His Rock/Metal Productions Have Earned Over 20 Billion Streams | Interview w/ Howard Benson

A complete transcription of our conversation can be found below:

Warren Huart:

Howard, how are you?

Howard Benson:

Good, good.

Warren Huart:

Thank you so much for having us over.

Howard Benson:

Doing a lot of work right now. So, Mike and I are cranking right now. Cranking out.

Warren Huart:

Cranking is good.

Howard Benson:

Yeah, it’s a good thing.

Warren Huart:

Thanks for having us over to your studio.

Howard Benson:

Sure. Of course. This-

Warren Huart:

What is it called?

Howard Benson:

This is called West Valley Recording Studios. We’ve been here since 2012. When we bought this place, it was a studio. It was made for a Disney guy who was doing very quiet music. We had to do a lot of sound proofing to make it so we could do big amps and things like that. The console was a O2R.

Warren Huart:

Oh, yes.

Howard Benson:

Yamaha.

Warren Huart:

I remember that.

Howard Benson:

Something like that. Yeah. We had to tear the floors out. I mean, it took us about four months to get it running. And then this thing fell into our laps from Vintage King, got us a really good deal in Scotland. We had to have it shipped over and refurbished by Pat Schneider.

Warren Huart:

He’s the best.

Howard Benson:

He’s the best. He’s the only one left, I think. So, here we are. Yeah. And we’ve been busy since. So, we’ve been here eight years. We have crazy amp racks over there and-

Warren Huart:

Amazing.

Howard Benson:

We have a clientele that’s mostly rock music and pop music. In the other rooms, Lenny Skolnik is in there. He does [meove 00:01:11] and more pop and rap kind of stuff. This is a great piece of real estate to own, too.

Warren Huart:

Yeah, it’s beautiful.

Howard Benson:

It’s sort of a real estate investment as well.

Warren Huart:

Oh, I love it. I love the fact you got this really long driveway and you come down and you don’t know what to expect. I like that kind of anticipation.

Howard Benson:

Yeah, yeah.

Warren Huart:

I was saying to Mike earlier, when I first moved to LA, the first record I made here, was at Don Smith’s house in Agoura.

Howard Benson:

Oh, yeah.

Warren Huart:

And it was just beautiful to be able to drive out on the 101 and get out of Hollywood and come where it’s a lot calmer.

Howard Benson:

Yeah. Sad what happened to Don.

Warren Huart:

Yes, very sad.

Howard Benson:

We worked next to him at a Base Seven Studios. He rented the room next to us to do mixing. So, we would see him a lot, actually. So, he made some great records.

Warren Huart:

Made some fantastic records, yeah. So, give us a little bit of your journey because you… I went back through your resume and we were talking-

Howard Benson:

Mike’s going to fall asleep.

Warren Huart:

And when I saw you at Nam, I think it was… I was telling you about how I… This is long time ago, maybe 10 years ago, I believe. I was talking to one of the guys and Little Cesar, doesn’t he now work at like Blackstar or something like that?

Warren Huart:

Yeah. And he was saying that you made a record with him in the mid, late eighties. He said that you, it was like…

Howard Benson:

It was 1989.

Warren Huart:

1989. Okay, okay.

Howard Benson:

Yeah.

Warren Huart:

And he said it was like 15 hour days and you sweated blood for them.

Howard Benson:

Yeah.

Warren Huart:

Yeah.

Howard Benson:

Well, we had a funny story though because when we made that record, that was one of the last kind of, quote, hairband records just being made. I think they only let us make it because the contract… They had to make it. But we were making a record. And it was some little studio in red something or other in North Hollywood. And we’re watching TV and we’re making the record and this video comes on. We’re looking at this video and it’s this guy in a basketball gym with a person with a mop. And we put this song up and we hear Smells Like Teen Spirit. So, the record must’ve been like 1990 then or something. And I remember thinking… I turned to Ron and I said, “We’re.” You know? Like you could tell something happened. It was so obvious because the video was almost on repeat on MTV. And that did not sound like us, by any means.

