Dinner with Racers Nov 25, 2025

Ep.302 – Alex Sims

Annotations will appear as you listen

0:00

102:00

Brand

GM

GM stands for General Motors, a big company that makes many different cars, including Chevrolet and Cadillac. They are involved in both regular car sales and racing.

Concept

GTD Pro

GTD Pro is a type of car racing where professional drivers race high-performance sports cars. It's part of a larger series called IMSA, which includes various classes of racing.

Car

The Chevrolet Corvette is a fast and stylish sports car that many people love. It's been around for a long time and is famous for being powerful and fun to drive, which is why it's often talked about in car discussions.

Company

Continental Tire

Continental Tire makes tires for cars and trucks. They are known for making good quality tires that help vehicles drive better and safer.

Concept

Formula One

Formula One is a type of car racing that involves very fast cars competing in races on special tracks. It's known for its exciting and high-speed events.

Concept

Daytona 500

The Daytona 500 is a famous car race that takes place every year in Daytona, Florida. It's a big event for NASCAR fans and is considered one of the most important races in the sport.

Concept

Formula Cars

Formula Cars are special racing cars that have open wheels and are built to follow certain rules. They are used in professional racing events to compete at high speeds.

Concept

Formula Renault

Formula Renault is a type of car racing that helps new drivers learn and improve their skills. It's often a starting point for those who want to race in bigger competitions like Formula 1.

Car

Aston Martin GT4

The Aston Martin GT4 is a special version of Aston Martin cars made for racing. It's built to be faster and perform better on the track than regular cars.

Car

Mercedes DTM car

A Mercedes DTM car is a type of race car made by Mercedes-Benz for a racing series in Germany. These cars are built to be very fast and competitive on the racetrack.

Car

Formula 3 car

A Formula 3 car is a type of race car used in a specific racing series. These cars are designed to be fast and are often used by drivers who want to move up to more advanced racing like Formula 1.

Car

Mclaren F1

The McLaren F1 is a famous sports car from the 1990s that was very fast and had a unique design. It was one of the first cars to use a carbon fiber body, making it lighter and quicker.

Brand

Aston Martin

Aston Martin is a brand that makes luxury sports cars. They are known for their stylish designs and are often featured in movies, especially James Bond films.

Concept

Formula 3

Formula 3 is a type of car racing where drivers compete in small, fast cars. It's often where new drivers start before moving up to bigger races like Formula 1.

Concept

GP3

GP3 was a racing series for young drivers to compete in smaller, faster cars before moving up to bigger competitions. It helped them learn and gain experience.

Company

Genie Capital

Genie Capital is a company that provides financial services and has invested in motorsport, specifically the Lotus F1 racing team.

Term

Formula 1

Formula 1 is a popular type of car racing where specially designed cars compete in races around the world. It's known for its speed and technology.

Term

LMP2

LMP2 is a type of race car used in long-distance races, like the famous Le Mans race. They are built to be very fast and are a step below the top-tier LMP1 cars.

Car

BMW Z4

The BMW Z4 is a two-seater convertible car that is fun to drive. It's known for being sporty and stylish, making it a favorite for people who enjoy driving with the top down.

Car

Mazda Miatas

The Mazda Miata is a small, fun car that many people enjoy driving. It's known for being light and easy to handle, making it a favorite for those who like sports cars.

Car

Radical SR3

The Radical SR3 is a fast sports car made for racing on tracks. It's very light and powerful, which helps it go really fast around corners.

Concept

Formula E

Formula E is a racing series where all the cars are electric. The races happen in cities, and it's about making racing more environmentally friendly.

Term

all-weather tire

An all-weather tire is made to work in both rain and dry weather. However, it usually doesn't perform as well as tires made specifically for racing or for just one type of weather.

Term

pit stop

A pit stop is when a race car pulls over to the side during a race to get new tires or more fuel. It's important because it can help the car go faster later in the race.

Term

tyres

Tyres are the round rubber parts on cars that touch the ground. They help the car grip the road and are very important for how well a car drives, especially in races.

Term

tyre temperature

Tyre temperature refers to how hot the tires get while driving. Keeping them at the right temperature helps the car handle better and go faster.

Car

Lotus Elise

The Lotus Elise is a small, lightweight sports car that is very fun to drive. It's known for being quick and having great handling on the road.

Concept

hybrid

A hybrid car uses both a gas engine and an electric motor. This helps save fuel and is better for the environment because it produces fewer emissions than regular cars.

Term

miles per gallon

Miles per gallon tells you how many miles a car can drive using one gallon of fuel. The higher the number, the better the car is at saving fuel.

Car

Kia EV6

The Kia EV6 is a new electric SUV that doesn't use gas, which makes it better for the environment. It's designed to be stylish and has a lot of cool features, making it a popular choice for people looking for an electric car.

Car

BMW M6

The BMW M6 is a really fancy and fast car that is made for people who love to drive. It has a powerful engine and feels great on the road, so it's often mentioned when talking about high-performance cars.

LIVE

So world-class skier.

Last more than one.

No, no, you say one word.

We run the show.

I thought you were suggesting what I could say.

No, no, no, no.

He introduced you.

So we're going to start again.

Yeah.

I was going to correct you and say that's more than one word.

You tracked me on my show.

I was like, that's more than one word.

Factory guys, that's where to go.

So world-class skier.

I don't know any other way to say it, but car bottle

collector.

An heir to the throne of the British fruit empire.

Yeah.

Alex Sims with 1M.

If you could describe this dinner we just had in one word,

what would it be?

Therapy.

I don't know.

OK.

For us or for you.

For me, to talk about things that I've never

talked about before in a public audience.

It's mainly just pooping.

Yeah, I've never put it on record to this extent.

And now for Dinner with Racers, presented by.

Continental Tire.

With your hosts, Ryan Eversly and Sean Heckman.

Please hold the radio.

Please.

Oh.

I'm a driver very angry in the sound of a driver

on the radio during a race.

What do you think I should go ahead and change it?

No, no, no, no, no.

Welcome to Dinner with Racers.

Dinner with Racers.

I'm Ryan Eversly.

I'm Sean Heckman.

We are sitting here 10 years.

10 years later.

Into the making of this podcast.

That is a long time to have to sit next to each other in cars,

to drive across the country many, many times.

So much so that we're doing this hosting, not in a car.

We're at Johnny Rockets at Hollywood Gallup.

We sure are.

And getting ready to do a couple more types of shows

for you.

But what we're doing at the moment

is the hosting for this season's guests

and this next guest coming up is a very fast,

but maybe not necessarily known GT driver

by the name of Alex Sims.

Alex Sims has become a staple of the international sports

car scene, prototypes GT cars, European racing,

worldwide racing, American racing, you name it.

Alex Sims has driven it and driven so very successfully.

But he's also one of the most eccentric characters

I think we've ever met.

Yeah, he's a really funny guy, really neat, interesting.

He doesn't put himself out there that big on social media.

So getting some of the research on him

was a little difficult.

But once we cracked the code and got in there,

it was amazing.

Yeah, so just to lay out, lay down some stats,

Alex is a longtime factory driver for multiple OEMs.

Currently he is a driver for GM and Corvette

in their GTD Pro effort, in which,

you know how he did, Ryan?

I think he did pretty well.

He is the 2025 reigning MCGTD Pro champion.

So congrats to him.

We recorded this before that happened.

But of course, we are the ones who made it happen.

Full credit to DWR.

And so that now has added yet another championship

to his roster, including being a GTP champion

and everything in between.

So the dude can get it done.

But we're gonna hear some crazy stories, Ryan.

What, name some things?

Yeah, including realizing how soon

you wouldn't like a program.

Debriefing naked.

And lots and lots of stories about peeing and pooping.

Yeah, man loves to talk about peeing and pooping.

He sure does, he is very comfortable.

Not shy, not shy.

Now we went over to P.F. Changs

right across from the Speedway.

And I believe that was his call.

He wanted to go pretty bad.

And I had the chicken teriyaki.

And at P.F. Changs.

Ryan, you're 10 years in because we're such huge deals.

They made me that 10th anniversary chicken sandwich.

They sure did.

Yeah, they cut the chicken into a 10.

Yeah, they did that for you.

Thanks, Changs.

Now something we're doing new this year

is a Patreon for the fan that wants a little bit more

of Dinner with Racers in their life.

You can go to patreon.com forward slash DWR show

and sign up for us.

We've got a behind the scenes show

basically where we're doing race reports,

race reviews, race previews.

Behind the scenes content from the show

that didn't make the edit.

Some of the stories that go on behind our inside jokes.

And just learning a little bit more

about what makes this show happen.

And the reason that this show does happen, Sean.

Oh, is that our sponsor?

That's our sponsor.

Who's our sponsor, right?

Continental Tire.

You want me to just cut in the previous time

you yelled it?

Continental Tire.

Hashtag, dinner with Conti.

That's right, if you're gonna be helping us out

on the social medias and you wanna see

a little bit more Continental Tire in our lives,

please use the hashtag dinner with Conti

or go to dinnerwithracers.com.

There's a couple of trackable links

you can click on.

And what that does is it tells Continental

that you are supporting us

and that we are worth sponsoring.

And so far you guys have been unbelievable

in this department.

We truly could not be doing this for 10 years

if it wasn't for you.

But please, please use the hashtag dinner with Conti

whenever you tag us in anything

that goes a long way with making the show possible.

And you know what also makes our show possible, Ryan?

Having a driver?

Having a driver.

Uh-huh.

You know who drove us around this year?

No, no, no.

Shane Van Guisberg.

Guys, we gotta stop.

I really gotta piss.

Thanks, Shane.

Appreciate it.

Thanks, dude.

All right.

Should we strap in?

Here's Alex Sims.

Good luck.

Meow.

All right, we're gonna start in five, four, three, two.

What's going on?

We're kinda boxed in, but good seeing you.

Hey, how are you?

Yeah, good seeing you.

So we've never met before, I think,

just to see each other in passing.

Absolutely.

We locked eyes when you walked in

and we immediately both knew

that you needed to go to the bathroom

and that's what that was.

And I turned to Sean and I was like,

well, we're good,

because you're like, yeah, I'm just gonna go, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah, I figured that would be.

We were just talking about this.

This is our 10th year of doing this.

We have never done a big national chain before.

Okay.

But we're like, let's say Tona Beach,

PF Changs are probably pretty easy going,

and here we are.

And you requested this, right?

This was your request.

