[Music] And welcome to another episode of Trackside, the podcast for Marshals and you know, I say something different about that every time, don't I? I'm Jamey Osborne joined by Jessica Althoff and on this episode we are going to do something completely different, which is for us a lot of fun because it's not just us the whole episode, yay, we have our first guest. And so we'll be talking with Dave Hawley, he is the flag chief for the MotoGP taking place at Circuit of the Americas. As we record this in a couple of days, it may have already happened by the time you hear it, but Dave is a very long time bike Marshall and he has been around a long time and we sat down on how to really interesting talk, I thought, Jess. Oh definitely, yeah, and it is cool to hear the perspective of his origins in the UK because they definitely were some differences that he'll talk about. Oh yeah, especially when you go back, you know, as far back as he's going to be talking about, you know, the to see where Motorsports was back then, you know, and to see where it is today and of course you and me being involved in race control, we kind of see it from a yet again, another perspective. There's just so many things that you have to appreciate about Motorsports, particularly motorcycle Motorsports in 2025 as opposed to how it probably was back in the 70s and 80s and you know, it was, it was a whole different world back then. Yeah, definitely, so yeah, no, I enjoyed it, I think it was great. I think without further ado, here's our interview with Dave. Maybe the best thing to do is to me to volunteer how I actually got involved as a Marshall in the first place. Well, that was going to be my first question, Dave. Yeah, which was a very, very long time ago. It was 1972, our 17 years old, and I was still at school. And over the winter, I was kind of a bit bored, you know, the 17-year-olds don't hang around with all the age and ease and all that sort of thing. And I saw there was an out of season motorcycle race on. I lived in Newcastle at the time when the race was a place called Croft Autodrome, who is the name of the place, it's still going. And they were looking for volunteers to help out. So I thought, alright, okay, I'll get that one out of the house. So I had a, a, a, my little 252-stroke bike and M, I called it an MZ, you call it an MZ, you know, East German thing, which was, it was, it was a bit better than you might expect. Anyhow, it was about 40 miles away, so it took me about an hour to get there on this little thing. So I showed up at the Apprented Time and I said, hey, I'd like to be a volunteer and I said, oh, I agree, I've gotten, I've changed the names because some of the people might be still alive. Go and see Jim, he's a great guy, Jim, you'll, you'll, you'll sort, yeah, Jim said, well, would you like to be a marshal? And I just, well, anything you like, you said, right, there's a yellow flag standing there. That was my training. It was literally like that. I mean, this seems like another world, what I think about what it was like at Croft in those days because communications were using X World War II field telephones, which were in a little box and you had a turn of handle to communicate when it was insane. I mean, that wasn't so bad, but the fact that stuck me on the corner where I had not a slightest idea what I was supposed to do was just like unforgivable. And once the bikes started coming around, I got really quite seriously spooked. Well, to come on story short, for some reason I went back when the restarted in the spring and started volunteering a bit more regularly as a marshal. But I was always really unhappy with the lack of training. I started looking at it a bit more and I kind of agitated within the club and either heard of talking yourself into a job. It was like a case, well, if you're so bothered about it, about people being trained and having a documentation stuff like that, why don't you do it? So I got more and more involved with the club and then we did improve things. In those days, there was a very cavalier attitude to safety. The general feeling about safety was, "Oh, right, well, they know what they're getting themselves into." And that was it. Now it is, they still know what they're getting themselves into, but this doesn't mean we can't improve safety. And things are so much better now. So I got involved in the club and I got myself a clock at the courses license after a few years. After about three or four years with the club, I started to get involved with the MotoGP, which in those days was at Silverstone. And this was very soon after the World Championship round for MotoGP transferred from the Isle of Man TT to Silverstone. I mean, it seems unbelievable. Now the thing that the Isle of Man TT was actually part of what is now with the MotoGP World Championship, it just seems insane. The transfer to it over at Silverstone and the way they worked in those days is they sent invitations out to all the clubs round the United Kingdom. And said, "Send us a team of marshals for the World Championship round at Silverstone." And my own club, the Northeast Motorcycle Racing Club, which is still going, still speak them from time to time. They sent a team of about 12, 15 people or something like that. And a lot of clubs did the same. So I got involved in MotoGP at that point. And it was organised a bit better. It wasn't one single organisation the way it was now. It was basically a bunch of riders and a couple of more than a couple of few officials went off, but fundamentally the... It was all organised by the local country, who did it? And there were very few MotoGP's compared this season now. What have they got now? 21 rounds or something like that? Yeah, it was something like 11 rounds, probably half as many. And nearly all of them were in Europe. It was only a bit later they start to expand to