How to become the voice of Leh Defay American Motorsport

You know his voice, even if you have never seen his face. This is still necessary, officially invited over a surefire time yet like a V8 engine like we roar for life. When the race is calm, its voice is stable and measured, but as the action reaches the pitch of fever, he cracks with enthusiasm with the belief of a person who has breathed the motor) in living and breathing in decades. Excessive than just a commentator, Leh Defay is a mestro that can inject a burst of energy in a turtle race – and he not only tells you what is happening, he feels it.

You have heard the Australian Lilt of Difayi everywhere. 100m sprint final in Paris Olympics with one of the nearest finish in history? He was a defense. Indy 500? You bet, and it was the voice of Indycar for more than a decade. He soundtracks NBC Formula 1 coverage in the US and continued to lead the Slate of Motorsport Prasad’s network including NASCAR and Rolex 24, where I managed to steal a moment of my time during a commercial break.

Although the commentary box did not even have an early adulthood on its radar, the ambition of Diffai quickly rose, and he quit a lifetime job in Australia, so that a even more big dream could be chased on the other side of the world. However, the 53 -year -old Shikhar’s route did not begin in Padock, but in an orbit outside Brisbane, where he worked as a school student in his early twenty -seventh condition and played with a career idea in farming.

Before hearing the dollset tone of Difay around the world, he was collecting a liberal mixture of jobs. “I worked in the fitness industry as a gym and aerobics instructor, I worked on building sites as a chippy laborer (Ed. Note: A Carpenter, Australian), and I worked in the Theme Park Warner Brothers Movie World,” he said. “It was all at the same time – I was doing everything and anything.” Even as a teenager working on a tomato farm, he absorbed the lesson that shaped the morality of his work. “I had a tremendous boss that taught me that there is no such thing as free lunch.”

After working as a physical education teacher at a prestigious all-boys school, Difaye met luck when some friends said with a dirt bike race that he asked to handle the public-skills that announced the duties received from a local motorcycle club. “I was naturally a very energetic style,” he says, accepting some of his early comments “perhaps it’s not all factual.” However, his enthusiasm formed the basis for mastery in the art of race calling. “My passion helped me lead a good race call to other interior elements,” he explains, with his story skills responsible for a lively interaction around the family dining table. “Perhaps it came to me through osmosis,” he introduces.

The doors soon opened to Difay as he climbed rank in Australia, eventually a reputed job that would have almost certainly become one of the country’s most recognizable figures in the game. “I was a reporter on sports tonight, which included many different motorcyst categories, and I really started getting opportunities abroad in my career. I found a bug for (proceeding abroad), and I met a gentleman in Britain, who was very well connected, so I left what a lifetime of work could be to chase a big dream in Australia, ”he remembers.

This elevated dream was probably the best dream in the short world of commenting: When retired in 2001, for a long time, by pressing the deep cute voice of Formula 1. “I assured myself that I was going to replace the dead walker, which was a beautiful naive and young enthusiasm,” he says with a laugh. He even cooled Berney Eclestone to throw his hat into the ring. “I got closer, I reached the last three.”

James Ellen (now the President of the Motorsport Business of the publication) finally played a role in ITV, where he was the leading commentator of the network for seven years until he lost broadcast rights in 2008. But I ask Difaye what life seemed, if he was successful, and headfrends in Formula 1 in the early 2000s. “I think it would have been purely difficult because I was a foreigner and I was still so small and so green … Look at the difficulty and criticism facing James. He was already part of the team, and he is English,” Defai is the English and late, the constant comparisons between other pundits and late, the great walker. Back … I think it would be somewhat clever a poison. “

After a small tenure in the UK with the BBC, before making a deal with NBC in 2013, he transferred the status to include the speed channel as a play-play-play-announcer. The network organized the F1’s American broadcasting rights by 2017, which means that the defense was the sound of a series for four years. “I really enjoy walking through airports and looking at children, and adults, wearing a red bull shirt or a McLaren cap, because recently when we were doing F1 on NBC, it was very rare,” he remembers, seeing that the rise of F1 Fandics represents a comprehensive victory for all forms of the Motorcyx. “Instead of wearing a New York Yankise shirt, they are wearing a macleren shirt, and it’s great for our game.”

