Latest / Rusty's Garage / Dean Herridge | Part 1 - The Herridge Family & Going All In.

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Dean Herridge | Part 1 - The Herridge Family & Going All In. · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:14
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust, and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:26
  For this episode, I'm in West Australia, specifically at the Maximum Motorsport Workshop in Perth.
• 0:31
  I've filmed interviews here before and recorded a feature ep with the founder, Rob Herridge, which you can find in our library.
• 0:39
  But this time I'm here to chat with his son, Dean.
• 0:42
  We've just returned from Busselton down near the Margaret River and the second round of the 2025 Australian Rally Championship.
• 0:48
  We've been here to talk about the next episode.
• 0:50
  Dean and I have known each other for over 20 years since he competed for the factory Subaru team alongside Cody Crocker and the late great Possum Bourne.
• 1:00
  These days, Dean runs Maximum with one eye on the history and legacy of what his dad built.
• 1:07
  Rob can still be found tinkering and building some things downstairs in the workshop area and as always, they are beautifully crafted.
• 1:16
  And the other eye is on taking the business in a direction that is part race and rally car preparation, as well as proud official Subaru Motorsport parts distributor.
• 1:26
  Dean's good around logistics and management, so we've set up in a boardroom beside his office, which is immaculate.
• 1:34
  There's lots of reminders from photos and memorabilia of his and Rob's achievements over the years all around us.
• 1:40
  Dean's daughter Olivia is in an office upstairs here too, working on the digital and social side of things, which she is very good at.
• 1:48
  So there's three generations here today.
• 1:51
  Now these rally people...
• 1:54
  They enjoy a chat, and I think that's in part because I love this area of motorsport.
• 1:59
  Many in it are like family.
• 2:01
  So you'll notice a bit of a trend here.
• 2:03
  Many of the rally feature eps somehow end up three-parters, and this one's no different.
• 2:09
  But there is so much good stuff here, and the conversation time flies.
• 2:14
  flew by so you won't be disappointed from how it all started with some paddock bashing to taking their own hyundai to the uk for an assault on the british championship to a shootout for a factory drive with mitsubishi and opting to go blue
• 2:31
  with Subaru and he's proudly been with them ever since.
• 2:34
  Later on we cover his memories of Peter Brock's fatal crash and being among the first on scene to a little-known story of an incident in testing plus how he ended up in hotel quarantine long before a thing called COVID.
• 2:51
  Let's get into it.
• 2:56
  This is well overdue.
• 2:57
  Hello.
• 2:57
  Hi mate, how are you going?
• 2:59
  I love coming here because you're surrounded by all kinds of things at Maximum Motorsport from the currency of what you do and we'll get into a bit more detail about that but also there's little bits of history.
• 3:10
  I mean there's great rally suits of yours, pictures around the place that remind you.
• 3:15
  Crazy to think that something your dad started, you have ultimately ended up following it.
• 3:21
  Yeah, and particularly as I have no skill set around being mechanical.
• 3:26
  And I hope he's proud of that as well because I think he's the one who said – he's probably got every single diary he's ever had, by the way, because he doesn't throw anything out.
• 3:34
  Really?
• 3:34
  Somewhere in the deep, dark depths, there'll be probably 30 diaries over 30 years of maximum motorsport, and I reckon in there is about five times very highlighted –
• 3:41
  We're closing the business because it's hard work to run any business, particularly a small business in Perth based around motorsport and ultimately rallying.
• 3:52
  And I guess because of his involvement, Subaru became exclusively around Subaru at some points probably 15 years ago, tied in with his relationship with being around Subaru legacies and racing them.
• 4:04
  And ultimately, this car that came along called a XX, which became a cult car, and he probably found himself at the right place at the right time.
• 4:11
  Awesome.
• 4:11
  We can find, if you're listening to this and you want to hear Rob Herridge's three-part, I think, episode, you can find that in the library.
• 4:22
  blend from the two.
• 4:23
  Firstly, I think you went to his first ever rally.
• 4:27
  Is this right?
• 4:27
  Were you about seven years old, your dad's first rally?
• 4:29
  What was that?
• 4:30
  Yeah, because he started quite late, to be honest, for rallying.
• 4:33
  Like he started at 30.