Howard Benson:

Yeah, it was a rough one because we knew every… I did two or three more of those kinds of records after that, and you knew you had to reinvent yourself. And that was part of my journey as a producer was to learning how to reinvent myself because you can’t control the music that’s being made-

Warren Huart:

Absolutely.

Howard Benson:

… or the set that the times change. If you’re a hairband guy and you know it’s a hairband guy, you better start producing. And what’s going to happen is you’re not going to get hired to produce those things. You have to go find them. So, I remember I had to go to Austin, Texas and find a modern rock band that was like a Nirvana. I found one, got them signed to Giant Records. I ended up getting an A&R job out of getting them signed. So, that reinvented myself again. So, now I was now not a hairband producer, I was a modern rock producer. Then all of a sudden, music changed again and it was like Korn started to happen. You have rap rock and new metal. But I’m making other kinds of music with Less Than Jake and stuff like that. So, that goes out. So, I went and found like a rap rock band called Zebrahead. Got them signed to Columbia.

Warren Huart:

Great.

Howard Benson:

Then started getting projects like that. At that time, I hadn’t really sold that many records yet. I think the biggest record was maybe 200,000 records, but Pro Tools came along. I was an early adopter. In 1997, I did Sepultura on it. It was a very early version, like 3.0, where if you breathed on it, it crashed.

Warren Huart:

I remember it well.

Howard Benson:

One of those. Yeah. I think that’s when P.O.D. came into my life and that was the first really big, major platinum record I had. Then I did a really big record on their next one. And then Cold came along and All American Rejects and I met Mike. I realized at that point, I really don’t want to deal with what’s going on out there or this. I want to deal with that. So, that became sort of a division of labor in the studio and I realized, from my aerospace engineering background, I could more or less hire people and delegate stuff to other people to do stuff and I could focus on the music, the songs, the vocals, the lyrics, the things that were the bigger picture stuff. And then it just all took off from there. So, I think a lot of it was just learning on the fly and some good mentors. Keith Olson was a good mentor of mine that I learned a lot from.

Warren Huart:

Amazing.

Howard Benson:

Just other producers you run into along the way give you little bits of information and all that.

Warren Huart:

Did you work with Keith as an engineer?

Howard Benson:

No, Keith was an interesting story. This is actually right at the end of the hairband era. I was doing a band called SouthGang. Butch Walker was in it. This is the second album. This is at the end of that whole era. There was a lot of panic on board with the managers and the record companies. We signed too many hairbands. I’m just like, “How do I feed my family?” That’s all I’m thinking about. Right? So, I took the second SouthGang record. Two weeks into it, the new manager takes over. The old manager goes, “I don’t know who the hell Howard Benson is. He’s fired. I’m bringing in Keith Olsen.” So, I was fired off the project. Right? He had every right to fire me too because I didn’t really quite know yet what I was doing. I’d only done maybe six or seven albums. I was still figuring out the job.

Howard Benson:

So, what happened was I went into the studio and Keith goes, “Why are you here? I’m the new producer. You’re out. It’s me and the band now.” And I said, “Hey, would you let me just watch the sessions?” And I said, “I’ll be your assistant. I’ll do whatever you want,” because I knew at that point I needed a mentor. I was doing the same over and over with no process at all. I’d see the tape and there’s all these blank reels of tape. Let’s do it this way this time, let’s do it that way this time. Keith, on the other hand, was a very process oriented guy. I related to him that way. So he goes, “Okay, that’s really pretty amazing that you’re even willing to do that because you’re going to come back and with a band that just fired you and look like… Are you going to be all right with that?” And I said, “Yeah, I’m into it.” And he goes, “You’re going to be successful one day because of this move you’re doing.” Just because I was able to jump back down to six levels and start over.