You love PF Changs.

Request is slightly, slightly.

Not in a negative way.

We both like PF Changs, so, yeah, yeah.

Slightly bold term, I would say,

but yeah, I was pushed for a suggestion and I'm very good.

He was pushed for it.

I'll give him that.

They were very nice, so hopefully it goes well.

Yeah.

So what were you doing today?

We went to Orlando and played paddle,

which is kind of like pickleball,

but with glass backgrounds to the court.

Oh, so like, almost like racquetball?

Maybe.

Were you hitting against the wall or were you hitting?

No.

Okay, interesting.

No, it's like a tennis court.

So is it tennis?

No, no, no, no, it's called paddle, paddle ball.

It's the pickleball of pickleball.

Yeah, right.

There are pickleball courts next to it,

but yeah, I've done it twice in my life,

so I'm not exactly well-versed.

Who did you go with?

Discuss.

Katzberg, Dacosta, Alecudel, Niko Verone,

and Kershofer.

Are we allowed to call you George W?

Bush, yes.

Is that, this is your nickname?

Somebody said the name George W.

Oh, okay.

So where does that nickname come from?

Oh, gosh, yeah.

So back in my earlier days, I wasn't very good at...

Manscaping?

Exactly.

And I have a tendency to be quite happy to get naked.

Yeah, this is the reputation.

And yeah, just quite bushy.

And so then it got shorted to George W.

So you became George W because...

Yeah, exactly.

Our boy didn't know how to trim.

Exactly.

Okay.

It's been four minutes.

We're off to a good start.

All right.

So who gets credit for that nickname?

Good question.

It was back in my rover days when I was doing Blancpain.

So teammates were Katzberg, Eng, and Steph Düsseldorf.

So one of those, I think, was pretty Eng or Katzberg.

Now is this getting dressed in the trailer, like swapping over?

Yes.

Okay.

Got you.

Great.

Well, you already jumped right into it, because we talked to a bunch of people.

The predominant reputation you have is you are not afraid of being naked in the trailer.

How many?

Wow.

Is this a note?

Yeah, absolutely.

No, no, absolutely.

It does seem to be a common theme in every single team that I race with.

So, right.

So like when it comes to the number of people that have seen your s***, is it three

or four figures?

No, definitely not four figures.

It's crazy.

There aren't that many people in motorsport.

Yeah.

Okay.

Mechanics as well have walked in, but often the driver room's kind of bit out of the way.

So I try not to impose it upon people.

Got you.

But I have maybe entered a couple of engineering debriefs and things, whilst unclothed, because

they've been pushing us for time pressure because we're late, and I'm like, well, if

you want me now, then this is how you get me.

That's a good price.

And then they're like, okay.

That's called a statement.

Yeah, that's also called a s***.

Yeah.

I have questioned it, and I've started to stop doing it, because yeah, when there's

only guys in the room, somehow it feels like you're less likely to get called by HR.

But yeah, on the times when females have been in the teams, it's kind of like you look back

on anything.

Probably.

Yeah.

It was a different time.

Less three years ago.

Exactly.

Yeah.

GM isn't known for their corporate culture.

Exactly.

Right?

Yeah.

So are you the guy that's like, you go to like a public gym, like a lifetime

sports whatever, there's always the one guy that's just tallying off completely

naked.

Yeah.

I'd be very happy with that.

Yeah, you're that guy.

Got it.

Yeah.

Horrible.

Okay.

Is this what you thought this would be?

I'm fine with it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Cool.

But I have no issue.

I don't see the massive issues with it, but because we're all, we'll have the same

bodies pretty much and like everyone to themselves.

Right?

Should we get into it?

Whatever.

All right.

So moving on.

So on the terms, I'm guessing this is somewhat related.

What would the phrase baby powder mean to you?

I don't know who you spoke to about that, but yeah, it was a very, very kind moment where

I was fooled.

I trust, I trust people quite a lot.

I give people the benefit of the doubt and don't think of the bad side of them and

get found.

Oh, I find out that actually people are quite mischievous and I'm a bit of a **** as

well.

Yeah.

No, most sports.

Peter Baron asks, no, Pippo asked for my car keys.

I'd say Peter Baron.

Yeah.

On behalf of Peter.

Peter Baron basically a couple years ago was running the wheel in a GTP car.

Well, helping in the team.

He's still helping right now.

Yeah.

And yeah, he, it was Peter's idea.

So he asked Pippo to get the car keys off me.

Pippo did it very well.

I was like, Oh, I forgot something in your car because we came together in the

same car.

And then Peter went and doused baby powder in all of my car's vents.

Yep.

Like an entire bottle.

Yeah.

And so then when I went to turn the car on at the end of the day.

You turned the fan all the way up.

Yeah.

I'm just saying this is from you telling off after, after a race or something.

No, no, no.

And then the entire interior of the higher car was covered in white powder.

Yeah.

And thankfully Peter and Pippo spent probably a grand total of two minutes

helping me clean it.

Oh, nice of them.

How nice of them.

Great guys.

So I spent an hour like going back and forth to my hotel room with wet towels

and back to try and clean it out because I didn't want to get laced with a massive

fee for cleaning the high car.

So yeah.

Yeah.

That was a good one.

So kids, if you're listening at home, what you do there is you take a little

funnel and you just dump it into the vents.

But then before you leave the car, you turn the fan all the way up.

So that way when they start it, it immediately blows everywhere.

Yeah.

You young racers out there.

Yeah.

Enjoy the runoffs next year.

What was the payback?

I'm not sure there has been one yet.

Oh.

Any stories you want to tell?

Yeah, yeah.

About to say.

Peter Baron loves me.

Yeah.

Not yet.

I find it hard to really be harsh like that.

You don't want to be mean or because you don't want to get into the one

upsmanship of.

No.

I have this weird thing where I want to take the piss all the time out of

people.

But then it keeps me awake at night.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

For sure.

And I'm like, oh, what if I took it the wrong way?

Oh, God.

Yeah.

That's moral fiber, right?

Yeah.

Maybe.

That's also being a decent human being.

I describe our daily lives.

Yeah.

Okay.

I get by that.

Yeah.

That was one of the highlights of 2023.

Was the baby powder.

Yep.

And all the falling around.

Yeah.

Well, we'll get into that.

Yeah.

All right.

We're not really a bio show, but in your case, we'll get into some of it in

terms of how you got going.

No need to.

But so March 15th, 1988.

Yeah.

Popped out of my mom's between her legs.

In London.

Yes.

Yep.

And what are your parents?

So dad imports fruit into UK and sells it onto the supermarkets.

Okay.

Where's the imported from?

Everywhere?

Various places.

Nowadays it's like.

Columbia.

Like Wenatchee.

Then Chile.

Oh, okay.

South Africa.

Spain.

Okay.

India.

Various places around the world.

Okay.

Chasing the seasons for different fruits.

Anything like specific all the time?

No, kind of with the seasons, but he's quite a big cherry provider.

Okay.

Supermarkets and some other fruits.

The cherry king of the UK.

Yeah.

Pretty much.

And yeah, my mom did help out with that.

My parents split and she has done some care working and volunteering on things and generally

just being around and seeing my kids and stuff.

So yeah.

Got it.

So the racing side of that come from either your parents?

Nope.

No history of racing at all and just by chance really.

So how'd this happen?

Went to go in a go cart and thought, oh, that's all right.

Yeah.

And wasn't very good at it to start with, but persevered long enough to see my competitors

drop by the wayside.

And yeah, somehow giving me an opportunity to do this, but yeah, it was just by chance

really.

So it's just you sort of driving by a go cart track and say, and I want to try this?

No, my brother even started.

My brother started.

He did it for a year and then he went off to boarding school.

And so my dad was like, oh.

We've got this car.

Do you want to have a go?

And I was like, your man, why not?

Yeah.

Had no aspirations to be a racing driver.

Had watched Formula One on TV.

Yeah.

How old were you?

I don't know about it.

10?

OK.

I'm the right age for that.

OK.

But yeah.

So not like some lifelong we watch.

Not at all.

Every day.

Not at all.

And to be honest, still now.

Making so many people mad.

Yeah.

So to say it like you enjoy the profession of being a driver.

Exactly.

I love what I do.

But I don't really watch motorsports.

You don't know all the seven different categories.

We could probably let's have a bunch of NASCAR people

and you wouldn't care.

Again, I came to the Daytona 2500.

She's crazy.

Big fan.

Big NASCAR fan right there.

The Daytona 500 in 2023.

Yeah.

To see a bit of it.

Yeah.

But yeah.

Yeah, just not your watch.

Just not your thing.

So as you start out with the go-karting stuff.

Who are some of the names that you were competing with

regularly that we might know now?

Well, Adam Christodulu.

Yeah.

He was a year below me or two.

But his cousin Ricky.

But I'm trying to think of who was there that is racing now.

Not too many, to be honest.

Craig Dolby was a big competitor of mine

and he did some racing in Europe and Super League and stuff.

Then in Formula Cars, I was like teammates of Bottas

and racing with Antonio, Felix D'Costa and Bianchi

and the likes of that.

So 2008, you move over to Formula Renault.

Yep.

By points to the one in the championship,

you don't because they eliminate the bottom two results

and so the other guy does it.

But you do win the...

In one day, we've now had two Autosport young driver awards.

Who's the other one?

Paul D'Arresta.

Oh, right, Craig.

Yeah.

And it seemed like was this kind of what set you on the path

that this was potentially a career?

That was probably a pretty career defining moment, yes.

Yeah.

That was the first time that...

I found it quite rewarding having an external panel,

effectively, judge me.

Yeah, sure.

And others, obviously.

And pick me as the winner.

Whereas before that, you're always involved with the team.

You're paying the team.

And yeah, they turn around and say,

wow, you're really good.

But can you keep paying us your money?

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

So it always was a bit sort of...

I do all right in championships generally,

but this was the first real clear validation.

Got it.

There was no personal interest.

Right.

They don't get anything really out of it.

You're making that decision here?

Prior to that was your dad funding your career to that time?

Yep.

How did that McLaren program work?

Do they reach out to you and tell you you're on the thing?

Do you have to submit something?

No.

So I mean, I'm now a judge for that award.

Oh, cool.

So do you have a reasonable amount of knowledge,

I'd say, of it?

So yeah, we have like 12 judges that we pick from.

Normally probably eight or 10 of them are available each year.