Great for the game too, in the eyes of Defany: An American driver in F1: “I would be surprised that if you don’t see Colon Harta in one of the seats,” he predictions when I ask about Cadilac’s arrival of 2026, the Indicar Star mentioned the participation of Lando Noris in his junior single-seater career. “This is the final missing piece of the success puzzle of American Formula 1: one (competitive) driver.”

As we speak, DIFEY is ready for one of the most notorious fierce challenges in racing: The Rolex 24 in Detona International Speedway. “We have a rotating team, so we all tap and tap, but you can’t go too far. You have found to keep an eye on the race to maintain the thread of the story, ”he explains. During the trip to the race control, in the room next to the NBC booth, I am a swing between the blow-up mattress, workstation and a waste compartment filled with coffee cups under the desk. Sleep is difficult to sleep during a sleep race, so you can relax anywhere. “We are either behind the booth or we are in the production trailer,” Defei tells me. Although hundreds of drivers and countless stories are to tell, 24 hours still have a lot of airtime to fill. “When a lot is not going on, when you earn your money,” he says with a laugh.

Outside motorsports, the voice of the defense has become a prominent of Olympic broadcasts, including 10 seconds seen in the most 10 seconds of the Paris Games: 100m sprint final. “There is a lot of similarities and crossover between the motorbow and the track and the field,” they say. “With 100 meters, I and my team partner Ato Bolden, four times the Olympic medalist, will be in a pre-set rhythm so that the broadcast is comfortable. Usually we will have a little silence so that you can hear the gun and build an expectation, then you join the race call. ,

He goes with his intestine and 99% time he corrects it, but he accepts the first time when he makes a mistake. “I found it wrong,” he wrote on Instagram in the last summer that Jamaica’s Kishan Thompasson was incorrectly identified as the winner of the 100m final instead of the American Sprinter, Noah Loles. “You just see your eyes,” he tells me. With six Olympics under his belt, Defie hoped to call the 2032 games in his hometown Brisbane. “It will be something special,” they say.

His next major challenge, however, continues to win staunch nascar fans to listen to an Australian accent in the commentary booth. Diftyy analysts Jeff Burton and Steve Latarte joined as the leading announcer of the series after Indycar left for Indycar last year, and he is already earning Rave reviews.

“You are never going to make everyone happy, but I was completely honest and opened with fan base saying that ‘I will never go away, I never went to Bristol, I never went to Martinsville.’

“I had this enthusiasm and surprise like this baby, and I think the audience got to see me,” he explains. When he led the Coke Zero Sugar 400 for his first race in the big chair last August, he ensured that his homework was done. “It was difficult to come later in the year when I had already done Super Cross, IMSA, Indicar, Indi 500 and Olympics. I make the best preparation when I compartmental. I had many other things that I had to focus on and first, especially to do a good job with Paris, ”he says. “When it is the time to go to the end, I look at every race of the season and write myself a note that I can refer back to.”

The defense quickly earned his stripes in the eyes of the NASCAR loyal, when he said “Jeff, your little boy did it,” when Harrison Burton won a surprising victory in Destona during his young woman in the booth. “I don’t know what the nervous is the right word … I was worried. I really wanted to start a good and made a good impression. One of the one of the “described as” which he will remember forever.

My conversation with Diffey eventually returns to the idea of ​​heritage. With two young sons growing up on a motorbike, I wonder if he implements a defley dynasty. “Not at all,” he laughs. “Our boys are in so many sports, motorbikes are just a funny thing.” In fact, his sons’ race can be the only motorcyst -ultimate event where he is not saying shots. “I mostly work weekend, so my wife is a full moto mom. He is incredible, “he says. “He is loading a pickup truck with a bike, fuel cans, ramps and gears.” Role of Diffey? Keep quiet. “When my children compete I get stressed,” he confesses. “When I am in a race, I have to keep my mouth shut.”