Susie Wolff (Managing Director of F1 Academy)

Summary

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Guest: Susie Wolff (Managing Director, F1 Academy)

Episode date: June 24, 2026

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Overview

In this vibrant and inspiring episode of Armchair Expert, Dax Shepard and co-host Lily Padman welcome Susie Wolff—former professional racing driver and current Managing Director of F1 Academy. The conversation traces Susie’s journey from her adventurous Scottish childhood in a motorsport family to breaking barriers in the male-dominated world of Formula 1, and now as a pioneering leader championing women in motorsport. Full of candid stories, humor, and practical insights, the episode delves into gender, resilience, racing culture, and personal growth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Susie’s Family Roots in Motorsports

• Adventurous Upbringing in Scotland

  • Family ran a motorcycle dealership; both parents were avid riders.
  • Childhood memories involve ATV rides and muddy adventures in rural Scotland.
  • Quote (Susie): “If I look back now, a brilliant, brilliant childhood. None of the pressures of city or expectations. It was just so wholesome.” (06:43)

• Legacy of Motorcycle Racing

  • Maternal grandfather was a renowned motorcyclist and later a commercial diver, paralyzed after a diving accident yet remained active and resilient.
  • Mother was a daring motorcyclist, meeting Susie’s father in the bike shop at 16.
  • Memorable anecdote: Susie’s father raced in the perilous Isle of Man TT; family tradition revolved around risk, discipline, and respect for motorsport.

Early Competitiveness & Gender Dynamics

• First Forays on Motorbikes and Karts

  • Began riding at age 5, competitively karting by 8.
  • Constantly in step with her older brother, benefitting from a gender-neutral, supportive home.
  • Quote (Susie): “There was no real pressure or feeling that I was doing something unusual for a girl.” (15:51)

• Being the Only Girl in the Paddock

  • Didn’t notice gender differences initially—everyone wore helmets, competition was what mattered.
  • Early realization: “When they hit you, you’re gonna hit them back twice as hard.” (21:43)
  • Navigated male-dominated environments with both confidence and humility.

The Path Upward in Motorsports

• Racing Progression

  • Moved from local to national karting leagues, racing against figures like Lewis Hamilton from a young age.
  • Faced the dual-edged sword of being a “token” female—help in garnering sponsorship and media, but subject to skepticism and extra scrutiny.
  • Quote: “I realized pretty quickly that it was all about the performance on track. … I needed to go out and have the validation of a results sheet.” (36:59)

• Key Challenges

  • Media often fixated on her gender rather than driving ability.
  • Sponsorship pressures soared after injuries; a broken ankle at age 22 nearly ended her career.
  • Family support and determination propelled her from setbacks to new opportunities (notably, the call from Mercedes for DTM).

Breaking Barriers in Formula One

• Transition to Formula 1

  • Made history as one of the only women to participate in an F1 race weekend, eventually becoming a development driver for Williams.
  • Candid about the physical and technical leap—F1’s unique demands especially on neck strength, and the psychological pressure of representing women.
  • Notable moment: “The feeling of driving an F1 car on the edge—there’s nothing else that comes close.” (69:41)

• On Female Capability in F1

  • Susie rejects the notion that women are naturally disadvantaged due to testosterone or lack of aggression: “I definitely don’t believe … there’s any reason why a woman can’t compete at the very top. It just comes down to the talent pool and the pipeline.” (24:57)

Personal Life & Partnership with Toto Wolff

• Their Relationship

  • Shared motorsport worlds yet navigated cultural differences: Scottish spirit meets Austrian directness.
  • Playful banter about pep talks (“Don’t be shit” – Toto, 55:56), support through career transitions, and blended family experiences.
  • Funny anecdote: Toto’s “pros and cons list” before their wedding. (56:28)

• Motherhood & Identity

  • Struggles with stepping into step-motherhood and later finding a new purpose post-driving—eventually leading to leadership roles in Venturi Formula E and F1 Academy.
  • Open reflections on the identity crisis upon retirement and longing for impact beyond motherhood. (70:55)

F1 Academy & Women in Motorsport

• The Mission

  • F1 Academy nurtures young female drivers, breaking down financial and cultural barriers.
  • Susie’s vision: Create sustainable pathways, normalize women in racing, and harness the growing female fanbase catalyzed by “Drive to Survive”.
  • Quote: “We give half a million euros to every driver … so they really have the possibility to nurture their talent and develop.” (73:31)

• Building Institutional Buy-In

  • Faced resistance getting F1 teams on board, including a humorous exchange with her husband Toto and rival team leaders.
  • Ultimate success in making F1 Academy viable by securing strategic commercial partners and team commitments.

• Changing Culture

  • Susie observes real shifts in motorsport’s openness to women and credits broader societal movements (like #MeToo) and the influence of visible role models, such as Lewis Hamilton.
  • Advises women to stay true to themselves, maintain belief, and draw from their inner “fearless child”. (80:29)

Reflections on Legacy and Growth

• Writing Her Memoir: Driven
  • The process was therapeutic; writing a letter to “little Susie” moved her deeply.
  • Recognizes the immense pressure of carrying big dreams—and the importance of self-compassion and perseverance.
  • Quote: “It was always, you got to keep going. This is not good enough. … But this little girl who had this dream and drive … I just want to hug her and say, you did okay.” (86:53)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

| Timestamp | Quote / Moment | Speaker | |---|---|---| | 06:43 | “If I look back now, a brilliant, brilliant childhood. … It was just so wholesome.” | Susie Wolff | | 15:51 | “There was no real pressure or feeling that I was doing something unusual for a girl.” | Susie Wolff | | 21:43 | “When they hit you, you’re gonna hit them back twice as hard.” | Susie Wolff (recalling her father’s advice) | | 24:57 | “I definitely don’t believe … there’s any reason why a woman can’t compete at the very top.” | Susie Wolff | | 36:59 | “I realized pretty quickly that it was all about the performance on track. …” | Susie Wolff | | 55:56 | “Don’t be shit.” | Toto Wolff (pep talk before F1 test) | | 69:41 | “The feeling of driving an F1 car on the edge—there’s nothing else that comes close.” | Susie Wolff | | 73:31 | “We give half a million euros to every driver … so they really have the possibility to nurture their talent and develop.” | Susie Wolff | | 80:29 | “… sometimes … have that belief in yourself.” | Susie Wolff | | 86:53 | “I look at that little girl and I want to give her a hug. … Just take a break for a second.” | Susie Wolff |

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Memorable/Lighthearted Segments

• Moto Family Antics (10:44-13:13): Grandfather’s adventures, wheelchair paragliding, and grandmother’s steadfast care.
• Barbie & Pink Race Suits (27:13-27:29): “I loved pink. I had a pink race suit. My father would buy me Barbies for race achievements.”
• Driver Crushes & F1 Hotness (27:40-29:04): Lively debate about whether F1 is the “best looking” sport, and the economics of becoming a driver.
• How to Deal With Pep Talks (55:56-56:28): Toto’s laconic style fires Susie up.
• Dax’s Daughter Meets Kimmy Antonelli (126:05-131:14): Sweet moment as Susie sets up a meet-and-greet for Lincoln with a future F1 prodigy, cueing tears and dreams of an F1 family.
• Musings on Dads in Department Stores (106:12-106:54): Extended riff on the “dad experience” in shopping malls.

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-------|----------------------| | 06:43 | Susie’s childhood & family background | | 15:51 | Gender dynamics in early motorsport | | 21:43 | Facing boys in karting | | 24:57 | On women’s potential in F1 | | 36:59 | Objective validation through racing results | | 55:56 | Toto’s pep talks—“Don’t be shit.” | | 69:41 | The physical and emotional high of F1 | | 73:31 | F1 Academy mission and structure | | 80:29 | Advice for the next generation; self-belief | | 86:53 | Emotional reflection on her journey | | 126:05-131:14 | Lincoln meets Kimmy Antonelli: F1 dreams come true |

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Closing Thoughts

Susie Wolff’s story is not only a tale of breaking through motorsport’s gender barriers but also a lesson in grit, self-knowledge, and using earned experience to widen opportunity for others. The warmth and levity between Susie, Dax, and Lily make for an episode full of inspiration, actionable wisdom, and charm—essential listening for motorsport fans and anyone chasing big dreams.

Recommended:

• Susie’s memoir Driven (read by the author)
• Check out F1 Academy events and its impact on the next generation
• “Drive to Survive” for a taste of F1’s modern drama and new audiences

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Transcript

[Dax Shepard]

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman.

[Lily Padman]

Hello.

[Dax Shepard]

We got a fox in today, but her name is Wolf.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, good. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Susie Wolf.

[Lily Padman]

Oh.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, we love her.

[Lily Padman]

She's so incredible. We love her.

[Dax Shepard]

So cool.

[Lily Padman]

She's so incredible. Coolest person on earth. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

I felt really lame. I said it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, well, I did too.

[Lily Padman]

It's hard not to feel lame.

[Dax Shepard]

She makes me feel lame.

[Lily Padman]

But she is also so sweet and nice and kind and inclusive.

[Dax Shepard]

But her gift is to make you feel lame. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's her gift. Susie is a former professional racing driver and current managing director of F1 Academy. She's also one of, I think either the only one or maybe one of two women to ever drive an F1 car on a track on a race weekend.

[Lily Padman]

Incredible.

[Dax Shepard]

And if people remember the total Wolf interview, that is her husband and he said she's a half second faster no matter what he does. When he cheats, he uses different tires, puts weight in her cart, can't get anywhere close to her. She has a new memoir out called Driven. Very appropriate title. Please check that out. Susie Wolf is a blessing on planet Earth. Enjoy. We are supported by quints. Every summer I realize I become a real creature of habit. I end up reaching for the same few things over and over.

[Lily Padman]

Totally. You figure out what's coming comfortable for you and suddenly that's just your entire personality.

[Dax Shepard]

Right? Because I want things that are lighter and breathable and easy but still feel put together. Which is why I keep coming back to Quince. They make really high quality essentials that feel elevated without feeling fussy. Think breathable linen and soft organic cotton. Great basics without the luxury markup.

[Lily Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Lily Padman]

Getting yourself a linen shirt to just reach for this summer is key.

[Dax Shepard]

It's funny you'd say that because I just bought some linen shirts from Quince and had them sent directly to Nashville because I intend to be adorned in linen this summer.

[Lily Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

He's an outrage.

[Dax Shepard]

Have you ever fucked with a topo chico? Though this one bites hard.

[Susie Wolff]

Which way does it bite?

[Dax Shepard]

Lot of carbonation. Yeah, yeah, it's good.

[Lily Padman]

It's good. It's very good.

[Susie Wolff]

And I didn't know they had different.

[Dax Shepard]

And there's a shortage. This is only gaining value as we sit here.

[Susie Wolff]

Well, now I feel really bad that I'm taking water.

[Lily Padman]

No, you must take it. You must take it.

[Dax Shepard]

If I only had one, I would

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

want you to have.

[Lily Padman]

That's right. No, it's a whole world sparkling water. Like the size of the bubbles and the volume of the bubbles.

[Susie Wolff]

Well, Toto only has sparkling water because he has this theory that he doesn't need to go out for the toilet in the night if he drinks sparkling water.

[Lily Padman]

Only sparkling.

[Susie Wolff]

Oh, I'm not convinced.

[Lily Padman]

Okay. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

How successful is this technique? He's still up, right?

[Susie Wolff]

He's still up.

[Lily Padman]

He's still up. He's still up.

[Dax Shepard]

He and I are both old man.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, I think it's an age thing. But I'm not gonna tell him that. I'm just like you. Just keep drinking.

[Lily Padman]

He's just gonna hear it on the pile.

[Dax Shepard]

I will tell him. I will tell him.

[Susie Wolff]

But it was so funny because I flew in last night. And he's like, oh, where are you going? I have Dax and Monica. He's like, I've been there. He's like, yeah, I know. He's like, you're gonna really enjoy it. He's like, oh, that's so nice.

[Dax Shepard]

I think you called him while we

[Susie Wolff]

were interviewing that we have this bypass where we can always reach each other.

[Lily Padman]

I know.

[Susie Wolff]

Which can be embarrassing.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I've adopted it. So since that interview. I didn't know that was an option. Because in general. Phone's just off. Right. It's so annoying. Who can break through to you? Toto.

[Susie Wolff]

That's it.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Jack doesn't have a phone yet.

[Susie Wolff]

No, he doesn't have a phone yet. But it's a good point because I should put my mom on it because she's on duty this week. But sometimes Jack grabs her phone and he calls me to ask me trivial things like, do I really need to have a bath tonight? Yeah. Like, yes, Jack, just do whatever your grandmother says.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

But also, he doesn't need a bath. The older they get, he does.

[Lily Padman]

He might be stinky.

[Susie Wolff]

And there's nothing worse than smelly boys.

[Lily Padman]

I know. And they need to learn early. They don't want smell.

[Susie Wolff]

Exactly. Hygiene. There's nothing worse than smelly boys. I'm with you.

[Lily Padman]

I'm with you.

[Dax Shepard]

Now I'm paranoid that I smelled when I gave you a hug when you walked in.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

He didn't.

[Susie Wolff]

Don't worry.

[Dax Shepard]

But I have girls. So maybe I've been misled because we were bathing them every single night. More is the routine to get them sleepy.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And at some point we're like, they're not getting dirty enough to justify a bath. Now it's pretty, you know.

[Lily Padman]

No, now they bathe. Right?

[Dax Shepard]

They do, but not every day.

[Lily Padman]

We need to get. I think because we're getting into some hormone.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, yeah. Yeah. Now it's probably time to pick up the.

[Lily Padman]

It's time.

[Susie Wolff]

But I think they'll come to the realization on their own.

[Lily Padman]

Of course.

[Dax Shepard]

What was standard in Scotland?

[Susie Wolff]

You were bathing every night.

[Dax Shepard]

There's no way. Right.

[Susie Wolff]

What happens in Scotland is not really relatable to the rest of Europe.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. What's the vibe in Scotland in the 80s as a little person?

[Susie Wolff]

The vibe was. We were discussing recently memories of your birthday parties when you were younger. My memory is my dad bringing in an atv. Like a four wheel terrain vehicle home with a trailer. Nine, ten kids on the back of the trailer hanging on for dear life. And him going through huge Mud on this mountain behind the house or a big hill. And I was going faster, my bad. And then we got home and he just sprayed us all down, him and my mum with water. It was a really outdoorsy life. Yeah, it was. If I look back now, a brilliant, brilliant childhood. None of the pressures of, like, city or expectations. It was just so wholesome.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a little town on the western edge of Scotland. On the water. Right. It's a tourist town.

[Susie Wolff]

Well, it was where everyone took the ferry to all of kind of the Outer Hebrides. So it was more like a hub where people would arrive.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you say Hebrides?

[Susie Wolff]

Outer Hebrides, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What are Hebrides? Outer Hebrides.

[Susie Wolff]

Like they're all these islands. I thought it was my accent at first.

[Dax Shepard]

Who knows? I mean, some will be new words,

[Susie Wolff]

some will be accent. Yeah, well, the Hebrides are like a whole area of Scotland off the west coast.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Susie Wolff]

And you took the ferry from Oban.

[Dax Shepard]

Would there be transient boyfriends? Like, a new boy comes into town in the summer, he's with his family, they're on vacation, you fall in love, they have to return home.

[Susie Wolff]

What kind of girl do you think I am that there was a transient boyfriend?

[Dax Shepard]

One that's driven, focused, aggressive, determined. The kind that could snag any kind of boyfriend she wanted?

[Susie Wolff]

Not at that age.

[Dax Shepard]

Not at that point.

[Susie Wolff]

I was completely uninterested in boys. You were. And my dad, I remember so distinctly when I was younger, around the age of 12, and my brother was only 15 months older, and he said something about a girl in his class. And then my dad looked at me and said, you are way too young to have a boyfriend. And I was like, yeah, you're right. I'm way too young to have a boyfriend. And then there was this moment in my childhood that this person will never know what effect he had. Because one of my dad's good friends who owned a pub, his name was Mario, and he said a throwaway comment to me, and I must have been like 13 or 14. He said, you'll be pregnant by the time you're 16 and working in your dad's shop.

[Dax Shepard]

What?

[Lily Padman]

Also, that is a crazy thing to say to a young girl.

[Susie Wolff]

Maybe he did it as like a reverse engineering. I was like, absolutely not. So then it was like, stay away from boys.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay? You have kind of my dream childhood. Not even kind of. You have my total dream childhood in that your father owned a motorcycle dealership. Let's start with grandpa. It probably starts with your maternal grandfather. Yeah. Being into motorcycles and whatnot.

[Susie Wolff]

So my mother's father was a works motocross rider in the 1950s.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Look at this.

[Lily Padman]

Wow.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah. And he was an English daredevil. Anything he did, he was really good at.

[Dax Shepard]

Did he ride trials bikes?

[Susie Wolff]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

And he was sponsored by bsa?

[Susie Wolff]

Yes, he was a BSA works rider, which in his day was like, he's a God.

[Lily Padman]

But what for? You know, I have to do this.

[Dax Shepard]

For people who try bsa, this is one of the, like, historic motorcycle brands.

[Lily Padman]

Okay, great. Okay.

[Susie Wolff]

And he had a shop also in England that kind of sold the bikes. And when the Japanese bikes started to arrive and kind of took over the market, he realized it wouldn't be a proper sustainable business.

[Dax Shepard]

They couldn't really compete with the influx of j. And he didn't adopt selling them.

[Susie Wolff]

No, because he's a staunch, loyal. Yeah. Nationalist and loyal loyalist.

[Dax Shepard]

Now, his motorcycle shop was in Scotland or. No, he moved there to open that.

[Susie Wolff]

He moved to Scotland to do diving. He was changing completely his career.

[Lily Padman]

Diving into water.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, he was a commercial diver.

