John Noble

And especially at a team like Renault in this period, post all the Singapore fallout,

They'd lost Fernando, title sponsors had gone, all the chaos and worries about the future.

So it needed kind of its belief back and a focal point and someone to push it on and focus on what can we do better rather than worrying about what's happened in the past and reflecting on failures and what's gone wrong.

And are we about to...

you know, pull out of Formula One and it's all over for us.

So, and I think Robert was very forceful.

It caused, you know, we know the problems it caused at BMW Sauber with Mario Tyson and pushing on.

But I think it fitted in perfectly where Renault was at, how the team and Eric were taken as criticisms, where Kubica was in his career.

And it's just a shame that that, I'd love to have seen where that would have gone on were it not for that rally crash.

Yeah, it's a bit like the Austin scenario that Ed mentioned.

It's almost like chicken and egg.

Would F1 have made the impact in America if Austin didn't exist?

But would Austin have been successful if F1 hadn't made the impact in America?

But I think in some respects, it was about getting a foothold in the States.

You needed that...

That starting point, it wasn't going to be successful by itself.

And it relied on liberty.

It relied on Netflix, the drive to survive, just lifting it all up and opening those horizons.

And that's what got the ball rolling.

But you can argue none of that would have happened if Austin hadn't been there in the first place.