some other places mainly because there were successful riders. But a few years after that, and I'd been gotten around between clubs just at News and Marshall. Oh gosh, how many circuits? Croft was my local circuit. I used to go to Scotland a bit. There's a circuit there called Knock Hill, which is a lovely little circuit. But a little being the opposite of word. It's about 1.4 miles. And it's a thousand feet of a Scottish mountain with weather in a match. But I got very used to that. I used to do Scarborough. And Scarborough is the last real road race on the English mainland. So I'm Marshall at Scarborough for quite a long time. And then I got involved with some circuits with two of them. Anyhow, it went on. Around about, oh, when would it be now? 1993, 1995, something like that. The British Superbike Championship had gone through a few iterations which were not, not only were very successful. I kept changing there were daft things like Formula 750, anyhow. There was effectively a coup within British motorcycle racing. Guy who's still very much involved called Stuart Higgs, Suddeny apparently popped out of nowhere and announced he was taking over the British Championship for motorcycles. And it, there'd been some rumours before and it was one of these conspiracy theories that actually turns out to be true. Because Stuart basically did take over the series. But he dunny's background homework and he before he made his move, he got all the British circuits on his side. Donington, Silverstone, the owners of Ranshach Group and all that sort of thing. So when the governing body in the UK said, "No, no, you can't do this, we'll shut you down." The circuit said, "Oh, no, you won't. This guy's got some good ideas. We're going with him." And it was like this massive blow to a lot of the local groups who'd been really big fish and little ponds around little areas of the UK running at their own circuit and it really put a noses out of giant big time. But Stuart put this series together, him and a few other guys. And one of the things he did was he put together this organization called Race Safe in the UK, which was a Marshall's organization. Car Marshall's in the UK had always had a fairly formal organization, much less so for motorcycles, far less so. I didn't particularly like the arrangements for Car Marshall's in the UK, it was very, very high a record goal. And oh, they had more badges than Boy Scouts at the time, barely seeing the fire and overalls of all these badges there. Anyhow. So Stuart said, "To be a member of Race Safe, you have to do a full day's training. Otherwise, you're not in." I mean, to time I'd been marching for about 10 years ago and like a month and a lot of other people thought, "Oh, who's he? Tell me I've got to be training. I know this now, I know that and I've been doing it rage." So anyhow, I reluctantly went along the first day's training, which is in the winter of that year, whichever year it was. That probably looked it up, but it's not really matter. But it's it's it's it's around about 30 years ago now. So I went with a pala mine and the training was really good and it had been very well thought through. And what they were saying made a lot of sense and it was well presented. We weren't treated like kids were treated like valuable people were skills. I can get on board with this. So at that point I offered to help with the training and the following year I did help with the training and shortly after that the guy was involved with the training, retired and I took over. So from 2000 to 2006 I did all of the martial training for the British Superbike Championship. And then every time everybody had to do a training day and during the winter and then they then had to repeat it every two years. They don't do that now because frankly it's just too expensive. But everybody who was an initial martial comes in and they do most of the stuff online after that. However, I have to say that they are very good at checking things out actually at the events. So the training is far far better. They put in a very very simple system which they're still used to this day, which is basically there's three levels of martial. There's a training martial and when you've done your training and done I think ten full days, you might have put it up 12 now, you are accredited as a martial provided, you've performed all right. And then most of the martials are accredited marshals. If you want to be a team leader, what we call a motor, cheap, and Austin zone chiefs, they call them incident officers, then you have to go and do further training, do various tests and then you get out of accreditation. No, it's the way it works with marshals in British super bikes is kind of different from anywhere else than I know of. And I've been quite around quite a lot. I've been a martial in Australia and in Netherlands and obviously the US and Ireland and a few other places. If you're in British super bikes, fundamentally the only person who communicates with race control is the incident officer who may have three or four martial posts within their control. So it's a big deal. Flags listen, other people have listening radios, but really the only person who feeds back is is the incident officer and they feed directly back to the to the race director or his substitute. There's no martial communicator. They do a different way from anywhere else in the world. It works very well for the UK. One of the reasons why it works well is that the United Kingdom is a very small country. So when you talk about the British super bike marshals, probably three quarters of the marshals go three quarters of the events. Completely different from the USA where we maybe get I don't know four or five people go at all the mode or America events are most of them. Probably more than or around about two thirds of them will only do one event because of