Michail Antonio’s prediction on the Footballer’s Football Podcast he co-hosts with Newcastle striker Callum Wilson, that his West Ham side would finish above Liverpool in the Premier League table this season, was subject to some mockery online after a recent 3-1 defeat at Anfield. Antonio’s linkup play was key in setting up Jarrod Bowen’s only goal for the Hammers, but that didn’t stop sections of the social media brigade from making their point. Namely, that he was all talk and no action.
Athletes are entitled to their opinions, but the derision aimed at Antonio is merely one of the reasons that proportionally few active participants in their chosen discipline commit them to a podcast format. Another, clearly, is that it requires work to plan and mental bandwidth to engage in sufficiently captivating conversation to prove worthwhile while not giving too much away.
Motorsport fans fortunately have plenty of specialist podcasts to delve into (beyond Autosport’s own offering of course) that have direct input from active and former drivers on a regular basis.
NASCAR megastars Dale Earnhardt Jr and Denny Hamlin command huge followings on their shows, among them series bosses who stepped in to penalise Hamlin following an admission on his Actions Detrimental podcast that he had intentionally hit Ross Chastain at Phoenix earlier this year. From the world of IndyCar, Speed Street with Conor Daly, and Off Track with James Hinchcliffe and Alexander Rossi can also be relied on for regular topical insights from the cockpit.
But sportscar racing is somewhat underrepresented in this regard, with the excellent Dinner with Racers featuring GT3 and TCR racer Ryan Eversley focused on the US market. That it doesn’t is partly what makes the Over the Limit podcast a breath of fresh air.
Hosted by Porsche World Endurance Championship star Laurens Vanthoor and his BMW GT ace brother Dries, both Le Mans class winners, the pair talk shop in episodes that are also filmed from a studio decked out with memorabilia and steamed on YouTube. It often feels like you’re earwigging on an intimate post-race chat, particularly when they’ve both been in action in the same event and haven’t had a chance to catch up before hitting record.
“Sometimes it even feels like you’re just sitting in the table and we forget we have the mic with us,” acknowledges two-time Spa 24 Hours winner Laurens, cooling down after a bike ride around Monza as Autosport joins him in the Porsche Penske Motorsport hospitality unit. He explains that episodes reviewing races in which both brothers have competed are “the most listened to and the most reacted to”.
Source: Autosport