[Dax Shepard]

Was he welding underwater?

[Susie Wolff]

No, no, I think he was more like in the west coast of Scotland. There's a real industry there to go and collect propellers, which had fallen off because there were so many boats and ferries and stuff like that. But then I don't really know much about that period because, of course, he got the bends and became paralyzed.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

So.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, he lost the use of his legs. Yeah.

[Susie Wolff]

He had done a dive when he hadn't been feeling well and came up too quickly. And he tells the story of them dragging him onto the boat. Now, bearing in mind he's super athletic guy, very, very sporty. And he remembers lying and his leg was falling off the edge of the bed. And he said, there was a moment where I realized I couldn't bring my leg back up.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. Oh, that's panic inducing.

[Susie Wolff]

That's when I realized this is not good. So I've only ever known him in a wheelchair, but you shouldn't think that that stopped him. I mean, I never once heard him complaining he did paragliding. As he got older, he opened a caravan. So he very much pivoted around.

[Dax Shepard]

He even had crash landings in his paraglider.

[Susie Wolff]

Broke his ankle. Yes, we poor grandmother.

[Lily Padman]

I guess it doesn't matter.

[Susie Wolff]

But just to add in there, my grandmother never got a care. She looked after him all on her own and dedicated herself, which, if I look back now with the perspective I have with age and obviously becoming a wife and a mother. Incredible. Yeah, really incredible.

[Lily Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

So the results of having that risk takery of a grandfather is that your mother herself was also quite a risky young woman. Yeah. And she rode motorcycles from what age on?

[Susie Wolff]

Well, my uncle kind of took after my grandfather did trials bike and nearly won the Scottish six days trials and was very talented also on a bike. But when the accident happened, it was difficult for them because suddenly the whole family dynamic changed. I think my mum lost quite a lot of confidence because suddenly this father figure who so many people looked up to at that time came back home a different man in a way and relied so much on my grandmother. So she lost a couple of years of her teenage years to that whole dynamic changing. And I think when she was 16, my grandfather said to her, go down and see John Stoddart and get yourself a bike. And she loved speed and she is very much, you know, get up and go like my grandfather. And that of course is where she met my dad, in the bike shop.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, wow. This is such a great story.

[Susie Wolff]

Love story.

[Lily Padman]

I love this. Meet cute.

[Susie Wolff]

I just wouldn't be who I am today without my mum. Because you say role models, but she set the foundation, she had her own business, she raced bikes. It was such an equal marriage between the two of them and she had as much get up and go as my dad. It absolutely shaped who I am.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So she was in a motorcyclist. They meet and fall in love. What's the age gap? She was 16 when she went to buy a motorcycle.

[Susie Wolff]

And now you're testing me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Susie Wolff]

Does it not make them look bad here? Well, she got her first. So you have to be 17 to drive a motorbike in Scotland. So she was maybe 16 turning 17. So maybe she went at 16 to get ready to buy the bike for when she was 17, she was dating someone else, one of my dad's friends.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, scandalous.

[Susie Wolff]

Small town was not treating her well and it was a really good friend of his. They went on bike tours together, everything. And then it became clear that my mum and dad were better suited.

[Dax Shepard]

Simmering.

[Susie Wolff]

Simmering, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I think actually quite similar to me, I think it was my mum was the first one to see, actually.

[Dax Shepard]

John, I'm going in this direction.

[Susie Wolff]

I think you and I fit.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. So yes, they fall in love, they get married and then father's running a motorcycle shop, but he's selling everything. Presumably because you're getting quads and jet skis.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah. And outboards for the fisheries and the fishermen. And basically in a small town, you Know what it's like, you sell whatever anyone needs.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, right.

[Susie Wolff]

So it was motorbikes. In the summer, a lot of motorbikes would tour through, do the whisky tour up through Scotland because it's beautiful scenery. But then the all terrain vehicles for all the farms.

[Dax Shepard]

But so basically you had access to every single thing I wanted as a kid. Your first bike's a PW50?

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

How old were you when you got that?

[Susie Wolff]

Well, no, my very first was a little three wheeler Yamaha three wheeler. And then PV50. I must have been five.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, five or six. This is when my daughter got her first PW50.

[Susie Wolff]

Love it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Susie Wolff]

And then PV80. Loved that. PV80.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure, sure. Now you're shifting gears with a car.

[Susie Wolff]

No, that's an RT100. The PV80 still doesn't have a clutch. No.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay. Here. The 80s all had clutches.

[Susie Wolff]

No. And I remember the first time I tried with the clutch, I was just like, oh. It took me a while to get used to.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a humbling experience. The first.

[Lily Padman]

Do you have brothers and sisters?

[Dax Shepard]

The older brother.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, 15 months older than me.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So I would imagine it's kind of a perfect storm for you because similarly, I have a little sister and I think if you have a little sister and she likes you, she's just going to trend a little bit more into, I don't know, conventionally boy stuff. What do you think about that?

[Susie Wolff]

I think so. And I think it was also my character, like, well, anything he can do, I can do. I was very competitive and he was a wonderful brother. He still is a wonderful brother. So he kind of took me under his wing. There wasn't a huge rivalry of, you know, I don't want her around. If he went on his motorbike, he was on his RT100. I was in my PB80, he was in the PB80, I was on the PB50. It was always that we were together.

[Dax Shepard]

He was probably proud of you. It's cool to have a little sister who rides.

[Susie Wolff]

Sure. He'd go as far to say to

[Dax Shepard]

be proud, that's too much.

[Susie Wolff]

But we definitely did a lot of things together. And my parents never really differentiated between son and daughter. It wasn't like I ever had the feeling that I shouldn't be on a bike or that I was doing anything usual for a girl. It was very much if you want to do it, you do it and if you don't, you don't. There was no real pressure or feeling that I was Doing something unusual for a girl.

[Dax Shepard]

We do have to take one second to worship your father. Because for people who aren't super into motorsports, the craziest form of racing is definitely MotoGP. It makes the F1 drivers look cowardly. So that just start there and then. The scariest thing in the motorcycle world by far is the Isle of Man tt. And for people who don't know they're racing on a public road on the circumference of an island. What is it like an 80 mile, 90 mile loop? Every single year someone dies. Pretty much without exception. Is the most dangerous motorsport imaginable. And your father raced in the Isle

[Susie Wolff]

of Man and lost his best friend there.

[Dax Shepard]

Lost his best friend. Just stand up.

[Susie Wolff]

It's so funny you say that now. He literally is going there this week.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, he is?

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah. Cause it starts I think this weekend

[Dax Shepard]

and he now goes and obviously spectates

[Susie Wolff]

he had a team for a while, but this year there's no team. He's just spectating. Have you ever been?

[Dax Shepard]

I haven't. I've been invited by Ducati and I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna go, but I know I'll ride on Saturday.

[Susie Wolff]

You need to go, wait, you're gonna

[Dax Shepard]

ride in it on Saturday? The public can take a lap.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, but you can take it easy there.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Susie Wolff]

You need to take it easy there.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, that's my concern is how easy I'll be able to take it. But yes, I do want to do that very bad.

[Susie Wolff]

I ended up taking Toto and it was an incredible experience because you just cannot comprehend the speed and the bravery until you get there.

[Dax Shepard]

The sides of much of the public road are cobblestone walls. So if you come off, you're going into a cobblestone wall. There's numerous.

[Susie Wolff]

You're not into it at all. Monica.

[Dax Shepard]

Monica. There's numerous hills and dips where the people are at 195 getting air for like 130ft and landing it's full on. It is truly the most hair raising, scariest motorsport in the world.

[Susie Wolff]

It is.

[Dax Shepard]

Your dad did that. He's a warrior. I just want to worship him for one second. So I got to imagine if dad is doing that, it's hard to take anyone serious. If anyone's saying like be careful or maybe that wasn't even being said in your household.

[Susie Wolff]

It wasn't being said but it wasn't like we were kamikaze either. I guess there was a structure to it that it wasn't just like Go out on your bike and go flat out. We built a little track kind of in the hills behind where we lived and of course we got the stopwatch out and it was who could go quicker. But we weren't kamikaze because there was an element where you always had to have your helmet on, you had to have your proper boots on and you had a respect. You cleaned your bike when you came home, you put it properly away in the garage. So we weren't kamikaze, but we loved speed and we loved that life of being out and that feeling of, you know.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, adrenaline.

[Lily Padman]

Were you scared when your dad went to do this thing?

[Susie Wolff]

I was too young to even realize and actually my mum made him stop when he lost his best friend and when we were young kids because I think for her she felt, well, that's way too risky now that we've got children.

[Dax Shepard]

I also doubt they said like, okay, so daddy's going away to the most dangerous lethal race in the world this weekend.

[Lily Padman]

Well, yeah, but like they probably kind

[Dax Shepard]

of hushed that part.

[Susie Wolff]

There were pictures up in the wall. But I never really comprehended until I went. I never really comprehended what he did.

[Dax Shepard]

It's madness.

[Susie Wolff]

Promise me you'll go.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh yes, yes.

[Susie Wolff]

Because you would really, really love it.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. When do we get into a cart?

[Susie Wolff]

8 years old, slightly before, because my dad had a bit of a midlife crisis and went back to racing road bikes for his 40th birthday, he got himself a bike. So we would spend a lot of time at Knock Hill, the only track in Scotland. But because we were not really that interested in just watching my dad, there was a kind of perimeter road to the track where we would be doing laps in our peew and peewee 80s taking on RT1 hundreds and water cooled 125s and there was a little cart track there. And I remember distinctly it was five pounds for 15 minutes. Well, we hounded my parents for five and another five and another five. And then eventually I think my mum said to my dad, listen, we come to these race weekends, it's all about you. I think it's time that the kids did something.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Susie Wolff]

So we got a go kart kind of around our 8th birthday.

[Dax Shepard]

A shared go kart between you and David?

[Susie Wolff]

No, because he was bigger than me. I mean they were secondhand. They were. I'll never forget Swiss hutless. It was red, it was quite rusty and peeling with pain. But I was so in love with this thing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And did you show more aptitude in that relative to David, like, you had to be a mildly competitive with your brother. And did this feel like something. Shit, I might have the upper hand

[Susie Wolff]

here at that time, no. We would, like, be out in the higher carts smashing lumps out of each other to see who could win. And then suddenly when we got to our very first race, we were a bit like, oh, there's like hundred kids here. And it wasn't any more me versus him. It was more like, this is big. Now we've got a lot of competition, intense. And we never really had. Well, no, that's not true. I was going to say we never really had a big rabbit. But we did have one race where I should have won. He took me out on the last lap.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Okay.

[Susie Wolff]

And we didn't speak for the whole way home.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Oh.

[Susie Wolff]

And after that, my dad always made sure we were in different categories, so he moved my brother up and I stayed. And then we never raced each other again.

[Dax Shepard]

Your father had Sur, Serena, and Venus on his heels.

[Lily Padman]

That was smart.

[Dax Shepard]

So were you receiving instruction or were you just kind of learning as you went?

[Susie Wolff]

I definitely wasn't a clear talent at the beginning. I mean, it was quite daunting being on a much bigger track and lots of other kids out there. I always tell the same story. I went out the first time and it was, like, scary. And I came into the pits and I said to my dad, I really don't like it out there. I mean, that's a lot.

[Dax Shepard]

A lot of chaos going on.

[Susie Wolff]

A lot of chaos. And they're kind of like getting hit as you were getting past.

[Dax Shepard]

And it was just aggressive little boys.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah. Lots of aggressive little boys.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Are you the only girl there?

[Susie Wolff]

I was, but I never realized I was.

[Dax Shepard]

You didn't clock that?

[Susie Wolff]

No, because we were all wearing helmets. Nobody really spoke about me being a girl at that time. I was just Susie. And my dad said, well, we got two options now. Toots. Because his nickname for me was always Toots. We put the cart back in the truck and we head home. Or you go back out there, you try and go quicker, and when they hit you, you're gonna hit them back twice as hard. So me being the character I was, I was like, I'll go back out there. I will get faster. And then it was something that just became all consuming in a very good way.

[Lily Padman]

You're so cool.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, she's so cool.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God, I feel so, so lame.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, I'm lame.

[Susie Wolff]

You're not lame.

[Dax Shepard]

No, no, you're not lame. You're not lame.

[Susie Wolff]

You're not lame.

[Lily Padman]

No, no, I am. I think it must be meant, like, how do you not have fear?

[Dax Shepard]

I'll let you answer.

[Lily Padman]

Both of you can answer.

[Dax Shepard]

It's funny enough. I'm watching it right now. So I went to our eldest daughter when she was about 7 or 8, and at that point she already rode dirt bikes. She had an off road razor, like a vehicle shoe.

[Susie Wolff]

I love that you give her a race.

[Dax Shepard]

Great at driving that, like a real immediate aptitude. And I said, hey, we could get carts, you and me. We have a tour bus. We could just start hitting races. I'm ready if you're up for it. And she was like, well, take me to the cart track and let me see if I like it. I take her to the cart tracks to go to one of the juniors. It's all boys who've already done it a bunch of times. She has one session, she comes back and she's like, I don't like it. And I'm like, okay. Heartbroken. All I wanted as a kid was someone to support me doing that. I now have the money to do that. And she just was not interested. Fast forward to like maybe eight months ago. She's like, I want to go back to the cart track. Take her back now. She's super into it. She's 13. It's too late for anything competitive.

[Susie Wolff]

It's not.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not?

[Susie Wolff]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, well, that's encouraging.

[Susie Wolff]

It's definitely not.

[Dax Shepard]

Point is, is what I got to observe which was the most rewarding was in soccer. When she played soccer, she didn't have that. Like, I'm gonna kill this person for the ball. She didn't have that. Which I could care less. But within three sessions at the track, when she started getting good and there were slow adults out there, I started noticing, like, oh, she wants to kill these people to get by. That magic thing has just kind of happened. And yeah, you kind of either have that. One of us is going to the center of this turn and it's gonna be me.

[Susie Wolff]

But you know What? I' with F1 Academy, it's because of girls like your daughter. Because I'm pretty sure if that little girl at eight at her first time at the cart track had seen another little girl out there, yeah, it could have changed her whole experience of it. But because that first experience was daunting. Like mine was daunting. But I had that older brother was like, well, actually, if he's doing it, I'll figure it out. And now she's 13. She's got a bit more confidence. She's a bit older. She asked to go back there. It's in her anyways.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not about her.

[Susie Wolff]

No. But this is so encouraging for me because that I think is the shift that's happening within motorsport now. Because before it's always seen as this egoistical, macho, male dominated world. It's changing and it has to change because there's so many talented young drivers that are female, like your daughter out there that just need to be exposed to it because they've got that passion within them.

[Dax Shepard]

You were saying in a different interview I listened to you in which I hadn't thought of this. There's only really three sports where the men and women are together and it's horse jumping.

[Susie Wolff]

Riding or jumping. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Sailing and driving.

[Lily Padman]

Whoa.

[Susie Wolff]

Involve either a big piece of equipment or a big animal.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, that's true. Weird.

[Susie Wolff]

I definitely don't believe and having been in this sport for as long as I have that there's any reason why a woman can't compete at the very top. It just comes down to the talent pool and the kind of pipeline.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, let us. For the most skeptical audience member. What about someone who's like, well, what about just testosterone as a aggressive hormone that boys at 18 have an excessive amount of? Do you think there's any deficit for not having that?

[Susie Wolff]

Listen, I would never claim to see a man and a woman or a young boy and a young girl are the same biologically. Clearly we're all made up differently. But it also comes down to individuals.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Exactly.

[Susie Wolff]

And it's so funny you mentioned testosterone because when I was racing, I won't say what age I was. I had a medical and I had high levels of testosterone. We were just never taking supplements or anything like that at that time. And immediately the medically, the guys that did the kind of assessment said, oh, this is an outlier, you know, can we do some more tests and studies? Because I think this is maybe why you're a racing driver. And I went away and thought about it overnight and came back the next day and said, no, I don't want me being singled out. And I don't think my results are the basis or should form what a female racing driver.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly.

[Susie Wolff]

Because I think it comes much more down to characteristics of the individual. There are some girls who are really tough also.

[Dax Shepard]

They were chicken and egging it and I would argue your participation in it, your body starts reacting and you're training. We have tons of data on stock brokers when they make riskier Trades, their testosterone goes up, which begets more riskier trades. It's working in both directions. So, yeah, your body could have been like, oh, no. We're in a situation where we need more testosterone regularly.

[Susie Wolff]

But I don't think that the aggression is something which can stop a woman not being successful in the sport. Because you can also argue that red mist and overaggression is a real negative.

[Lily Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Unless you're somehow Max Verstappen and you're bulls. You're on the edge, whatever that thing is. It's like, I'm willing to die.

[Susie Wolff]

The Nurburgring, 24 hours.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Susie Wolff]

Incredible.

[Dax Shepard]

He's such a God. It's crazy.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, it was impressive.

[Dax Shepard]

I know 13 is a pivotal moment, but between 8 and 13, when you're starting to cart a lot and you're starting to race, walk me through some of those challenges. Slowly, I bet it starts occurring to you, oh, I'm the only girl here. Or one of very few.

[Susie Wolff]

Not at that age. I wasn't your stereotypical tomboy. I loved pink. I played with Barbie. I asked for pink sideboards for my go karts. I had a pink race suit.

[Dax Shepard]

Your father was using Barbies as leverage to get you to do things. He offered to buy you a very specific Barbie.

[Susie Wolff]

The cowboy Barbie.

[Dax Shepard]

Cowboy Barbie.

[Susie Wolff]

I still haven't.

[Dax Shepard]

You still have her.

[Lily Padman]

That's so cute.

[Susie Wolff]

And it was When I was 13, I was taken to watch a Formula 3 race at Donington. There's an English driver at that time called Jenson Button, who of course went on to be a world champion.