geography. Maybe a couple of that close together like Adland or in Barbour or something like that, but it's quite uncommon. So just moving on quickly out of that sort of boring stuff, 2006. A lot of things happen with me. I got divorced. I got offered a job in the USA. Where various other things happen, but I actually moved to the USA in 2006 or left this left the training behind them. Occasionally you go back to do the odd British super bike round, see all me milled pals and this sort of thing, which I did. I went to motor GP until the still last year. But I got involved with the local club here in St. Louis, which was the time was the Midwest Cafe Racing Association. Now sadly disappeared for various reasons, but I got involved with that. I started, I volunteered as a marshal for the first motor GP in Duneapolis. I got taken on as a flagger. In fact I did every motor GP in Duneapolis. And then I was quite happy doing that sort of thing and then motor America started. I'd been aware of the AMA Pro Superbike Championship. I kind of seen it on TV a bit. But the development of motor America. Interestingly parallel is the development of the British Superbike Championship in many ways. When the finally air the AMA Pro Championship was kind of like the finally air just before the British Superbike Championship came to be in the UK. It was a few circuits. They wasn't on TV. It wasn't very well attended. It was badly paid. Nobody knew about it. And then it suddenly was taken over. Now I think the motor America popping up was a bit less of a surprise than it was in the USA. Then it wasn't when it happened in the UK. But I got involved without right at the beginning. And I'd been doing some, I've been helping out a little bit with the training at Indianapolis. Because I had lots of training slides. If you've seen them, I'd started using bits and pieces of animation instead of just bits of video. Just I think a schematic often works better. I did it in a very kind of structured way. I'm not saying it's the best way, but people seem to like it. I can't one or two people knew me name from that sort of thing. But I was sitting at home on November with the season before motor America started and the phone went. My wife answered the phone. I said, "Oh, it's for you." And I said, "Oh, who was it?" I was sitting there and she said, "It's Wayne Rainey." And I thought, "It was this joke that pretend to be Wayne Rainey." Well, I mean, if you're my generation, Wayne Rainey is named Light. And it's like somebody in the 19 year old being called and said, "It's Taylor Swift on the phone or something like that." And I said, "It's Wayne Rainey." I thought, "Who's this joke that pretend to be Wayne Rainey?" So I went and answered the phone. And it was Wayne Rainey. And he ever done this thing where he was sitting down on the phone and he realized that somebody important, he suddenly stand up. That did that, you know, it's fine. But I mean, Dave, that Wayne Rainey introduced himself and said hello and very soon passed me over to Chuck Axlant, who is the chief operating officer. Certainly was at the time that might be Nicole now, but Chuck is the main hands-on boss who does the operation stuff for motor America. Probably handed most of it over to Nicole now, but it's certainly at the time. And he explained that they were starting this new series that were going to take over from the old AMI-approach championship. They had the backing of the AMA and all this sort of thing. And they were clearing out a lot of the people who would work for the... I think it was the Daytona, what did they call it? The Dover Motorsports Group. I don't know. It was the NASCAR organization at the time anyhow. A lot of the car guys, and I've heard a lot of very strange tales about things that were going on in the championship at that time, which I'm not going to go in because I don't know if half of them are true, it was pretty weird. But he said, "We're looking for a chief marshal." And your name came in the conversation. Well, you could have knocked me over the feather. So I mean, it wasn't something I had to think about. I said, "Yeah, definitely. In principle, I'm really interested." But where on earth did he get my name from? And he said, "Oh, we got it from Stuart Higgs." And Stuart Higgs is the guy who did the British Superbank Championship, and they hired Stuart Higgs effectively as a consultant, I suppose, to show them how to resurrect a championship that was just about dying on its feet, I suppose. And Stuart moved the... knew I'd moved to the US. Now, I guess he... I think I'm... guess he thought I wasn't a complete idiot because he suggested my name. And I've been involved with mode America ever since, basically. The first year of mode America was really a big year, getting to know each other. But since then, it's picked up. And, frankly, I think it's going pretty well now. So for me, now that I'm retired from a day job, I was originally a chemical engineer by background, worked all my life in a pharmaceutical industry, but anyhow, that's all behind me now. This is my retirement hobby, which pays for itself, which is great. I can't honestly say I make any money out of it, but it does pay for itself, which is quite handy. That's a great history. And pretty good history of motorsports involving bikes in general, as well. Dave, with that vast experience, can you sort of summarize in... I don't know, however you care to characterize it, but what would be some of the main difference in marshalling for bikes as opposed to marshalling for cars? How is it different in sort of the broad picture? It's quite significantly different in many ways. I used to do quite a few car races. I don't really do it anymore. Bikes have always been my love. I've entirely missed out a bit where I was racing motorcyclists myself, but that helps if you've been on the track