• 4:34
  He was not late for anybody, but to go on and do what he's done was pretty amazing because I remember as a kid it was motocross, offshore powerboats and tunnel boats and anything.
• 4:44
  Water skiing.
• 4:45
  Yeah, yeah, water skiing, all that sort of stuff.
• 4:47
  But then he tried his hand at rallying.
• 4:49
  And I reckon he took the Datsun 1600 to the back of his bobtail truck that he had that he was doing some sort of work with.
• 4:57
  And therefore, I must have been, we're talking like 83, 84.
• 5:00
  Seven, seven years old?
• 5:02
  Seven, eight, nine, something like that.
• 5:03
  Myself, my sister.
• 5:04
  Gemini wagon support vehicle.
• 5:05
  Yeah, because Grantina Shadforth, one of his good mates, was his very first service crew.
• 5:10
  They've since...
• 5:11
  helped out and been around a little bit.
• 5:13
  Yeah, I'm pretty sure they had a Gemini wagon that Natasha and I sat in the back of and scooted through doing what was more chase servicing back then.
• 5:20
  You used to chase the cars around so the service crew would set up in a spot on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, wait for the car to come out of the forest.
• 5:27
  service it, how long that took, and then you go to the next place.
• 5:30
  Nowadays, it's all completely different.
• 5:31
  We sort of settle into one place, almost like a mini paddock at a racetrack, the service park or what you might call a rally central.
• 5:39
  So it's changed.
• 5:40
  But, yeah, definitely chased servicing around on his first having a crack at rallying.
• 5:43
  Were you hooked?
• 5:44
  Were you like, you know, this Datsun 1600 is cool?
• 5:47
  It was cool.
• 5:48
  Jeez, I'm a rubbish passenger to this day.
• 5:53
  And even with my dad, if he went out just to test something and he might throw me in the passenger seat, I'd be holding onto the door handle going, I see your daddies.
• 6:00
  He knows what he's doing and he'll look after you, et cetera.
• 6:03
  But clearly it was no help to him whatsoever playing around in the back shed or anything like that because just that wasn't of an interest to me.
• 6:11
  And you were sort of cricket.
• 6:13
  Well, I love cricket.
• 6:14
  I love motorsport, but I probably love touring cars.
• 6:16
  And, you know, Peter Brock and I was an Alan Moffat fan because of the fact that he had an RX-7 when I was younger.
• 6:21
  I didn't even really know what history he had had around Fords and things until you get a bit older.
• 6:25
  So I thought – so I love motorsport, absolutely.
• 6:28
  And, you know, I love following Dad around in bits and pieces.
• 6:30
  But I guess I therefore, because I didn't like the mechanical, I wasn't very good at that stuff, it fell around –
• 6:36
  following the results and how he was going and looking at the times.
• 6:39
  You know, back then there wasn't the technology we have now.
• 6:41
  You'd literally go to the control table and scan through the results and try and add it up.
• 6:45
  Luckily I was okay at math.
• 6:46
  So that's how it more started.
• 6:49
  But I'm sure I was a disappointment to him at times, you know, late at night when he'd probably like his teenage son at some point to come up and help.
• 6:55
  I probably had zero – well, not zero interest.
• 6:57
  Obviously I was interested.
• 6:59
  It just wasn't what I liked.
• 7:00
  I would describe it more as just a different –
• 7:04
  style of interest.
• 7:05
  And that is now reflected in what you do here in the business, which we'll come to, what he did and the part you're now playing in this.
• 7:13
  Just to kind of illustrate what you're talking about, did you not keep one of the first programs from a Wanneroo touring car race that you went to or something?
• 7:21
  I think I still have it.
• 7:22
  Really?
• 7:22
  Like I loved going to, you know, Dad take me to Wanneroo and I'd be around the back getting the program signed by everybody, you know, Alan Grice, Tony Longhurst, Jim Richards, all those, you know, Dick Johnson, every, John Bauer, everything in that era.
• 7:35
  I loved that stuff.
• 7:36
  And that's what I would have loved to have done being a professional race driver around that at the time.
• 7:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:40
  And therefore, I guess, there was always an interest in motorsport.
• 7:44
  And then ultimately through time when I had a chance to drive a car around the back paddock and do stuff and get involved in rally, it became my sport as well, clearly.
• 7:51
  And I think the traditional line for most people is that they like tinkering with cars and then they like to go and race them or drive them.
