Adrian Reynard: a founding father of Brawn GP + Mercedes

0:00Cadillac has entered Formula One, deepening the racing pedigree behind every V-Series on the road. Discover a line-up that delivers pure adrenaline in the form of modern luxury. Experience the quickest Cadillac ever, the all-electric Lyric V, the peak performance of the CT5V Blackwing, the nimble agility of the Optic V and the legendary roar of the Escalade V, All engineered to thrill. Find out more about Cadillac's performance story in Formula 1 and our race-tested V-Series line-up at Cadillac.com. Having founded one of the most successful motorsport constructors in the world, Adrian Raynard knew Formula 1 would be the ultimate test.

0:51His company, Raynard Racing Cars, won the first race of every major single-seater category it contested before going on to win multiple titles in Formula 3, Formula 3000 and IndyCar. So when Adrian helped form British American Racing in the late 90s, the team arrived in Formula 1 with huge expectations. We were the disruptors. That was our brand. So we automatically were expected to do really well. and I wasn't trained for interviews too much. So of course, you know, yes, well, our aim is to go in and we'll win the first race. Why not? I was a bit naive for Formula One. I didn't really know how to tackle all the PR.

1:34It was astounding how much publicity it got. BAR never won a race, let alone their first one, but they did finish second to a very dominant Ferrari in 2004. They took 15 podiums and Adrian helped lay the foundations for the team that would go on to become world champions, first as Braun GP and then as Mercedes. Seeing all the world championships come out of that mechanism, I mean, that's what I do. I design mechanisms, I employ people, I choose great engineers. If I have to look back on my achievements, I don't look at all the races we won and the championships we won. What I look at is all the people that went on to do great things, either with us or when we went bust with other teams.

2:24Here on F1 Beyond the Grid with me, Tom Clarkson, Adrian shares some of his memories from a thrilling life designing championship winning cars and trying to crack Formula One. He talks about selling his house to create his own Formula One team in 1990 and how he helped to inspire legendary engineers like Rory Byrne and Pat Simmons. Then, after getting to Formula One with BAR, he recounts how he and team principal Craig Pollock had such a disagreement about the future of the team that he resigned. And there's more. Adrian also tells us how he designed the factories that would go on to become the headquarters of Mercedes and Alpine today.

3:07The part he played in the Benetton B192, the car in which Michael Schumacher won his first F1 race, and his up-and-down relationship with the late Eddie Jordan. Adrian's also happy to explain why the success he enjoyed with Raynard racing cars in every major championship outside of Formula One didn't quite translate to the top echelon. It's clear he loved the challenge, and I'm sure you'll enjoy his stories.

3:42Adrian, it is great to have you on the show. You're looking very well. How are things? Things are good. Summer's here in England, which is enjoyable. So I'm relaxed. I've been racing at Cabo Park and I finished four races. Not as quick as I used to be, but I still enjoy doing it. Hang on, elaborate. What were you driving or were you riding? Because you also ride bikes, don't you? Yeah, this was driving. In 1975, I designed and developed my first Formula 4 2000 car. And guess what? I've got a collection of them now, some totally original ones there, which I won my first race, championship race at Silverstone in.

4:22But this particular one, I've recreated. So it's all made of new parts apart from old engine, obviously, because they don't make Pinto engine anymore. And yeah, I've raced it for the last three or four years uh i was fifth in the championship uh in 2023 i think last year i slipped a bit because i didn't do all the races if i can come in the top six i'm delighted i'm not as quick as i used to be you know i'm scoring points but i'm not manic about doing every single race and also you're passionate about two wheels aren't you um just looking around uh your kitchen here there are certificates saying you're a land speed record holder on two wheels as well well that was when I was 19 and then 20 I went to Elvington again when I sort of retired from motorsport I decided it would be really cool to have another go at the same record so I built myself a 250cc motorcycle this time I've got a Honda engine in it not a Royal Enfield this time it's four stroke it's got four cylinders it revs to 19 ,000 rpm and I've turbocharged it and it's running on rocket fuel we've got about 110 horsepower out of it at the moment which is three times the amount I had and the the idea is to try and get as close to 200 miles an hour as possible at Elvington same venue I was at in 1971 72 who's going to be riding well there's no real choice on that I have to do it myself what does your family say to that I think my two sons are keen to have a go as well once I prove that I can get to close to 200 I'm not saying 200 is really difficult with a 250 the aerodynamic forces go up a lot the the engine power goes up of the cube of the speed so it's it's a big challenge and I don't want to keep developing this engine it's already developing per liter the same amount as Formula One engines do so we're doing very well I don't want to burst the engine the transmission is a limiting factor as well I don't want to put too much power through that power or torque.