[Dax Shepard]

He's also fucking gorgeous. I just.

[Susie Wolff]

Sorry, I can't judge drivers as hot or not.

[Dax Shepard]

You can't.

[Susie Wolff]

I always had this rule. I would never date another driver. And even now, when obviously there's a lot more interest in F1 and they're like, oh, he's hot. I'm like, is he?

[Dax Shepard]

Susie? It is a stable of the cutest boys in the world.

[Susie Wolff]

Really?

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It's asymmetric to any other sport where it's like, why are they all. Well, I kind of have a theory on why. They're also good looking. They're often the children of rich people.

[Lily Padman]

Right?

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, that's just a fact.

[Susie Wolff]

No, not always.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. Let's go through the current.

[Susie Wolff]

Lewis is not from.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, keep going.

[Lily Padman]

He's an exception.

[Susie Wolff]

Kimi Antonelli is not from Huge wealth.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. You're right.

[Susie Wolff]

George Russell is not from huge Wealth. He didn't really know wealth.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, okay.

[Susie Wolff]

No, no, no.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, okay, No.

[Susie Wolff]

I Mean, his father sold his business recently, but he didn't have a lot of money. That's why he relied on junior programs.

[Dax Shepard]

Lando's family. Charles's uncle.

[Susie Wolff]

Uncle who was supporting his uncle, helped, but he comes from a very background.

[Lily Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

But he's just so. He's a model.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, he's.

[Lily Padman]

He is a. Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. I wonder if this is a thing. She plays for Toto. Like, she doesn't.

[Susie Wolff]

What I will say is, his wife is beautiful.

[Lily Padman]

Yes, she is beautiful. They're a beautiful pair.

[Susie Wolff]

Great couple.

[Lily Padman]

But Toto's so hot.

[Susie Wolff]

Oh, Toto's definitely hot.

[Dax Shepard]

He's the hottest. Okay, so back to F3. You saw an F3 race. Jensen Button, I interrupted you.

[Susie Wolff]

And that's when I think it all changed in my head, because suddenly, what was just a hobby, I suddenly thought, oh, wait a minute, I can do this. And that environment, the car. I'll never forget the first time I walked into the garage. Everything was so immaculate and precise, and the engineers and I just thought, this is where I want to be. And suddenly I was like, okay, I can be a racing driver. I can get some karting, move to single seaters and get to F3 and then maybe get to F1. And never once did I question why there was no woman in F1. I simply had David Coulthard on my wall because he was Scottish. Jack Villeneuve because he was in the Williams. And at 18, we'd done the world championships. Lewis Hamilton was there. Nico Rosberg.

[Dax Shepard]

You also had Wayne Rainey on your wall.

[Susie Wolff]

Wayne Rainey, Kevin Schwantz. There we go in the Kevin Schwantz fan club. Love him with the yellow bandana. Oh, I loved him so much.

[Dax Shepard]

So once you saw that and you got more focused on, okay, I want to do this as a career. Did you start taking your time, the weekends at the race to. To start educating yourself? Like, I want you to explain to people what you had to learn about the mechanics of the car and the engineering of the car. Your job's not just to get in there and drive the car. You could do that. But the great drivers in history have been able to give really important feedback to their mechanics and their engineers to make the car faster. And if they don't have that vernacular, there's going to be only so much you can develop. The car. The car. This is kind of a big component of it.

[Susie Wolff]

It really is. And then when you get to European World Championship level, it comes down to the finest details, like what to you're running what camber, what sprocket? It's not like you need to sit down and really educate yourself. You live it. So you're trying different things with your carts to get small advantage, like different thicknesses of rear axle, tire pressures, how many, what do we call them again? Seat supports. Because that changed the way where your

[Dax Shepard]

weight distribution was in the car.

[Susie Wolff]

And I always had to carry extra weight. So we would move the weight around to see which was the optimum.

[Dax Shepard]

Which could have been nice because you could put it on the weak inside wheel.

[Susie Wolff]

We talk the same language. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But some people don't. I want to give you credit. Some people don't take the time to

[Susie Wolff]

do sometimes it's exhausting. I'm a real perfectionist. So I was the one that curated all the folders that had the setup sheets from every race so that when we came back I knew exactly where to start from what we changed my notes on each track. I loved like the color coordinated folders and all the setup sheets.

[Dax Shepard]

I also want to introduce when is juggling the pros and cons of being the only girl at these races. Because there's upside and downside and I want to explore what those tensions were.

[Susie Wolff]

I think the only moment I really. Because I'd grown up racing with Lewis in that generation.

[Dax Shepard]

Let's talk about that. So for a while you were in the Scottish League.

[Susie Wolff]

Scottish.

[Dax Shepard]

Then you won driver of the year 14. No.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah. That was only national.

[Dax Shepard]

But then you step up to the British karting.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah. And had a bit of success in the British karting which allowed me to qualify then for the European championships.

[Dax Shepard]

And where do you meet Lewis at what rung of this?

[Susie Wolff]

Oh, very early on. Like I think I was only nine. We would have gone down for our first British race. And they were all talking about this little boy with the yellow helmet who was outstanding. And it was Lewis.

[Lily Padman]

How old was he?

[Susie Wolff]

He would have been eight.

[Dax Shepard]

So you're a year older than him?

[Susie Wolff]

I'm nearly two years older than him.

[Lily Padman]

A little boy with a yellow helmet. That's a really cute picture.

[Dax Shepard]

And did you race against him in karting?

[Susie Wolff]

We were at the age of kind of 14. We ended up in the same class because then became 14 to 16 year olds. So we weren't always direct competitors but then became competitors towards the end. And then when he moved into single seaters, we were always nearly. But I was sometimes the category above.

[Dax Shepard]

Because you're a little older.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, but there's the famous formula Renault Podium where I made P3. He won the race and I couldn't get my champagne open. And he was a lot more used to winning than I was. So he grabbed the bottle from me and opened the champagne for me and gave it back to me.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my goodness.

[Susie Wolff]

If I go back to the world championships, I'd finished 15th overall, which was solid because there was over 130 people there. But I was called to the podium ceremony in. And when I was called the awning, the team where I ran, there was like maybe 20 of us in the team. We were all like, why are you being called? I'm like, oh, I hope I haven't had an issue with my card or something or I'm disqualified from the race. And it was really weird that they were calling me over the tannoy. So I run over the podium, ceremony's happening, and I'm called up on stage to receive an award for top female in the world.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Susie Wolff]

And I was, like, so embarrassed in front of my whole team. And my first thought was, I don't even remember seeing another girl. And I was actually, there was like, there was four of us.

[Dax Shepard]

What if you had won the best and worst female driver?

[Lily Padman]

I mean, seriously, slow as advances female driver. It feels like a pat on the head.

[Susie Wolff]

And I think the organizers, they were probably just trying to be nice.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, I'm sure.

[Susie Wolff]

But I think that was definitely the moment. Of course, everyone made jokes afterwards with the fact that, oh, you're great, you beat three other girls.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Right.

[Susie Wolff]

But it was the moment. I definitely thought, oh, this is going to be different than I thought.

[Dax Shepard]

This is a thing.

[Susie Wolff]

They see me as different. When I moved into single seaters, it became the topic. There was a girl trying to make it in racing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking what the warning light means before pulling out of your driveway, you absolutely convince yourself it was probably just a sensor thing right up until you were standing on the side of the road waiting for a tow. Yeah. Checking first is the right move. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. And for fast, reliable help when you need it, add an Allstate roadside plan. Today you're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary insurance and roadside assistance plans are subject to terms, conditions and availability. Insurance provided by Allstate North American Insurance Company, Northbrook, Illinois. Roadside assistance plans provided by Allstate Motor Club Incorporated and Allstate Affiliates. Yet this podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. I feel like Spring always does this thing where you realize you've been thinking about something for a long time and suddenly it feels like, okay, maybe I actually do something with it.

[Lily Padman]

Totally. It's less pressure, but more like readiness.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Like you've been sitting on an idea or a project, or even just a perspective you care about, and now you're like, maybe this deserves to exist somewhere outside of my own head.

[Lily Padman]

In May being Mental Health Awareness Month, there's already this broader conversation happening. People are more open, more curious, more willing to engage, which is where something

[Dax Shepard]

like Squarespace comes in. It makes that jump from idea to actual thing feel way less overwhelming. You can build a site that looks good, works well, and actually reflects what you're trying to put out there.

[Lily Padman]

And it's not just hypothetical. Wabi Wob literally used Squarespace to build our site.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And Wabi Wob is not trying to spend 40 hours figuring out web design. It just worked, which is kind of the point. So if you've been sitting on something and waiting for the right moment, this might be it. Head to squarespace.comdax for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Now, again, there's trade offs with that. Right. Is it fair to say? Maybe you would have gotten a sponsor easier?

[Susie Wolff]

Definitely. I got a lot more media attention. Didn't always know how to manage it.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, that's a lot.

[Susie Wolff]

You kind of need it commercially because. Because racing is expensive. But on the other hand, I remember going to some photo shoots and there was stuff, I'm not wearing that. You know, I'm a driver at that time. The sport isn't what it is now. And there was very much stereotypes of you were a girl that had leather on imposed on a car, or you were a girl that drove the car.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, right, right. And I would imagine too, you want to be asked about driving, and they probably want to ask you about being a female.

[Susie Wolff]

All they wanted to ask me about was being a female. And that's fair enough. And I always thought talking about it can help others, maybe be inspired by or not be inspired. Because at that time, I was never out to inspire others.

[Dax Shepard]

You wanted to win races. Yeah.

[Susie Wolff]

And I realized pretty quickly that it was all about the performance on track. Yes, you could talk about my gender, but it made it even more important that I went out there and showed what I could Do. Because everyone seemed to have an opinion that I was either not gonna be good enough or not physically fit enough. Or she's just there cause she's a girl. Or she's only got the sponsor. Cause she's a girl. So for me, I needed to go out and have the validation of a results sheet to say no, this is why I can do it. Look, I'm quick enough and I can compete. So it was always that validation through results. And that's what I love about sport. It's so pure.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. It's empirical, it's objective, not subjective.

[Susie Wolff]

I would struggle in your industry.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. This one is pretty subjective.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But sometimes you hit the hot streak of the subjectivity. Like it. I'll take it. I don't think I'm better than that guy, but I'll take it. Yeah. What kind of neuroses arise in this period because you're young and you're asked to. Yeah. Represent all girls in racing, which you didn't sign up for. You're a token. I'll just advise you to listen. Do you know who Malcolm Gladwell is? He's like a very famous American writer and he has a great podcast called Revisionist History and he did an episode called the Token and talking about the weight of being a token and how it's not fair to judge someone like Sammy Davis Jr. Because he was first one through the door and what he had to deal with just to be there so other people could walk through. I don't know. It's just until you take a minute to stop and think about the pressure of being a token. I think it's a really isolating. Did you feel very isolated in that. That experience?

[Susie Wolff]

I remember real periods of loneliness, but it's difficult because I only have my own experience. So I don't know how different it was to someone else that wasn't a woman or feeling lonely anyways. But I definitely struggled sometimes in the environment because it was very much of a male, kind of macho, egoistical. And that's why I decided I would date another racing driver because I would overhear the way they spoke about women and girls, and I thought, well, I never want to be spoken about like that. But I didn't feel like in that situation I could always be the one saying, hey, don't do that.

[Lily Padman]

Stop shooting.

[Susie Wolff]

You shouldn't be saying that. Or, that's not fair on her. So I just kind of detached myself from it, but thought I never want to be spoken about like that. I just had a love for the sport. That meant I didn't want everything around my gender to take away from my love for just doing the sport and achieving.

[Dax Shepard]

But you're giving up a big chunk of your life when you're a kid. All your weekends are that you're traveling. So if you don't have friendships at the races, then you're really missing a big opportunity or a big chunk that you would. Did you have friends in the race?

[Susie Wolff]

I had. I shared a house with a bunch of Irish drivers, and they became like my big brothers. And there was a lot of camaraderie. I did have friends who looked out for me and who we had a laugh with, but there was always just that invisible line. Yeah. Looking back now with the perspective I had, I think there was definitely moments where I would walk into a garage, especially if I joined a new team, and I could feel the skepticism. Many people say, well, what did they say? I said, it's not a direct comment. I feel this skepticism or this idea that, oh, we have her and we didn't get him. And then when you have a bit of success with that team, first of all, they're a bit like, oh, oh, you can. But then the minute you get them with you, they are loyal. The environment and everything that comes with racing, aside from being in the car and performing, you just become used to. Well, that's part of it, and that's part of the game. And it's an important part of the game because if you're not doing the media and the sponsorship commitments, you're not racing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Talk about the financial stress of that whole period.

[Susie Wolff]

Well, I'm giving away my age here because my main sponsor was British Telecom, because they were launching something called broadband.

[Lily Padman]

Okay.

[Susie Wolff]

That's how long ago it was. But they were my saviors. And actually, I had a really tough year in 2005 because they were my main sponsor for Formula 3. And then I was at home, home visiting my grandmother. Went out to buy her milk, slipped, broke my ankle.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, no.

[Susie Wolff]

And those were dark months. I lost my race license, I lost my sponsor. I lost my seat in the F3.

[Dax Shepard]

And you were how old then?

[Susie Wolff]

22.

[Dax Shepard]

And you'd already left because you went to University of Edinburgh for a year?

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, I was a very conscientious student because my parents always said, can't race unless you do well. School, I'm a grafter. I don't have the natural ability, but I have no problem to work really hard. So I ended up up second in my year in high school, and There was a lot of expectation that I would go to university. I picked international business. The easiest thing when you have really no clue, but really felt like a duck out of water at university. They were all partying, drinking. I'm like, what am I doing here?

[Dax Shepard]

Is that because you had a certain immaturity cuz you hadn't been hanging out on the weekends and going to D Maturity cuz you'd been doing something so you don't feel like you had missed out on childhood at all by racing

[Susie Wolff]

aspects of it, like boyfriend, girlfriend stuff,

[Dax Shepard]

social stuff going and bo.

[Susie Wolff]

I'm not a big drinker at all, even to this day. So I would see them all go out and get blind drunk and I'd be like, what are you guys doing?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Susie Wolff]

And then I would have races on the weekend, so I would be kind of training and I was just in a different planet to the planet I got transported to and did never feel right there. So when I left after one year, was that hard?

[Dax Shepard]

Did you feel like you were disappointing mom and dad?

[Susie Wolff]

It was more hard that it's what everyone expected me to do, to have this backup plan. And I remember going into the economics lecture in the first day of my second year, I'd gone back and I just thought, what am I doing here? I'm here because everyone tells me I should be here. I'm just a sheep that's following the flock. I just don't want to be here. And I called home and one week later had all my possessions in a little Golf tdi, which was my parents car. I rented a room near Silverstone, worked as a marshal, waving the flag in the little shop that sold racewear and focused fully on racing.

[Dax Shepard]

You get into Formula 3 in 2001, 2001 to 2004, you were Formula from the Renault. I'm sorry, Renault. So now you've gone from karting to a single seat race car and you do pretty good there. 2004, you finished fifth overall.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, and I nearly got third. And that's the breakthrough year because I got nominated for British Young Driver of the Year. Not just girl. And that was the first time a girl had ever been nominated.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Wow.

[Susie Wolff]

And that's when Toto first heard my name.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh really?

[Susie Wolff]

We were a support race at this big festival. And he tells a story of coming over the loudspeaker, the Formula Renault race coming, this girl that was fighting for the podium. And at the time there was just no girls racing, never mind fighting for a podium. And he remembers thinking to himself, I need to go and find this Susie. Just because he was interested, because he was driver managing at that time.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Right.

[Susie Wolff]

But let's just say I wasn't a very polished version of myself then. So I'm glad he didn't find me.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so you break your ankle. I read jogging. Now you're saying to help Grandma.

[Susie Wolff]

I was exiting the news agents with the milk and the bread and I slipped.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, were you so mad at grandma?

[Susie Wolff]

No. You couldn't be mad at my grandma.

[Dax Shepard]

No, Grandma had taken care of grandpa. She deserved.

[Susie Wolff]

No, it was the other side of the fountain.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, it's the other side of the fountain.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. You could be mad at her.

[Dax Shepard]

No, you couldn't. Okay, so what was the Formula 3 experience? You are on the feeder for Formula 1.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, it's F3. F2, F1.

[Dax Shepard]

If we had to like make an analogy to US sports, to go from carding would be like, you're on a state champion high school team and then to go to single seat Renault, you've gone into college and now when you get to Formula 3, like you're in the professional league. This is very serious.

[Susie Wolff]

You're bubbling, you're.

[Dax Shepard]

How many female drivers were in Formula 3 at that point? Or had been.

[Susie Wolff]

There were a couple races at the time, like Katherine Lake, who's in Indy 500 now, she was racing at that time.

[Dax Shepard]

And how would y' all get along when you saw each other?

[Lily Padman]

Other.

[Dax Shepard]

Cuz this might be counterintuitive. You might think, oh, you would get along so well. But maybe not, because often the tokens are pitted against each other.

[Susie Wolff]

Exactly. We were always pitted. And I felt it was an unnatural to try and form a relationship with someone just because it was another girl.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, right.

[Susie Wolff]

And I remember distinctly then when we made it to German touring cars, they would always arrange these photo shoots just with the girl drivers. I was always so against it. It's like, why do you pit us against each other when we've got everyone else that we need to be?

[Dax Shepard]

Right. Okay, so how did Formula 3 go?