And yeah, we get together a couple of points during the year

to whittle basically all the young British drivers

that qualify in terms of their age

and experience down to 10 to start with.

And then from that 10, we now pick four when it was my day,

it was six drivers to actually come and take part

in a two day competition where you test three different cars

normally.

And in my time, it was a GT4 Aston, a Mercedes-DTM car

and a Formula 3 car.

And yeah, you go around various run programs,

new tyres, old tyres and get assessed.

Normally it's obviously quickest wins, pretty much,

but sometimes it's super, super close.

And then you have to try and work out all the different

fine margins, exactly.

So how did you find out that you were in the running?

They just, I don't know how they got my number,

but they got my number and they actually gave me a call.

I feel bad because at the time again,

I didn't really know much about the award.

Cool.

I was like, alright, I think I should probably find out

a bit about this, because it's got McLaren in the name.

There's so many mad fans right now.

Son of a bitch.

And I did my research and spoke to 10x finalists

or whatever and arrived pretty prepared.

But yeah, it was a cool award

and as I say, it was pretty life changing.

Yeah, it immediately puts you on the map.

I guess it's on the website now,

but it used to be in the magazine and everything as well

when it was spread out.

And it's always, well, traditionally...

There was a website back in my day as well.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

How old are you?

36.

Yeah, okay.

So, Audisport used to be like the biggest magazine

in the world for motorsports.

And obviously now everything's online,

but it was traditionally in a McLaren F1 test,

which is what you got.

And now it's with Aston Martin.

Is that right?

So yeah, then we went through a phase.

The last three years has been Aston Martin.

And now this year, we still have Aston Martin

as supporting in terms of giving the F1 drivers a prize,

but they're not the title sponsor anymore.

And it's just the Silverstone Autosport BRDC

Young Driver of the Year award.

Be it to the mouthful, but yeah, it always has been.

Yeah.

When you look at the people that have won that,

it's the who's who of motorsports royalty.

And we did Oliver Gavin last year.

He was a big part of it.

Audisport arrested an egg.

From a British question.

Yeah, for sure.

But it's like Jensen Button,

like all these big, big names.

So when you got to test,

you drove the same car that Hamilton won,

some type of F1 car that Hamilton won the championship.

Exactly.

Yeah, I think the car,

literally the chassis that you drive in Brazil.

Yeah.

And so that's the first time you get to drive something.

Which really didn't mean much to me.

That's f**king man.

Can you just pretend like it was so cool.

But up to this point,

you're so unversed in like what the Audisport award is,

which means that, you know,

paying for a full season Formula Renault

to get to this point.

Like, is this just on a whim?

Like, it's just like, oh, dad, this is cool.

No, I took it incredibly seriously.

Right.

Except for the history.

In terms of what I was doing,

I dedicated my life at the time to it.

And I'd go to the workshop on a weekly basis,

at a minimum, help work on the car,

understood more and more about it,

built tire trolleys for the welder.

You know, I'd integrate myself properly into the team.

But also it's a little bit difficult

with the McLaren Audisport award as it was.

And there's still now with different names

in that it's really only focused around November or December.

And so if you don't subscribe to Audisport

and you're not looking at it for those three days on the website

or for those two weekly issues,

you can almost miss it entirely.

Copy.

So if you're fairly new to the sport,

which can affect your work.

Exactly.

You weren't paying attention

since you weren't paying attention

for the limited amount of time.

Yeah, it was my second season of car racing.

So I'd only done the season before.

And so I was only really reading

Autosport for the season before.

And I'd missed it in November.

So at this point, even if you don't know

the heritage of everything at this point,

you're at least taking it serious enough

that this is a potential career and you are.

Honestly, it was my life.

And yeah, I had two really career defining moments.

I would say one was winning that.

The other was actually breaking my arm.

I broke my arm pretty seriously when I was 17.

And it almost put me out, almost died.

But then almost put me out of racing altogether.

And so, yeah, from that point,

I was super, super serious on it

because I got a second chance in my mind.

What was the accident?

A skiing accident.

Oh, you idiot.

I was skiing off-piece.

Testing in Cederton.

Nope, nope.

It's the only, like, serious time

I've had an accident and been in a hospital.

Yeah, what'd you do?

Skiing.

Just being in a **** and skiing off-piece.

And let my mum and my brother go down ahead of me

because I like to go fast and like straight down the mountain.

And just went over.

So you basically went off trail,

but now going straight line down.

I mean, going fast off-piece.

Just to the side of the run.

Not like crazy off-piece,

but anyway, just going over jumps that I had no clue

what was the other side of.

And then, you know,

having gone on skiing holidays every winter,

my luck finally run out.

Okay, so it wasn't like you were inexperienced.

You were just going a little crazy.

To experience really for the level of the age that I was at 17.

And, you know, you think nothing will ever happen to you.

And then I hit a rock face.

So you landed right in the air.

Bam, 90 degrees onto a rock face.

I still remember seeing that rock face.

And then I blanked out and woke up in hospital.

All right, so where were you?

Switzerland.

I went to Interlaken Hospital.

Okay.

But yeah, it was just a weird story that my mum,

I was only on holiday with my mum and my brother.

I was down ahead.

Some random person found me.

Jesus.

My mum and my brother were waiting down the bottom of the run

for 20 minutes or something like what's Alexander doing.

He'll be down soon.

Then they had to wait to get the chairlift back up

to then be like, right, where is he?

And then this time someone else had found me.

Called the air ambulance.

It was on its way.

And I mean, I was, it was a compound fracture

and I was bleeding and it was a fairly big issue.

Yeah.

Honestly, I hit my head pretty bad.

So my scar comes from my forehead.

Yeah, I didn't notice until you said that.

Big Harry Potter fan, but not quite that big

to create my own scar.

And then, yeah, I mean, I still to this day,

I think that person, I don't know who it was.

Right.

Yeah.

How long were you out or like injured and laid up?

Well, I was out of racing for nine or 10 months.

Jesus.

And I don't know, eight or nine operations in the time.

Yeah.

Scars like on your arm and everything.

Yeah.

It's pretty, it's pretty.

Oh, brother.

Jesus Christ.

You have a kneecap on your elbow.

Yeah.

It was pretty intense.

Still to this day, I still feel like it was the best thing

that ever happened to me.

Why do you say that?

Because I was just a young, dumb, you know,

teenager just at that age at 17 where you start drinking,

you go out seeing friends and night clubbing

and all that stuff and thinking that you can do

everything.

And then I was like, I can't do it.

I mean, suddenly, right?

Well, now can I actually get back to racing?

I've done racing for the last seven years and love it.

And oh, shoot, I can.

Wicked.

Okay.

Right.

Well, I'm going to do it properly.

This took you out of racing to the point that you

realized, oh, I'm going to miss this.

I might not be able to do it again.

Yeah.

And that means now when I come back,

it's going to be everything.

Yeah.

Sounds like it was like life lesson of like, hey,

this can go away.

Exactly.

It was really, really valuable to me.

That's crazy.

You do the formula car thing for a while.

It kind of comes to a halt.

Was it like F1 the goal or was it just see how far?

Yeah, at the time, you know, again,

you sort of hope that that can happen.

Half believe it, but probably never did fully believe it

in myself.

But that's, I've never really fully believed

myself in anything.

But yeah, I got to Formula three, did the first year,

then amazingly had gravity sports management.

They picked me up and paid for two years of my racing.

Oh, wow.

Second year of F3 and GP3.

Is that like a preferred return kind of thing?

Yeah.

Future earnings kind of thing?

It was a bit, yeah.

I mean, they were never going to make much money out of me.

It was a bizarre situation.

I don't know how much money laundering was going on the stuff,

but they had like 14 drivers or something.

Is that company still in business?

It was Genie Capital who, to do Genie Capital,

had Lotus F1 and stuff.

Well, we found a new documentary episode.

Yeah.

But anyway, yeah, I felt pretty bad because I was with

a motorsport German team and they introduced me to these people.

And then gravity said, actually, no,

we want you to go to ART next year.

So then they moved me teams.

And I was like, oh, I think part of the deal really was

that Mocha introduced me to stay with Mocha.

Yeah.

But anyway, that still got me two years of free racing.

Sure.

And then at the end of that, I was like, right,

a single seat is just done.

Okay.

Yeah.

Would your dad, was the funding done?

Had you not had that?

I mean, I realized that it was in terms of getting to F1.

Sure.

My dad said to me, like, can we try and get money to go

to do GP2 next year?

And I was like, that's like, what's the point?

Yeah, what are we doing?

Like, we might be able to do one year here.

So you stopped your dad in the sense of, like,

why are we going to put this kind of capital in?

I'm not going to get there.

I'm not going to put the family business on the line

to do one season of GP2 when, you know, I've done well.

But not brilliantly.

Well, it's like you won races

but you're fourth in points.

Exactly.

Yeah, these aren't the guys that get to F1.

Exactly.

I'm good to be a professional, hopefully.

Yeah, right.

Not F1.

Yeah.

So you're realistic.

What age was this when you came to this realisation?

21.

I was actually quite an old.

I was your second in that vibe anyway.

I finished karting when I was 18,

whereas some kids are car racing at 15.

One of the common conversations we have is that,

who do I want to give up the F1 dream to go

sports car racing or whatever?

Whereas you're ahead of this in the sense that

you had the maturity to go, nah, this isn't,

if I'm going to be a pro, I need to move over elsewhere.

Yes, yes.

And again, winning the Autosport Award,

I read down the list of names and I was like,

I don't cry, who are these guys?

But no.

I've heard of any of these people.

I did recognise some of the sports cars

and that's when it hit home that,

I've got a decent chance of being a professional

as long as I work hard.

Yeah, exactly.

Because there's always that last

catch-all that doesn't matter how good you are,

you've got to work hard.

So mom and dad weren't really into it.

Dad's pretty well off, sounds like I say that respectfully.

Yeah, yeah.

But it sounds like he got into it.

If he's willing to try to roll you to GP2,

so is he now into racing?

Or is he just...

Only really my racing.

Okay, copy that, yeah.

So he's just like, I want to see my kid do this.

Totally.

He was, I think, living a bit of history through me.

Was he a big sports car?

Sorry?

Was he a big sports car?

No, not particularly.

Really?

So it wasn't like,

my son's going to be a big pro athlete.

It may not be football,

but it's going to be none of that.

No, he's pretty intense in whatever he's doing

and he lives and breathes his business

and wants to kill everyone in the world of fruit.

That's not his company,

which those are literally his words.