6:26I'll do my bit and then if my two sons Sam and Max want to have a go they're welcome to it. Adrian your passion for motorsport and all things with an engine is still so infectious. Well that's what I talk to young people about. I teach a bit as a visiting professor at both Cranfield University and Oxford Brookes University and passion is the one thing I say is an essential ingredient for them to have to follow a career in motorsport because it's difficult. You need determination. You need a vision of where you want to be. And the passion, I guess I've still got it in a minor way. It's not a professional way.

7:09It's a very selfish way at the moment. But I enjoy still doing things and I'm not quite sure what I'd do life if I didn't have something to focus on. It begs the question, what interested you first about motorsport? Was it because you wanted to be a rider or a driver or was it the design side? I wanted to be a Formula One driver. There's no doubt about that. My father bought himself a go kart when I was about nine and he let me have a go in it at Stevenage Go Kart Club, which was a field. So that's the only thing I've got in common with Lewis Hamilton. We both started go karting in Stevenage about the same age because I was about nine and I do believe that starting young I mean it's no chance that there's so many good young drivers in Formula One today that started karting in their six to eight year olds and I think that's the the body and the brain is so supple it's just absorbs all those automatic reflexes um so I'm sure that's why these guys are so fast when you were younger and you had a steering wheel in your hand who was your hero who did you want to be like well I went my dad was he was an aircraft engineer but he did see I was interested in motorsport and he took me to the British Grand Prix in 1958 I was seven I've got a picture standing next to Ivor Buhebs Connell which was in the paddock grass paddock and you were able to go and touch cars in those days as a seven-year-old and I'm standing there with my lollipop looking at this car funnily enough owned by one Bernie Ecclestone, who I was later to do business with later in my career.

8:47I remember coming home because Sterling Moss was in that race and he obviously had an oil leak and his face was covered in black and his goggles are made of white imprint. And I remember going home and putting boot polish all over my face, apart from where goggles would be. And my mum was horrified because it took ages to get it off. I guess that's as much an inspiration as you can get and i loved the feel the noise the vibrations the people the competitiveness and i guess the cars as well i had dinky toys i've still got some cooper 500s here which i i had at that age right so the initial attraction was driving when did the design side the engineering side start to appeal well i couldn't afford to drive racing cars so motorcycles were my start so i did the world land speed record thing when I was 18 19 and 20.

9:42I then bought a Ginetta Formula Ford 1600 for 600 pounds with a trailer and spare wheels and tires and ratios and I raced that and found all the deficiencies in flexible chassis and rubber mounted suspension so I spun that crashed it quite a lot but I guess I was still thinking well I think I could be a good driver so after that I was at Oxford Brookes University it was Oxford Polytechnic in those days and I combined my final year project is for designing a Formula Ford car which I designed and built either there or a bit at British Leyland as well as a joint project finished that in 1973 took me a whole year and all my budget I'd sold the Janetta to finance it cost me about a thousand pounds to build the whole thing I took it to Silverstone and fortunately all the top drivers were away at Brands Hatch in a championship race so I had an easy time winning the first race in that car at Silverstone.

10:45I didn't realize at the time that that would set a precedent for the rest of my life. It really did, didn't it? Because I'd gone to Elvington and aimed to get all the Worldland Speed Records as a teenager and I managed to get them. Then I designed and built my first racing car and I won the first race. I had no idea that that was going to be the manual for the future of the company. You won your first race in F3, in F3000, in IndyCar. We'll come on to all that later. But when you had a pen in your hand, I know it wasn't a pen, and you were designing a car, if Sterling Moss was your hero as a driver, who was that equivalent?