[Susie Wolff]

Well, it didn't because of the ankle testing and then the ankle. And I didn't ever compete in a race. I lost everything that year and went through a really, probably the toughest time of my life. And then I got from an old team boss, I was testing World Series, which was like a competitor to F3, with the thought that I would be racing that the following year under kind of like a sponsorship agreement. But I got called into a meeting in February, six weeks before the first race, and Got told that they kind of miscalculated the marketing budget and I'd need to bring €250,000 or pounds, which just was completely unrealistic for me at that time. I walked out of the meeting and I remember, like, yesterday I was sitting in my Golf TDI and I called my dad. It sounds like I only speak to my dad. I speak to my mum a lot as well. It was just in those moments, it's my dad. And I remember saying to him, well, what am I gonna do? I don't know, toots. And as I was kind of not really knowing what to say to him, a German number was trying to call my phone. So I said, dad, there's another call coming. I'll take this and I'll call you back. And I picked up the phone and this gentleman in a very thick German accent said, this is Ger Unger from Mercedes Benz Motorsport. What do you think of German touring cars now? I tested the car in the British Young Driver of the Year award. So I knew the car. It was 500 horsepower mega touring car.

[Dax Shepard]

A C class Mercedes. Right, Monica, this is your car. Ding, ding, ding.

[Lily Padman]

I have one of those.

[Susie Wolff]

You have a.

[Lily Padman]

Well, it was a gift.

[Susie Wolff]

C63.

[Dax Shepard]

She has a C43. She's not.

[Lily Padman]

He didn't think I was ready.

[Susie Wolff]

You. You were a good colleague.

[Lily Padman]

It was. It was.

[Susie Wolff]

I mean, I don't know the cars or not, but that's a really nice car.

[Dax Shepard]

She's not, but she was making a lot of money and I borrowed her car one day and it was this beat up Toyota Prius and I was driving in traffic and I was fine with this car.

[Susie Wolff]

And I was like, you're not fine with it. Don't say that.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

I was.

[Lily Padman]

And then he was like, you can't have this. We're doing too well for you to be driving this car.

[Dax Shepard]

And I was like, I'm just gonna cap your.

[Susie Wolff]

It says so much about you, which car you drive.

[Lily Padman]

See, I did not grow up like that at. At all. So it didn't. But all to say, I love my car and I love driving.

[Dax Shepard]

And I can hear her coming through the gate when she goes to her house across the street.

[Susie Wolff]

And you really mean that. You get the joy now of.

[Lily Padman]

I understand what it does to you internally, not the speed, unfortunately, but it

[Dax Shepard]

does something to your identity.

[Lily Padman]

It does, it does.

[Dax Shepard]

You infuse its muscularity and its agility.

[Lily Padman]

Confident. It says something about me.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a signal.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, I think it's more than a signal because I give you the counter argument. I live in Monkey, which is really superficial. And everybody drives supercars. So what do I Drive? A 1972 Pagoda. I buck the train of everyone trying to outdo each other.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Susie Wolff]

I get my Pagoda with the roof down and it's like from the 1970s, so you can like bounce along. But I love that. I'm not trying to.

[Dax Shepard]

You guys are also in a 300sl lot. I see. So you can only see.

[Susie Wolff]

Okay, I'll give you that much.

[Dax Shepard]

I'll give you that nicest Mercedes in the world.

[Lily Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

It's her dream car, funny enough.

[Lily Padman]

I know. And Toto said he was going to give me a ride.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Lily Padman]

He offered me.

[Susie Wolff]

Come to Monaco. I'll give you a ride.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, I know.

[Dax Shepard]

Come to Monaco.

[Lily Padman]

Monaco I will.

[Susie Wolff]

Now that you're into cars, come to for Formula One. Formula One Academy.

[Lily Padman]

I love watching Formula one.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so you get this call, we got to get to Williams. But you have a long road to Williams.

[Susie Wolff]

Well, the DTM years, everything hung on that test. I got myself out to Barcelona and one story you will appreciate, I arrive at the track and the Germans are very direct. So I got my seat fitted and they're like, okay, and then we'll do a warm. I said, yeah, can I just do a lap of the track? Like a lap of the track? Do you not know this track? It's like, no, I'd never driven Barcelona before. And they kind of looked at me and then Gerhard Unger kind of said, okay, Micah, come over here. And it was Mika Hakkinen, two time F1 world champion. Show this girl around the track. So there I am in a higher car, Mika Hakkinen showing me the racing lines.

[Dax Shepard]

Is he sober?

[Lily Padman]

Oh, I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that.

[Susie Wolff]

So I obviously gave it the all in the test. They leave me waiting 10 days, but then finally I get called over to Stuttgart, get offered a one year contract and then of course ended up staying for seven and chose to leave off my own back. Met Toto there. I thank my lucky stars to this day. That was my big break.

[Dax Shepard]

Such a sexy car. You were racing way different though, right? So heavy, so big. Was the transition out of one seater easy for you?

[Susie Wolff]

No. And because I'd missed that year of F3, I was up against really, really quick drivers who were after F3 level. So I had a lot of catching up to do. But that's where I come into my comfort zone. I drilled down and I kind of had a great engineer at the time hp, who got me so well prepared for the season because I knew this was my one shot, a one year contract, and managed to pull off a couple of really good races.

[Dax Shepard]

Now here's where we get into the fun. This is your history with Barbie and your history with pink. You've at times had to kind of silence your femininity or felt inclined to. And so they put you in a pink car or you had a pink race car, you had conflicting feelings about this.

[Susie Wolff]

It's really good water, good bubble density, Strong, right?

[Dax Shepard]

And you've let it cool for a while too.

[Lily Padman]

Bubbling.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah. I think in my teenage years I went from that little girl that loved painting to feeling that my femininity was seen as a sign of weakness. So I kind of boxed it away. And then it was really by being made to drive a pink car in DTM because the sponsor was a magazine that had a logo that was pink. But then realizing that, I think because I was older by that point, I was more confident in myself. And suddenly all these little girls started appearing at the track and dressed in pink. And they all asked me, is it the hello Kitty car? Cause it was big hello Kitty time then. And I think that made me realize, well, actually, if pink is going to inspire little girls to come and see my car and to like racing, I can drive a pink car.

[Lily Padman]

It's cool.

[Susie Wolff]

And I think it was also a transition in my life where I got married and Toto was so good at. He never wrapped me in cotton wool. He was tough. But we were a team and I wasn't on my own anymore. And when we got married, the Mercedes Coms and marketing department were like, oh, you can't change your name. I was like, oh, I'm absolutely changing my name. Like, I'm not on my own anymore.

[Lily Padman]

I'm a Wolf.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a good name to take on. You kind of hit the jackpot. It can go sideways.

[Susie Wolff]

And that also gave me a confidence that it just wasn't me on my own anymore.

[Dax Shepard]

He tells the story. So he had crashed at the Nurburgring and he was in the hospital and that you came to see him in the hospital.

[Susie Wolff]

Well, no. We were testing in Portugal because this is the start of our love story. We were testing in Portugal in a track called Esty. And Hans Johan Matis, who was a team manager, he came into the awning where all the drivers were because I had seven teammates. And he said, toto, Wolves had a really bad acts. And now I remember the first time I even saw Toto in the hospitality, I was, well, I can share with you the very first time. So we were sitting at a team dinner, and Matthias Lauda, Niki Lauda's son, was opposite me. And he was a very good friend of mine, him and his brother Lucas, even to this day, but in a brother sister way. And Toto walked in and I'm following him, thinking, who is this guy? I haven't seen him here before. And Matthias is watching my eyes and then turning around to see what I'm looking at. And he, he was like, you're looking at him. And of course my face went bright red. I said, well, no, who is that? He's like, well, his name's Toto Wolf and you've got no chance. He's dating Ms. Austria.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This is when all your friends are men. This is how they talk to you.

[Susie Wolff]

So I'd obviously noticed Toto, but he was off balance. And then when Hanji Yoga Matis walked in and said, totobos had a really bad accident in Nurburgring, I was kind of like, I hope he's okay. It hit me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Susie Wolff]

And he said, well, I think it'd be really nice if one of the drivers you called as a group and Gary Paff, who was kind of de facto more senior driver, said, yeah, that's a really good idea, Susie, you should call him. Oh, I was like, yes, I'll call him.

[Dax Shepard]

I guess I have to.

[Susie Wolff]

I guess I have to, right?

[Lily Padman]

I'll do it on behalf.

[Susie Wolff]

And then suddenly I had his number. Oh, and a reason to call.

[Dax Shepard]

And then you go see him in person and then.

[Susie Wolff]

No, I called him.

[Dax Shepard]

No, it was just a call.

[Susie Wolff]

I called him and it should have been like a 10 minute. The drivers are all wishing you well, but we were on the phone for like an hour. And then he said, I'm going to get better in the next kind of 10 days. The doctors say I'll be fine and I'll see you in Dusseldorf for the big presentation of the championship. So, of course I'm counting down the days he'll Dusseldorf outfits thinking, this is going to be brilliant in Dusseldorf. So we have this big dinner the night before. I did everything, like, everything. And I'm sitting at the dinner, he's not there. And I'm thinking, okay, he's going to walk in any second. Long story short, he doesn't turn up the dinner.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, Jesus.

[Susie Wolff]

Gutted Toto. Thank you.

[Dax Shepard]

Come on.

[Susie Wolff]

So, comes to breakfast the next morning and I say to myself, I'm not even gonna get in dress straight into my race suit, hair tied back. Who cares about toy?

[Dax Shepard]

He's an arrogant Austrian.

[Susie Wolff]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Shithead.

[Susie Wolff]

So I go down to breakfast, and he comes over to the table all jolly and kind of sits near me. I said, well, what happened to you at the dinner last night? He said, yeah, I called one of your teammates to check where it was. And he said, don't bother coming. It's boring. And I'm looking at the guy that he called.

[Lily Padman]

That person was in love with you.

[Susie Wolff]

No, he wasn't. Even.

[Dax Shepard]

I like that. Take. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you don't want to come. Everyone just left. Bye, Cody.

[Lily Padman]

It's really boring here. It sounds like almost like an snl. It's boring here. Like, don't come.

[Dax Shepard]

Everyone got food poisoning. It's a mess. Don't come.

[Susie Wolff]

So we talk a bit and all the butterflies come up. And then I go off to do my thing, and he's off to do his thing. And then at the lunch break, all the drivers and kind of the management around, and they're talking and of course, comes to people's love lives. And I was actually dating someone from another team, but who was a manager, not a racing driver. Someone then said to Toto, you know, how's it going after Miss Austria? And then someone said, well, isn't it time that you dated someone at Mercedes, Suzie? And I kind of said, well, there's nobody at Mercedes. And then Toto, in front of everyone, said, well, sure, there's me. What about me? Of course, my face. And I'm looking down at the ground, trying to laugh along. So I didn't really see him for the rest of the afternoon, but when I left to drive back to Switzerland, I had one of those thoughts where it's now or never. So I got my phone, I pulled into a fuel station 10 times, drafted this text message, and it basically said, if it had to be someone from Mercedes, it would only ever be you.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow, Suzy.

[Susie Wolff]

I put it all out there. I put it all out there.

[Lily Padman]

I. Soozy.

[Susie Wolff]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm jealous that I want this text.

[Susie Wolff]

So I sent it and then got back on the motorway, and I got a reply pretty quickly. And I remember because it could have gone either way, like, oh, you're so sweet.

[Dax Shepard]

But no, yeah, get real. Miss Germany has just become available. It turns out I'll circle back after

[Lily Padman]

I get all the misses.

[Dax Shepard]

I've got a few more countries to go.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, but no, the message back was something about, I'm getting in a plane. Oh, that's nice. I'll call you. I'm like, what? Oh, boy. So it wasn't like a. No, it wasn't. Yes. But then he called two hours later, and that was.

[Dax Shepard]

That was it.

[Susie Wolff]

That was it.

[Dax Shepard]

You guys were engaged eight months later, then. It's fast.

[Susie Wolff]

He bought the ring six weeks later.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my gosh.

[Susie Wolff]

And we were engaged eight months later. It was an immediate click.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, quickly. Are you sensitive at all about talking about Toto or. No?

[Susie Wolff]

No.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Great.

[Dax Shepard]

Because I wanted to. To ask. Tell me about the cultural chasm between the Scottish and the Austrians. Right. So you've already hinted at a couple of them. It's like, very direct.

[Susie Wolff]

Very direct.

[Dax Shepard]

Some of the things he said to you over your. We'll get to. But when you drive for the first time in Formula one, he's like, don't be shit.

[Lily Padman]

It was like giving you a pep talk.

[Susie Wolff]

Well, I thought it was going to be this big pep talk. And he just looked at me. I was like, don't be shit.

[Lily Padman]

Did you get in a fight? Did you say, hey, you need to be a little softer? Or. No, no.

[Susie Wolff]

That fires up something in me. I thought to my.

[Lily Padman]

Well, yes. Your whole life is about saying, like, you think. Okay.

[Susie Wolff]

You think, I can't, I will.

[Dax Shepard]

It's her fuel. Like, Jordan.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you watch the Last Dance?

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And he just has to come up with an enemy. He's like, I'm gonna pick this guy from the team. You know, he makes up a story why he hates this guy.

[Lily Padman]

It's a good one.

[Susie Wolff]

I could share with you just how direct he is. The night before our wedding, well, the day we were signing the paperwork, he was very quiet. And the next morning said, is everything okay? He's like, yeah, I think so. I've done a positive and negative list.

[Lily Padman]

Oh. Oh, my God.

[Susie Wolff]

And there's more positive than negatives.

[Lily Padman]

I'm like, oh, my God.

[Susie Wolff]

Excuse me.

[Dax Shepard]

That's not very romantic.

[Susie Wolff]

Excuse me. I was like, I don't care what's on that list. We're getting married.

[Lily Padman]

We're getting married tomorrow. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Too late for that list.

[Lily Padman]

Throw that list. Oh, my God. That is so funny.

[Susie Wolff]

I think I was really lucky that Toto was nearly 10 years older or just over 10 years older than me. So he'd been married once before. He had two wonderful little kids. So he'd kind of been through it and knew exactly what he wanted, probably

[Dax Shepard]

what to do differently, hopefully.

[Susie Wolff]

Exactly. And I come from such a wonderful family who really embraced him. And, you know, he lost his father at a young age. So I think through me he saw this sense of family and this loyalty to each other that we stick together through thick and thick.

[Dax Shepard]

And probably his dream dad, fucking racing motorcycles, owning a shop, Speed, Speed Speed. Yeah, that's a good family to click into.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah. And I definitely struggled and I have obviously speak to my step kids about it now. I struggled at the beginning because I was this selfish racing driver who suddenly on certain weekends would have to be a mother. And I just had no idea how to be in that situation. And I knew from my childhood and obviously the respect to his ex wife that I didn't want to come in and pretend to be like a second mother. So that took a bit of navigating.

[Dax Shepard]

But then things come up and you are mothering.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Susie Wolff]

And there was a little girl, I mean Rosie, the cutest little girl you could imagine. And you feel so much affection, but then you don't want to overstep.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, it's a fine line.

[Susie Wolff]

And we weren't married then, so you're just trying to navigate. That wasn't easy at the beginning, but he was very understanding of it. And then when we got married, it all became just much easier because we knew, okay, we're a unit and we'll figure this out. And it wasn't like I was going to disappear or anything.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm going to talk in broad stereotypes right now, so forgive me. There's going to be tons of exceptions to this rule that are Austrian. There's tons of exceptions that are male. But. But a very common tension with men and women around me is the woman says something, the man hears, oh, she's asking me to fix this problem. And then they start laying on, I'm going to fix this. And the woman's like, hey, man, I just wanted some compassion. I wanted you to just be with me with this. So that's like already a male, female thing that kind of exists. And then I think Austrian, Scottish, Scottish are much more Gaelic. We got flutes, we're very expressive. Right. We're dancing around in the kilts, you know, it's a different culture. So I feel like that would even compound this male female thing a little

[Susie Wolff]

bit completely because I'm someone that's pretty tough. Like I give you example. Like when I get ill, Todo's like, do you need anything? I'm like, no, no, no, I'll be okay. Okay. So he just disappears. Oh my God, like six hours later he comes back, I'm like, did you have a nice dinner? He's like, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Are you better yet?

[Susie Wolff]

Do you think of bringing me anything or checking on me?

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Susie Wolff]

Well, are you better yet? I'm like, no. You're like, oh, well.

[Lily Padman]

He's like, no, you said you didn't need anything.

[Susie Wolff]

It bores him. Whereas if he gets ill, the world stops.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Susie Wolff]

The world stops. And he's like, no, but what you had can't be what I have because it's so bad.

[Lily Padman]

I can't.

[Dax Shepard]

Certainly the same virus. I. I gave it to you, now you have it. And how do you like it exactly?

[Susie Wolff]

I definitely have to say he's got better with age. I arrived here yesterday and he wanted to surprise me by coming to the airport, which after we've been married, 15 together, kind of 17 and a half, and I obviously had a car booked to pick me up, and he wanted to surprise me, but he didn't realize that one of the group chats that he was speaking to our office on, I was also on. So he's like, I want to surprise her. I'm going to cancel her car. I'm coming to the airport. And I'm reading this in the airplane. I'm like, that's so sick. Good intention.

[Lily Padman]

Such a good intention. That is sweet.

[Susie Wolff]

It's very sweet.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so now back to your racing.

[Susie Wolff]

Back to racing.

[Dax Shepard]

After racing for DTM for seven years, I guess, how do you get called to Williams?

[Susie Wolff]

Frank Williams had come to watch a German touring car race, DTM race at Brands Hatch. But at the same time, Toto was looking to possibly enter Formula One by investing. He looked at Toro Rosso at the time, was looking at Williams. So I don't shy away from the fact that I was on the radar, obviously, also being Toto's wife. And Frank, I remember at the time

[Dax Shepard]

because his daughter hadn't started running the team.