yourself. But if I had a point out the biggest difference, bike marshals are very used to working in front of barriers in a live track. That's a rare thing for car marshals, except in very, very specific circumstances. Like marshals have always done it. Now if you watch motor GP, motor Ameriton TV, if somebody goes down, the marshals will come out. They will move everything. They will check the track. They will take the bike, assist the rider, carry them if necessary, back behind the barriers. They will make sure that the circuit is ready for racing without interrupting things. And in most cases, they will do this on their own initiative. Now, the big implications for that is that you need people who fundamentally know what the hell they're doing. You can't just have any old idiot just dashing out from behind the barrier. So you've got to be careful with the people you choose and you have to be careful with the training, which is going back all those years, where I was, frankly, bloody well appalled at the first event I went to. Never forgotten that. Absolutely never forgotten it. And I think it helps to remember that people come in with new. We'll look at it in the same kind of way and be quite intimidated by it. When I've been involved with car races, I have been kind of wanting to go out and deal with things, but knowing that that's not the way it works. I need permission. I know that that cars are out there, which could clobber the barrier and demolish the barrier. In general, that's not going to happen with motorcycles. It's also fair to say I think that the circuits have changed a lot over the years, and that there's circuits now which were commonly used for motorcycles, which will no longer be used because they're just regarded as too dangerous. Europe still has some street circuits. I mentioned that I'd, I'd, I'd, uh, Marshall that's Scarborough in the UK, which included a few car races. The car races were perfectly, as I say, perfectly safe, but they were far safer at Scarborough than bike races. Marshall's at Scarborough hide behind trees, which are right next to the circuit. They, they, they've had the trees with straw bales, but there's some jerk, I said, they've, they've straw bales there to protect the tree. I, I, I was there on a few occasions where people hit trees at high speed. Well, yeah, you can imagine the result. I gave up going to Scarborough after a while, I thought, I don't need this sort of thing. So, um, flagging is almost exactly the same. Some of the flag signals are, are, are a bit different. In fact, the diff, flag signals are a certain difference is right across the world between disciplines. But the use of flags and increasingly lights these days for anybody who was a car, Marshall, who was thinking about getting involved with motor sight, I wasn't thinking, oh, well, I, you know, that looks a bit scary. Um, you know, whether it is scary, the thing to do would be, be a flagger. Flag, flag posts are generally the same. Flag signals are generally the same in the disciplines or pretty much the same. Marshall is on the ground who are moving things. No, that's the thing that's different. That's really cool. So as we record this, we've got the US Moto GP coming up at circular Americas in a couple of weeks. Yeah. Kind of walk us through, because you and I and Jessica all know much of the preparation involved. I think a lot of people listening to us understand just how much preparation it takes to put on an event like Moto GP, both from a track preparation standpoint, a training standpoint and a logistical standpoint. Oh, well, yeah, it's huge. I mean, um, at Moto GP, we effectively have three chief Marshalls. Um, we have the flag chief, which is me. I'm in charge of all the flaggers and like people. We have the track chief, the Marshalls have gone out, move bikes. That's my colleague or Emory. And we have a rider assist chief. Um, the rider assist or what they call kind of medical marshals, or if you wanted to put it in the military context, stretch it, bear us to put it bluntly. They will help people with injured riders. Um, when you add all these people up, um, certainly the number of marshals, probably around about 300. Um, that's one of the reasons why we're divided up because one person trying to deal with all these people is, is, is, is, yeah, it's just not possible. Um, we start planning, um, usually about a previous October. And this is for an event, which is a March or April, we'll start a little bit earlier last year. So basically it's, it's a six months planning process. So much of the planning online, um, the logistics are largely the responsibility of the circuit. Um, but you can, you can understand it when you took, you show up at the circuit and you really, you look at all these temporary grandstands. Um, you look at, um, I mean, take a, I don't know, a, a banal example, we need about a hundred porter johns. They don't arrange themselves. Um, it was three, three hundred people in marshals going out in the circuit. They need to be moved. They need to be fed. They need somewhere to stay. They need somewhere to meet. Um, that's even before we start thinking about training, um, how many radios, they all have to be hired. The, the temporary transport links, the campsite, which, you know, just fences. So there are people who you would never even think of who do a lot of work in the background. Um, to give a single example of that, which shows the detail of it, we have a campsite coordinator who spends all that time on the campsite at Moto GP, just making sure that people don't do stupid things. Uh, and, and the public don't come and part their RVs in an area where marshals are. Because we, we want a nice, quite area for marshals because we're meeting very, very early in the morning. Uh, you, you been through that. You know it. So we'll, um, um, we also have things like