CASTROL Racing’s Thomas Randle is set to sensationally quit his career in motorsport to take up an offer to join the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
The 27-year-old will hang up his helmet, effective immediately, and has been inserted straight into the famous orchestra as its lead pianist.
Tickford Racing’s Randle is a classically trained pianist and has always enjoyed playing piano and other musical instruments.
His stocks in the musical world rose sharply recently in a collaboration between Formula 1 and Supercars where Randle played the F1 theme song.
The video went viral, watched almost five million times on Instagram alone.
Melbourne born and bred, Randle could not refuse the chance to join the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and is now preparing for his first major performance – Star Wars: Return of the Jedi™ in Concert at Hamer Hall in Melbourne. He will be part of six straight nights behind the piano, starting April 18.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, but I’ve decided to park my racing career, hang up the helmet after 20 years, and I’m going down the avenue of becoming a professional classical pianist,” he says.
“It’s been a very big decision to make. It’s a big career change to go from being a professional driver in Supercars to putting that aside and focus now on my professional piano career.
“After the Grand Prix with the video that we did with the F1 intro, the messages I’ve received from different musicians, artists, orchestras … my inbox has just been flooded. I really think this is the best opportunity for me to take the next step in my career.
“And to do that properly, I have to put Supercars and motorsport aside and head down the music path.
“One really good thing is that Castrol has been immensely supportive throughout this whole journey. The team there has been amazing. I’m still going to be a Castrol ambassador and do their corporate functions, annual awards and their galas for the foreseeable future. They’ve even talked about doing a Castrol-liveried grand piano as well.”
Tickford Racing team owner Rod Nash says Randle goes with the team’s blessing.
“He’s been so passionate about being in an orchestra for so long, but his driving duties have held him back,” he says.
“And although we would have liked to have delayed it, it’s just been really working him over.
“It’s pretty disappointing because to have a driver leave your team, you know, early in the season like this and there’s sponsors and team and everything, we’ve got to work through it.
“It’s a bit of a kick in the guts. We’ve invested a lot of our time and energy into Thomas’ career, and we tried to change his mind, but he’s pretty adamant that he’s doing it.”
Tickford Racing and Castrol will make further announcements ahead of the next round of the Repco Supercars Championship in New Zealand for the ITM Taupō Super400.
Today’s news comes on April 1, a noted day for mischievous motorsport news to appear online that is in the spirit of April Fool’s Day …