Every time we think about it,

he's a mafia boss,

but there's like crates of cherries around him.

That's in my head.

Like, yeah.

It's every guy rich in movie I've ever seen

with crates of cherries.

Yeah, exactly.

So he's competitive,

but in his own world.

So when you start going sports car racing,

are you bringing funding initially?

So yes, first year at LMP2,

I did bring some funding.

That was honestly a waste of time doing that,

chasing, thinking that, you know,

you've done single-seaters and LMP2

is the way to go.

I was dumb enough to think that

that was a great route.

Why is that a dumb route?

Not dumb, but it's not an uncommon route.

To me, GTs, I mean,

I had signed with McLaren to do GTs.

There wasn't any racing that was forthcoming initially

and I was like, right,

I need to do some racing in LMP2

was the thing that I wanted to do

rather than, well, let's embed myself in the GT

that I've got a link with the manufacturer in.

Which is already there.

And it's going to probably cost less.

It was like, no, let's do LMP2.

But anyway, the year after,

then I did some GTs and it all started to

flow better.

Then moved to BMW and the rest is history.

So you ended up going to BMW

and you were with them for quite a while.

You drove what I think is the greatest sounding

GT3 car of all time.

The Z4.

The Z4, yeah.

That was cool.

That was a really nice car.

How did the...

Because like you said,

you've been McLaren connected this whole time.

The BMW thing come together

because you did British GT for a couple years

which is kind of where you started

on the Transition and those were Z4s.

It was before that.

I don't know really why F3 teams kept calling me up,

but they did kept calling me up

to ask to do some guest races.

Respectfully, is it because you had funding

and so they thought maybe...

No, no, no.

They were like, come help us out.

They were always free drives.

That's merit then.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I even earned some money actually

in F3 towards the end of my F3 career,

but I mean, I went to McCalloch seven times in F3.

I don't really know why,

but some teams would want an experienced driver

and they tended to ask me.

Amongst others, but often me.

So yeah, Teesport, anyway,

a small British team called me up

and one of the engineers

that had worked with the engineer

I was working with at the time,

Stephen Lane, who's now in formery,

was a guy called Albert Lau,

who's also in formery now,

working with McLaren,

but yeah, at the time he was working with BMW.

And so Laney got in touch with him

just to try and help me out,

got me a meeting with him and then got a test

in a GTLM Z4,

because I had a clause in my contract

that I couldn't drive any other GT3 car,

which I said to BMW and they're like,

well, we've got a GTLM Z4.

We should get around this damn rule.

And that was a really cool car to drive actually.

That was the only time I drove the Z4 GTLM.

And yeah,

drove with Dirk Werner and the rest of his history.

Do you know what you want already?

I probably do, yes.

I think I'll go.

What are you going to get?

I think the veggie lettuce wraps,

probably, which are just an appetizer,

because I had a massive lunch.

Are you a vegetarian?

A pescatarian.

I don't eat meat, but I eat fish.

Yeah, I'm gluten free by necessity.

Pescatarian by choice.

Is that for health or for animal?

No, avoiding diarrhea.

Not on the gluten side, on the meat side.

Oh, that's just choice.

Meat doesn't give me diarrhea.

But it's just gluten does.

Just clip that.

Meat doesn't give me diarrhea.

So my question is, do you not eat meat

for animal rights reasons?

I saw a guy talking about eating meat

and if you'd kill the animal yourself or not.

Sure. And that guy was Andy Lally.

This is at a driver's meeting.

I don't know.

If there was a potato or a cow,

I'd always eat the potato. I'd never kill a cow.

I probably would

rip the head off a shrimp

and eat it.

So you're okay with that?

That's a fair philosophy.

My wife's always been vegetarian.

Yeah, yeah.

I never really cared about it,

and I was just like, huh, yeah.

I never would kill a sheep or a cow

or a dog or a cat or anything.

So I stopped eating meat at that point.

How old were you when you decided that?

It was my second imposter season, actually.

Oh, okay.

So yeah, over the winter.

So you started doing sports car racing.

You get to BMW, start racing over here.

Outside of the team culture,

what about just like competitive culture?

Is it the same?

Within the drivers, honestly,

I don't go to too much of a difference

because I don't really have many friends.

Which side of the pond I'm on,

I kind of have a tendency

to keep myself in my own little...

Is that a trace of the insular?

I just always...

You just don't get invited.

Wait, I had two mates.

Do you not get invited or do you choose not to go?

Usually there's a crossover

where you stop going and people stop inviting you.

Well,

I would happily go along

with people

if they asked me,

but I also wouldn't

try to reach out to people.

Yeah, I got it, yeah.

It's one of those. When I was in school,

I had like one or two best mates.

Because you went to a boarding school, right?

No, my brother did.

I went to day school.

I would get on with the whole year.

I get on with people and happy to chat to them.

But in terms of those that I want to spend time with,

I really just want to spend time with

two people, you know.

And so, normally,

the race team that I'm in

get on really well with all those drivers

with the Corvette guys at the moment, you know.

Until I ditch them and move on to the next...

No, I'm the Corvette for life.

You put it for life this year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2025, yeah.

But, yeah,

I just somehow,

when I see a ton of drivers,

I don't know, I just feel a bit overwhelmed.

That just, yeah.

Not for me, I don't know why.

Obviously, you've already mentioned that

you didn't really follow the sport growing up.

But you strike me as somebody that,

when you go home, you don't take work with you.

Really try not to.

Especially, I've got three kids and a wife

and even more so nowadays.

I try and leave it at the door pretty much.

Obviously, I need to do work still at home sometimes.

But, yeah,

I don't have much social media engagement,

I've got to be honest.

I don't follow the sport too much.

You might look at autosport.com.

Quick plug.

Occasionally, but that's about it.

But, yeah, you asked me, sorry, about America.

And to be honest, the type of racing

I think is really important to me

in terms of the difference.

Because in Europe,

it's so much, I feel generally,

the rules are about race neutralization

and keeping it fair

in inverted commas

from a sporting point of view

because this car

retains its margin over the second place car

and

after a safety car, whatever.

Not a safety car, but, you know,

a virtual safety car.

If there's a yellow and there's a 10 second gap,

they want to keep that 10 second gap,

which is not how we do it here, thankfully.

And although it

works against you, obviously, if you're in the lead,

it keeps it exciting.

I go back to that every time.

It's just more fun over here.

And they're awesome. You know what I mean?

And if you have an AM driver,

you definitely want that.

If you're trying to make it for a guy that's paying for all of this,

we want to have a shot at the end.

So, I mean, I was happy in 2017

when I was paired with Bill for that reason.

But because if he started,

then we wouldn't have much chance.

But, no, I love Bill.

He's brilliant.

The winningest driver in history,

how many of those are down to him?

Great teammates.

Do you have any good

Bill Arbelin stories?

Because obviously, like you said,

when you come over here, do you even know who he is

when you come over here?

Not at all. Okay, cool.

My first ever race here

was when we had the fantastic

John Baldassari

art car.

The greatest looking car

of all time. I wrote it down as a note.

I liked it before. Now I love it.

The art car with no art on it?

The guy's dead now, I think so.

So, we can talk about it.

Actually, now that means it's worse.

Well, and his coffin just says dead on it.

Unfortunately, it was such an unfast car.

It was very slow.

Well, it's ironic art.

Maybe he knew this.

But yeah, I remember

Bill was the guy

doing the launch of that car

and he was going to be my teammate.

And I was like, oh, okay.

Wow, he's done X number of races.

Wow, and was reading up on him for the first time

pretty much.

You said it yourself earlier,

and I'm not taking a dig,

but you don't look the part of the race driver.

So to speak, in the sense that you've got glasses

and you don't have the tall, dark,

handsome thing that comes in the movies.

How many people thought you weren't a driver

when you were with them?

Well, I mean,

I could quite easily play the part of an engineer.

Yeah.

Which I did on many occasions

to just avoid a conversation.

Yeah, that's my point.

And Bill loved it as well because

he gets to talk about him.

No, I love Bill.

We're going to hear that a few more times.

It was quite funny, though, after Watkins Glen

where we won. I do remember

it's deep into my memory.

He was on his Facebook Live

for his adoring fans,

and

I was saying, well, I've had the phone pointed

towards him. It's like, great race, you know.

Hey guys, blah, blah, blah, this is what happened.

And this is my teammate, Alexander Sims,

and pointed the camera towards me. So I was like,

hey guys, how are you?

And that's as long as it lasted before he put

the phone back to himself.

I kept on talking. I was like, okay,

he definitely played a bit part in that one.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that was summarized that, yeah.

Well, let's, we're talking way too much

right now. You gotta say, it's a personal life stuff.

You're married, you've got three boys.

Yes, okay. How did you meet your wife?

Silverstone, actually.

So she used to race herself.

So that's pretty helpful because she

can give me some tips.

But no, she was very much

an amateur.

We actually shared a race car once,

which was cool. We did a radical race together.

That was one of the highlights.

And I scraped her onto the podium.

But, yeah, no,

we met at Silverstone.

Then I was having, I think,

yeah, I had another girlfriend at the time.

So I just met her there and then broke up

with that girlfriend and met her again

at the auto sports show in January

in Birmingham, a lovely

national exhibition centre in the UK

in the car park.

And I had just been on holiday to Cape

30 of all places, a tiny little set

of islands and

had got sunburned.

And my nose was peeling.

And she said,

oh, hey, Alexander, and we were chatting

and she was like, crikey,

your skin's peeling off your nose.

Or no, my neck, I think it was, actually.

And she's like, I'm

now I'm weird, but can I get that?

Because that's annoying me.

And so she peeled my neck in the car park

and it was at that moment that

I thought you're a keeper.

Because you're weird like me.

Well, and she found you

exactly very good.

I haven't used that one before, well done.

And then, yeah, then

we had a pretty successful

relationship from that point on.

What did she do? Or what does she do?

Well, she was

a teacher

until we had our second kid and

we moved house and then she had

to knock that on the head for a bit, be a full

time mom to help me

with my

yeah, career

and obviously, you know, racing stuff

you just can't plan.

If you're traveling all the time, she's got to be around with the kids.

That's the thing, it sucks for her.

And I feel bad every day, really,

that she has to sacrifice her life

and career for me.

But it's financially the best thing

for our family, frankly.

And she's super supportive in that, which is great.

