust the age level a bit, but if you can make a phone call to let’s say the 18 year old Max and give that young man a bit of advice, you know, knowing what you know six years later, what would you tell him?

1:17:08 Max Chilton: Make the most of life You know, life you’re not here for a long time, you’re here for a good time, enjoy it make friends, and if you do that, then you’re going to have a good life

1:17:21 Brian Rose: Do you think sometimes you take it too seriously?

1:17:24 Max Chilton: I think everyone can take themselves too seriously at times, and that’s why it’s nice when you sometimes get you know, watch something, I went to a dinner yesterday where I had a speaker and it made me realise how lucky we all are, you know, his life got turned upside down, and we think we’re having a bad day because we’ve got a flat tire on our car and we have to go get a new tire that’s not an issue but you just have to get on with life as I said, you’ve only got one life make the most of it

1:17:54 Brian Rose: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? I might ask for 2-1 What’s the best racing advice you’ve ever received? And then the best advice in general about life?

1:18:04 Max Chilton: Um, best racing advice that is a good one

1:18:07 Brian Rose: There must be a bunch of these like one sentence lines that you repeat to the pit all the time, you said one earlier I think, there must be ones that get thrown around and then thrown around too much but

1:18:19 Max Chilton: Drive it like you stole it, I think that’s a pretty standing one when it comes to anything with a car, drive it like you stole it you know, you’ve got to be aggressive to win so, you know, yeah pretend the police are chasing you and try and drive away as quick as you can

1:18:36 Brian Rose: Like you stole it, is that something the coach would tell you?

1:18:40 Max Chilton: Yeah, try and drive it like you stole it that’s a good one

1:18:44 Brian Rose: Is that the way to live your life as well?

1:18:47 Max Chilton: Maybe not

1:18:47 Brian Rose: And best advice, otherwise, career advice I don’t know, maybe it came from your dad or anyone a word to you that you remember being like okay, that was good

1:18:57 Max Chilton: Make someone else’s day and it will make you all day powerful, powerful, powerful, powerful, powerful, powerful.

1:19:04 Brian Rose: Last part, to the 10 year old that’s out there watching us you know, and these days with YouTube they are that instead of watching Schumacher, they’re watching you and they want to be a driver and it’s a long shot and it’s hard, but what do you tell them?

1:19:20 Max Chilton: You can be anyone in this world you know, there’s people that, you know, whether it’s to do, you know, becoming the best business man in the world or creating Facebook, you know, anything can can be done in this world in a matter of days, months, or years, whoever you are. And don’t treat school as your be all end.

1:19:40 School is there to teach you how to deal with other people, how to learn the things. It doesn’t mean you have to learn what they’re teaching you, but it’s a learning process. If you go into life taking in as much as you can, you’ll then come up with something which will make you have a good life.

1:19:56 Brian Rose: Great advice. Are you sure you’re not 34 years old?

1:19:59 Max Chilton: I just can’t grow up big yet.

1:20:01 Brian Rose: Max, thanks so much for your time.

1:20:03 Max Chilton: Pleasure. It’s great talking to you.

1:20:05 Brian Rose: You sound like a guy that’s very centered, that kind of knows what you want, and that you’re going to kind of go and get it.

1:20:13 And it’s a good energy you give off as far as that. You’re also appreciating a lot of things, where I don’t think you’re 24 hours appreciating much around me. And it doesn’t seem like you’re getting too caught up in just the win. It sounds like you have goals, like Indy. But it sounds like if it doesn’t happen next year, you’re going to be okay with that.

1:20:32 Max Chilton: I have just as many life goals as I do racing goals. As I said, your job isn’t everything.

1:20:37 Brian Rose: And I think also that if you do what you do well, which is great advice for anyone, this is a great platform for you for whatever you want to do next, because people know you is doing this great. And so it sounds like if you constantly strive for greatness, it’s going to carry over into whatever else you do next. It’s good.

1:20:55 You’re the first racing driver we’ve had on. This is a good sign. We might have some more on. Thanks for shattering my images that I’ve had in the movies, whether it’s Tom Cruise or the Ron Howard movie, especially the English actor James Hunt, who you know his son. But it’s funny, because you see these guys and you’re like, it must not be like that.

1:21:13 But it’s nice to know there’s a lot more going on than just the race and stuff. So as we say on London Real, it’s about the journey. Please stop by a couple of years, let us know how you’re doing.

1:21:23 Max Chilton: Thank you very much. Your life goes on.

1:21:25 Brian Rose: Cheers.