[Susie Wolff]

No, she was simply working in the team. And it was actually Toto was a big part in picking Claire up and saying, you need to be on the board. You need to be more involved, and you're a Williams. But let's just say for Frank, he came from the era where women definitely didn't go out on the track to race. You know, they were very much behind the scenes. And I was teammates at that time with David Coulthardt and Ralph Schumacher, former drivers of his. He was always so interested in asking me about my racing. How did you start? And you're Scottish. And he went to boarding school in Scotland and hated it. So we always had this joking about how I loved Scotland and He hated Scotland. And I said to him in one of those conversations, well, it's my big dream to drive a Formula one car. And at the end of the weekend he called over Adam Parr, who was the CEO at the time, and he said, we've got something to tell you. We're going to give you 25 laps in an F1 car. And that's all it was ever supposed to be.

[Dax Shepard]

And at that point you had not been in a single seat, massive aero car. So like you're rusty for this.

[Susie Wolff]

Rusty. But DTM was a high level, so it wasn't like it was completely detached

[Dax Shepard]

but just open wheel, closed, tons of downforce.

[Susie Wolff]

A Formula one car is completely different to anything else.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, we've interviewed a few drivers at this point, but just to remind people, the easiest way to say it is like the car is creating so much downforce, it's a reverse airplane. It has a lot of aerodynamics to create the opposite of lift. And so it's pushing the car really far down. And the current car weighs like 980 kg or something.

[Susie Wolff]

Love how informed.

[Lily Padman]

He's very informed.

[Dax Shepard]

But the car's creating 2,000 kilograms of downforce. So for real, the car at a certain speed, speed could drive upside down just fine. So you just got to remember that's the element in F1 that's not in other racing.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And that's why at Silverstone you can take a right hander in seventh gear going 190 miles an hour, a sharp right hander, and be stuck to the. And that's a leap of faith.

[Susie Wolff]

It is, because it's counter intuitive that the more speed you have, the more downforce you have and the more you're

[Dax Shepard]

going to stick to the ground. You got to unravel everything you've learned almost.

[Susie Wolff]

But the great thing is, and I was really lucky because as soon as that decision was made, I mean really hats off to Williams. I was put through my pasties in the simulator, straight line tests, everything to get me ready to perform in that test. There was no way I was getting in without being really ready for it.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. Talk about the physicality.

[Susie Wolff]

The physicality was harder to prepare for. I ended up getting access to the machine that Michael Schumacher built at the end of his career to build up only your neck muscles. And interestingly, when I stopped racing, within months my neck had just shrunk in size because neck muscles build up quickly but shrink quickly.

[Dax Shepard]

Susie wears her hair always down to cover her neck. She's insecure about how big her traps.

[Susie Wolff]

Not anymore. I mean with the ball.

[Dax Shepard]

Back in the day.

[Susie Wolff]

Back in the day, yeah.

[Lily Padman]

My Botox guy says I have a thick neck as well.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, is he Botox? But you don't.

[Lily Padman]

But I guess I do. We work to keep it small,

[Dax Shepard]

but

[Lily Padman]

maybe I could have driven F1. Oh my God. Miss my calling.

[Dax Shepard]

But in a nutshell. So, yes, your body at rest, if you weigh 150 pounds at one atmospheric pressure, you weigh 150 pounds. But as G forces go up, there are moments on the track. I know the one that got you really hardcore was breaking. You'll hit 4.5 G's braking and it's

[Susie Wolff]

like something coming behind you, forcing your head forward because you're strapped so tight into the seat and the seat's made for you and everything's down to the millimeter. So you're really well strapped in. You need very, very strong braking leg because the brake pressure is important. And then there's power steering in the car. So it's not actually your arm muscles that take the strain, it's your neck. But Lewis had said to me, put a neck pad in, paint it white so people can't really see it. It fades into the car.

[Dax Shepard]

This is in Barcelona. There's one really, really long turn and he like, use it. Cuz if your neck goes. You had to do 72 laps at Barcelona.

[Susie Wolff]

It was a test to see if I could do a race distance. And he said if your neck goes, which means you just can't hold up anymore, he said you'll have to stop and you don't want to stop. So he said use. He said, I do it at the beginning of a season as well before my neck muscles get built up. And that was one of the best tips because he said as you just entered right lean, so don't even try because it's like being on a roller coaster but trying to keep your head straight. It's nearly impossible.

[Dax Shepard]

20 turns for 72 laps, it's like impossible. Yeah, yeah. If your head weighs 18 pounds, it now weighs 90 pounds in the turn.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, those very first 20 laps, it was a damp track to begin with, which helps G force, but it's more challenging to be on a damp track. But there was never a moment on that day where because they'd done such a good job in the preparation, obviously there was so much media around the fact that a girl was getting back in an F1 car which they had underestimated and I didn't even think would factor but to your point earlier, it then worked in my favor because they realized I did well in the day and this is a big opportunity because this amount of interest for the team is hugely valuable. So they developed a role for me because it was in November and the team was already set for the following year. Development driver, which is a common term in F1 now. A development driver.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So what were your duties as a development driver?

[Susie Wolff]

Lots of simulator work, lots of straight line tests and then some testing throughout the season because it wasn't as limited as it is now. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

So when you get called and told you're gonna drive in practice at Silver SP for the British Grand Prix at that time it had been 22 years since a female had been on a track in an F1 car.

[Lily Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

How'd that decision come about and what was your response?

[Susie Wolff]

So I did that one test that went well and then I became development driver and I was doing steady work of not crashing the car. Straight line test and it was all kind of a natural development. And I was obviously also pushing to say, well, what's next? Because you're getting used a lot in the media and there had to be an authenticity to it and to be fair to Williams, they also just didn't want it to be a show. It had to have something.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, people were accusing it of being some kind of promotional media completely.

[Susie Wolff]

So we felt then, well, there had to be substance to it and that's why it just kept progressively getting to be more opportunity.

[Dax Shepard]

So just talk about the morning waking up. I can already imagine this. You'd love to go into that day very rested, but of course the brain is like there's no way you can sleep the night before.

[Lily Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

And Toto's next to you. He has a race as well. He's now principal of Mercedes in this time. And so you're just up all night, right?

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, it was really difficult because there was so many thoughts going through my head and the first thing I did when I woke up is you immediately check the weather because that plays such a big part in and if it was going to be damp. And the very difficult thing with FP1 sessions is that I was taking Valtteri Bottas car and if I caused any damage it had a huge impact on his race weekend. So you're very much told by the team, we're going to let you go for a fast lap because it means nothing to me if I can't go out and do a fast lap. Everyone's looking and I'd rather Not drive than just drive around slowly, be 20th on the. Exactly. But the golden rule is there's no way you can crash that car.

[Dax Shepard]

Yet the amount of stress that you're taking on, on, it's not even a real fair test of what you do this moment that people that aren't into cars wouldn't understand. But, like, the most humiliating thing you can do is stall a car. So even just right there, you getting out of the garage is like, packed with stress. No.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I was just like, stall or

[Susie Wolff]

not got out the garage. And it was the first thing my dad said to me when I came. And he's like, thank God you didn't stall.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, you're either gonna stall or spin the tires, which you don't want to do because then you're all out of control. Leaving the garage, there's like this tiny little window, but you get out, you gotta be like, okay,

[Susie Wolff]

first hurdle.

[Dax Shepard]

And then you get out there. And what is the experience like once you're on track?

[Susie Wolff]

Well, my very first test was a great experience. The FP1 at Silverstone. My wonderful Mercedes engine blew after one lap. And that was such an anti climax.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yes, yes, yes. Okay. But then you go back to out. You do another practice session in Spain.

[Susie Wolff]

Hockenheim. That was where I made my German touring car debut.

[Dax Shepard]

Now, this is a big day because on this day, you ended up finishing the practice session just two tenths off of Philippe Masa's.

[Susie Wolff]

Was it two? I thought it was one.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. The Internet says two.

[Lily Padman]

I'll give you.

[Dax Shepard]

It was probably.

[Susie Wolff]

No, I think I probably my hair to have is 1. It was probably 2.

[Lily Padman]

2.

[Dax Shepard]

10 of a second next to the team driver. Driver is awesome.

[Susie Wolff]

But that was such a different mentality to Silverstone because I think the disappointment of Silverstone, I got to Hockenheim and I was in such a different statement. I was like, yeah, let me get out there. I have to use this chance.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm pissed off. Yeah, it's a good fuel source.

[Susie Wolff]

And I was so thankful I had that other chance because I thought if it had just been that and the engine had gone. So I was so grateful. And there was just one corner. I knew that there was a chance of hitting the gravel. So that's where I lost about a tenth and a half. Everywhere else on the track, I was on the limit. The feeling of driving an F1 car on the edge, I think there's nothing else that comes close.

[Dax Shepard]

Everything's happening so fast. There isn't a single stray thought about anything else. It requires such concentration and looking ahead nonstop that it is a unique state to find yourself in completely.

[Susie Wolff]

And if you ask some of the current F1 drivers, some. Some even prefer qualifying because it's all down to that one lap. Whereas in a race, you're always having to think of, okay, when the pit stops where you are in the race, everything. Whereas in qualifying, it's everything into one lap. And it's such a hyper focus. It's a special feeling.

[Dax Shepard]

How fatigued did you feel at the end of Germany?

[Susie Wolff]

Zero. I was so hyped and pumping with adrenaline.

[Dax Shepard]

The neck was huge.

[Susie Wolff]

I won't say that by the. Yeah, the neck was ball team. You need to tell your Botox doctor if he wants to see a big neck, I'll send him pictures. I mean, don't get me wrong, by the evening, I was completely. The adrenaline had worn out. But for me, it was the best day of my career.

[Dax Shepard]

You ultimately retired in 2015, although you do have a race in 16. Race of champions.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah, that's more like a fun event for current and ex drivers.

[Dax Shepard]

You have Cute Jack in 17.

[Susie Wolff]

Best thing I've ever done. Yeah.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What could be better? You become the team principal in Formula E for Venturi racing scene.

[Susie Wolff]

It was a team that was at the back losing a lot of money. And I was searching for what to do after stopping my racing career. I was fighting a complete lack of identity. Yes, I had fallen, as much as I love being a mother, very quickly realized that I can't only be a mother. So was searching to find that thing. And then the formal E opportunity came and I was a real skeptic of formally at the beginning. So I was like electric racing cars. That wasn't my era. But it gained a lot of momentum when Dieselgate happened and electrification became a big thing and a tough challenge.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, because Team Principal is a much different role than driver.

[Susie Wolff]

Hugely different.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You're a manager, you're an inspirer. You're so many things.

[Susie Wolff]

And I had a lot to learn. But I had watched Toto closely start to become very successful in F1, and I kind of had a front row seat of hearing what his challenges were of watching him do it. So I knew what the job entailed. And formidy obviously is this much smaller scale than F1. And my business partner who offered me the role and took a real leap of faith in me, Gilles do Pasteur, was someone I just had a good connection with and felt, okay, I can trust him. And we turned the Team around and then nearly won the Formula E world championship.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And then you became the CEO of that team. Why did you leave? You left in 2022.

[Susie Wolff]

We sold the team. Gilda wanted to exit and move into the space industry. He wanted to build an electric rover to go on Mars.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Susie Wolff]

Which we were set to do together again, until I got the call from Stefano Dominic for F1 Academy.

[Dax Shepard]

All right, so tell people what F1 Academy is.

[Susie Wolff]

F1 Academy is a series started by F1, which is for all female drivers. We nearly fully fund the drivers in the series, and it's basically a platform or series to give female talent the opportunity in the sport to break down the preconceptions that it's a man's world and to kind of inspire the next generation to see that there's a place for women in the sport.

[Dax Shepard]

And it's a response to noticing. Right. The demographic of fans was changing pretty dramatically. Like, a lot of young females were coming in as spectators of the. The sport.

[Susie Wolff]

It had shifted massively because of the show.

[Dax Shepard]

I bet that's part of.

[Lily Padman]

Definitely got a lot of people who didn't know about F1 to be.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm into Formula 1 because of drive to survive. I was like, oh, yeah. I was like, that's the boringest racing in the world. They don't ever pass each other. Who cares? And then once I found out, like, how much is going into the. Nobody passes anybody. I'm like, oh, there's so much going on that I just didn't know. It's a science fair. F1.

[Susie Wolff]

It completely is. And then there's drama off track as well as on track. The politics.

[Dax Shepard]

What a show. What a show.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So, yeah, they had all these new

[Susie Wolff]

female spectators and a very young female demographic. And I have to give credit to Stephano, to Liberty, they said, okay, we need to create something that gives opportunity to young women because they recognized that it was shifting. And would I have started an all female senior? I mean, we are the only race series in the world that over 80% funds our drivers. So basically, we're giving half a million euros to every driver in order to do a season and really have the possibility to nurture their talent and allow them to develop.

[Dax Shepard]

But in some weird way, did you have to step over the notion that this is going backwards? We're trying to get women and men to race together. So if we split this off, is that lowering the bar for the women?

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah. And there was someone that had tried, tried and failed before called W Series, and people had always said, oh, why didn't you get involved in support? But I didn't get involved. I didn't understand the business model. I didn't understand how they were going to make it work and they were doing it as a business venture. So it was more that I didn't understand the sustainability of how to make into a business. Whereas with F1 Academy, it was backed by F1, it had the investment from Liberty. It was set up very differently.

[Dax Shepard]

I think we should talk about that. When you got there, the driver was responsible for a third of the budget. Liberty was going to give a third, and then F1 gives a third, or

[Susie Wolff]

someone else gave the driver one third, the team one third and Liberty one third.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. So this is a lot of onus on a young driver and there's not a lot of sponsor money flooding into this new thing. So when you got there, it wasn't actually tenable.

[Susie Wolff]

It wasn't tenable at all. And I will never forget the first time I. Because there was a lot to get the contract on board. I obviously had to exit from the space project and I was letting Gildo down. So it all took a bit of management. So by the time I got to my first. First race, I remember getting near. It was Paul Ricard in South of France thinking, there's no cars around. Why is this so empty? And I got to the entrance and there wasn't even a security guy on the entrance. I'm thinking, it's really strange. And I get to the paddock.

[Dax Shepard]

You thought you had the wrong date.

[Susie Wolff]

Maybe I thought I'd said something.

[Dax Shepard]

Wrong calendar.

[Susie Wolff]

And I get out of my car and I'm immediately met by drivers who say, you know, I just want to give you the heads up. I can't find the 1/3 sponsorship money. It was €150,000. Then some of the team managers came and said, we're not finding any sponsorship out there. So we're out.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, boy.

[Dax Shepard]

You're finding out you've taken on a role where it's collapsing, basically.

[Susie Wolff]

And I called Stephan, I said, listen, this is not working. He's like, okay, well, what do we need to do? I was like, I don't know just now, but let me figure it out. Give me time. And that's when I quickly realized, okay, we need to race with F1. We need to get the F1 teams on board and we need to get commercial partners on board and bring all the assets in house.

[Dax Shepard]

And so then you go through this precarious building of commitment from the teams and you go to Toto first, who's

[Susie Wolff]

like, get everyone else.

[Dax Shepard]

And then you're the first one in. You're going to hop the goods six. And then I can be the seventh.

[Lily Padman]

Toto never like, get it.

[Susie Wolff]

No, you can't show favoritism.

[Lily Padman]

Exactly.

[Susie Wolff]

And I completely get that. It wasn't even that I felt angry about. I completely understood.

[Dax Shepard]

So you were able to do that though. You got six teams. You had to go to Horner, which is its own unique thing because of the. The rivalry between Toto and.

[Susie Wolff]

But to be fair to him, he was great.

[Dax Shepard]

He was quick in.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You were able to make this kind of a viable off. And then how has the success of

[Susie Wolff]

it unfolded with the F1 teams? I didn't sign them up long term. I said, listen, if this doesn't work, you can all leave. I'm not obliging you because what I didn't want it to be was a charity. Yeah, a charity, but also like a feminist crusade as against the world. It wasn't. I said to them, you know, I think this will be for the greater good of the sport. We have this new fan demographic, but it's got to work. And if it doesn't, you're all free to leave. Because this is not something I'm obliging you to do that you feel you have to do. And then within the year, it kind of started gaining momentum. And then when I kind of at the beginning of this year went to all the teams, it was clear that they wanted to sign up for the long term. And we have commercial partners, but it's just really gone from strength to strength. But I don't take all the credit for that because I do think the sport in itself should take the credit because they've created this opportunity and they've all got on board with it.

[Dax Shepard]

And they made some compromises they hadn't in the past. Like they're letting you use the logo in a way that other teams can't. They've carved out some provisions to be helpful. And then you got some major sponsors. You got Hilfiger, you got a makeup brand that I don't know Charlotte Tilbury.

[Susie Wolff]

Now we have Sephora.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Sephora.

[Susie Wolff]

We have Pepsi with Gatorade. We have American Express, Lego Marquee, the maiden F1 Academy car.

[Lily Padman]

Cute.

[Susie Wolff]

The commercial partnerships were very strategic in that I want your 13 year old, or however old your daughter is, to feel some affinity. Well, I can belong there. There's a place for me in this sport. So when she goes to a cart track or another little 8 year old goes to cart track, she's like, I can do this. Because she's seen others doing it and she sees the pathway and it just takes one. But it can change everything.

[Dax Shepard]

It makes that reality possible.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you have any part of scouting who will join the academy? Do you have fun observing, observing young racers and thinking who would be. Are they already coming by way of the teams?

[Susie Wolff]

It's kind of a mixture. I get a lot of fun and that's a little bit why I wrote the book of passing on all my learnings. Because I really feel as women, especially when you have knowledge and experience, it's so important to pass it on to the next generation because it can help so much for others not to face the same battles you did. So I do love that I'm giving them a chance because I got chances in my life that I'm kind of passing on the challenges that they can learn from. They don't have to go through themselves. And I love being on the race weekends and seeing them take this opportunity. And we still have our skeptics and we still have our egomaniacs in the paddock who will always be negative about it. I know them and I know their opinions are never going to change. But that's okay because I feel the momentum of it as a whole. And I think ultimately, you know, we see more young girls turning up a carting tracks and a lot of the

[Dax Shepard]

young women are very popular. Like they'll outpace the popularity of some F3 drivers. Like if I look at Instagram and stuff, you have drivers that are pretty wildly popular, which is cool.