So yeah, she's just in the process

of doing a massage course

because she did do some massage

as part of, she's a PE teacher

so she did do some massage

course at her university

degree and so she's picking that back up

to do something part-time that works

around my life and the kids. How'd she get into racing?

Just for fun

as a kid, I can't remember with her dad

why. I think her dad had done some

car stuff for fun, had a formula for

for a few years and she just did some

karting, did some gearbox and did some

MG saloon cars

which I guess

are a bit like the Miata's that you guys

are over here, but a really terrible UK

version and did some

Radicals and the SR3 Cup

which was a pretty good car actually

and that's

where she finished her last

bit of racing but it's really nice

that she has a bit of an understanding

she likes the sport enough to be able

to talk to me about it and hear me moaning

on and

going through lap by lap

of my race

in a real-time

way, but

it works pretty well.

So because she understands it, she would understand

what BOP really means?

Yes, I can talk to her about exactly what

BOP is and she gets that.

Is she sick of hearing about it?

I can't

say a bad word about her honestly

I've sound really corny but she's a dream

she's wonderful

super supportive and funny

and we got on pretty well

but, pardon?

A while ago and now you have three boys

Was the plan to have kids?

Yes, not for her

actually, she didn't want to get married

and she didn't want to have kids, she told me

You ruined this woman's life

but I convinced her otherwise somehow

it wasn't like dead set

on having kids initially

but one thing led to another

and we did those things that

one does as couples and hey presto

she became pregnant

and

then my life was ruined

but no, I love you kids

I love you

we probably had a conversation

like let's start having kids

but it was very natural

Are you inserting that just so they hear this?

Exactly, please keep that in

20 years from now and they're deciding what home to put them in

like remember that one thing you did?

20 years, that's 56

that's early, thanks

Big hit in the head, Pam

I have had some actually

so all boys

but they're all three

pretty young, what's the different

10, 8 and 5

so that's a pretty quick repetition of having some kids

so that's a lot of work at home

it's very busy

but now that it seems like they're in the age of time

it's like fun times

quite a lot of fun

that's just got so much energy

and trying to stop them from

killing themselves is a 24-7

job that we share at home

when I'm there

but then I feel for my wife when I'm gone

I was about to say, from

door opening to bag coming down

what's the gap

to them becoming your problem?

