Top five podcasts for revheads

Listening to podcasts is becoming an enormously popular hobby in Australia.

New podcast listeners in the age bracket of 18-54 rose 52 percent from 2017 to 2018 while 87 percent of all people surveyed said they had listened to a podcast in the last month.

Podcasts have become the new medium for commuters and people on public transport and cover a wide range of topics and subjects.

It should come as no surprise then that there is a wealth of podcast material out there for motor enthusiasts.

We spoke to Chris Riddell, who has his own podcast Supercar Chat and also contributes to Endurance Chat, two podcasts that cover motor racing.

He runs us through his popular podcasts and offers suggestions on some of the other hottest podcasts out there for revheads.

Supercar Chat

This podcast covers the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship (formerly the V8 Supercars Championship) with previews of each round, reviews, stories and occasionally some content from the Dunlop Super2 Series as well.

It has become very popular amongst racing enthusiasts and the podcast is dissected on Reddit as well, allowing listeners to become involved in the process.

Chris said the inspiration for creating the podcast was simple: “The others that were out there weren’t much good,” he laughed.

“We thought we would come out with our own way of doing it, a bit irreverent, a bit of banter. We have a lot of fun doing it.”

Endurance chat

This podcast is a bit more involved and talks about the popular endurance races like the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Indianapolis 500, Daytona 24 and our very own Bathurst 1000.

Recently, the team travelled to the United States for the Daytona 500 to give listeners an experience of what it is like to be on the ground for one of these major events.

There is a panel of eight that contribute to the podcast and experts are regularly on the show, including open wheel racing experts and well-known car racing journalist Graham Goodwin.

“The feedback is overwhelmingly positive,” Chris said.

“We post them on social media, Reddit and encourage people to ask questions. Then we have a couple of episodes based around those questions which have gone down an absolute treat.”

Rusty’s Garage

Automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust is a household name in motorsport and his personal podcast is a must-listen for anyone that likes high-octane racing.

“He is a brilliant commentator and he has been around the traps so long that he always knows his stuff,” Chris said.

There are plenty of quality interviews on this podcast as well to add to the appeal.

The Marshall Pruett Podcast

An interview-based podcast that focuses not only on today’s motorsport heroes, but past legends.

Graham Goodwin is on deck to conduct interviews for the podcast which gives it a strong sense of credibility.

Recently, the podcast has interviewed the likes of former Formula One World Championship winner Jenson Button, 2016 European Le Mans Series champion Alex Brundle and IndyCar veteran Marco Andretti to get listeners nice and close to the action.

“Listeners can give feedback and they are very active with questions as well,” Chris said.

Midweek Motorsport

This was the podcast that started it all for Chris.

The European podcast began life as a traditional radio show and is the world’s longest-running motor sport radio show/podcast.

It covers all types of racing from Formula 1, sports cars, endurance racing, le mans 24 hours, Indycar, touring cars, superbikes, MotoGP and rallying.