hotels. Um, and these things don't get arranged overnight. If you're going to block book a bunch of hotels, you're talking months and advance. Um, yeah. Uh, and this is before you even start thinking about all the people coming from abroad who are the competitors. Um, the key person in all of this who is responsible for whole lot is Beth Miller who I'm sure you've met. Um, Beth Miller has a hell of a job. Um, um, um, from a Marshall point of view, she talks to Ego, me and John Law, who's the rider assist chief this year, but she always has to make sure that there's taxi bike. There's technical control. There's pit lane control. There's offices in the paddock for each Moto G P team to work from. There's security in the paddock is going to know that the closed circuit TV works all the way around the circuit. Um, Beth has to hold hold all these strings together and make sure that they're all working. There's the whole medical side as well, you know, everything from, you know, medical marshals who know how to pick up a stretcher to ensuring that there's a helicopter, a helicopter landing pad, which is kept free. So, so it's, it's massive, massive. It's comparable to Formula one. Um, though I did hear from the circuit, it Formula one uses fewer marshals than Moto G P. That would be true. Yeah, because they don't have to run out and yeah, the distance they cover is much shorter. Yeah. So, yeah, it, so it is a, it's a massive deal. Um, right at the moment, I've been working today on the, um, the allocations. Well, no, the allocations. Um, I've got a few last things to do for, um, Moto G P. I'm traveling there next Tuesday and I'll be working there Tuesday and Wednesday and then we'll be doing training for marshals on the Thursday. Last minute preparations. Um, because something always changes. I, I also find that in the moment America rounds. I always do go and do a personal track inspection because it's surprising how things change, which they don't tell you about like like the move the track. Um, the track is moved or the other built a wall. Um, good example as well. I probably shouldn't say the circuit but last year. Motor America won the one or the circuit's, um, and they closed the marshals gap for the wall. It hadn't really thought about motorcycles at all. They were concerned about marshals and a turn one. There was fundamentally nowhere for the marshals to be. Um, nowhere at all. So the bite went down. That was it. They were left there. We had a regup, something up where the climb over a wall with some steps made out of straw bales. But, um, yeah, these, anyhow, go back to Moto G P. I, um, I, I, I, I inspect the circuit. Make sure things like the lights are in the right place that they, they haven't moved a marshals post behind a pillar. So they can't see anything that this sort of thing occasionally does happen. Um, and as is, as Lee, my deputy would tell you, I'm never satisfied until I've seen anything with my own eyes. Um, I, I, I always go and do it myself. Um, and then, um, then we do the training on the Thursday and then Friday morning we've got the, the big meeting it, starting it about. 530 or something stupid like that. Something dark, dark in the morning. Yeah. Yeah. And the organizers always spring a surprise on us like this year. The sprunger. There's, there's something like an hour gap at about five until six on the Friday. And then they do a 20 minute practice session and then we can go. So we're all going to sit around. Well, we're all waiting to get a bite. We eat five of them. Yeah. I work with what I've got, but, um, yeah, do you, do you sometimes get nasty surprises like this? So I have a question for you. You know, you talked about your first experience. You just kind of were thrown in the deep end. How do you think it would have been affected? How do you had a really good first experience where you had really good training? Do you think you would have gone down this path because it sounds like you've left things better than you found them? Um, it's a good question. Um, I think maybe I wouldn't have been so involved because I think I, I was so annoyed. Um, I'm so angry about what it happened. I'm still angry. It was, it was, it was, it was 53 years ago. I'm still annoyed about it. Um, but I, yeah, I suspect I may not have been quite so, um, yeah, involved. I accept that thought. This has got to be fixed. So, uh, and I don't know, I did, I did, I got to say really, I, I, if I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it. I, I'm, I'm all great believer in doing things with a smiling face. Um, and I, I have fun. I take, I take the whole business of motorsport very seriously. Um, I've seen many things which are, I would rather have not seen from time to time. Um, but I still come through with smiling. Um, maybe, maybe I'm crazy. Certainly, the grandson is seem, it seems to be a, the, the opinion, I'm completely mad, but you may be right. I think that's a lot of us though. This is our fun job or fun hobby. If it's not fun, then why are we doing it? Right? Because I think it's, it's a rare that people get to do this full time. So we do this because we want to do it. So I'd get that. Well, I've told my boss in motor America, Nicole, I said, you know, when I, when I stop having fun, I'll stop doing it. And this is, this is, this is, this is fair warning. Um, which I don't know. And I'm, I'll see how this season goes as I get on. I'll be turning 70 in April. Um, so I'm starting to slow down a bit. Um, particularly, you may or may not know that I had a serious road accident a couple of years ago. I did know that. You missed you that year. Yeah. And I missed Moto GP for that year because of all the aftermath of the road accident. And if I'm honest, that slowed me down a bit more than I really want to admit. You know, broke, broke a lot of bones. Me neck, me back, pelvis, sternum, some