11:27Colin Chapman. Absolutely Colin Chapman. What was it about Colin? I just think he was a brilliant engineer. He started his own company. I'd gone up in my teens. As soon as I could drive, I went up to Hethel and I saw the second car he ever made, LK102 or something registration it was. and I just that just inspired me to think well if he can do that as a 20 something year old then I should be the same so he was definitely my hero and of course there was Bruce McLaren as well who was great because he drove the cars which was my still my aspiration and he also had his own car construction company so another one of my heroes so both of them figured really highly and both of them had incredible reach it wasn't just one championship was it there was a whole load of different cars no they had a spectrum of talent and um fortunate later in life i was actually recruited to be a technical director at lotus which i had to turn down because colin wanted me to stop my own company but that's about as close as i got to lotus they were i i love what he did i love the innovations he produced and i thought he was great at collecting some really good people around him as well by making a great team can we talk about formula one now it's been a while since you last worked in f1 are you still across it let's start with that i watch every race yes of course i think i got burned out a bit on the travel uh japan did me no favors when i had to go to japan 18 times a year and it was you know economy travel and poor hotels lack of sleep and a challenge to win the Formula 3000 championship.

13:13So I didn't get the opportunity to go to any Formula One races when I had a Formula One team. But I still think the industry is great. I am so pleased that it's grown into what it has. It's beyond all expectations, the commercial side, and I'm sure Netflix has done it a power of good. So it's become a much more interesting spectacle than it used to be when good old Murray Walker would turn on for and you'd get an hour's racing. You know everyone in Formula One, but I think we can say you had three main cracks of it. And can we start with the most recent British American racing? How did you get involved with that?

13:58It was through Jacques Villeneuve and Craig Pollock. Jacques had come up through former Atlantic in the States, they chose to run our IndyCar in 1995 and win the Indy 500. And Jack was a championship driver. So that core belief in each other was founded because Jack loved our car. He loved our team, the backup. He loved working with Barry Green in the States. our successes were incredible and because he was a he was a rookie really for the Indy car but winning that was incredible we've just celebrated 30 years since he won that so a lot of belief was created and Craig Pollock was doing a great job at that time promoting him and he got a Williams drive out of it and as you know one way or the other he became world champion in Formula One with Williams.

15:00He was obviously so talented and Craig had done a great job in managing him. Funnily enough, I think that Jacques didn't enjoy his time at Williams as much as he had working with us. He said it wasn't a fun place to work. So the idea came about and it was Craig's idea. I've got to give him credit. Let's build a Formula One team. He was already sponsored by players. So Craig had a good inlet with BAT. BAT was interested and we tried to put together a Formula One team. It took longer than expected. So we actually missed a year. But in the meantime, I got motivated. I found a site in Brackley. I bought the site myself.

15:46I designed the Formula One headquarters and our own future for Renard at the same site. So all that was going on Automatically but we missed the year and in the end we had to buy a team because BAT said we don't want to go in like Jackie Stewart We want points. We want to earn the points So we have to buy an established team and I think it was in this insurance policy for them as well So we were pressed to buy tyrrel, which we did BAT put money up craig put money up Jack put money up and I put money up. So we bought tyrrel. I think it was 25 million pounds And of course, not many people remember, but the same team won the Braun World Championship and the Mercedes World Championship.

16:31It's the same company, the same team. So that's the Tyrell heritage which has gone on. Cadillac has entered Formula One, deepening the racing pedigree behind every V-Series on the road. Discover a line-up that delivers pure adrenaline in the form of modern luxury. Experience the quickest Cadillac ever, the all-electric Lyric V, the peak performance of the CT5V Blackwing, the nimble agility of the Optic V and the legendary roar of the Escalade V. All engineered to thrill. Find out more about Cadillac's performance story in Formula One and our race-tested V-Series line-up at Cadillac.com. Cadillac has entered Formula One, deepening the racing pedigree behind every V-Series on the road.

17:23Discover a line-up that delivers pure adrenaline in the form of modern luxury. Experience the quickest Cadillac ever, the all-electric Lyric V, the peak performance of the CT5V Blackwing, the nimble agility of the Optic V, and the legendary roar of the Escalade V. all engineered to thrill. Find out more about Cadillac's performance story in Formula One and our race-tested V-Series lineup at cadillac.com.

18:04Can I just take you back to when were the seeds of Formula One first sown? Is it during 95 when you were all still in IndyCar or did it only happen once Jacques was in Formula One with Williams? I think it was when he was in Formula One with Williams. Obviously I'd had a couple of failed attempts at getting into Formula One and although I was very confident to doing the technical bit, designing the car, doing the R &D, getting the efficiency right, getting the manufacturing flow charts and the procurement and suppliers all lined up building the factory I failed in my previous attempts at getting sponsorship and engine this seemed to be a much better opportunity because with BAT we had I think they put in 65 million of sponsorship in the first year Craig was in charge of getting the balance because I think our budget was over 100 million so with them underwriting most of the costs.