[Susie Wolff]

Which is very cool.

[Dax Shepard]

Now, if you had to distill everything you know of your last 30 plus years navigating a fully male environment, what advice do you have as far as like, no, you can be out loud and be pink, but also here's a reality that you're not going to get around.

[Lily Padman]

I mean, do you think you can

[Susie Wolff]

be out loud and pink now? I do. Looking back, you know, it was so funny because at the end of the book my brother kind of said, oh, what would you tell little Susie? And when I sat down it was like, not what I can tell her, it's what that little girl, that belief she had in herself, that fearlessness, that ambition, that little girl who said at 13, I want to make it to F1 despite the fact there was nobody that looked like her doing that. And I sometimes think that if we go back to the child in us, what would your life be if you had no limitations, if you didn't have society's poor, constant perceptions shoved on you of what your life should look like and what you should be for all my years, and that's where the books give me so much perspective, because I think I compartmentalize. I'm always looking forward. I never really looked backwards to think, okay, well, how was the journey? What did I learn? But I think it's having that belief in yourself, and sometimes there'll be moments of your life where you do doubt yourself. There's moments where I'm not sure I've got this all under control, but you got to have that belief.

[Dax Shepard]

Are there, like, domains that you've seen where it's like, oh, yeah, that's how it is. And this is where I can make progress.

[Susie Wolff]

I think where we are in the sport now, compared to. To even just five years ago, even 10 years ago, there's been a huge shift culturally, and maybe it's linked to society and the whole MeToo movement. And some say, oh, it went too far. It helped industries like ours because, let's say, the behaviors of certain individuals, and I don't want to say it's black marking everyone, but the culture changed. You don't get away with it anymore.

[Dax Shepard]

You're seeing it everywhere across the board. You're seeing these older figures in Formula one putting their feet in the. Their mouth pretty regularly. Like, in the last five years, there's all this residual racism that you're like, whoa, wait, what'd he say? A German driver has a different mind than a Mexican driver. You know, there's been a lot of rapidly evolving ideas, and I think Lewis

[Susie Wolff]

should take some credit for it.

[Lily Padman]

Definitely.

[Susie Wolff]

You know, he's someone that the easiest thing to do is just follow the trodden path. But he chose to be different. He brought a culture into the sport. He made that entry into the pitch like a catwalk for all of us, which has been great for the sport. But he chose to stand up for what he believed in, and he chose to be different because that's who he was. And that also helped moved it all forward.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. When your most valuable asset is being out loud about racism, what choice do you. You can't silence that person.

[Susie Wolff]

And he's the goat.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Susie Wolff]

If he says it, people are forced

[Dax Shepard]

to listen back to the objectivity. You can say what you want. This guy's won a hundred races. He has the goods.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah. But definitely what I see now, the minute I go into an important meeting, I can tell within the first 10 minutes. If the man at the table has a. Because it's such a different view when you're a man with a daughter at the table. Because it's as if you're able to see the situation through what your daughter would experience.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And you want the world to be the most inviting place for her.

[Susie Wolff]

And even some of the decision makers in the sport who maybe their daughters are not going to come into the sport but you can see them understanding. Yeah, I get that. Because actually would I want my daughter to be treated like that or not get that opportunity? No, I wouldn't. And so they're much more proactive and I think that's also changed because the leaders now, they are the next generation and they want this sport to be in the right place.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Stefano's just a good dude on top of everything else. He's not like some of the previous heads of F1. Yeah. He's an evolved guy. You've been fearless. What has it been like watching your son be in karts?

[Susie Wolff]

Well, it's so interesting your story with your daughter because Jack is really into racing. He has been from a young age and you could argue well he's surrounded by it. But Toto is very agape against him getting into racing because he kind of felt why would we do that to ourselves? You know, with the name and it's our industry. And I kind of said to him I get that. But I got given that chance and if he really wants it, I'm not going to not give him the chance.

[Dax Shepard]

He got scared. Toto got scared by one accident.

[Susie Wolff]

He is a parent that has fear for his kids or just anything happening in general.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Susie Wolff]

But he also when we started going to the kart track he could see how much Jack got into it. And now we have to the life of the motor home, the racing and those are some of the best weekends we have. Cuz it's back to basics and it's together as a family and it's seeing this little guy have to dig deep in moments. And yes, his name makes him a target.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Susie Wolff]

But I say to myself, well it'll toughen him up because no matter what he does in life and whether he's good enough or not, he'll have to figure it out. But I think sport for a young person just teaches you so many life.

[Dax Shepard]

How about you driving? Do you still get joy out of driving? Do you do track days?

[Susie Wolff]

I don't have capacity because now every weekend and I'm not if one weekend it's with Jack. On the cart track, I kind of feel I had my turn grade. I still love driving fast. Toto and I, I think if we would have a free weekend, we would love nothing more than to get on a racetrack with a GT car or something. But then it can always end up with us not speaking to each other because we both want to beat each other.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. But he was very honest about he tries to cheat every time and that you're always a half second faster. No matter what cheating he does. I love that he put different tires on the cart. He put ballast in your cart can't be beat. No matter what, you're still half second, always faster.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah. There will be a moment in time where we will be the old ones out on track.

[Dax Shepard]

I hope we're best friends.

[Susie Wolff]

Hanging on and still giving it.

[Dax Shepard]

I'll be there with you.

[Lily Padman]

So cool.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I'll tell you what your book does a great job of. The book's called Driven is you really do a good job of helping people understand what it's like to be sitting in the car strapped. And the experience of it is so unique. And you do a great first person job of explaining what that feels like. That's a very unique perspective.

[Susie Wolff]

Well, that's a real compliment coming from you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's so unique. And I think it's so applicable to any situation where it's like, okay, I've been aiming at nothing but this. We're now here. Oh, fuck. You don't have to be into racing to have that experience. You're pitching, Ching, for the first time as the head of your department, and this is the day. And I think it's highly relatable. I adore you and I'm really glad I got to meet you.

[Susie Wolff]

You're gonna make me blush.

[Lily Padman]

This is so great.

[Dax Shepard]

But Driven is out now also. People can listen to it, which I advise you.

[Lily Padman]

Read it.

[Susie Wolff]

I read it. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Nice.

[Dax Shepard]

Was that daunting?

[Susie Wolff]

You know, my publisher said, oh, you need five days. I like, I don't have five days. So I did it in two.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. So it's like therapy.

[Susie Wolff]

I kind of got into a rhythm. I really enjoyed it.

[Dax Shepard]

And did you have this moment? I think sometimes when I've read what I've written, it helps me integrate what happened in my life.

[Susie Wolff]

I found it was a lot more work than I anticipated. And we were perfectionists. We got to nine drafts, my brother and I, but I found the whole experience really enjoyable and therapeutic. Definitely.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Like, it helps you take a minute and recognize. Oh, right. I really did go through all those things, and I survived all those things, and I can survive. Did you get unexpectedly emotional while reading it ever?

[Lily Padman]

Oh, yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. What parts?

[Susie Wolff]

The hardest was a letter to little Susie. I took like five attempts. Cause I kept welling up because I guess it was a moment where I was speaking to myself in a way, but it was very emotional.

[Dax Shepard]

I bet I know what was going on, which is Susie's been talking so mean to herself since she was a little kid. And you got to be kind to her. And you probably deserved a little kindness from yourself.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And that's really hard.

[Susie Wolff]

That is so true. It was always more. It was always, you got to keep going. This is not good enough. And keep.

[Dax Shepard]

And then suddenly yourself.

[Susie Wolff]

I look at that little girl and I want to give her a hug.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Just take a break for a second.

[Lily Padman]

And aren't you proud of her?

[Susie Wolff]

And so thankful to my parents, looking back. But this little girl who had this dream and drive and ambition. It's like I just want to hug her and. And say, you did okay. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It's stressful having a huge dream.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, God.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, Susie, I adore you. This has been so fun. Everybody driven. I' glad you wrote it. You're so good for the sport. And I hope we get to talk to you again. I really hope we're like in our 70s driving the Nurburgring together on a weekend.

[Susie Wolff]

I think let's do a trip to the TT and then from there go straight to Nurburgring, do a few laps.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm in. I took Kristen the Nurburgring in a rental.

[Susie Wolff]

But do you know the track?

[Dax Shepard]

I didn't. That was my first time there. I rented a car at Avis rental car at Frankfurt airport. And I asked the German Davis rental guy, could you put into the nav because it was all in German. Can you put in the Nurburgring? Oh, no, you must not drive this car on the ring. I said, oh, no, no, no. I would never drive this. No, you must not. I go, no, no. I'm going to go spectate. I just want to look at it from far. Okay. He reluctantly put it in. Sure enough, we went and just bought laps and yeah. Went out and we were in a pack between a GT2 and a GT3. We were in like base 911, but it was so fun. But anyways, Kristen just like reading a magazine the whole time. The bull's coming up. You got to look at the. But she could care less. She's just like reading. Yeah.

[Susie Wolff]

I just have One funny story to share with you. When I just joined Mercedes Benz for dtm, we'd done pre season testing, we'd done the first race and then I got told to go to Nurburgring. And I was a young Scottish girl that really only in single seaters had driven nationally in the uk. So Bernd Schneider who was like the king of dtm, he's like, oh, let's go and do a lap of the Nurburgring. And I'm like what's the Nurburgring? He's like come with me. Oh boy.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Susie Wolff]

Get in the C63. The barrier goes up and he takes off and I'm like. And because I didn't know what it was in the corners. This is a never ending racing track.

[Dax Shepard]

It's like a 12.8 mile mile lap and there's every different surface. You're almost on cobblestone at one point it's like you're in the cement bowl. Then you're on asphalt, then you're in the woods.

[Susie Wolff]

Incredible.

[Dax Shepard]

Then if it starts raining, things get really exciting. What's happened to us? Okay. I adore you. Thank you so much. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Unfortunately they made some mistakes.

[Lily Padman]

Well, I don't like time again.

[Dax Shepard]

Why?

[Lily Padman]

Cuz that was so sad and sweet.

[Dax Shepard]

That made you miss the time that's gone by.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Should we play the audio of that?

[Lily Padman]

If you want.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know if it's good enough audio. You really see the face. She looks like a mix between Rumpelstiltskin and Throw Mama from the train.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Dax. Okay. Dax found an old video of Dax Delta. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And she's being interviewed for the quote documentary that Lily's making.

[Lily Padman]

I wish we could show it. We can't.

[Dax Shepard]

I know.

[Lily Padman]

God.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, Delta just said to me the other day if there's ever a way I could be on the fact check again. I was like I miss you on the fact check so much.

[Lily Padman]

I know. We can put a bag over our head.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that seems so.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Del, why don't you tell us what your favorite thing to do is?

[Dax Shepard]

My favorite thing to do thing to

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

do is play basketball.

[Dax Shepard]

She never played basketball.

[Susie Wolff]

What is your.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

What are your talents, Multiple? My talent is I try to be like Lincoln cuz Lincoln does good stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

A that's sweet.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

That's what I'm trying to do.

[Dax Shepard]

Rethinks. Lily says what are your two talents? And she says my talents are. My talent is. She switches it to singular.

[Lily Padman]

Oh so good to be like Lincoln. Cuz Lincoln does Good stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. Yeah. I guess. It's heartbreaking, but it's. But thank God for videos.

[Lily Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, there's no video of me doing anything either. No of you. You guys had probably camcorders, right?

[Lily Padman]

Cam. Camcorders. And you know where you put the tape in Y. So there was some tapes, but they're all gone.

[Dax Shepard]

They haven't been digitized. That feels like something your mom would have done in her retirement is digitized the VHS she needs to call Block Box.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. What is it, Rob? I'm trying to look it up. Jesus.

[Lily Padman]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I feel less bad anytime Rob doesn't know something.

[Lily Padman]

It was called, like, Safe Lock.

[Dax Shepard]

No, Legacy Box. Legacy Box. Are they still with us?

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

They're.

[Dax Shepard]

They're alive, yeah.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Oh, great.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know. With us, though. You should yell to your mom, make them digitize our stuff. Mom, make me a milkshake.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, sandwich.

[Dax Shepard]

And a sandwich, too. And digitize everything.

[Lily Padman]

She should.

[Dax Shepard]

She really should.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, but also, it might. Might be like, lackluster back then. Like, I can't. I bet it was a mess. There would never have been a two camera. Like, it would have been like a grade. Some singing or something. You know, something like that.

[Dax Shepard]

An event.

[Lily Padman]

An event.

[Dax Shepard]

There wasn't just random candid B roll shot like it is now.

[Lily Padman]

I don't think so. Yeah, but this is a ding, ding, ding. Because time is sad, as we know.

[Dax Shepard]

Uhhuh.

[Lily Padman]

The passage of time.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

And Father Time. Yeah. Mother Nature, Father. Cuz he's just so mean.

[Dax Shepard]

He's strict.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, he's strict.

[Dax Shepard]

His word is final.

[Lily Padman]

He won't lay up. Like, he won't just, like, give us a break.

[Dax Shepard]

No, his. His word is unwavering. When he says the time has passed, it has passed. There's no going back. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

So rude.

[Dax Shepard]

Rigid.

[Lily Padman]

Rigid. Very rigid. Stuck in his way.

[Dax Shepard]

But I think it gives our life its meaning. Without it, what's the meaning? I have a wreck.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, let's hear it.

[Dax Shepard]

And a curiosity. I hope you are. Are you watching Widows Bay?

[Lily Padman]

Oh, yeah, I think we. I think I told. Did I not tell you?

[Dax Shepard]

No.

[Lily Padman]

Yes, I am, but. Okay, so pin in the. That. Okay, well, pin in whichever, I guess. Which one do we want to move forward with? We can pin back the other one. Widows Bay. Yes, I'm watching. I'm not caught up.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. No spoilers.

[Lily Padman]

No spoilers.

[Dax Shepard]

Everyone's dead.

[Lily Padman]

Great. It's like a comedy horror show.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, the comedy is comedying, though.

[Lily Padman]

Well, yes.

[Dax Shepard]

So funny.

[Lily Padman]

Well, it's Katie Dippold who is so funny. She. I used to watch her at UCB in the. In my heyday all the time. She was. She was a big star there.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Lily Padman]

And she created it. And she is so funny. She wrote for Parks and Rec, and she's just. Just like. I think she's written some stuff for that Paul Feig has directed. She's just brilliant. And so when I saw that it was her, it's like, oh, I gotta watch this. And it's fantastic.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, what I was so pumped about is Nancy from Bless this Mess. Do you remember Nancy on Bless this Mess? She works at the museum at the Widow's Bay Museum. If you've seen the first episode you saw already, they go to the museum and it's the history of the island. And what's so funny is, of course, witch burning is a real black mark on Salem. But when she's walking this reporter through the museum, they get to this bloody outfit from a burned witch. And she said, well, here's a source of great pride for us. We found them. We burned them.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Burned.

[Dax Shepard]

A little delivery of.

[Lily Padman]

She was in Bless this Mess.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. He was one of our neighbors, and she was so. I loved her so much. She was so fun. She knitted me, like, a couple of scarves and stuff. She was a knitter.

[Lily Padman]

That's so cute.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Wait, who's the actress?

[Dax Shepard]

Nancy Lenaham.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, cool.

[Dax Shepard]

And she's so good.

[Lily Padman]

Well, it's also shot a lot of. It's directed by Hero. Yeah. Who did a lot of Atlanta.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Lily Padman]

So it's just. It's brilliant.

[Dax Shepard]

Power powerhouse crew. True.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Can't recommend it enough. It's so silly.

[Lily Padman]

It is, but it's also getting skilly. It's Matthew Reese, one of our faves.

[Dax Shepard]

We love him.

[Lily Padman]

So good. He's so, so.

[Dax Shepard]

A Movable Feast. That's the name of his boat in Manhattan.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Check that episode out in the archives.

[Dax Shepard]

Give it a listen. He's so charming. He was. He was covet, though. He wasn't in person, was he? Yeah.

[Susie Wolff]

God.

[Dax Shepard]

So I really want. I want to sit with him.

[Lily Padman]

Okay, so back to what I was gonna say. About time.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Okay. So yesterday, I can say this because it's been announced Elizabeth came over because she's moving. Her and Andy are moving to France for a whole year, which is the

[Dax Shepard]

opposite of wee wee. No, no, no, no, no, no. Not a wee wee.

[Lily Padman]

I know. And, like, it's gonna be great for them. They're gonna have so much fun. And it's A beautiful thing to do. And I'm.

[Dax Shepard]

Will they be podcasting from France?

[Lily Padman]

They will be.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

So that's so fun. And, like, be very fun to listen along on their adventures, you know, That'll be great. But I hate it. You know, I really hate it. But then it, you know, Elizabeth is kind. Is. Is a crier.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

Her tears come easy.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

And, you know, she, like, gets out of the car and she's like, already, like, I didn't bring. I didn't wear mascara, like, on purpose. I know. I'm gonna cry.

[Dax Shepard]

This is to tell you that they're moving.

[Lily Padman]

No, like, it's just the last time I'll see her.

[Dax Shepard]

Wait, they're moving tonight.

[Lily Padman]

I leave on Friday, and then they leave like a couple. They leave like a week later while all. While I'm gone. Oh, yeah. I should say so. This is a little. Last time I'm going to see her

[Dax Shepard]

before they leave until you go visit him. Where are they moving in from?

[Lily Padman]

Bordeaux. What?