open fractures. So yeah, I was fairly well-clothed. Come, come back pretty well, but I don't know if anybody ever comes back 100% from my age, any. How many events do you do a year, Dave? Um, at the moment, well, last last year was fairly probably in many ways, a tentative like Sampler. I did all the motor America rounds, which, which was 10. Um, including day, Tony, I was at 11, I think it's 11 actually last year. I also went over to the UK and did the Moto GP there. I generally do a couple of events at the end of the year in, in the UK as well. But last year, instead, I went to Australia. So my wife and I went to Australia for a month and we did the Moto GP in Phillip Island, which is the second time we've done it. So that would be probably probably 13 events last year, something like that. All events all, all three days. Um, so it's, so that, that would be 39 days. So it's very, very little bit of time. Do you, when you go overseas, were you, were you, were you chiefing or were you just regular Marshall or? Oh, just generally regular. Well, I made, I still was still in the, maybe an incident officer, which I didn't really need to be. I know the chief bar shop quite well. I keep saying, I don't need to be in charge of anything. I, you know, I do enough of that in America. I know each time I show off John, the chief, Marshall, who was a great guy. Oh, Dave, yeah, we just, we just have somebody gone off sick. Could you just go on? I'm too much of a surprise. No, I just want to flag something. But in, in, in Phillip Island in Australia, just went on a flag point, which was, which was really nice. Just, just, just, just to be told what to do for a change. Did, did anybody at your post know who you were? That you were like a secret shopper? You're like a, yeah, well, yeah, I, I do chat with people and I have got to know both the previous and the current chief Marshalls at Phillip Island. The previous guy called is a great meberhard, who was there at Chief Marshall the first time I went in. 2018, was it something like that? And the new guy is called Josh Polka and he, and he'd been to MotoGP in Austin the previous year. So he took me around the circuit, so, which was very nice. And just said to me, what do you want it to do? And I said, I want to be a flagger. So, okay, right, going flagger. Josh and Graham are both going to be at MotoGP in Austin as well with a bunch of other Australians. So I went, I went and beat a drum a bit when we're, I had the meetings in Australia saying, you know, come and, come and visit us in America. We, we need people who, especially need people who know what the hell they're doing. Yeah, that's awesome. It's always cool to hear about the international marshals we get at our events. Phillip Island is a hell of a circuit. It's just, it's one of those circuits where you almost cut the atmosphere with a knife when you arrive at the place. It's so, it, I don't know if you can say a, a geographic location has charisma. But if, if you can, Phillip Island certainly has it. And, yeah, you can see the sea and from there and it's a very flowing circuit. It's, it's not flat like some circuits are. Just, it's surprisingly small, small on the, you might think. But it's just, just, such a, such a nice place. And Phillip Island is a lovely place. Now, I have to say, October is possibly the wrong time of year. I have MotoGP because it's beginning of their spring and the weather and sometimes he pretty dreadful there. Definitely wasn't warm. First time I went to Phillip Island was bloody freezing. Though they do have penguins live on the island. So I suppose I shouldn't be in the hospital. So we'll leave it with one final question because I'm going to put you on the hotspot, Dave and ask you what's your favorite circuit. I always tell people my favorite circuit is Brands Hatch. There are so much running close with Brands Hatch in Kent is one of those circuits which is as atmospheric as Phillip Island. There's two versions of the circuit of Brands Hatch. This is the indie circuit which is short about a mile and 1.6 miles or something. And that's in a kind of natural bowl. The shape, it's kind of kidney shape if you see what I mean. Where it's like, a bit like an oval but with the ends tweaked and stretched out a bit. It is very hilly and there are certain places there waiting just naturally see the whole circuit. The longer circuit is the better one, the two 0.6, 2.7 miles circuit. But there's, I've seen so many fabulous races there and I've always enjoyed going to Brands Hatch. It's very close to London where my two daughters live and my grandson. So when I'm in the UK I generally try and time it so I'm going to see something Brands Hatch but I do like it a lot. Can I get a plug in please do. America is always looking for marshals always always always always. Some of the events are paid. Most of the events we are really quite short. We've known us possibly in exceptional, we had a good number of day tone but Daytona is a unique event. But the next one coming up is Barba then we go to road Atlanta. After that we go to road America. Ridge motor sports park up near Seattle, Laguna Seeker. We're going back to VIR in Virginia this year and then we're going to Mido, Ohio. We're going to be in September for the motor America race where it's always hot as hell. And as usually motor America season finishes off at New Jersey motor sports park where it always rains. We need people for all of those events. And if anybody's interested get in touch with me. I'm used to people just calling me or emailing me emails usually the best way. And then there's D.H.A.W.L.E.Y. at motoramerica.com. Come and visit us. Well, one nice people. We'll put those in all that in the show notes. The website is motoramerica.com and it's got a great calendar on there that will show you all the places that motor America is going to