Howard Benson:

So, the next day the band shows up and they’re going, “What are you doing here?” You know? And I said, “Hey, I’m just watching. I’m helping Keith out.” And I watched how Keith handled the session. He was the man. I hadn’t learned to be the man yet, but he was the guy. And if you didn’t agree with him, he would sit you down in his room full of platinum records and say, “What do I know? How many records have you sold?” Like he was doing all this kind of stuff that I couldn’t, in a million years, imagine doing. But I was like, “Yes, this is the way it’s supposed to be done.”

Howard Benson:

But everything was also very… It was like today we’re doing the drums. All the drums get done. Next we’re doing the guitars. This is how I do guitars, this is how I do this. This is how I do vocals. Print out a vocal sheet, rat every single line. Seven, eight, nine or whatever. So, all this kind of stuff was happening and the band lost control of this because with me I was their friend, so they had control of the session. With Keith, it wasn’t their session anymore. It was Keith’s session. But even though it seemed like that from the outside, if they were a smart enough band, which they were not a smart enough band, they would have realized that he was doing them a huge favor by creating this work environment where they could be creative as long as they stuck to certain things, which they didn’t want to.

Warren Huart:

Have you done that one?

Howard Benson:

I have, actually. I’ve walked out of sessions.

Warren Huart:

Yeah?

Howard Benson:

Yeah. I’m not a demagogue, but if they’re doing something so messed up, I’m out. Call your manager. Go find somebody else to produce you. It’s not that important. If you think it’s not that important to you, it’s not that important to me. Why am I working harder than you’re working? You know? Yeah. So, sometimes you have to pull that. It doesn’t happen as much anymore. Artists, I think, are a lot more business oriented now.

Warren Huart:

Out of necessity.

Howard Benson:

You have to.

Warren Huart:

Yeah.

Howard Benson:

You have to run your own… I mean, you don’t even get signed unless you have 10 million streams now. So, I mean, you better know how to run your business to get it to that point.

Warren Huart:

Yeah. Albums are being made for the same price of the old food budget.

Howard Benson:

Oh, yeah. But we do get… We’re working on an artist named Diamante now and I’m the record company. So, I own half the master.

Warren Huart:

Fantastic.

Howard Benson:

I fund the project and we own the record. That’s the way to go. It’s like sort of the movie business in a way where you write the script, you own the production company and you put it up there and see if it works. If it doesn’t, you release it yourself. If it does, you sell it off to a record company. So, it’s very much the movie business right now. That’s kind of how I see it working.

Warren Huart:

On`e of the things that, frankly, you’re known for is being really smart in business and making really good decisions. You’ve just described all of that, like you pivot quicker than anybody else.

Howard Benson:

Right.

Warren Huart:

Like I remember with the big rock records, what are we talking about? 2010, eight, nine, 10 sort of period where it suddenly went from like X number of $100,000 to less than $100,000 to make an album. It was six weeks is standard, and suddenly it was like, “Well, can you do it in three weeks?” And I remember having a conversation with an A&R guy going, “Howard’s doing this. He’s now saying it’s going to take this amount of time, it’s going to cost this amount of dollars. And he’s also like, ‘If I’m going to work on these songs, we’re talking about publishing. We’re talking about this, that and the other.'” I suppose, for us, you’re sort of the trailblazer because you would do that first, and then we all sort of follow you.

Howard Benson:

Yeah. I think a lot of that was done out of necessity. It’s always the mother of invention.

Warren Huart:

Yeah, yeah.

Howard Benson:

So, when we moved into here, it was right at the tipping point, about 2012, where the budgets were starting to crash. There was that time between selling records and streaming, which was about three or four years, where the music business really tanked because we didn’t know where the money was going to come from. They hadn’t figured out how to collect it. There was no Spotify. It just started. So, I said to Mike, “We can’t afford to be at base seven anymore, but I can afford to buy a house and put a studio in it as a real estate investment.” So, the trick to this place, it doesn’t really need to make money, it just needs to break even, because I look at it as… It’s the McDonald’s version of things. McDonald’s is not about hamburgers, it’s about the real estate they own. So, this is about the… If you’re a studio owner and you’re still paying rent, good luck. I don’t know how you do it because there’s not enough money to pay the rent. So, the cost of keeping this place alive, we pretty much every year hit it right on the number. So, it’s fine for me.

