Luke Bennett, M.D.: The emotional, cognitive, and physical demands that make Formula 1 a unique and special sport

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
My guest this week is Dr. Luke Bennett. Luke is the Medical and Sports Performance Director for Hintsa Performance, a company focused on human wellbeing and athletic performance with a particular emphasis in motorsport. Luke received his medical degree as well as his master's degree in sports medicine at the University of Queensland. He then spent seven years training in intensive care before working for six years in remote emergency aeromedical retrieval with the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Western Australia, something that we actually talk about in this episode that despite knowing Luke, I didn't know this about him and didn't understand what that meant. I wanted to interview Luke because I talk a lot about my interest in Formula 1, my passion for it.
And I realized that a lot of people who listen to this podcast might not fully understand why. And I thought that no one could do a better job explaining some of the ins and outs of it the way Luke could. And he does a really great job of that. Again, you can come into this without having ever watched a Formula 1 race or finding any interest in it. And I think you're gonna come away from this thinking, wow, you learned a lot and you have a greater appreciation for the sport of Formula 1 What makes it special?
Why it's so emotionally, cognitively and physically appealing? We talk a lot about Luke's background. We do, again, an overview of F1, including the races, the driving, the unbelievable travel and physical and logistics and sleep constraints and everything that are placed on all of the drivers and the teams.
We decided to release this episode specifically to coincide with the release of season two of the Netflix documentary series, Formula 1 Drive to Survive, which just came out on February 28th. And if you haven't seen season one of that, I recommend going and watching that first. I think I binge watched it in two days when it came out. Can't recommend this series enough. Does a really good job of showing you not just the drama of what happens on the tracks, but perhaps more importantly, the drama of what happens off the circuit. My hope is that if you're not a fan of F1, this will give you a great overview of the sport, why I love it so much. And if you're already a fan, you're definitely going to enjoy this. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Luke Bennett. Luke, it's so good to see you, man.

**Luke Bennett** (3:16)
Thanks Peter, back in Austin, huh?

**Peter Attia** (3:18)
Yeah, and thank you for making time. We had spent a couple of weeks trying to figure out how we were going to make this happen with your schedule, because obviously you have more important things to do than sit here and goof off with me. So I really appreciate you making time. That's why we're doing this so late at night.

**Luke Bennett** (3:31)
No problem. We got the races the other way around this year with Mexico and Austin, so we actually had a free day beforehand. It worked out well.

**Peter Attia** (3:38)
So let's start with the most interesting thing on your CV, and we're going to get to a lot of things that you do, but tell me what a flying doctor is.

**Luke Bennett** (3:47)
The Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia is pretty unique. I don't think there's anything like it anywhere else in the world, even considering the continent of Africa. Western Australia in particular is a state that's about the same size as Western Europe. It has only 2 million people by way of population and only really one.

**Peter Attia** (4:03)
And one of those is, I mean, most of them are in Perth, right?

**Luke Bennett** (4:06)
Exactly. So all of the clinical services essentially are in Perth. And it's actually more economical for the health system to fund an aeromedical retrieval service by fixed wing aircraft for the entire state rather than building and funding hospitals around. So it's this huge expanse with a vibrant sort of mining industry in particular, lots of underprivileged indigenous communities, a big tourist industry during the winter months and all sorts of crazy action happening out there. And a couple of these flying doctor bases where you'd have a crew of a doctor, a nurse and a pilot flying to retrieve patients and then taking them to the capital city. So regardless of the problem, you are usually at best three or four hours from help, but more often than not up north half a day to a day away from tertiary specialist care and some really, really sick patients on a daily or weekly basis.