19:05I knew I could design and build the factory and supply and recruit and supply the technical staff and equip the factory with all the right equipment, the machinery, the R &D, do the aerodynamics, etc, etc. So I was confident about that. And that's really what kicked it off. You say you were delayed a year. Why was that? And which year? So you wanted to come in in 98? Yeah. I think it was just a big deal for BAT to underwrite. It took time. And, you know, credit to Craig. He tried really hard to get this thing through. And if it wasn't for Craig, this wouldn't have happened. So although we did fall out later on, he owns a lot of credit for getting this set up.

19:50I remember you guys being the disruptors. Yeah. The build-up was sort of marred by sort of political controversy. First of all, the liveries. Do you remember you wanted to put each car in its own livery? The FIA didn't want that. I remember Article 151C bringing the sport into disrepute was being bandied around. How much of a distraction was all of that when you were just trying to get a racing team up and running? It didn't distract me at all, but it probably distracted the team. And I thought that livery was really clever. And I think it's probably one of the best liveries ever on a Formula One car, that split livery.

20:32It will go down in history, I believe. But there was a lot of politics. Yes, we were the disruptors. There's no doubt that the win every race first time, whether I said it or whether Craig said it, I don't know. but we were bandied we we that was our brand so we automatically were expected to do really well and you know i wasn't trained for interviews too much so of course you know yes well our aim is to go in and we'll win the first race i remember you saying why not why not why not well yes that's probably a good answer that put a lot of pressure on your back of course but you know i was a bit naive for Formula One and the publicity it generated.

21:18I was trained with BAT about smoking. I remember the interviewer said, look, I'm going to train you for smoking. So one of your first questions is, do you smoke, Mr. Renard? And I said, no, but I'm trying to take it up. And that was the end of the interview. She didn't want to ask me any more questions because I was trying to support BAT, but I didn't really know how to tackle all the PR. and it was astounding how much publicity it got. And did you have the support of F1 ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone? I never spoke to Bernie at this time. This was purely a Craig Pollack thing. I just did the technical stuff.

22:00I was the backroom boy, designing the site, machinery, hiring the people, getting the facilities right. That was my role. And as I said, I never went to any of the races when it was Tyrrell and I never, I think I might have been to one test event at Jerez the following year. But Craig, unfortunately, rationed the passes and I wasn't on the list. How can the technical director not be going to races? Well, that's a good question. Jacques qualified 11th in Melbourne, race number one, and then he retired, I think, with a rear wing issue from the race. Just tell us about that car and what you learned from it.

22:42we learned that the engine that we were using vibrated very differently than the the test mule that we'd been running so we hadn't anticipated all the vibrations and things vibrated off it wasn't just the rear wing it was all sorts of brackets and things so we hadn't done enough durability testing and that plagued us all year once you get behind the curve in formula one it is relentless you it's so difficult to catch up because testing is limited so we were plagued with unreliability in our first year and that was the reno v10 or badged a super tech at the time correct yes you then change engines is i think we worked out why why did you think we changed well because of the vibrations and the lack of reliability was that the motivating force you mean when we went to honda we'd done a good job with honda and this is definitely my input i'll take the credit for it.

23:41Mr. Asaka, who was head of IndyCar Racing, we'd blown away teams in the States. Honda, when they went into IndyCar, didn't have a reliable engine. They didn't have good success with Bobby Raho. When we came in, they were different. They had the best engine. We won championships. We won races. So Mr. Asaka thought, this is a good guy. When I mentioned to him, we wanted to do Formula One. I think we were in pole position. So I went over to Japan. I was hosted. I went around their factories, talked to them. And hey, presto, we got our Formula One deal. And also Eddie Jordan was trying to get the same works deal, but we convinced them to give us the works deal.

24:22The engine wasn't quite as good as we hoped. It was a bit overweight, or quite a lot overweight, actually. We didn't have the best power, but it was an interesting technical challenge and a massive step forward in terms of results there were fourth places in in 2000 and you know when you think about it in year two of a brand new formula one team to be to be finishing just off the podium is actually a huge achievement i do think about that these days i have to say when you look at haas that came in i know they're doing better now but when you look at a new team or even older teams like Sauber, we didn't do too badly really in perspective.