[Dax Shepard]

Tell me about Bordeaux. That's the wine country, I guess. I don't know.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, it's like, there's wine there, and

[Dax Shepard]

the Donna river should be.

[Lily Padman]

I don't know much about it. I've never been.

[Dax Shepard]

How did they pick that place? These want to be so close to the wine.

[Lily Padman]

No, they don't even really drink much. So they went last summer. It's always been a dream of Elizabeth's live in France. So last summer, they went to just test the waters. Yeah, they went to test the waters and try it out, and they. They loved it. But they had to come home a little earlier than expected because unfortunately, Andy's father passed away. So they. They. They came home, they loved it. But I didn't think they loved it that much.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Lily Padman]

Like, I wasn't like, oh, like, there's

[Dax Shepard]

unfinished business everywhere I'm at on vacation. I'm certain I want to live there for a year.

[Lily Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, everywhere I go, virtually.

[Lily Padman]

I know. So she. She. So I didn't expect this, really. I thought they kind of got it out of their system last summer or, like, maybe they go back for another summer break. But, like, living for a whole year, I didn't expect it. And so anyway, she came over and she was. She was like, I'm going to cry. You know, just.

[Dax Shepard]

I was like, oh, I've come here to cry.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. And there was another friend there, Sophia, who's kind of a new friend. So it was good. I was like, well, Sophia's here. She'll, like, bump and. And Elizabeth was like, you know, she's kind of like, well, I don't. That's not gonna stop me. And also like, I don't need that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, let's go.

[Lily Padman]

Right. And so, you know, we talked a lot. And then.

[Dax Shepard]

Does it make you nervous that she's gonna cry because you feel obligated to cry in return?

[Lily Padman]

So, okay, this is what we started talking about. Because I was like, you felt pressure. Well, I think Elizabeth was like, you better cry.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, well, that, that's direct pressure. That's not even in your head.

[Lily Padman]

At one point you said that. And I was like, oh, I'm not gonna. I said, I said, I'm. I'm not going to.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

And then. And Sophia was like, you better cry for her.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Lily Padman]

And I was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, pressure.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, no. Oh, no. And I, you know, I didn't.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, sure.

[Lily Padman]

I knew that I didn't. The whole. I didn't. And. And she, you know, at the end,

[Dax Shepard]

in 10 years, I think I've seen you cry, like three or four times. Four of the seven cries.

[Lily Padman]

You have seen me cry. Cry. Like, disproportionately than most people.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Lily Padman]

And even still. Yes. Not that often.

[Dax Shepard]

Correct. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Anyway, so I didn't cry at all. And then, you know, we were hugging by, and I still wasn't crying.

[Dax Shepard]

And were you trying to make yourself. Could you feel yourself, like, focusing on your eyes and stuff?

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

A little.

[Lily Padman]

A little. She was like, wow. Not even. Not even a little.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Little.

[Lily Padman]

Not even a little water in there.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Not even a well up.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. And I was like, well, it's. It's there. It's there. It's on the inside, you know, and it's a ding, ding, ding to the graduation. Delta's graduation, where everyone was crying and I wasn't crying.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

And everyone. And I was like, some people are performing here. But really they weren't. You know, they just cry.

[Dax Shepard]

And you were just self conscious that you weren't crying?

[Lily Padman]

Of course. Yeah. And I, I. But I was sad at the graduation, and I was sad last night. Yeah. But I have a problem.

[Dax Shepard]

Look, I know this very well. I'm like, you know, deaths and people getting arrested and friends dying and. Yeah. I feel the pressure of someone, like, waiting for me to have this expected reaction. Reaction. And then kind of, once that occurs to you, that you're supposed to. For me, trains left the station. There's no reaching the cry point because you're now self conscious about not crying.

[Lily Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

And that's just not the frame of mind to cry.

[Susie Wolff]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

Like they say, you know the trick in acting is to try your hardest not to cry.

[Lily Padman]

Exactly. I love that trick because I can do that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Lily Padman]

But then. But I'm. I was never good at crying as an actor. Actor.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm caught between wanting to give another recommendation but also wanting to talk about an actor I saw that was using menthol. And I don't ever want to give it away. Be exposed of who I use menthol in Employee of the Month, I would have felt unethical about doing that, like in Parenthood, but I did not feel enough to go about doing an Employee

[Lily Padman]

the Month because I had won, like,

[Dax Shepard]

I had won a. A ring competition. And, And I thought it would be hard. Hilarious. If I was just like uncontrollably sobbing at this victory.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And, yeah, I used a lot of it and my eyes were on fire and I was supposed to spray more.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I don't. I don't know. I just don't think I cry when I'm sad.

[Dax Shepard]

You cry when you're mad.

[Lily Padman]

I cry when I'm mad and frustrated.

[Dax Shepard]

Frustrated.

[Lily Padman]

I cry cry wolf. No, never. I don't cry wolf.

[Dax Shepard]

Liz is at the window.

[Lily Padman]

She was there.

[Susie Wolff]

Oh, my God.

[Lily Padman]

I might cry right now because I'm being frustrated. I misunderstood.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't want to frustrate you. Not before the break.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. So, yeah, I think I cry when I'm angry and I cry when I'm frustrated and I cry when I'm embarrassed. That's.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah, that's. That's the first time I saw you cry.

[Lily Padman]

That's the first time I told you, Bren, I ran into the window. Yeah.

[Susie Wolff]

Cuz I ran.

[Lily Padman]

I went into the car and then I cried.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you held your crying until the car?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, I mean, I was walking to the car.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Lily Padman]

So I was probably. It was probably starting immediately. But no one had.

[Dax Shepard]

When you turned back, I thought I saw a. What was the beginning of a breakdown. But I could be wrong. I definitely thought, ooh, like, who cares about banging in the glass? But the look was like, oh, we got. We're going to have some crying.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

And some people.

[Dax Shepard]

What was the event that night? There was. Someone was in town.

[Lily Padman]

Bob Murvac was in town and it was the first time I ever met him. It was a long time ago this happened.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

And some people are quick triggers for me. Like, are quit. Like, I, I, as I said, I've cried in front of you a fair amount. Don't yeah, I've cried. My parents can get a good cry out of you. Get me to cry.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Well, then this is consistent dads.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. I mean, Bill, so far, hasn't.

[Dax Shepard]

He hasn't. Yeah, he will.

[Lily Padman]

I hope not. I don't want to cry in front of him.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

I want to be.

[Dax Shepard]

Will you let him hold you?

[Lily Padman]

No, I don't let my dads hold me. No, no, no, no. Yeah. So. So anyway, just. But I did. She left, and I was like, God,

[Dax Shepard]

like, I need to cry more.

[Lily Padman]

I can't. I just. I. I wish I did. I wish I had cried then, but I. It wasn't gonna happen.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't cry out of sadness. I cry out of my heart. Being touched, as, you know.

[Lily Padman]

A lot. Yes. Yeah, me too. I think that's more. That's definitely more likely than sadness. Like, if something. Something's just, like, so overwhelmingly, like, sweet or beautiful. Like the. Like, life is beautiful.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

I cry at life is beautiful.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, that's good.

[Lily Padman]

Not the movie. Never seen it, but.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, just the beauty of life.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Like, sports moments.

[Dax Shepard]

The last phase, I think, for me to be a complete crier is I have had two or three different moments in the last couple years where I was so frustrated that I did. Did have the feeling in my body of like, oh, if I could just ball right now, I would feel so much better at the end of this. Or. Or sometimes there's, like, there'll be the occasion where, again, in my mind, whether this is happening or not doesn't matter. I feel like all three of them are coming at me and I am biting my tongue. Yeah. Overwhelmed and maybe ganged up on, and. And I'm biting my tongue because I don't want to make any. Anything worse. And I do reach a. A point when I'm biting my tongue or I can feel my eyes are going to betray me. Like, I'm gonna start crying out of my anger and frustration.

[Lily Padman]

Let yourself. Because then everyone will stop being mean

[Dax Shepard]

to you and be like, oh, maybe we should. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, no. He's, like, crying.

[Dax Shepard]

What's so funny is I think half the time they'd have no idea because they. They don't know necessarily when I'm, like, fighting my hardest not to get involved or to say something that's really, really hard for me.

[Lily Padman]

Do you ever just decide to walk away like, I need a min.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, God.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I go upstairs. I quote, go upstairs for something all the time.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I think it's a real patented dad move.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

You know?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, it's good to go upstairs as

[Dax Shepard]

a dad or go out to the garage. I always have to go out to the garage and just do one thing, and then I get like, I can return. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

As soon as you need a minute.

[Dax Shepard]

I like how generic I am. Some part of me, I like that I'm, like, doing what all dads do. And then I. You know, it makes me feel like I grew up.

[Lily Padman]

Was your, like, quintessential image of a dad.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, that's what I was gonna say. I've never seen. I never saw my father parent in a relationship. I only saw him operate as a lone wolf. And my mom and then my stepdads, they didn't hold their tongue. You know, they. They. They yelled all the time and screwed, screamed and.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Swore and. And said really nasty character assassinations of us a lot. But I've never seen the healthy version where it's like, oh, yeah, Dad's going up to the garage to check on, you know, a blank.

[Lily Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

And now he's back, and he's. Now he's calm, you know, like, I don't know, interesting. But I guess I've seen it in movies and in TV shows, and I've seen it maybe in other people's family, and I. I just know I'm a part of, like, a great tradition.

[Lily Padman]

When I think of dads, the first image I think of is in a store. A dad just sitting in whatever seat there is. Makeshift seat. There's always a dad sitting on the floor. Yeah. They're just sitting there waiting for everyone else to be the mom and the daughter to be done shopping. I mean, we would all go to the outlet mall.

[Dax Shepard]

How could he do it? I can't even do it.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Want.

[Susie Wolff]

He would.

[Lily Padman]

He wants to do it, too. And then he's not going most of the time. He's not even going in any stores. He's just waiting outside the store while we go in.

[Dax Shepard]

Store after shopping is miserable.

[Lily Padman]

But then why does he want to go?

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know. To. To be a good. To be a good dad.

[Lily Padman]

To spend time.

[Dax Shepard]

That's right. Sitting and getting exhausted in. In stores and watching so Hot and watching the saved money disappear.

[Lily Padman]

Exactly. He's just sweating out there. It's, like, actually so sweet that he's just, like, going.

[Dax Shepard]

Going Real men. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Just going to these stores for no reason. And even he's never, like, let's go. Like, he never says, let's go.

[Dax Shepard]

He's thinking it over and over again, and he's resisting I wonder if he's ever had a solemn tear. You missed like. And he's sitting in that chair. It's just. Well, it's just, just like he wants to go. Like, oh God, no. Like, let's leave, please let's leave. But then he doesn't. He already feels that, that complete angst of being stuck somewhere.

[Lily Padman]

He doesn't. That's the thing about him. He's really st.

[Dax Shepard]

He's a better man than I am.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, well, maybe it's his Indianness, I don't know. But like, it's pretty wild. He just like, really.

[Dax Shepard]

He'll spend seven hours out with you guys and he doesn't buy one thing, Right. He doesn't pick anything up that, that's like being in an eight hour long cricket match.

[Lily Padman]

I couldn't do.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, nothing's happening.

[Lily Padman]

He likes cricket.

[Dax Shepard]

Maybe that's what. That's me. Maybe that's what. Well, he played formatted him to be so tolerant of boredom.

[Lily Padman]

I think they are just, I think Indian. Well, I shouldn't say. I don't know. I just think, well, maybe Indian Med from Kerala. They just like know to go along with the women.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

And they're like, it's fine. Like it's fine. Just let them do.

[Dax Shepard]

I guess my question is why would. Why? Yes. Why doesn't. Why would any of the women want us there?

[Lily Padman]

He wants to be nearby.

[Dax Shepard]

Because he only sees you on the weekends and you guys want to spend the whole weekend shopping. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Although now when I go home, he doesn't really come with us. Like if we go to TJ Maxx, he doesn't come.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, good.

[Lily Padman]

He just meets us at dinner or whatever. Yes, it's better. It's better.

[Dax Shepard]

Do the lunches, drive two cars. He can stop at Home Depot.

[Lily Padman]

It's better. But. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Can you imagine going to Home Depot with him for seven hours?

[Lily Padman]

No, I would, I just, I would never do.

[Dax Shepard]

Do that and think about.

[Lily Padman]

I mean, I did have to do that as a kid. It felt like something. I was probably 20 minutes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, 20 minutes. Because that's how guys shop. They like already know what they want before they walk in.

[Lily Padman]

I hated it.

[Dax Shepard]

No, imagine like really put yourself in a situation where you were at Home Depot for seven hours, three and a half movies.

[Lily Padman]

Well, he must not hate it or he wouldn't come.

[Dax Shepard]

Or he's just like, he's like a monk. He can like just ignore the pain.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

He can.

[Lily Padman]

I do think like really, really just like. He just like doesn't complain about anything.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

It's pretty wild.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. It's hot. It's attractive.

[Lily Padman]

I guess, like, that's what you should

[Dax Shepard]

be as a guy.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

No complaining. That's right. My therapist said to me, you should never say what about me. That's not your domain.

[Lily Padman]

Well, and I.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, that's right.

[Lily Padman]

Well, no, you're still a person. But he doesn't. I've never heard him say that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it's not. You can do that. You are free to do that.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And then there are certain outcomes of that and that's. I don't want that outcome.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. But you also don't want resentment. You don't.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm not going to get resentment.

[Lily Padman]

But some people.

[Susie Wolff]

No, no, no.

[Lily Padman]

You could build a resentment. Like, nobody's thinking about me. No one's even noticing me. No one cares what I think.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, you're not allowed to do that either because that's not grown up behavior either.

[Lily Padman]

Right. That's going to be hard for some people.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. But like, in pursuit of being a man, the definition my therapist and I have for me as a man.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Includes shutting the up. No resentments, no pity party. No. What about me? That's the strength that you're supposed to exude as a man. You're supposed to bring strength to this. And that's. We think that's just screaming and shoving other men. No, no. The strength is restraint. The restraint.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Well, this is good because it's.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my gosh. Is it Father's Day? Hey, is it this Sunday? Yeah. Oh, my God, Rob, are you being spoiled? You're traveling too. Yeah. Don't you feel like traveling nullifies the. The event?

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I have my birthday Always is right on it too. Right by it. Oh, so you get triple screwed. I have Saturday.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Sunday.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

What would you want to do this year?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I don't know if it was last year, the year before, but I hosted a Father's Day party in was tournaments. It was a volleyball tournament, a pickleball tournament.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And sideline shoulder massages.

[Lily Padman]

That's nice. And food.

[Dax Shepard]

And it was really quite fun. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

I didn't know about sidelines.

[Dax Shepard]

You know about the food. Yeah. When you weren't playing pickleball, you were getting a shoulder massage.

[Lily Padman]

That's cool, right? I want.

[Dax Shepard]

Because for Mother's Day I bring in all these people.

[Lily Padman]

You do? Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

And so we're not going to get pedicures and manicures, although we could. And they're fun.

[Lily Padman]

They are fun.

[Dax Shepard]

I did.

[Lily Padman]

And you kind of need one.

[Dax Shepard]

I need One.

[Lily Padman]

Well, you always complain about your toes. You're always complaining about them.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't even know if I would in good conscious, let someone touch my toes.

[Lily Padman]

They probably want to. They're like, you know what? This is like Everest. You know, like, they really. They want at them, and they want to see what they can do.

[Dax Shepard]

Remember I spoke about. We could look this up now, huh? Rob, do you. Can you control the tv? Yep, sure can. Will you look up Malala and Zarna Garg?

[Lily Padman]

Oh, Zarna. She's very funny.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you know her? Remember I was telling you about the video?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, someone was nice enough to tell me what video I was watching.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

That's cool. Yeah, she's very funny. She's. People really love her.

[Dax Shepard]

We might be able to connected to Dax's Max Studio.

[Lily Padman]

What if porn just popped up?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I love it. A man and a horse.

[Lily Padman]

That's your thing these days.

[Dax Shepard]

That's my thing? Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Nice.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm watching exclusively men and horses, but only kissing.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, you draw the line.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Got to figure out how to get this audio to go through there, though.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, boy, this is hard.

[Dax Shepard]

What happens if you have play? Let's find out. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

No, audio doesn't.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, all right, never mind.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

We're not as techy as we appear to be.

[Dax Shepard]

I guess I could have just looked it up on my phone. It would have been a lot easier.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

So, Malala, I'm the world's leading almost therapist. Whatever your problem is, I can solve it. Just tell me what it is. Let's go. When I was 15, I was shot by the Taliban in Pakistan. Okay. That happens. And then I'm moved to a different country in the UK for my surgeries. Okay, that sounds fun.

[Lily Padman]

That sounds good.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Yeah. New culture, new environment. I joined the school, but I couldn't make any friends. I was really lonely. Oh, because you were. You were the problem. So by the end of my school time, I had only made one friend. Your one friend. That's sad. Yeah. Sad for the friend who was stuck with you. And I was joining college at Oxford. I said, I'm gonna make as many friends as possible. Oh, Oxford? You went to Oxford? Yeah. What happened? You didn't. You didn't get into Cambridge? That was my dream place to go to. Oh. See, right there, we just identified the first problem. You have dreams. You know, I'm. I'm really sorry to just bring this up, but you sound like you complain a lot. You're coming across a little whiny about the Old girls need to be this and that situation. Like you got shot once. You're fine. The other side of your face looking great. As far as I can tell. Everything is fine. You're welcome.

[Lily Padman]

The other side of you.

[Dax Shepard]

You're fine. Thank you. You're welcome. So you got shot in the face.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I love that accent. It's so pleasing.

[Lily Padman]

It's very.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you like it or does it make you nervous?