Well normally they're completely disinterested

to see me first of all

they're like oh daddy sent me

cool anyway, what are we doing

what's on TV

and

there's honestly quite a

difficult transition from me being away

and doing my own thing day to day when I'm racing

to then getting home and trying to be in

dad mode

and not being really judgmental

and like

why are you doing this little

so and so

exactly

to then flowing

into a little bit more of a calm

mellow dad two or three

days later and I'm like yeah whatever

they got down from the table with a 17th

time this meal

just leave it you know it's not worth it

so that

transition is a bit of a challenge

what's the

do they care that you're a racecar driver

they think it's cool do they want to do it

they don't

they want to watch crashes

and that's about the only part of motorsport they care

they like so

what's a 10 year old want to do

this week

he has autism

and he

incredible mind absolutely mind-blowing

incredible at times in terms of how he absorbs

information and

what he

yeah he could do so many things

but nothing in particular

that he's dead set on

or has been dead set on for

a prolonged period of time

not kind of diverges presumably

he's when he's into something he's super

super into it then it shifts

yeah and also I'm guessing you have to be careful

about what you say because he's going to remember it

and store it away he does it's really annoying

yeah he's like oh I did say that

you know I

one thing I always remember is he

he read something about

the Romans and the Roman Empire

and

like four months later he was telling my

my mom about how Romans constructed

their roads

I know you read that book for five minutes

tops

how

I read something five times

and still

yeah

or that's one thing

engineering debuts with me are a disaster because

so many times we did

tire testing and that's in my time

especially in IMSA because yeah you'd go through

I don't know do six seven sets of tires

and I give my feedback I can give feedback there

and then in terms of what happened and then you go to the end of the day

and go so can we now run through things

yeah session one

just look at my feedback

from what I said then

because that was my feedback

and I haven't miraculously got more

and also I can't even remember what I said

most other drivers actually did seem to be able to

elaborate but I was just like

I was in the moment I remember what I did then

and that's it

we got questions based on anonymous

stories

the naked part well established

yep you brush your teeth

on the way to the track

nope

that's not normal

you shake your head like yeah of course

yeah I like to have clean teeth

how many times a day do you brush

what generally

what generally twice to be honest I always like to

thing is I like to brush my teeth after breakfast

and so often we'll leave

the hotel or apartment

are we talking like a bottle of water

I mean I normally use an empty bottle of water to spit in

yeah it's okay

so you've got bottle water, you've got toothbrush and toothpaste

with you in the car

so that go in the backpack everywhere

always have a backup set with me

yeah I think

one of the things I read about you is you use a

bamboo

I believe

okay so you're

conscious about reusable plastics and things like that

yeah I don't really read

I don't know if it's that big

I really hope making a big deal about it because I'm also conscious

that I fly transatlantic flights

yeah I know but like every little bit can help

25 times a year which is the

by far the biggest

yeah I've been trying to get rid of you guys for years

really great for our business over here

we're just better than you

but yes I brush my teeth

on the way to the track quite often

so the technique has to be like a bottle of water or something

well I normally start off dry

so I don't normally have

oh you're a dry brusher

in my backpack

that's not a thing

what's a toothpaste tablet

yeah it's just toothpaste but in dry tablet form

it's an absolutely a thing

it's the shrug like a duck

where do you buy that

on any good online retailer

like anywhere

the store

just because I don't really go to stores

that often but no you can buy them in

in health shops and stuff

again I'm gonna say stuff in England

of Boots and Holland Barrett

but that means absolutely nothing to you guys

so CVS or

Walgreens would have them as well

okay we're gonna go

ask them to have toothpaste tablets

that can be a job for the next guest

I want to go back one step

I'm sorry to keep this out of order

I actually get that you don't want to brush your teeth till after breakfast

now you haven't breakfast at the track

so you haven't

you have breakfast at the hotel then you get in the car

then you choose to like you have breakfast with your teammates

I mean this is in the scenario

where we do have breakfast before we come to the track

I understand this

because everyone else seems to have breakfast and then just leave

whereas I would normally go back to my room

brush my teeth and come

to the track

not come

on its own

it's been described as a fairly common scenario

most days because I generally want to have breakfast

with my teammates

and then I don't want to be a burden to them

so the fundamental thing isn't that

you need to brush your teeth six times a day

in the car or whatever

it's that you have breakfast at the hotel

you don't go back to your room and go straight to the car

I was

that part

I've got a thing about brushing my teeth in the car

that's okay

yeah that's what I'm saying

so this part is established

so I would have been okay with all this

until now we start getting toothpaste tablets

so that's because traveling

with liquids is a pain in your hand luggage

wow

I prefer not in the UK anyway

you got to get it all out of your bag

and you don't have TSA

and so

I found toothpaste tablets

again on my sustainability drive

which is completely token gesture

but

yeah cuts down on plastic

and super convenient

so you just chew it

your saliva makes it froth

and then you spit

if you were to just clip that

that one phrase

you chew it, you get a little bit of a throb

then you brush your teeth and then you spit it out

then your teeth are minty fresh

and yeah

whether it's in the car and the driver landed in the truck

and I spit in the bin

I mean literally just yesterday morning

the Corvette engineer Kyle Millay

was like dude are you alright

I just went and spat my froth into the bin

I was like yeah all good

and they're like oh yeah standard sims

freely peeing in bottles

this is a thing

it's a time saver

okay it's a time saver so you've done it enough

yeah I mean

I guess it's against the law

to expose yourself

in a car whilst moving

I feel like it's probably not great

it's frowned upon

you definitely did this at least

you know where the school zone is as well

yeah

that's just a time saver really

so you'll pee in a bottle rather than pull over

as long as I've got a bottle on me

which I normally store in the side pocket of my car

because of this

correct yeah

how long does that bottle stay in the car

until it's so gross

so you use it for the ones

I don't want to use more plastic

I'm with you on that

one specific part you're with

that I recycle it

well hold on you recycle it

so you pour it out

yeah on the grass verge

when I next stop at home whatever

and then put it back in the door of the car and crack on

so by walking to your rental car

no car at home I'm talking about

that's what I was about to say this is worse

way worse

you're hydrating the track

what city

street number

near the Birmingham

so if I go

so if I go to your home in near Birmingham

and I see an empty bottle

in your car in the pocket

I know that's the piss bottle there's two

at the moment there are two

because one was only 500 mil

and that's sometimes not enough

you're a father

how's your wife on the piss bottle

she's like gross

so she's normal

and unlike your first date

like getting to the first date

and killing your next get off

she's got over it

it's just my weird ass husband

in his piss bottle

bottles

because one by the way is too small

in the current situation

normally it's a 750 ml

it's like a 500 and a 250 now

now it's a 500

another 500

I need to recycle and upgrade

as and when one comes available

how long does a bottle last

in the car time wise

3-4 days

2 months

wait

it doesn't stay there full

you pour it out and then reuse the bottle

so there's just a constant bottle

I need to use it every single day

it's just for airport runs in the morning

when I set off at 3am

and I need to be there at 7

you can't hold

how long is the air from Birmingham to the airport

there's a long drive

and I'd like to do it in one go without stopping

so the piss bottle

the options are

to come off the motorway, go into the motorway services

which it's always

adds 15 minutes to your journey

whatever

and I'd rather not

is it an aluminum piss bottle

no plastic

it's trying to reuse the plastic

aluminium I don't know

so you've got to choose the right bottle

the wrong way that could be a problem

I mean I

not that I'm

particularly well endowed

but still it makes it easier

my brother does the same thing

much to the annoyance of his wife

we didn't even talk

we didn't even like share details

no no exactly

you don't use that for what I think you do do you

I was like yeah sorry

oh no I do the same

I don't know

Tim Sims

he says

so the Sims home in the 90s

was something interesting

yeah you think about it he's comfortable being naked in front of anybody

a big furry bush

piss bottles that were just

laying around

how's the rental car situation

do you have piss bottles in the rental car

I need to

I mean if he's comfortable doing it at home

it's fine no no I get that but you have like teammates you might

yeah the noise cuts

yeah how do you think we know about this

it's cliched in a

show to do like the piss in the race seat kind of thing

so with you we're

that would be disgusting

I'm not an animal

but would I piss in front of other people in the car

yeah sure

well you have no problems just being naked with your big old bush

so I get it

I don't want to be an inconvenience to them

anyway

do you ever have an awkward meeting with a team physio

yep not gonna say who

or I'm not gonna say who gave us that

explain this a lady called Julia

she's coming this weekend

who's Julia with

who's she with

oh with Corvette

she's coming this weekend

for us

no no no nothing weird

but it's a standard me awkward useless

matter for the first time in I think 2021

in the RV at Corvette

annoyingly it was in front

we're all drivers together so in front of everyone else

and I just got my words muddled

and wanted to say

nice to meet you Julia and also hi

I'm Alexander

I went hi

I'm Julia

and Twitch is like

no I'm Julia

I'm Alexander

nice to meet you

Julia and obviously I was stood in front of Tommy

and Nikki and everyone

what does he do

no no but what does he do

I understand you're telling me he's one of the drivers

he's our mascot

and so then he was just like oh

laughed and said this guy's now called Julia

nothing more sort of than that

so do they call you Julia now

at times exactly yeah whenever I introduce myself to someone new in the team

they're always like who are you

Julia

so we've got

all right so we've got Julia

and George W so far as your nicknames

and you said you've got no shortage

well moments like that

have happened so I don't know what's top of my head

loads of them but yes they call me all sorts of stuff

okay okay

dips was one when I was growing up

what's dips

just the IPS

right but again I understand that part

what is it it's a word

but no I as a kid I

went on funfairs and stuff I couldn't say yippie

for some reason I pronounce it dippy

and that shortened it to dips

and had it on the side of my first race helmet

and to this day

pretty much the only person who still calls me dips

is Oliver Oaks who I used to race against

as a cadet Carter

who's now the

team principal of LP and F1

how he's ended up in that position

is somewhat dodgy

I don't know

but anyway he's a lovely guy

the GTP cars

you didn't think you did a very good job

is that your take on it?

not over the whole season though

I had moments where I was okay

but I was really brilliant

and often below par

but you have a good career in open-wheel stuff

coming up against pretty solid guys

is it that particular style of prototype you think

or was it just too much time in GT cars

frustratingly I could not work out

why? but I cooked the rear tyres

I mean

what I couldn't work out why

was why it didn't work in the GTP

but I drove the DPI car for half a day

boom

fantastic

was a couple of tenths of people

on my third run or something

and I hadn't driven a car like that

since I drove P2 in 2012

so it was like 10 years apart

just unformery for 5 years

no downforce in that

but boom

this feels great

but yeah in the GTP

so we

tested on the 2022

tyre to start with

all seemed to be going alright

then as soon as we moved to the 2023 tyre

I just started cooking the rears

and I didn't realise until sorry

it was sort of Laguna

time when it really highlighted itself

there's a grating there

well I

came out the pits

under caution

Rengar had been in the car the stint before

so he was fully up to speed

he went around the outside of me in turn

to make me look like a complete tool

but I was like I'm on cold tyres

I'm just finding my feet

but he's also on a Cadillac

yeah exactly so I couldn't take any risk

and anyway that was

I then chased him stayed on his backside

for 15 laps but cooked my tyres in the process

and then chatted to Ryan

the performance engineer

at decent length

about it and it had been a trend

that he had noticed

so yeah from that point on basically I had to

feel safe during my stints to keep the retires

cooler, keep them underneath me

and

yeah that was one of the big issues

I didn't have a great feeling of the car

under braking as well, struggled at times

tried different braking maps and things

but just couldn't have a really ghetto feel about it

I don't know why, it was one of those things

you probably can fix it

but it was something to do with

how I generally like to have the car that's oversteering

and feel it on the rear axle

the rear of being on the limit more than the front

if the car's understeering I'm generally slow

if it's oversteering I'm normally pretty decent

and yeah

just couldn't achieve what I wanted with that car

at this point

you're a full time veteran

essentially how do you

manage that internally like I've had a couple years where

I was in a car that wasn't very good

good teammates who weren't much better

and

I was starting to doubt myself and question myself

how do you handle something like that

I mean it gets to you

I don't think fans

or even entry level drivers realize that

real pros do get that way

they do get down on themselves

I didn't really help honestly because I've done

four years in Formula E

where

it also wasn't great

for a fair chunk of the time

but it was great in Formula E

but I would never know why

and could literally go on a double head of weekend

have one day

fighting for pole position and qualifying

to literally qualifying 18th on the grid

the next day and go it's the same time

what the heck

it wasn't quite that bad in GTP

I was left scratching my head quite often

but yeah it's

you've got to pick yourself up and keep trying

I just knew fairly early

in the season

just purely from my performance point of view

ignoring anything else

the writing was on the wall

not going to continue

these cars aren't for me

I might be able to string it out for another year

if I'm lucky if I get the right deal

if someone drops out or this or that

but it wasn't the life I wanted to be honest

but literally starting with

your first race at Daytona

in the first GTP season

you realized the writings on the wall that you needed to get out

so you did four years in Formula E

it seemed like the last Mahindra year

really wasn't fun

no a lot of crashes

was it a choice to get out

well I mean that was the end of my Mahindra contract

it seemed like I might have an option with another team

lower down the grid

that they're doing quite alright now

but at the time it was

they'd struggled for a few years

again it seemed like a little bit of a race to the bottom

in terms of me just

holding on to being in Formula E

for as long as I could

if I took that up

it was around the Le Mans time with Corvette

when I was having the discussions

and I was like I just need Le Mans

just to see where I was at

because that was the only GTP race I did

with Corvette that year

and that went really well and I loved it

and I was like nah

I've had a few years in Formula E

and frankly earning very good money

and I made that decision

largely for the financials honestly

after BMW

to go to Mahindra

and I was like let's now use this to

have that in the bank and now focus on what I enjoy

now do what you want to do

so Formula E I guess that makes sense

it pays better than factory GT racing

he really only our second Formula E driver

we've had Rene did it

and Rene didn't have great things to say about his time

in Formula E he just didn't enjoy the racing

how was it for you

I think he'd struggled honestly to find any driver

who really enjoys Formula E from a pure

driving point of view

is it because the cars are

there's just so much stuff you have to manage

so you're not actually just pushing the limit

or they're slow

I think the treaded tyre

the all weather tyre honestly is just not

a very good racing tyre

it's compromised from the start

because it's got to do both dry and wet weather

so it's pretty rubbish and dry

and pretty rubbish and wet

it's not got much downforce

it's got a lot too

it's got a lot for it

sorry

in terms of the technical side it's fascinating

I really really enjoyed working with engineers

on that side of it

but these tight makeshift tracks

kind of video game elements you have to play to

yeah

honestly with the attack mode and things like that

it was just part of it

you've got to get on with it

just as much as if you have to do a pit stop or this or that

or say fuel in GT racing you do it

it can help you win the race

but yeah

I think really the tyres

was for me anyway

just a bad start

kind of capped the whole thing

massive change

to what you're used to as a race car driver

in terms of being able to attack

always thinking about tyre temperature

and trying to not push too hard on them

because you lose performance because they overheat

in the dry so easily because they've got to also do

wet weather driving

it was politically very environmentally conscious

was there any satisfaction

in kind of what they were espousing

it was

nice to be able to

talk about

some of my views

and things that I was interested in

in the same

sentences talking about motorsport

because normally that's not the case

I kind of have to try and separate them

separate them quite

a lot because I know

they don't naturally go together super well

as much as people

tell you that they're driving efficiency by doing motorsport

and development and all that stuff

it's unnecessary as so many things are in the world

and frankly if I wanted

to save the environment I'd just stop

doing this

the sport that's built on burning natural resources

better than the other that a whole circus of people fly into

hang on a second there's a green initiative

there's a green initiative

surprised

so that side of it was pretty nice

yeah and

cool to be able to talk about things I'm interested in

and have some decent opinion on it

and I don't know if that was that

enlightening but yeah

so we should probably go down that road for a bit

because we have more funny dumb things to talk about after

but you are actually involved

with like several different things that are

very cognizant about the environment

and long term and single use plastics

and things like that so

where does that start for you like why do you have that

interest or thought

good question I mean

really the first thing

I can think of

really was when I first got my

EV I bought a Tesla back in

2012

the original like the Roadster one

like the cool looking one right? yeah yeah

well I shouldn't say that but it looks like a Lotus Elise

exactly

and

I got to that point

because I was fed up of going to the fuel station

three times a week

and

I don't want to stop to go to the bathroom

I don't want to stop to go to the gas

maybe just lazy

maybe exactly if it can charge up to the night

when I'm sleeping then everyone's a winner

but

it was just the realisation of

putting fuel into the car

it burns it's gone fuel into the car

it's gone fuel into the car boom it's gone

you know

just from a practical point of view there's got to be

a better solution to this you know

was my thought process so I got

first got a hybrid

and I went from getting

50 miles per gallon

in the diesel to 50 miles of gallon in a petrol

car and I was like well it's yeah it's

a little bit better because it's petrol and it's still getting the same

number but frankly it's not really

getting to the root of the problem

and I can't even remember

where I first saw the Tesla advert or whatever

there wouldn't have been many at the time

because it was a pretty niche niche thing but anyway

I got one amazingly

thanks to Dad

and then

that got my interest going

in where the electricity comes from

so then more and more interest in renewable energy

and then onto

home heating and think we use plastics

and you know the snowball just goes

you know once you start following

green car reports about EVs

they then talk about renewables

and then you look at other stuff and

you know it's just snowballs so

that was really the journey that I went on

your LinkedIn specifically mentions

the zero carbon world charity

is that sort of the biggest one you're part of?

well yeah I mean I'm actually

getting to a point where I'm going to leave that soon

but yeah I've been a trustee for that for quite a few years now

where

it's a small charity

don't get me wrong it's very very part time

from all of our perspectives but yeah we

have donated

I don't know what it is 7 or 800 charging

points across the UK

from EVs to small

establishments places that might not normally have one

exactly and they can apply

and they get a free charging point of us

bed and breakfast, small attractions

places where people would be staying anyway

just destination charging that's relatively cheap

to install but can

incentivize somebody to sell there

and helps an EV driver

substantially and I used to use those points

as an EV driver myself back in the day

so it's just a charity I was aware of

and they had a very useful drive

to get a new few trustees and I just

off at my time

obviously Corvette's the greatest car ever made

but you also have an EV at home

and that's a Kia?

exactly an EV6

so do you have solar panels at your house now?

yep

I don't know anybody that does

so what does that save you

or gain you?

to be fair

the last three or four houses I've had

put solar in but it always depends on

the plot of land that I've got

and some houses I've put in 150 solar panels

and a massive mountain in the field

current house I'm in doesn't have that space

so it's got like 16 on the roof

which is a token gesture frankly

and the amount of electricity that I use

with a heat pump as well

so the heating of the house is an electric

but super efficient

and the two EVs that we've got

and stuff we use a lot of electricity

when you have that field of solar panels

how much are you still relying on

actual power from

from the city or whatever

well I mean we didn't have batteries to be honest

so everything at night was

still reliant on incoming

electricity but

yeah I think over the year we'd

produce a lot more

totally than we used

so I was a net exporter

so what's the

price key?

