TRANSCRIPT OF "I WAS EIGHTEEN", SUNG'S GARAGE EPISODE THIRTEEN

DAKOTA: Can I just say for one how surreal it is to be sitting across a coffee table from you? I literally grew up watching the Fast and the Furious, I must have seen Tokyo Drift like twenty times. I remember watching Han onscreen and looking at my brother and saying 'we could do that', and we tried. I learned how to drift in the middle of the outback because of that movie.

SUNG: *laughs* How old were you when you started drifting?

DAKOTA: Maybe fifteen? I'd already been driving single-seater for a few years, I think I'd done maybe one karting race. The actual racing aspect has never been my thing, I just drive for fun, when it comes down to it. I like that feeling of weightlessness, the adrenaline rush.

SUNG: So you've never actually raced before?

DAKOTA: Well, I was maybe sixteen when I decided to give single-seater racing an actual try instead of just zipping around the outback. But I didn't have a driver's license until the year I turned twenty, so it's not like I could actually drive myself anywhere. If I wanted to drive, it had to be with my racing license, on a track.

SUNG: *laughing* You didn't get your driver's license until you were twenty?

DAKOTA: I was busy with pit crew stuff, and world travel, and it really just slipped my mind. Lance and Daniil didn't have driver's licenses either, we never needed them, there were always people who would drive us places. Anyways, when I was like sixteen I did the Toyota Racing Series, which was massive in the Australian and New Zealand areas, I did the season with Marcus Armstrong and Clement Novalak, who are still two of my really close friends today, and it was the only racing season that I ever did, mind you. I think I placed fourth or fifth overall, like I was damn good at it, but of course this was after Susie Wolff retired form driving, when it was still really hard for women in motorsport to get any kind of backing. At the time, my grandfather was working for Toro Rosso, and he had the rapport there because he'd been there since the Minardi days, and that's really the only way I've ever had a fighting chance in the motorsport world. In fact, without him I'd probably just be working at my dad's garage fixing outboard motors.

SUNG: You've always been really mechanically inclined, right? I know just from like watching Drive to Survive that you've had an interest in the practical mechanics of it all for a really long time. I almost feel bad, the cameras didn't leave you alone that first year. But you were incredible on the pit crew, I don't think I've ever seen a mechanic move that fast.

DAKOTA: *laughing* Oh, they still don't leave me alone. I've been Netflix's most interesting story since I was eighteen and I don't see that changing any time soon. Especially this year, my life kind of just blew up in my face and the cameramen went with it. But I've always loved cars, my granddad owned a karting track, my dad a scrapyard. My brother is in the navy, he's a mechanic onboard the warships and the aircraft carriers, he's having a grand old time. 

SUNG: You look well, by the way. I know you were in the hospital last week, things took a bad turn in Canada.

DAKOTA: Yeah, no, I feel a lot better too. I'm sure you're familiar with what happened in Mexico City back in 2019, it was a big focal point of Drive to Survive but basically it was the worst migraine I'd ever had, Lewis Hamilton found me in the paddock, it was pitch black outside and I was still wearing my sunglasses, I had my hands over my ears because even sound hurt. I ended up in the hospital and that's when the doctors actually first suggested that I try botox and I refused because I fucking hate needles, but after what happened in Montreal, I've decided I'm going to give it a shot and I've actually gone four days now without a migraine and I can already feel the difference.

SUNG: If you don't mind me asking, I know we talked about this before we started recording, but that was the same year that you were in the Red Bull driver's academy, which has been in the headlines recently over what you went through during your year there. You made a very powerful statement back in Monaco. What was it you said, "I was eighteen"?

DAKOTA: Nineteen. I was nineteen when it was at it's worst, eighteen when I signed my life away, so to speak. I knew I was a diversity hire. Red Bull has always been under fire for scandals of some sort, they've never really played by the rules but somehow always managed to find a technicality, which is very smart of them, have to give credit where it's due, and after losing Daniel Ricciardo to Renault, they needed to do something big. So they signed me, after I got on my hands and knees and begged for the chance to drive the car during testing. But from the start, something always felt off.  I was desperate to prove myself, and maybe that played a part in it. The first time I drove a Toro Rosso in an actual testing session, I crashed. Pulled a ligament in my leg, it's been fucked ever since. I got back to the garage, and Helmut Marko just tore me apart. He told me that I should go back to Queensland, find a nice boy and give up on cars. I still wake up screaming with his words echoing in my head sometimes, like they've been tattooed on my brain. I was beside myself, even after Marko had been forced out of the garage. I was so worked up over the entire thing that I barely ate when I went out to dinner with Alex and Daniil afterwards and even then, I threw up what I had eaten when I got back to my apartment. I had been living in Milton Keynes with the rest of the junior Red Bull athletes at the time, so while we were in Italy for testing, I'd rented a place with my boyfriend at the time instead of staying with my grandfather. But my ex came back while I was throwing up my guts, retching even when there was nothing left in my stomach to throw up, and I felt nothing when I looked into his eyes, when I saw how worried he was. I just remember thinking 'this is what my life is now. This is what this sport has done to me, I'm just letting everybody down.'

SUNG: You didn't know who you were outside of racing, you couldn't make that distinction, is what you're saying?

DAKOTA: Exactly. Being Red Bull's poster child for women in motorsport became my identity, even when I was relegated to sim time and not allowed near the actual car. My place on the pit crew took a back seat, even though that's why the hired me anyways. They stopped assigning me proper roles and I was left holding the signs and handling the jack, nothing that required any mechanical skill. Even then, I was working myself to the bone on car repairs, no regard for  m y wellbeing or personal safety or anything. If I cut myself on a part of the car, I wouldn't even stop the bleeding, I'd just keep going, keep working. Because I think I was scared of not having anything do to, I didn't fully trust myself. I was pushing myself in training, harder and further than I could healthily go. I looked like a fucking ghost by the time I made it out of there, I was so pale and so thin. I had already passed out in the locker room once, fumbled with an air gun in a pit stop because my hands were shaking from loss of nutrients that I wasn't getting on this diet they'd put me on. Obviously Helmut threw me under the bus in those races, but Pierre and Dany were dead worried, especially since I'd started shutting them out. And I wouldn't have made it out if it weren't for the pandemic. With gyms shut and my mental health at an all time low, I was working out less, eating my comfort foods that definitely weren't on my diet plan, and that's when I realized that the weight I was gaining was a good thing, that I was slowly gaining back everything that Red Bull had taken from me.