Howard Benson:

The other thing is too is that the labels I found… First of all, from the publishing end, the bands were like, “Okay, we’ll give you X percent of the publishing to work on the record.” The labels were like, “Okay, instead of getting four points, I’ll give you eight points to work on the record.” And so I was like, “Okay.” The hard part about all this stuff that I’m learning, I have another team of people working on this right now, you really have to make sure your contracts are done right and you’re SoundExchange is done right and you’re collecting the money. You know what the recoupment is. We have been able to collect a lot of money recently from projects that you would think are not recouped because what you’re seeing is the streaming numbers are starting to pick up. So, you have to have somebody doing that for you. That’s a full time job is doing analytics.

Warren Huart:

Sure, absolutely.

Howard Benson:

And you can do the analytics. It’s possible, you just have to have someone do them for you because then you can kind of predict what you should be really being paid and then you have to have someone calling the record company up and knowing, “Hey, this record costs $40,000. This is how many streams it did. This is how much we spent. You owe us a check.”

Warren Huart:

Yep.

Howard Benson:

And so they’ll go, “No, I don’t owe you a check.” The trick is not to sue them. The trick is just to keep emailing them and emailing them and emailing. Eventually, it works out. I’ve never had to sue anybody.

Warren Huart:

I’ve actually just gone through that at the moment was just listening to a record that I’d worked on. I couldn’t help but notice that one song on the album has got 36 million streams. Just one song. So, then I start looking at all of this, and then I did the math. I worked out how much I spent… This is just only on Spotify. I’m like going, “We’re recouped like five times.” No matter how they shape-

Howard Benson:

No matter how they look at it.

Warren Huart:

How they look at it, we recouped five times.

Howard Benson:

That’s right.

Warren Huart:

And so my manager’s just sitting there doing exactly what you’re saying, sending that email to them.

Howard Benson:

Yeah. First of all, you have to have the production agreement. It has to be signed. The letter directions have to be right. This is where it gets tricky because if you have a lawyer that didn’t get them to sign it or you didn’t sign it or the LOD isn’t in place or SoundExchange is really difficult now with that stuff, you have to make sure all that works out. I’m very lucky. We got into SoundExchange in 2003.

Warren Huart:

Great.

Howard Benson:

My manager was down in Washington along with Ben Kauffman. It was Lee and Ben Kauffman and a few other guys.

Warren Huart:

Ben is my manager.

Howard Benson:

Oh, yeah. So, he was there, actually.

Warren Huart:

Great guy, yeah.

Howard Benson:

And he said, “If you’re going to pay the artists, we want the producers to have letters of direction.” So, you got to have those. But they don’t even accept those letters of direction anymore. You have to keep redoing them with new stuff. It used to be that the band’s manager could sign it. They don’t accept that anymore. The band members all have to sign it now. So, you have to resubmit and resubmit.

Howard Benson:

Somebody said to me, “Aren’t you upset that it takes this much work? And SoundExchange is all messed up? And they’re this and that.” I said, “Listen, it’s the wild West man. You can’t blame them for being…”

Warren Huart:

At least they’re doing it.

Howard Benson:

Six years ago, there was no Spotify even, or eight years ago. So, all this stuff is happening so quick that you can’t just blatantly go, “We’re going to sue SoundExchange.” I mean, come on, they’re doing it. So, you’re right. Somebody’s doing it.

Warren Huart:

Yeah. I have an artist that we’re trying to get them to complete the SoundExchange forms. It’s just that-

Howard Benson:

Yeah, because you can’t get it unless they do it. They won’t do it.

Warren Huart:

Yeah.

Howard Benson:

I don’t know why. You know what it is? Artists are horrendous businessmen.