[Lily Padman]

I mean, it makes me nervous. Obviously. It makes me nervous. Nervous when. When you listen to it that like you won't be able to help yourself to do it.

[Dax Shepard]

There's something so pleasing and melodic about it.

[Lily Padman]

I mean, it's very Malala Dick. It is melodic. It's sing songy. That's the I that I think is maybe a pejorative way of saying it. Maybe.

[Dax Shepard]

No, but it is. It's.

[Lily Padman]

But it's sing songy. It has like a real.

[Dax Shepard]

That's as close. That's like as safe as I can.

[Lily Padman]

You want me to. It's Father's Day. You want me to let you do it? Go ahead.

[Dax Shepard]

No, it's not rough.

[Lily Padman]

You want to see me cry?

[Dax Shepard]

No, no, no. That's not my Father's Day wish.

[Lily Padman]

What is?

[Dax Shepard]

Horse porn.

[Susie Wolff]

Great.

[Lily Padman]

We can make that happen.

[Dax Shepard]

Really? Passionate kissing between a man and a horse.

[Lily Padman]

Oh my God. All right, let's do some facts.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more armchair and expert if you dare.

[Lily Padman]

Su Z Wolf.

[Dax Shepard]

I love her.

[Lily Padman]

What a stud. What a gorgeous, awesome guy.

[Dax Shepard]

Good job, Toto.

[Lily Padman]

They're such a cool couple.

[Dax Shepard]

They are really. You seen them in their three hundreds, Elmer? Mercedes. That old ass Mercedes.

[Lily Padman]

The one that he said he would take me in?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, they drive around Monaco in it and they're always dressed to the 90s.

[Lily Padman]

What color is it?

[Dax Shepard]

Silver.

[Lily Padman]

The one we saw on Instagram that time was green.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that was like a. I won't bore you, a resto mod version of them. So they were free to make it any color they want. They'd already. They'd already altered it.

[Lily Padman]

Now they can't.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, no, if you have a. A mint condition unaltered, you don't want to change the paint color. Oh, you would be degrading the value.

[Lily Padman]

So they were ever made green originally?

[Dax Shepard]

Correct. That was. And nor they put like a cool engine in it and bigger. You know, they did what I do to cars.

[Lily Padman]

Right. So am I supposed to want an original or a souped up one?

[Dax Shepard]

It's a tricky one because those cars I'm ballparking, but I think a goal wing 300. That's got to be like a three to five million dollar car, I think.

[Susie Wolff]

Holy.

[Dax Shepard]

And if you chopped it all up and put all this cool stuff in it, it would probably be worth, like, 800,000. So you would be losing two and a half million dollars of the value to have the car you wanted.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, if I take my Lincoln, it's not gonna. It wasn't worth a lot of money before I did all that shit to it.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

None of my cars.

[Lily Padman]

But now it's worth more. It feels like. Oh, you're saying because it wasn't worth a lot.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly. Because you're not getting it to be completely pristine and original.

[Lily Padman]

Well, this is interesting because I've never been in this position.

[Susie Wolff]

Normal.

[Lily Padman]

I'm. Normally. I'm on the other side of this, where I, like, don't care about the value. Like, I want to, like, what I'm driving in and what it looks like.

[Dax Shepard]

That's how I feel.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

That's why I don't get those kind of cars.

[Lily Padman]

All right.

[Dax Shepard]

I would never want to get a kind of car that I'm making it less valuable by making it better.

[Lily Padman]

Huh.

[Susie Wolff]

Huh.

[Dax Shepard]

I'd rather just buy.

[Lily Padman]

So if, like, Toto and Susie buy me one and then I have you soup it up, they'll probably be mad at me about that.

[Dax Shepard]

They will be bummed. Yeah. That you made a couple million dollars disappear.

[Lily Padman]

Okay, now I'm in a pickle. Okay. Anyway. She was amazing.

[Dax Shepard]

She was.

[Lily Padman]

She was amazing.

[Dax Shepard]

Sounds like a fun family, too.

[Lily Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

And remember she was talking about Isle of Man. Tt.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

That started last weekend.

[Lily Padman]

Did you watch any.

[Dax Shepard]

And Brad was there and chanting, and they were filming. Filming.

[Lily Padman]

No. Yeah. For their new.

[Dax Shepard]

I think they're making a movie about. I don't know if it's both of them, but I think Channing was filming something for a movie about Isla. Man.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God. I wonder if it's a dock.

[Susie Wolff]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

I doubt it'd be a doc with Channing in it. What would be the point? Right?

[Lily Padman]

Oh, he was starring. I thought you meant, like, he was, like, directing it.

[Dax Shepard]

No, he was on a motorcycle in leathers. I'm presuming filming him. He. Yeah.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Wow. Yeah. Cool.

[Lily Padman]

Okay, some facts. The Topo Chico shortage. Yikes.

[Dax Shepard]

Crisis.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Okay. A nationwide shortage of Topo Chico original mineral water is affecting store shelves and bars in the US Coca Cola suspended production of its flagship sparkling water at its Monterey, Mexico, facility to perform well. Stabilization and facility upgrades. Supplies are expected to remain extremely limited through late 2026.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

This is a big boy.

[Lily Padman]

This is.

[Dax Shepard]

I feel like the well went dry.

[Lily Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

You're not telling us.

[Lily Padman]

I know. CNN said America's running out of Topo Chico mineral water.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, we love Topo Chico.

[Lily Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

We have bottles in that fridge just accruing.

[Lily Padman]

What are we going to do when they're. I know.

[Dax Shepard]

We're going to auction them. Remember people paid an insane amount of money for original Coke.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

When they switched to New Coke, people were spending, like, preposterous amounts of money on a 12.

[Lily Padman]

This is just like La Bear tea.

[Dax Shepard]

It is.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my gosh.

[Dax Shepard]

And we're sitting on a stock.

[Lily Padman]

How many do we have?

[Dax Shepard]

Six.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Okay.

[Susie Wolff]

Two.

[Dax Shepard]

Two. We're down to two.

[Lily Padman]

Not even one for each of us.

[Susie Wolff]

This is horrible news.

[Lily Padman]

Okay. Oh. If you drink sparkling water, do you not have to pee as much?

[Dax Shepard]

Sure.

[Lily Padman]

That was Toto's theory. It actually says fizzier. Sparkling water contains dissolved carbon dioxide. This results in an acidic solution that may increase urinary urgency. Irritate your bladder.

[Dax Shepard]

Irritate your bladder.

[Lily Padman]

Our advice is to limit your intake of one of these to one glass a day.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow. I think. Well, Tota's only drinking bubbly water, but look it. Do I believe that what you just read or just looking at the man, Whatever he's doing, it's true.

[Lily Padman]

But we don't know about his peeing

[Dax Shepard]

proof is in the pudding.

[Susie Wolff]

It.

[Lily Padman]

That is. Is true.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you have any sparkling water? I don't want to wake up every night to go pee and wake up and then I can't concentrate on the team. I'm the cutest little boy ever made. Watch me jump, watch me play. Do you think he ever sings that song?

[Lily Padman]

So different. Oh, okay. I said something out of school. I left it in. I want people to know. I know it was wrong.

[Dax Shepard]

What did you leave in.

[Lily Padman]

So her grandfather. Father was paralyzed, remember?

[Dax Shepard]

Or from the.

[Lily Padman]

From the waist down. And then he got in an accident, broke his ankle or something.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

And I said, like, oh, I mean, like, doesn't really matter or something, but it does. Like you.

[Susie Wolff]

I.

[Lily Padman]

Then I. I looked it up. Like, if you're paralyzed and you break your leg, do you still have to do anything? And you do still requires medical treatment. I just, like, maybe if there's no. No pain, it could just heal on its own.

[Dax Shepard]

That's definitely the silver lining of getting a broken leg when you're paralyzed.

[Lily Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

But it's not nothing.

[Lily Padman]

It's nothing.

[Dax Shepard]

But it's definitely less than if you're so you fully able bodied?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. The current F1 car you said weighs about 980 kg. A current Formula 1 car has a minimum weight limit of 768 kg. This limit applies to the car and driver combination, but excludes fuel. 2026, reset. The current generation of cars is noticeably lighter than the previous era, dropping 32kg from 800kg minimum seen in 2025.

[Dax Shepard]

Ask it how many kilograms of fuel they carry. I think. I think they have like a hundred kilos of fuel.

[Lily Padman]

Fuel. Does an F1 car, I think filled

[Dax Shepard]

up there in the nine hundreds.

[Lily Padman]

Okay. It carries a maximum of 110 kilograms of fuel.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

Because mid race refueling is banned. This maximum amount must last the entire race, taking the cars about 300 kilowatt kilometers. Did my Botox guy say I have a thick neck? I don't think he used the word thick like I did, but he did comment. He. He basically was like, it's like you have really strong muscles. But he was saying that because the neck was thick.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Oh.

[Dax Shepard]

So he said you have really strong muscles and you heard my neck's too thick?

[Lily Padman]

Well, no, because we're trying to make it smaller. The whole point of the Botox was

[Dax Shepard]

to try to imagine if you succeed at giving yourself a pencil neck, how wild that'll be.

[Lily Padman]

Well, it's more. It's not really about the neck much as it is. Like this in here. Yeah, exactly. But this is like very strong.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow. Your elite muscle mass is all in your neck.

[Lily Padman]

Exactly. He grabs it. He grabbed it.

[Dax Shepard]

Manhandles you.

[Lily Padman]

I gave him permission. Okay. I like him a lot.

[Dax Shepard]

He processes you like a chicken.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, he does. And I appreciate it. Okay. Was she two tense or one tenth away when she finish that practice session? You said to it? Yeah, 0.2. That's what I see as well.

[Dax Shepard]

Kimmy and Max's qualifying lap at Monaco. Second to last qualifying lap 0.003. No, 3000.

[Lily Padman]

That can't even.

[Dax Shepard]

No 3000ths of a second.

[Lily Padman]

How can they even measure that? No, that is so.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, losing.

[Lily Padman]

No, that me want to die actually

[Dax Shepard]

by something that's way less than a blink of an eye.

[Lily Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Way, way less.

[Lily Padman]

You can't even do it. We can't even like initiate the blink

[Dax Shepard]

of an eye and you're at.003.

[Lily Padman]

Whoa.

[Dax Shepard]

That's the margin, man. It blows my mind. You have two different teams. Each team has a thousand employees. The cars are completely one offs. They're not the original part. Everything's original for each team. Team. All these variables and they land.003 often.

[Lily Padman]

That is so.

[Dax Shepard]

That doesn't feel real.

[Lily Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Those the facts?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, those are the facts. We have a story.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, we have a little bit of a story about Susie, which is when we walked her out, Lincoln was hiding in the bushes. She knew Susie was here, and she wanted to meet her.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

She's super in F1 now, which I thought was so adorable.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

So she comes out and she meets Susie, and they're chatting, and Susie says, like, who's your favorite driver? And she says, kimmy, of course. Kimmy Antonelli. And for people who aren't following F1, there's the cutest human being on planet Earth is currently destroying. He's 19 years old, Kimmy Antonelli. He's Italian. He lives with his family at home in San Marino.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

And he's a little boy.

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And he's dominating, and he's so cute and friendly. So anyways, Langan says Kimmy. And Kimmy drives for Mercedes, Right. Which Toto is the team principal of.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

And Susie said, oh, well, we're in town because we have a Mercedes event tomorrow. Would you want to meet Kimmy?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And Lincoln immediately started crying.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

Wow.

[Lily Padman]

It's a powerful.

[Dax Shepard]

It was like. I love her response was just to start crying.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. It's like an overwhelming offer. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So we went. So then we were gonna go to the event, and then the next day, you and I were recording all day long. So it's like, I wasn't able to connect with Susie, but all these flurry of texts I had missed, I now see, by the way, they all do WhatsApp, right.

[Susie Wolff]

So.

[Dax Shepard]

Which I forget to text check. So anyway, Susie's like, okay, bad News. The event's 21 and over, so Lincoln can't really come to the event, but we're gonna be hanging in this hotel room for an hour before the event. Do you want to come by the hotel room? And I'm like, well, this is so much better. Yeah. Been like being at a big, noisy event and standing around awkwardly. And so I go, yeah, absolutely. Oh, tell me what time. It's, like, at 5. And I'm like, perfect, I'll be there. It's downtown. So then I come in and I tell Lincoln, like, okay, so it's. This is a situation. It's not the event, but we're gonna go hang. And she goes, I, no. Yeah, no, no, I can't.

[Lily Padman]

That's too much.

[Dax Shepard]

It was too strange for her. And I'm like, Listen, love, I don't really push you to do much, but you're gonna. We're going to meet Kim Anton. This is. This opportunity ain't coming around ever again. There's so much funny stuff. We ride down there on the motorcycle because traffic's horrendous and we gotta go downtown. So it's like, we're gonna take the motorcycle. We get to the event. It's at the Soho House warehouse, which I didn't even know they had. It's so cool. There's a really cool warehouse downtown that the Soh house has. So we parked it motorcycle. It's a pain in the ass to try to get two helmets in the. In the back. Bag the top box on the motorcycle. So of course I'm just going to carry them. And Lincoln's like, no, no, put the helmets away. And I go, wait, why? I don't want to. I don't want us to have helmets. You know, like the stakes were. So that's cool. I told her that. I go, what are you talking about? It's so much cooler to walk in. We're both holding helmets. You ride motorcycles and you're on the motorcycle.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

And here's where, as a dad, you just gotta go, like, okay, that's what she wants. Yeah, this is great lessons she's teaching me. Yeah. Like, she's wrong, right? I know she's wrong.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And who cares is how she wants to do it. So we put the motors, we put the helmets away. We're not even going to talk about the fact that we were. When we can't talk about the fact that we were.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

We go into this room. And I'm also. Look, I'm. I hope I'm really conscious of the fact that, like, I don't want to bum a famous person out. I don't want to complicate human. His downtime before he has to do this event with me and my kid, you know? And so I'm planning on being like, whatever, man. We'll talk to Toto and Susie or whatever. But we walk in. He immediately comes up and introduces himself. He's so likable and outgoing and kind. He engages Lincoln right away in conversation. And they sit on a couch. Yeah. And just chat. And he's showing her pictures on the phone. He's talking about hot. The race cars. And I'm just hearing little glimpses. And it's just so cute to hear my little girl like, oh, I know you're up. So hot. You know, just how she's just responding. And so then Toto's videoing them.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Secretly. Secretly, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And he's like, shut up, shut up. Because I'm talking to the other guy from Austria. He's like, shut up, shut up. He goes, we're gonna show them this video at their wedding and embarrass, embarrass them. It's so in that moment, I was like, oh, my God, what if Lincoln married Kimmy Antonelli? And then I just thought, oh, my God, what if my son in law is an F1 driver that fun will have.

[Lily Padman]

And not only just an F1 driver,

[Dax Shepard]

like an incredible driver, soon to be a legend F1 driver.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, I really hope she marries him.

[Dax Shepard]

I was starting to lock into how these like kings felt in France where it's like, you're gonna pair up your kid with somebody that you're gonna love this family.

[Child or minor participant (possibly Lincoln or a child guest)]

I know.

[Lily Padman]

See, it' easy. It's easy to do slippery slope, easy to arrange marriage. That's so cute.

[Dax Shepard]

It was the sweetest night. And I just. I want to scream from the rooftops. This generosity that this young man showed to my daughter, I am so grateful for. He's such a little gentleman.

[Lily Padman]

Love him.

[Dax Shepard]

He's so kind and sweet and it just was a real fucking. It's incredible gift of all gifts.

[Lily Padman]

Thank you, Susie, for the invite. What an incredible.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, and then one more question. Funny, total thing. So then they had to go do stuff. They're in and out of the room, right?

[Susie Wolff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What's funny is all the Kimmy stuff happened before Susie ever arrived. So then soon as Kimmy had to leave, Link's like, let's go, let's go. Like, basically, like, we got the yes. You know, like it was a success. Let's get out of here before I embarrass myself.

[Lily Padman]

Kind of wise.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I understand the stretch. So then we, Lincoln and I are leaving. We're departing and we're getting on the elevator. And he goes, where? Where are you going? We have the event. And I go, oh, no, it's 21 and over. And he goes, no, no, no, no, you, you're staying. Come here. Everyone out. Come on. You're staying. And we go, no, we don't. We don't want the rules broken. She got homework. He's like, no, no, those aren't the rules. He got into total mode. Like, you're coming to this event.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

We did not. We went home. Do you know who's at the event? Brad Pit.

[Lily Padman]

And that's why Kim Kardash kk You

[Dax Shepard]

ever heard of Kashmir?

[Lily Padman]

Not like that.

[Dax Shepard]

Tricky, too, because she's dating Lewis Hamilton. He's at Ferrari. Oh, yeah, but she was at the Mercedes. You know what? It might have been a different car.

[Lily Padman]

I'm not sure it was Kim or Chloe or Kendall. Oh, don't say that, because we want all of them on the show.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, Bernice?

[Lily Padman]

Okay. Well, that sucks you didn't get to hang out with Brad.

[Dax Shepard]

That's fine.

[Lily Padman]

Probably the moment he was going to ask you to be in his movie, he's like, hey.

[Dax Shepard]

What, are you busy next weekend? I'm going to I man tt to shoot this movie. I need you.

[Lily Padman]

And then.

[Dax Shepard]

But I was there. But it's great, cuz the whole night was for Lincoln, you know? Want to bring helmets? Great. You want to pretend we took a cab here?

[Lily Padman]

Cool.

[Dax Shepard]

We want to get out of here. Okay.

[Lily Padman]

Wow. Well, what a good time.

[Dax Shepard]

I love her. I love her so much.

[Lily Padman]

We love her. We absolutely love her. And I hope Lincoln and Kimmy get married and put it out there. We're doubling down.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't mind. I'm signing off.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. All right.

[Dax Shepard]

Love you.