be. And of course, motor GP taking place in Austin in a couple of days and day we'll see you there. Thank you for your time today. You've really opened the door to a lot of people I think who it may be never considered about marshalling. Even though it's a great first event, I know it was my first event back in 2014. But even if you're not going to marshall come out and watch because it is a spectacle. You don't even have to be a bike person to enjoy motor GP. Well, no. And for motoramerica, you don't have to even have to be a marshall. We have other volunteers who are not used to motor sport particularly grid, which is a really easy job and safe than basically anything else. There you go. David's been great talking to you. We'll see you in a couple of days and thanks for visiting Trekside MotorSports Podcast. Okay. Nice to speak to you. Thanks Dave. We'll see you soon. So that was our interview with Dave, which was pretty awesome. And I still have so many other questions that I look forward to hopefully getting to ask him when we see him in a couple of days. But yeah, I thought it was fascinating hearing about, you know, talking about how sector chiefs cover. I think you say what three or four different posts and they were the ones that talked to the race. And it was the race director. I think that's fascinating. I just, I'm picturing Kota. Like how would you even see? Yeah. For more posts from where you are to be able to make those calls that that was fascinating. I just keep thinking that you would have to have so many more than three because you would have to have probably seven or eight just to make it around the circuit in order to do that. And they might see some things, but you can't. The track is so big that you wouldn't be able to see, you know, if you're standing, let's just say in turn two. And something happened at turn five, which is at the other end of the S's, how are you going to call that? That would be insane. Yeah. And especially like if you happen to identify the bike, you might not see it. Oh, yeah, forget the bike. Yeah, if they're in a pack, you would never know. I mean, heck, you could be at the turn where it happens right in front of you and still not know what bike it was. Yeah. Just so fast and so hectic. It's a remarkable thing to understand just how different bikes are than cars. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And like you were saying, like the numbers are always so small, it's so hard to see. And then I was curious about they not have a Marshall communicator because I'm thinking like the race director of all people got a billion things going on. So he's actually the one that's receiving these calls that that was fast. Right. Yeah, it is. It is. You know, in bikes are such a different world. I know a couple of years ago, I functioned as the assistant starter. And I would work with Pat and I'm blanking on his last name, sorry, Pat, but Pat Tarshon Tarsioni and he is the motor America starter. And we would bring him in to start mode of GP because their process is completely different. And the thing that threw me the most was that they are not just as Dave described they are not in communication with race control. They're on their own net talking to their own people inside and not relaying on anything. Now in a car event, we're talking to race control at finish and we can hear call throughs from the Marshalls. They're not getting those on the moto. And again, it's that mentality of we don't need a race controller because we're doing it ourselves. And in the start stand Pat had me doing the old fashioned lap charts. And I would be sitting there writing the bikes numbers down as they came around 20 and passed us so we would know which bike was where if we had the flag a particular writer. And boy, you want to talk about exhausting. That was a rough weekend because it's so different than what we normally did. I learned so, so much that weekend, but man, I had my green. Oh, I bet. Yeah. I think anyone that's work timing and scoring because it's how to do that. You know, at least you usually do it for at least a few laps, I think. I think if it's a race, I think you do the whole thing and it yeah, it's just you have to be really good at being able to write without looking at the paper, which I am not. I know it's like I can never get the columns. It's bad. Yeah. And some people could do it flawlessly. And if you think back into the days before all the advanced technology we have, that's how they did every race. Can you imagine the Indy 500 being done like that and they did it every year that way. They call it taping. I think it's still like tapes doing the tapes and some people still call it that. Yeah. So see how long they've been around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. But yeah. No, it's it's I'm looking forward to moto. It's it's definitely unique one that you and I work every year compared to a lot of the other stuff. So it's always a good time and to see everybody and like he was saying, there's a lot of cross pollination between these series. So like that lot of the moto America people will be here in town and they're lovely to work with. That's right. Yeah. They are the moto motorcycle race experts in America. So Kota was brilliant to bring them in and have them basically run Moto GP. I mean, obviously as Dave said, you know, your the circuit's doing a lot of the work. It's just that moto has that. Moto America has that specific kind of knowledge that you need when you're event is so different. And yeah, it's it's been a great partnership and I have come to really, really enjoyed Moto GP. There was a time where I didn't. But, you know, but I really look forward to Moto GP now. Partly because I enjoy watching all the the many, many pieces as Dave was alluding to come together to make that event work and it's never perfect. But man, is