Warren Huart:

Sure.

Howard Benson:

That’s why you have to be responsible for your own business, you know? And I learned that early on. I had a good first manager. It was Shep Gordon, who was the first guy-

Warren Huart:

That’s a great way to start. Supermensch.

Howard Benson:

Yeah. Supermensch. In 1988, he took me on as client. I walked into his office and I said, “Shep, thank you for managing me.” It’s like right out of one of those movies where thank you for giving me my life, you know?

Warren Huart:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Howard Benson:

And I said, “Well, would you give me any suggestions as a producer?” And he goes, “Get the check.” That was it. Right? And I walked out and I went, “Get the check? What the hell does that mean?” But then you realize what it really means is you do not have the project unless the money is in the bank.

Warren Huart:

Sure.

Howard Benson:

So, you can think you do, you can tell everybody you do and you can start recording, and if you don’t have the money in the bank, that means that you can get easily. Really easily. The artist can change their mind. The band can break up. The label can… There’s so many things that can go wrong on these things. So, I started really sort of internalizing that and going… Because Mike even knows this, until we get the money, we’re not producing the record. Everybody promises everything in this town. That’s the nature of it. People just talk shit all the time. So, Shep was really good at that. Shep sort of invented that way of thinking with Alice Cooper and all those guys. So, yeah, get the check.

Warren Huart:

You’ve made a schnizel-ton of records from the 80s right through to now.

Howard Benson:

54 albums.

Warren Huart:

Your career growth was like this. It’s come up and up. You’re at a point now where you’re just making some of the best sounding records. What is your favorite things that you’ve done? Are there things for you, maybe even early on? Are there things that just put a big smile on your face?

Howard Benson:

Yeah, I guess the early on ones. The early on ones are always the easiest to talk about because they’re like the kids almost, these things.

Warren Huart:

Sure.

Howard Benson:

But the early on ones are the ones where you sort of were finding your way through things. And I think the early record I did, like the Wild Seeds was one of the first albums I did that got notoriety.

Warren Huart:

Great.

Howard Benson:

And I remember thinking, “Okay, that was really cool.” And Bang Tango was a record that gently put me into the world.

Warren Huart:

Great, yeah.

Howard Benson:

And Motorhead records were, I wouldn’t call them fun, but I learned a lot working with Lemmy. I did four of those things. I think the early P.O.D. records were fun because we were just really getting Pro Tools to do what we wanted it to do. When I did Sepultura and Less Than Jake, Pro Tools … I think about it more about the process. The Less Than Jake I loved doing in Pro Tools, but I still was a little bit learning it. We just got auto tune at that point. So, we were all using it wrong. We were putting it on everything.

Warren Huart:

Yeah, okay.

Howard Benson:

But when I did the P.O.D. records, I remember thinking, “Okay, this sounds kind of the way I want it to sound.” Big choruses, huge anthemic parts. That’s always what I liked to listen to. I was a big prog rock fan growing up.

Warren Huart:

Me too. Huge p-rock fan.

Howard Benson:

ELP fan.

Warren Huart:

Yeah. Emerson, Lake, Palmer.

Howard Benson:

They’re doing his movie, you know?

Warren Huart:

Oh, they are?

Howard Benson:

Karn Evil 9.

Warren Huart:

I didn’t know that.

Howard Benson:

Real movie with Radar Pictures. Yeah. And they got a script and everything.

Warren Huart:

Wow.

Howard Benson:

And it’s about the one day in the year as a Karn Evil where the one person gets to experience life the way it’s supposed to be.

Warren Huart:

That’s amazing.

Howard Benson:

It’s supposed to be… Yeah. So, I already told my manager I have to be on this thing somehow. Those are all big records. Yes and those kinds of things.

Warren Huart:

Sure.

