The series provides fans with an exciting behind-the-scenes look at the team. More than Machine is available for free on YouTube, and its episodes have already been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
But how did the idea for the series come about?
“I met SafetyCulture’s CEO Luke Anear very randomly at Rally Australia one year through Sebastian Marshall. Me, and few others ended up going for a beer with him after Rally Australia one year, and I got talking to Luke about his business. We kept in touch, and later I needed to use his SafetyCulture app, which is a safety checklist app. We started using it internally for rally car checks, and then we continued to talk, which developed into a sponsorship for the team,” M-Sport team principal Richard Millener explained.
“The more I got to know Luke, the more I learned about his hobbies and interests, one of which is filmmaking. He’s very good at spotting stories and understanding how things work. He used to either be a cameraman or worked for a TV production or news company in Australia,” Millener continued.
Millener and Anear began brainstorming ways to attract new fans to the WRC. Eventually, the decision was made to create a documentary series.
“Fortunately for him, his company has been very successful, and as part of the sponsorship agreement, he just kind of out of the blue said, ‘Let’s go with it. Let’s do it. Let’s make a series.’ We very quickly approached WRC to see if they could help with footage and some of the rights access, which they were very kind to do,” Millener said.
From there, things moved quickly, and filming was in full swing by the start of the year. Most of the groundwork was completed by February, and the first episode was filmed at the Safari Rally in Kenya in March. The process was surprisingly fast.
“From concept to first filming was about two weeks. We had a film crew who saw rallying up close for the first time in Kenya. They didn’t know anybody, and they didn’t really know how the sport worked. The best they had done was visit my house and come to M-Sport.,” Millener recounted.
Millener himself appeared more prominently in the initial episodes, but his role has since diminished – a change he believes benefits viewers.
“I think that’s why you find that maybe the series got better and better as we went along. I think the concept was very quickly born,” Millener remarked.
The goal of the series was not just entertainment. The primary aim was to attract new fans to rallying and showcase how unique the sport is.
“And like I said from the start, my goal for this is to give people the idea that we can create something very special in rallying. That will, of course, need to include the other teams and drivers. But for me and the SafetyCulture team to approach the other teams out of the blue and say, ‘We would like access, please, to everything you do, all of your drivers, and your home lives,’ was almost impossible,” Millener explained.
For this reason, the series focuses exclusively on the M-Sport team, which has presented its own challenges.
“We stuck with using our team first, and it’s taken a few episodes to get our mechanics and our team on board with doing this, but now they’re really into it. Now some of the other drivers have watched it and are starting to show a bit more interest. You’ll see a few more short interviews with some of the other crews, but we have to be careful not to just throw other people into the episodes for the sake of it. It has to tell the story and be right for what we’re doing.”
Millener also revealed that there are plans to continue the series.
“There’s a lot of opportunity and discussions going on at the moment to see if we can make this bigger and better going forward. That is the goal, because people want to see what happens behind the scenes with all the teams, including me,” Millener revealed.
He hopes that other teams will join the project, providing more captivating stories in future seasons.
“I think it would make for really interesting and exciting stories, so hopefully more to come,” Millener concluded.