I find this stuff interesting what's the price breakdown

then like price per solar panel

versus what you save

or is it a net wash and you care more about the environment

well I did it purely for

environmental reasons to be honest

the finances of it since

the war in Ukraine actually

became pretty sensible

because now also electricity

prices in the UK anyway are pretty high

so therefore the cost of the solar panels

remains pretty much the same

but the return on investments because

electricity prices are higher

more money because you would have used that electricity anyway

which cost more

so the ROI is

I don't know what it is 6-7 years nowadays

whereas

pre-Ukraine war it was

pretty bad actually it was like 12-13-14 years

which you've got to be

in it for the long time

you're committed at that point

I've got a technical question

do corvettes have turbos

I know now that they do not

wow

so how did

how did this mistake get made

well it's just a naive assumption

I think because I've done so many years of BMW

driving with the M6 and M8 with turbos

turbos and at Petit Le Mans

I was a third driver

so I hadn't done the whole season

but I had done

day turners

2021 my first season with Corvette

so I had done three races

three long races

and then at Petit was chatting to Nicky

and going you know what

the anti-lag on this thing

is really good because

it's like there's no lag at all

there's no lag it's great so I mean

the comment was relevant at least I wasn't complaining

about the turbo

exactly

at least you're a pro driver

if you were complaining about the lag it would have been way worse

correct

Pratt and Miller's got their shit together

this thing has zero lag

he looked at me vacantly

what am I missing

I do know these

don't have a turbo

that might explain it

yeah got you

so yeah that's how much interest I have

in the technical side of cars

but now big Corvette fan

I mean you love it

yeah they're cool

very cool cars, love Corvettes

so one of the things that we learned about Corvette

and Cadillac from Johnny O'Connell

and talking to Tommy and all these guys

and I had the same thing

when I race for Honda and Acura

fans will want to come talk to you about their car

and I had to learn

really quickly what some of these engine

numbers meant and things like that because if you

didn't know they're like what the f*** is this guy

doing so Corvette

specifically has probably the most proud

fan base in sports car racing

how many times do people come up to you

to tell you about their car

I'm always very interested

fascinating

but rarely have any understanding

of what they're talking about

we don't have

until the C8

we haven't had Corvettes in the UK

haven't had GM product

in the UK full stop for many years

so in my defence

it's very difficult for me to have

hands-on experience

but

yeah I like the colours of the cars

quite often when we go to the corral

or the rims

but

I don't know

a huge amount more to be honest

so that's your go-to to be the show

we've had

the big winners

but I also

might not be the only driver

who is in this position

yeah it's almost like you guys should have Americans on your team

yeah Tommy talks a lot

what is your go-to question dodge

like how do you evade

when people ask you about specs that you clearly don't know

or vintage isn't here

thankfully generally we are asked as a group

when we're stood up

talking

so it's like everyone just goes

Tommy did you have a viewpoint on that

and he does a great job

of saying everything

that needs to be said

this is Tommy Milner Jr

Tommy Milner Jr

which is what he prefers to be called

Tommy Milner Jr

okay

well speaking of sports car life

obviously marketing promotions

a big part of it

tell me about your promotional video

for the 24 hour

oh for this one

I'm guessing

oh yeah no

well I was duped into that

that's not my responsibility

but Nicky asked me to record

a very yeah cat's burger

a terrific

set of words

whilst saying them

what was it sniffing a long tube

and then going

boh

smells like race day

what?