Howard Benson:

The problem with those records was is they had no real emotion. I was listening, as a kid, to that at the same time The Sex Pistols on the same listening. So, people would always say, “You don’t really have a style.” Well, I kind of, as a producer, really don’t either. I just like making the best records for the artist. I’ve worked with Kelly Clarkson. I’ve worked with Rascal Flatts. I’ve also done Three Days Grace records and Motorhead records. You can’t really say there’s a… I don’t stick to one thing. I like moving around a lot and it’s healthy to do that.

Warren Huart:

I agree. It’s healthy. I also think it’s all the best producers. If we look at guys we admire. Like look at John Leckie. I mean, he did Radiohead The Bends. He did Kula Shaker’s first record. He did Stone Roses first record. And he was an engineer on All Things Must Pass by George Harrison. It’s like…

Howard Benson:

Amazing stuff.

Warren Huart:

Just makes music. Or even George Martin, of course, from The Beatles to Jeff Beck Blow to Blow to you name it. It’s-

Howard Benson:

I used to admire Rick Rubin because I remember thinking in like 2000, before I had any real hits, or 1999, Rick would always have these hits, but he was never as involved as I was. I was involved in everything. I remember thinking, “What is Rick doing that I’m not doing?” And I remember thinking, “It’s not about you, it’s about them, the songs and who they are and do they move you or not?” That’s it, really, for me. I thought he was really good at picking those kinds of things. He could even the Dixie Chicks, and then he could do crazy rock records that were just all over the place. Johnny Cash records.

Warren Huart:

Totally.

Howard Benson:

Mostly because of his vision of the bigness of things. The bigger…

Warren Huart:

Right. Yeah, I was able to do… I did Californication pre-pro with the band for like six months. And what he would do is he’d come down like three times a week and they’d be rehearsing six to eight hours a day, five days a week. And he would just come down and go, “What have you got?” Play stuff, give them pointers, come back two days later, see what they’d worked on. And you knew by the end of six months of pre-production that they’d really just needed somebody as great as Jim to sort of press record and record it and obviously get great tones.

Howard Benson:

Right, right.

Warren Huart:

But you knew that the songs were just-

Howard Benson:

It was already there.

Warren Huart:

It was already there.

Howard Benson:

You can’t get that anymore with these artists because you don’t have the time. They’re always touring now because that’s where the money is.

Warren Huart:

Yeah.

Howard Benson:

So, your time of them writing songs is so compressed now into small… A band like In Flames will come in here, they’ll come off tour, they’ll come in, we’ll record the record within two months and they’re gone. But everything has to be almost done on the fly, the song writing, everything.

Warren Huart:

Sure.

Howard Benson:

So, you really have to have your wits about you. Pre-pro is… I don’t think I’ve done a pre-pro in a long time. We used to do it all the time. Now, I get files sent to me and you just say, “We’ll work from this file. We’ll do this, this and this.” But you know what? At some point, you’re good enough at this stuff where you know what to do. You don’t need five weeks of this. You go, “This’ll work. This’ll work. This’ll work.” And if the bands are smart, they usually go home at night and do homework for you. I always assign them homework every night. Do this, rewrite that, rewrite that, rewrite that. But it’s mostly within the recording process now.

Warren Huart:

That’s the great thing about the technology is that we can move so much faster.

Howard Benson:

That’s right. And the bands can send you stuff right away. You know who was really good at that, before the technology, was My Chemical Romance. When I was doing pre-pro with them, I’d always give them suggestions. The next day they’d come back with ready. And they were always listening and processing in their own way. So, one of the things do is not to kind of get in the way of that. Let them do it their way.

Warren Huart:

Sure. When I first started working as an engineer, I worked with Dave Jerden for a bit. He said sometimes you have to get in there and rewrite the songs with the band, and other times you just have to get out of the way and help them make a great record.

Howard Benson:

Yeah. That’s what people don’t realize about our jobs. It’s sometimes you’re in all the way, songwriting, all that stuff, and sometimes you’re just facilitating it. There’s no real way of doing it. And people go, “Well, you didn’t really do anything.” Well, your presence did a lot, actually. The fact that you’re hired makes everybody step to it better. They raise their level. That’s why they pay you the money.

