Johnny Herbert and Billy Monger united by their life-changing motorsport crashes
The chemistry between them is obvious from the start. Johnny Herbert and Billy Monger were brought together by tragedy, but they have a whale of a time in each others' company.
And you don’t even have to listen to their new podcast to figure that out. Seconds into Mirror Sport's interview with the motor racers-turned-broadcasters and they are both already roaring with laughter.
Herbert may be 35 years his colleague's senior, but he is the one playing a juvenile prank as he turns the computer screen away from Monger as he begins to answer a question. "He's like a child!" shouts the latter as the former Formula 1 driver giggles to himself.
The two pals are speaking from the Brands Hatch circuit in Kent, fresh from having recorded an on-location episode of their Lift The Lid podcast. A clash with the Australian Grand Prix weekend means Mirror Sport is unable to make the trip and so a video call would have to do.
Why that location? It was the site of a huge crash Herbert suffered in August 1988, while racing in Formula 3000. He avoided the need for amputation, but the Brit was left with permanent mobility issues which hampered his Formula 1 career and continue to give him pain every day.
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Meanwhile, Monger was just a few weeks shy of his 18th birthday when he suffered his life-changing crash at Donington Park in 2017. Both his legs were amputated and, upon hearing of the young racer's plight, Herbert reached out.
BIlly Monger needed a double amputation following his 2017 crash (Clive Mason)Monger says: "I had the big accident which is what brought us together. Johnny related to my situation through his own crash. It was nice, so early on after my accident, to have someone who has been through something similar to me coming to see me in the hospital.
"It was good for me and my family, who were not sure how those situations unfold and how you bounce back. For them, to see Johnny and see that you can bounce back and carry on... that's what brought the two of us together in the first place."
Herbert immediately adds: "I knew how important that was... the early time is where things can become more difficult. I knew it was important for him and his mum, dad and sister as well.
"My dad, he had a cry. He felt that, if it wasn't for him putting me into karting, I never would have got myself in that situation. Billy told me today it was the same with his dad – I was surprised, I just thought it was my dad, but it wasn't."
Herbert reached out to Monger after his life-changing crash, having gone through a similar experience when he was younger (Soapbox PR)Both drivers' driving career were inevitable affected by their injuries, even if Herbert did go on to race in Formula 1 – taking three victories and seven podiums in total. But, as Monger points out: "It's so hard to compare it to the feeling you had before.
"The way you start to feel the pedals and find the limit within the car changes. My prosthetic, I have a bit of metal and a circular pad at the bottom which is the point of contact with the pedal, rather than the sensation you get through your toes in a racing boot. Things change, but your body is very clever and it learns how to adapt to your situation as best as it can."
Herbert, 58, lives with the pain in his legs every day. "It was way more natural, as you would expect, which makes a big difference to the overall effect of what speed you can get out of the car. But you can still get quite close to it. We adapted our brains, conditioned them to think in an outside-the-box way.
"With me being older now, my feet are sore with every step that I take. But I accept it. I've spoken to doctors who say you can have new operations with ankle joints and so on, but they can't guarantee the pain. Is it worth going through all that and then actually coming out more painful than when I went in?
"I got to the point where I said to my wife that, if they get too painful, I'll chop them off… but my wife won't like that. I totally understand that, but I know I would be pain free."
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Even though the topic of conversation is emotive, these two light-hearted jokers are still keen to take any opportunity to laugh about it. So there was little surprise when Monger interjected: "He's been checking out my prosthetic!" Both of them laughed again.
With the chemistry they clearly have it's a good job they decided to work together on this podcast project. But how exactly did it come about for two men who knew each other personally, but had not worked with each other before?
They recorded a special episode of their podcast at Brands Hatch, the site of Herbert's 1988 crash (Soapbox PR)Monger explains: "Through Johnny's work with Sky and me doing stuff with Channel 4, we've been staying in touch and seeing each other around the paddock which was always nice. And then this opportunity to do something together came up. Our stories, the fact we have that relationship and experience of knowing what it's like to go through those things...
"Fundamentally, we're both racing drivers who love motorsport and, with lots of new F1 fans coming into the sport through Netflix and with F1 being very popular at the minute, it was a good opportunity to do something where we can give our experiences across to those people and try to help bring them into the sport as well as we can.
"I'm fairly new myself to podcasting as a format. Over the last six or 12 months I've been taking it in rather than just listening to music at the gym. Listening to podcast, you learn something. And I think digesting content myself in that way made me realise you can pick things up just by listening while you're doing whatever you're doing.
"Hopefully, that's what people can get from listening to me and Johnny talking about what's going on in the world of F1. It's a new way of doing things, but you can stick it on whenever and get up to date with what's gone on in the weekends gone past and, if you've got questions about F1 in general, even if you're not a massive fan and you just want to ask one thing in particular, hopefully we give people the platform to be able to do that."
Listen to Billy and Johnny's Lift The Lid on Apple Podcasts.
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