25:04But of course, we didn't live up to the reputation of the expectations which were created. So the press didn't do us any good. And then of course, my relationship with Craig was falling apart, which didn't help either. When did that start to happen? When did you start to perhaps reduce your involvement in the team? I basically felt that Craig was blaming me for being over budget, overspending when he would spend lots of money on buses, which they were great buses. I have to say, I got the blame for overspending the budget on technical side. It was a rivalry between us and it was not a good situation.

25:42So I decided to resign as technical director, put Malcolm in there, who had more experience of the actual design engineering he was going to the track and he was doing a great job so i basically resigned i went on to keeping the site going running the back i was the backstream technical boy um i remember trying to suggest we should put isdn lines in between our factory and the track so that we don't need to send so many we were lacking on passes which was maybe justified that i wasn't going to get a pass but we could not send so many technical people if we had a real-time data acquisition between the track and the factory and that was probably pioneering what is now um you know you got 25 30 40 people at home making decisions these mission control yeah exactly every factory yeah malcolm osler was the guy you just mentioned yes he came in as technical director tell us about his history with you and why you thought Malcolm was the right guy?

26:44I love recruiting young people. It was one of the most pleasurable things I did. We never used to advertise. So I would take 10 or 15 young people from college and hire them basically. But Malcolm wrote to me from Australia. He came over. I wasn't at the factory at the time for his interview. And I said to Ian Ashdown, who's in charge of recruitment at that stage, I said, this is what I want you to do. I want you to hire him and then interview him, which was exactly the opposite for most people. So I was that sure that I wanted to hire Malcolm Osler. How could you be that sure? I was sure. He was the guy and he proved absolutely that person.

27:28His CV was a brochure, a folder rather than just the two pages. He was just perfect he he'd designed his own formula ford car he'd driven it he'd raced it his engineering degree was much higher qualified than mine he his drawings were great he was very modest he was a great team player totally empathetic with all the young engineers that I'd brought in so he embraced that I remember one Andrew Green who went on to become obviously famous technical director at Jordan and then Aston Martin and Andrew came in uh he was meant to go around the factory to do three or four weeks in every department but he ended up next to Malcolm and Malcolm obviously recognized him as someone with talent I went I said look Andrew's meant to be going around every department and Malcolm says just just leave him with me and that was that I think you could see a lot of yourself in Malcolm Osler yeah well he's just better than me I had to multitask.

28:29I had to drive my cars. I had to design my cars. I had to procure the parts. I was the buyer. I was assembler. I had to sell them as kits. I had to deal with the team. I had to sell them. I had to race against my customers. I didn't do everything really really well because there was a whole spectrum of of challenges I had Malcolm he was the designer and he could concentrate and focus on design development telling me where my stupid ideas were and maybe embracing some which weren't so bad well and the podiums then came and as you said a little bit earlier the foundations were laid for what then became braun grand prix and that huge success that mercedes had in the last decade or so do you still take a little bit of pride out of the success that mercedes are having do you feel that you were a cog in that wheel that's all i've got left that's all i've got left is the memories of course i mean uh buying the site and developing it was great uh seeing all the world championships come out of that mechanism i mean that's what i i do i design mechanisms i employ people i I choose great engineers, empower them for what they do.

29:41So if I have to look back on my achievements, I don't look at all the races we won and the championships we won. I'm not the one on the podium. What I look at is all the people that we cultured and embraced that went on to do great things either with us or when we went bust with other teams and have gone on to do excellent things. I mean, I think it's seven Formula One technical directors we spawned during our time there. Recently, I went to, I met Andy Cowell at an MIA event and I didn't recognize him. And he said, do you remember you gave me my first job? And I said, well, actually, I didn't, Andy.

30:21But he said, yeah, well, I went to you. And then because of you, because my time with you, I got a job at Cosworth afterwards. So I don't think he stayed along with us, but it's nice to know. Andy told me that story on this very podcast earlier in the year. Yeah, yeah, no, he's big thanks to you. Look, you mentioned a little bit earlier about your first attempt to have your own F1 team. That came in 1990. Just with the benefit of hindsight and knowing how difficult Formula One was when you had the might of BAT behind you, How do you view what you were trying to do back in 1990 with your own team, with your own money, self-finance?