Warren Huart:

And if you didn’t do anything and it was successful, it means that you’re smart.

Howard Benson:

You’re smart.

Warren Huart:

Because you didn’t get in there and ruin it.

Howard Benson:

Yeah, I think Mark Dearnley, when I was working with him, he told me about AC/DC. He was working with Mutt Lange at a time. He was his engineer. I said, “How’d you get those guitar sounds?” He goes, “I put up a mic and got out of the way.” That was it.

Warren Huart:

Yep.

Howard Benson:

57, mic, get out of the way. Sometimes doing nothing… I mean, all these buttons are cool and all that, but sometimes you have to know which ones not to push.

Warren Huart:

Yeah. I’m a huge Formula One fan.

Howard Benson:

Are you?

Warren Huart:

Oh, yeah.

Howard Benson:

You know what’s funny? I never was until I saw Drive to Survive on Netflix last year.

Warren Huart:

Oh, wow.

Howard Benson:

Did you see that?

Warren Huart:

Yeah.

Howard Benson:

I never even knew a thing about the sport and I watched the 10 episodes and I was in. I started getting into like… I went to Grenada where Lewis Hamilton was born. Not to go there, but I just… Now I know all the racers. I’m a Verstappen fan.

Howard Benson:

He’s my favorite.

Warren Huart:

No, he’s amazing. I mean, it’s great-

Mike Plotnikoff:

Hamilton now, he’s like so fast. The new cars they tested this week.

Howard Benson:

They blew everybody away again.

Mike Plotnikoff:

They blew everybody away.

Warren Huart:

It’s all about the driver.

Mike Plotnikoff:

It’s all about the driver.

Howard Benson:

When you watch Lewis Hamilton from the cockpit, that guy is so steady.

Warren Huart:

He’s a machine.

Howard Benson:

The other guys are like this. He’s a machine. Yeah.

Warren Huart:

For me, the best driver of all time is probably a Scottish driver, Jim Clark. His win ratio was 65%.

Howard Benson:

Wow.

Warren Huart:

Every race he entered.

Howard Benson:

You like Verstappen though?

Warren Huart:

Oh, amazing. Yeah. My mother is Irish and Dutch. I’m a real mix. So, I’ve got lot of Dutch family. Yeah, he’s a firecracker.

Howard Benson:

He needs to calm down a little bit.

Warren Huart:

Yeah.

Howard Benson:

That’s true.

Warren Huart:

He’ll be the world champion. It’s definitely going to be Verstappen and Leclerc are going to be fighting it out once-

Howard Benson:

Those two.

Warren Huart:

… once Lewis retires.

Howard Benson:

Yeah. I had no idea there were different like levels of you have a constructor thing and you have a racer thing. You start learning more about it. Well, I watched all the races last year. I thought a lot of them were kind of like, okay, this is the way it’s going to… It started, it’s going to end like this. The most interesting one was when they had to restart after a flag. Everybody had to bunch back up. Watching how Lewis Hamilton manipulated the pack and how he was able to pull ahead and slow down, it was crazy. Because I thought that wasn’t really fair, but then when you watch the restarts, it actually is fun.

Warren Huart:

You know Jackie Stewart?

Mike Plotnikoff:

Of course.

Warren Huart:

When he won his third world championship, you remember he won at like two or three races before the end of the season, and then he retired. They’re like, “Why don’t you finish out the season?” Just to say he did it. He goes, “Well, in that last race,” he said, “I got in the car and I wasn’t scared anymore.”

Mike Plotnikoff:

He wasn’t scared?

Warren Huart:

He wasn’t scared anymore, so he retired. Well, thanks ever so much.

Howard Benson:

Okay.

Warren Huart:

It’s been a lot of fun.

Howard Benson:

I really appreciate it.

Warren Huart:

Please leave a bunch of comments and questions below. Have a marvelous time recording and mixing. We’ll see you all again very soon.