it intense and it's a lot of a lot of fun. There's a lot of adrenaline and you know, it's a wild couple of days. It definitely is and I think you and me both have a lot to do during the we I don't know if we mentioned what we do. We both work in race control and Jamie you're you're the. What I know you're dispatched, but what's your official? I'm the medical medical communicators what I'm called so when day was referring to the writer assist chiefs and the medical side of things. I'm talking to them from race control. I have the chief medical officer of the track seated next to me and the chief medical officer of Moto GP seated next to him. And the minute we hear the words writer down on the radio, they snap to attention until my ground medics that I'm talking to in one of my years. It gives us a code that states the medical code for whether or not we need to escalate a writer. Injury and and it's recovery so if a writer pops back up it's a code zero and I like to joke that the doctors can go back to their phones. But you know if it's a higher code then we maybe we have some more things that happen and of course they have the responses if a very serious injury happens and there's a whole slate of things that happen. But it's my job to be communicating with those marshals those medics and they're all actual paramedics. Employed in the Austin area that will or some are not in the Austin area somewhere in San Antonio some from Houston but they all come in they're all certified paramedics and they all have to provide the very first. What I like to call instantaneous writer care to a down writer and then I'm communicating with them and then communicating with the doctors to coordinate the response so it's a big challenge but it's a fascinating piece that I really have fallen in love with. And you get to do a video for all of it. Yeah. We are gigs kind of go hand in hand because yeah when you like you said when they hear you're going to write it down, back down, write it down, whatever. That's when everybody's you know okay something's going on we got to be ready and that's when I have to find it on the camera. On the three and a half mile circuit America with 40 something cameras Jessica's got to find it and find the best angle and zoom it in and then put it on the wall. Before the doctors freak out where is it because you know that's what for a public service announcement for anybody marshaling when you make that call please tell me where it is. In your initial call it is so sometimes you know especially for the rookies we've said a million times a lot of a start in mode of GP they just say back down and they don't say where and that's what I'm like where. So I kind of keep my mouse hovered over the hot spots and I kind of try to follow them when I can but you never know then but it's interesting because like the first year. That I think you and I both was just our third year in the room. I mean we've done it other things in the past but I think this is our third year in race control and. Remember the the test day is usually like the Thursday isn't will all the the powers that be will be in the room they're kind of checking everything like like Dave talked about you know making sure we have everything we need to run this show. And though what we'll do is we'll set up on our video while you know so we can trace a bike from all the way through without losing coverage of them and I remember they were asking for all these weird camera angles and I was kind of like that's kind of weird like like we want to see more gravel more gravel and I'm thinking like what. They made a really good point that never occurred to me which is it's all geoger of geometry you know like if a bite goes down it's plan off in this direction and we want to see yeah you know. I'm a tree of the sex. Yeah we don't care about like the broadcast looking pretty you know views we just want you to see where they're going to end up and it's like wow see that's something I never thought of so I saved all those presets so now I know. What angles I can snap to when they're when they're here in a little bit so yeah just as the CC wizard the closed circuit TV wizard that circuit in America's and I don't I don't know that anybody can do it any better but I don't know but I'm just a sucker I'm just the sucker that ends up doing it all the way. You're the one who does it the most there you go. But yeah no I'm looking forward to it it's always fun to see the the Moto GP in Moto America people the Dora people get lots of it's always cool to talk to people from Spain and Italy and yeah there we got some animated folks in the room it's a very international experience and it's a little mini United Nations in race control when Moto GPs in town. It is in the other funny thing is that they're all kind of they're very audible when they react so like if they're watching the race the who and every time I hear that in the back row I'm like thinking oh like I every time I hear somebody gas I'm thinking oh great where is it well no they was just a really good pass or something right. I don't know if you've noticed that as well but it's always funny very emotional in I'm not complaining about oh no oh no it is hilarious just so funny how different groups are yeah well it's going to wrap up another addition of track side the podcast for marshals and just it's been fun as always and great to hear from Dave Holly who will be seeing in a couple of I guess days now but anyway great to have you back from Japan.- Back from Japan too by the way just travels the world all over the place she's not even particularly jet lag or at least she doesn't sound that way I'm holding it together really well. Awesome stuff well thanks for joining us on another episode of track side the podcast and we will catch you on the next one and we will see you at the track. Yeah.[Music][BLANK_AUDIO]