31:03I look at that as a brave attempt, which failed because I wasn't Eddie Jordan. Eddie Jordan could probably have made that work if I'd have partnered up with him then, because he was such a successful person at getting funding behind him. I was just a technical guy. So I had the dream. I looked at the mechanisms and the mechanical parts. I bought a site a farm site farm building I demolished the buildings. I designed formula one headquarters, which is now alpine I bought that I put together a team of 22 young People that I thought were really great at doing their jobs One was rory byrne one was pat simmons dave was there was a everyone talent Everyone was there, talented and inspired.

31:53And I gave them a year to design and build. Well, we did a model. We did a wind tunnel model, tested at Imperial College. It was one of the very early high nose Formula One cars. We did active ride on it, which of course was banned later. Pat Simmons did that. it was excellent aerodynamically and we got everything except the engine so i couldn't get an engine for it and that really killed it but the lack of sponsorship was there as well even if i'd had an engine i'd have had to rely on an engine manufacturer to do the finance so after spending a lot of money and i had to sell my house and i had to sell a lot of very nice things i had acquired at the time it all came to nothing and i let them go the only satisfaction i gave that again from the people because all those 20 people were recruited by benetton because john barnard had just left and i was pleased for them to take whatever technology and whatever they'd learned and drawings to benetton and that became the essence i believe of the benetton b192 which became very successful formula one so you know satisfaction i in some bizarre way i got some satisfaction out of that that bennett on you talk about was schumacher's first win yes bar in 1992 but how close did reynard f1 get to becoming a reality you say you had the wind tunnel model up and going you've talked about the engine and the money was there a moment where you thought yes i've got this i don't know i've never thought about it i sort of blank these things out of my mind i don't think too much about failures i think failures are very important to have in your life because you learn so much more from them but why it failed um lack of sponsorship was one thing and certainly i'd spoken to bernie i went to see him in his office and he was very encouraging but encouraging from bernie is still okay where's the money adrian you know that was the factor I didn't have covered.

34:00You know, you said if you'd been a little more EJ, did you talk to EJ about it? Because at the time you were dominating F3000 with Eddie Jordan, you knew him well. Yeah, I sort of fell out with Eddie because he stole, recruited three of the best guys, my entire Formula 3000 staff, Gary Anderson, Mark Smith, and Andrew Green, all of whom went on to be technical directors of Formula One teams in their own sight. So they weren't a bad recruit for me. And he just took them one month after another after another. And then the following year, we had a pretty poor Formula 3000 season as a result of it.

34:42And I didn't speak to Eddie for years. We subsequently became best mates again. And we laugh a lot about it. We laughed a lot. But it was tough. But he was relentless about sponsorship and money. And he had those talents that I didn't have. Just imagine if you two had worked together. Well, we did think about it. But it never happened. I had Rick, of course, who was my... Rick Gorn. Yeah, Rick Gorn was my fantastic entrepreneurial salesperson. He was more than that. He was business development. he was great with customers and he just caused the company to take off in sales and we had an amazing few years together or many years together and we were part of a a great team but of course rick didn't have the experience getting sponsorship either but he was great at selling cars i can tell you you talked about rory byrne pat simmons all those people going to benetton and sort of forming the technical cluster that took that team on to great things.

35:50What happened to the wind tunnel model that you made? Because I read somewhere that you sold it to Ligier. Is that true? It is true. It's funny, really. You turned a quick buck, maybe. Yes. I think you've got a lot of EJ in you, actually. I was really underwater. I mean, we lived in a beautiful house at the time, which I had to sell. And we ended up living in a three-bedroom semi in Oxford, which my boys will remember, had no carpets it went to Ligier I sold it for 400 ,000 pounds on the basis that it was a trial they'd pay more if it increased the efficiency in their wind tunnel so we flew down there I witnessed the test then I came back in the end they said well it doesn't it doesn't come up to scratch so we're not paying you the final amount funnily enough they'd sent the check for the final amount so I did get my 400 ,000 pounds for it but how did that whole experience in 1990-91 change your attitude to Formula One I guess I knew then of my weaknesses were the commercial side and I basically put it to bed and thought well I'm I had to focus on my production car company I had to focus on Formula 3000, Japan.