it'll make sense in a bit

tune into

you know the championships website

that we may or may not be racing at this weekend

which doesn't have anything to do with the actual smell

which is why I hope it never gets posted

but

because he said

I'll explain later

and then he clipped it

I know that's my problem

right

what are you doing

and the start of it

was actually a lady farting into a white tube

so that it's a lady farting

into a tube

smells like race day

that sounds like a great promo

it would actually work better than what they're actually doing

Mr Doonan might go

wow so you think my race day

smells like

SHIT you know

and

if he thought that I would not really

live it down with him so I thought

let's not post that but it seems like most people in the paddock have actually

watched it already so

because Nicky sent it to everyone

which is kind

friends like these

how do you get along with Martin Tomczyk

very well

without Lamar

well

to be fair I've got two good stories with Martin

proceed

one was he

stupidly left his helmet in the race track

and we were at a test

this is when we were racing with Rover

in BMW days

in Europe

and I

being nicknamed Georgia W

a lot going on down there

in the

hair sense and

so we videoed with me holding the helmet

slightly to the side of myself but being filmed

from the other side

using a razor and shaving

and making it look like

the hair goes into the helmet

which it probably still did

there had to be a couple in there

maybe you know they like spear sometimes aren't they

yeah so that was a great

film to send him after he'd worn

his helmet at the next test I think

to which he then never wore that helmet

ever again

so that was funny

not my best friend for a bit

but then yeah

at Lamar

again a bit like

this period now between the raw

and the 24

you're just killing time for a few days

as race drivers you

have nothing important to do

so you turn to utterly stupid

behavior to kill time

we're just chilling in our little cabins

that we had at the circuit and the two

cars were right next to each other with bunk

beds and a toilet

I needed to go

I was on my own in mine

and he was on his own in his so I went

next door obviously to his

bathroom

did my stuff

and walked out

laughing and he was like

haha yeah funny since he

going flush I was like nah

why not why would I do that

I'm not going to do that and left

to which point the fumes really

started to annoy him

was this post helmet pubes

oh yes yes

what did I do to you

it was not a small one

and he just he lost

his shit

he found yours

lost his

I mean Martin

has a phenomenal

way of going on the

absolute limiter with you

to the point to me I'm like

this relationship is dead

he's down the spade

this is completely broken

the two stories you've told me I would f***ing hate you

we have a lot of fun in between

and he knows that I just

take the piss all the time

yeah to which I'm like

and then I sit there

like God he hates me this is really bad

for the you know inter car

relationship in the team

everything's going to break down

and so about half an hour later

I pluck up the courage because I'm pretty scared of him

when he's in that mood

to be like look Martin

I overstepped the mark here I'm really sorry

and he turned around and be like

oh seems don't worry about it

whatever

and then he's like completely fine again

I'm like

well like you said

you fret so like you can't

help but do the pranks but then you fret

about it for nights and nights after that

so when he's like that it makes it that much worse

well to be fair I actually

then sort of knew where I was with him

all the time

okay well

just full respect honestly

of like okay he'll tell me when he's pissed off

but also when he's happy with me

he's happy with me he's not false

he's just how he is

which I appreciated in the end so

yeah that was a funny process

to learn that

speaking of poopy

do you ever poop next to a car

in a car park

oh my god

I tell people these things in some

confidence

you could deny it

I don't know

we could have moved on

too truthful

so yeah I can't lie

you should

no no no but this is like one of those moments

in your life where you're like

kill me now

before or after

after because it's like

what do I do

you clearly have to

so you clearly are headed to your car you gotta go

so no I'm in the car

so UK

I had landed

had I landed

no I think I might have just been driving down

to Brandt's hatch

to do a race

last year

yep oh this is pretty recent

it was

a father of three

and I was like

20 30 minutes out from the circuit

and I think I'd got caught in traffic

and the journey had taken a while

I was there for a meeting

at the track with engineers

and you're very big on efficiency

when you're driving

this is getting critical

well that's saying

it sounds like you need a sh** bucket

I needed

to go for a dump

and

well

was hoping that I'd be able to hold out

to get to the toilets at Brandt's hatch

so you don't have some public toilet

but my point is like you're not evasive to that

like you don't have some like hang up

not in the slightest

I can dump everywhere

I might wipe the seat

but that's about the only thing

porter potties or whatever at the track

it's all going

but

I hadn't passed anywhere

that was convenient and I was like

I just gotta get to the track and go to the toilet at the track

but as I got nearer and nearer

it was like wow this is ramping up

usually that third wave is like oh this is bad

I got no more time

and so I parked up

and normally I'd be able to park quite close to the paddock

but something had been

they'd got a test there something going on

and so they diverted us off into a field

and so I was like

I know I'm nowhere near the toilets right now

and I can't walk

even 300-400 meters

it's

so I had to squat down next to the car

in the middle of the field

in a line of cars

what time of day is it

4 in the afternoon

clear visibility

I'm like

shoot

thankfully I had baby wipes in the car

because of kids

it was fairly hygienic from that point of view

then I was like

I've got this mountain of

next to my car what do I do

it's so obviously

not a dog turd

what do I do

so I was like

what would you do

so this is what I did

I backed it up and parked the car over it

so I was like I've hidden it

done but then it comes to

7pm when I'm leaving the track

I'm like well

there's still loads of cars around me

and anyway

so I was like backed up a bit

I was like yep it's still there I don't know what I thought

so I was like ants are going to devour it

in 3 hours

but it's huge

I mean there's not much more to the story

but I felt

really ashamed of myself leaving this

thing there

I was like I've got to go to the hotel

now and get some sleep so then I drove off

and just looked in the wing

did you go back the next day and check

no parked in a different position

I wouldn't try to find it

it was one of the moments

when I was looking in the wing mirror

and I was like oh my god

I'm just the worst

do you know my favourite part of the story

is that there were no witnesses

and we found out about it

which means you told me

no one had to know this

I think I told two people

like my wife and Nikki

and I tell him

these things in some confidence

and he

he is getting paid

good

we have an arrangement

but no it's all fine

I'm happy to discuss

to some level

so we do a pass on question

for every guest and today we had lunch

with Paul de Resta

his question for you was do you think you'll ever race together again

well

I mean we're clearly

going to race in the same races

but in terms of sharing a car

I don't think that's

probably going to happen

it's actually in my contract not

that that won't happen

no offense Paul but you're boring

no no no

I don't think that's going to happen

to be honest

unless Paul decides to start doing GT3 racing

which doesn't seem to be too likely

at the moment

so tomorrow we're going to have lunch

with Daniel Morad

if you could ever ask anything of him

I had to think about this and I might have

got the wrong

question

I was going to ask him

at what point in his life

did he

but I didn't know if it was a little bit

controversial in anyone who

was going to cancel me

might not like it

what we'll do is we'll ask that one

and then we'll laugh

at what point you're like

we'll all laugh

and then the next question was

I hate it

I don't really know Daniel

that's my issue

and I looked up

what are good questions to ask someone on a podcast

because

I wanted to try and do the

thing justice

we should do a chat

GT and um

what was it

if you could

deliver any historical

moment

what would you pick

just generally

because I guess you were going to talk about motorsport

so I was like choose something that's

maybe not motorsport related

what would I go with I hadn't gone that far

I just wanted a question

that was maybe going to put him on the spot

and go oh f**k

we're sitting here

January 20th the race is in a couple days

the 24-hour daytime is a couple days

how do you think he did

in the race that we had to do

there's a go out

couple of months or whatever

well I was very happy with my performance

I killed

there was very little more that I think I could have done

however

there were difficult moments in the race that we

do you want to say

cause this is coming out later so you want to give us four different answers

so we can pick one that's closer

exactly you want me to say something that's just generally

I am generally curious but then also we can make this

really funny you're like we won by two laps

I finished exactly

exactly where I thought I was going to finish

really ashamed about the drive time penalty

yeah

I thought they had the torque sensors figured out by now

yeah

I mean I

I mean I'm sat here right now

I think the 4-hour is going to be pretty strong

I'm hoping we will be in the mix but I'm not

sure we have quite the ultimate pace

to fight at the front but we'll see

we'll see how it goes

yeah again I'm really

comfortable with the level that I

performed at

looking back on the race I really hope I don't shunt

in the first lap or something

how do you think about that

we're not going to say it because we're not having that person

yeah good call yeah

we'll come on the show

if you had to pick one driver from all

your teammates

not from the driving standpoint just from like the front

standpoint who would you say you're closest with

well I mean

very much Katzberg

is someone who I've been friends with

for many years

there's so many people that I've

got on well with in terms of teammates

through lots of my racing it's really tough

to pick one but I mean I would just

literally list pretty much every one of my teammates

barring Tommy Milner

Junior

do you have like a

first couple of movies that come to mind just in general

favorites

Shawshank Redemption

have you been to Mid-Ohio?

Columbus

yeah sorry sorry I was thinking of Ohio State

you know the prisons right there

it's in Mansfield

they've knocked down most of it but they still kept a lot

of the parts where they filmed and they built a brand new one right next

to it so you can go and you can like see like they're like this was the

cell cool this is the thing it's really neat actually

yeah you obviously transatlantic

is how you're living these days I do a lot of transatlantic

flying what's your

how do you manage it what's your routine through the flight

um at the moment

quite a lot of minecraft

my kids got me into that which is I've never

played much to my anoints because

the amount of hours I spent on it but um

so you actually enjoy it though

yeah I sort of begrudgingly explore

the game so that I can talk to them

about it because I can get on their level

okay so this is about being a relatable dad

okay that's pretty cool

yeah now I'm into it yeah

I'm also into it so I do enjoy playing it

but I still ask them questions about

what do I need to do here and you know what does this mean

and stuff so I mean I enjoy that

you've been paid for a few years but when

was your first sort of proper paycheck

BMW

what was the first dumb thing

you bought I never

went and bought something because

I got a contract to be honest I never like treated

myself unlike

one Alex Lynn who

went and bought himself a Ferrari because

he got his Formula E contract

which I was quite impressed

with that confidence to I mean

his Formula E career didn't last so long

but um

in which to be honest

I don't mind throwing him under the bus on this one

um that his

I remember one weekend saying did you have much fun

over the last week or whatever

and he goes yeah I went out and my Ferrari went for a road

trip um and he lives in London

and this probably won't make much sense to you but oh right

where did you go thinking you're gonna say Belgium

or Scotland or something

I went to Stevenage and I mean

that's probably 30 miles away

in London I'm like yeah it's a bit of a bumpy

ride so it's like wow so you spent

money on a Ferrari to treat yourself that

you can only do 30 miles

before you want to turn around and go home and be like nice

not my idea of fun but

totally respect that it's entirely his

choice what he does

and good for him

but I found that funny so if someone were to

listen to this episode 10 years from now or whatever

what would you hope they take away as your legacy

legacy

oh my god

I didn't give a shit about any of this

who am I to say anything important

all people are gonna remember is the piss bottles

yeah exactly that's the level I operate at

that's what I'm bringing to the table

a good Ricky Gervais quote

from the office that he signs off on is

I can't even remember the exact quote so that's how

useless I am but something about like

I just want

everyone who I meet

to like me

and

think I'm the best person ever or something

that's all I want just that

nothing much

he says it very funny

no I have

a desire to have a legacy honestly

Garcia has no interest in doing this

does that surprise you

yeah I'm not surprised at all

that's really

really strange

he's always got so much to say

to the media

oh to the media

oh yeah

to give his thoughts on anything really other than

intricate detail

of the car balance in the last session

that he loves talking about

so let's say 10 years from now

you decide you've had enough racing

do you then go become

the fruit importer of the UK

yeah see I always kind of said to myself

that I didn't want to

stay in my sport until

I was 75 years old

sure sure um because

I kind of

thought I don't love it enough

to want to give up

the time that I need to give up

especially when you're not a driver

you know because we have a really cushy life

because in between race weekends

we can switch off

but as an engineer you do all the same

commitment time in terms of weekends that a driver does

but then during the week you're back to 9-5 every single day

and it's just like wow that's such a

commitment

you also get paid less

you get rewarded for it

um so much

I couldn't see myself being like

yeah that looks like a cool thing to do

and so yeah at the moment

I am actually starting to integrate myself a bit

more with the family business

just with a one eye on the future for at whatever

point in time it becomes

relevant is that because

it's already there or is there any interest

because of it like just finding it fascinating

or no well so far

I don't find it fascinating

but it's a convenient

past to tread like

why wouldn't you

set up

dad is just testing so he's only giving you guava right now

impress me

tell me how you do this

yeah exactly I can just be too

honest and say I don't know if you really need this

but yeah my brother's more

involved in it my older brother

oh are you the idiot brother then

like the idiot son that plays race cars

plays well he did

do karting for a year but I'm saying now he's the one

that helps with your dad's business so there's like

my son that's helping keep this family afloat

and then my other son

playing

responsible brother

I am that guy

I mean to be honest my dad I think

still loves the fact that I race but

but yeah

my brother I think

would appreciate

having me around a bit more to support

help

I need to start just learning about what they do

because when my dad talks about fruit I'm like

wow I've listened to this for the last 20 years but I still

haven't got a clue

if I don't know that a Corvette's not got a turbo

I'm not gonna know what variety of cherry you're talking

about and what season it's

grown in and the intricacies

if I don't actually start learning

so that's what I'm doing at the moment

I had ambitions or dreams

of starting up

like a heat pump company or something like that

and being involved in renewable energy in some aspect

but the more I think about it

frankly it just seems like way too much hard work

and real life

for most people

which

yeah I just

shudder at the thought of it really

not that I

would like to think I'm too much of a cop out but

frankly when you've got a family business

it's perfectly successful

why wouldn't you just integrate yourself into that

especially if you don't have a passion about anything else

my brother's there and I get on well with him

if one of the kids wants to get a go-kart

what do you do?

thankfully they don't

and I took my eldest son

karting for the first time

a year ago

and he liked it and he was like

that was really good fun dad do you think we could do that every year

and I was like

we didn't quite go

at the end of that last year because things were busy

and I was like yeah maybe next year

and so

that cadence

that's ideal

but thankfully they don't and I would struggle

honestly to

you have put the time

and effort into

them knowing what it takes

and knowing

the

the chances of them making it

are pretty slim and the

cost is just so

extortionate and I don't have enough

money to pile into that

extortion is the best

f***ing word I've ever heard

exact

that's excellent

my last question for you

do you still ski?

no but I haven't skied since

my accident

although this winter actually was the first time

my wife and I have said

shall we start thinking about a winter

holiday so I will go back skiing

I've always said

that I don't need to ski at the moment

I know what it can do to me

why would I take that risk again whilst I'm active in my career

and no stupid

as I was still in my 20s

but now I think I'm at a stage where

especially with three kids

I'm looking after them

I think I can trust myself

to not be a complete douchebag

think I'll be responsible enough

so yeah it's starting to creep back

into conversation now

well with that I'd say continental's got to check

music

last time I saw her

she had a fiddle in her hand

playing

playing sweetly with the band

soft brown eyes

an uber in hand

a song she played brought a tear to her soul

more than I could stand

from the distance

I watched her coat that sound

filling into space

her song around

more than just a fantasy

she was there

for all to see

and in it

my heart is bound

add a line play that song

one more time

soft and sweet so gentle

to the soul

add a line play that song

one more time

love my heart

takes its toll

music

who's small when the light

dance across the face

and with it

there was a trace

of angels

on high

and in it

I could die in heaven

there in that place

add a line play that song

one more time

soft and sweet so gentle

to the soul

add a line play that song

one more time

my heart takes its toll

music

love

You

About this episode

Alex Sims, a world-class skier turned successful GT driver, shares his unique journey in motorsport, including his quirky personality and humorous stories about racing life. From his unexpected nickname 'George W' to his candid discussions about bodily functions, Sims offers a refreshing perspective on the pressures and eccentricities of being a professional driver. He reflects on his career, his family life, and the challenges of balancing racing with personal responsibilities, all while maintaining a lighthearted tone. This episode is filled with laughter and insights into the world of sports car racing.

all-weather tire Aston Martin Continental Tire Daytona 500 Formula 1 Formula 3 Formula Cars Formula E Formula One Formula Renault

BMW M6 BMW Z4 Chevrolet Corvette Kia EV6 Lotus Elise Mazda MX-5 / Miata McLaren F1

Original notes

There is, simply put, no character in the sport quite like Alex Sims. Currently a driver for Corvette Racing and the recently crowned IMSA GTD Pro Champion, Alex’s resume between formula cars, prototypes, GT and even Formula E for multiple manufacturers only scratches the surface…. as it’s his existence as one of the quirkiest human […]

Dinner with Racers

View classic page →

0:00

102:00