• 7:59
  And I guess that part wasn't there for me.
• 8:01
  So it was actually a little, not tough in the early days, but Dad started Max for Motorsport when I was in high school.
• 8:08
  And clearly it wasn't a direct path for me to try and be mechanical work in there.
• 8:10
  I actually went off, did something different and would come in on the Thursday nights and the weekends because you should.
• 8:16
  And I've got lots of people that dad was probably leaning on to help me start my rallying.
• 8:19
  And maybe back then they thought, God, Bob's son's a little lazy bugger who doesn't do much.
• 8:23
  But...
• 8:24
  I was clearly paying attention to other parts of the sport, which in later years as I've made a career out of it, even a few of those people have come up to me and said, righto, you had your own path.
• 8:34
  They clearly made it work.
• 8:35
  It wasn't the traditional work on your car in the back shed and then take it out on the weekends and then fix it back up on Monday and Tuesdays.
• 8:42
  It was a different path.
• 8:43
  But there is a common theme here that I want – you've sort of sparked my interest.
• 8:48
  So, firstly, you have some great long-term partnerships.
• 8:50
  That's, I think, reflective of both your dad and you for that matter.
• 8:55
  You had a link with Snap-on along the way, and it's gaudy for memory, isn't it?
• 8:59
  Yeah, Gordon and Sheila Douglas.
• 9:00
  Yeah, you've known them forever.
• 9:02
  I think he can recall coming to the house at some point.
• 9:05
  Was it a Corolla, a red Corolla, and you were paddock bashing in that thing?
• 9:08
  What was that?
• 9:09
  The first guy I sort of drove around the back paddock was a little white carola.
• 9:12
  God knows where that came from.
• 9:13
  Boy, it's $500.
• 9:15
  Eventually- Manual?
• 9:16
  Yeah.
• 9:17
  Yeah, of course.
• 9:18
  Manual one right under the back, and maybe that just deteriorated somewhere.
• 9:21
  We ended up with an ex-Phil Myers rear-wheel drive sort of day-glow-yellow.
• 9:25
  He was a famous sign rider here in W.O.
• 9:27
  and did speedway and things, and ultimately actually even got involved with our Team Heritage Hyundai logo many years later.
• 9:32
  So I had a Phil Myers car, which didn't have all the works gear in it, but it had a roll cage.
• 9:37
  Maybe that was Dad and Mum's way of going-
• 9:39
  Dean's starting to crack on down the back paddock and maybe this could be a way to do some autocrosses and some other things potentially.
• 9:45
  But, yeah, Gordon famously would come around on Friday afternoon on his northern run because he was from the city with his snap-on truck, have a cup of tea and coffee with mum and dad because obviously we had a livestock business and had 10 acres worth of property.
• 9:57
  So not much but just a small paddock out the back and they reckon that I was going around so many times I wore a – you're going to see the roof of it by the time I done.
• 10:05
  So he lapsed around this very, very small little track.
• 10:07
  But...
• 10:08
  And I didn't realise at the time fuel wasn't that hard to get.
• 10:12
  Mum and Dad made it sound like it was hard to get because when I'd run out and I'd want to go back out, they'd go, oh, we haven't had a chance to go and get any fuel yet.
• 10:18
  Thank goodness because the clothes on the clothesline are covered in dust when you're going around the back.
• 10:22
  We had a four-wheel drive, sorry, a little quad bike that myself and my sister would use and a little tennis court out the front and bust.
• 10:29
  We had a great upbringing in that regard.
• 10:30
  I mean, touch points and doing that and skiing on every Easter and stuff near the lake, which was named after our family, ironically.
• 10:39
  family farm where a natural spring sort of came out.
• 10:42
  Dad probably touched on it in his podcast.
• 10:43
  And we would go out there regularly as a family.
• 10:46
  And ultimately when we got our own boat, we sort of even did more.
• 10:49
  Yeah.
• 10:49
  Awesome.
• 10:50
  So just in terms of before you get to the competitive stuff, just learning to drive, how do you,
• 10:57
  I think there's a bit of a rite of passage thing where dad was taking you out for a couple of things.
• 11:00
  He might have been putting some grain out or something, we'll see, when you first, like as a little kid.
• 11:05
  Yeah, because I think at one point he must have had a little bit of land out somewhere and he was probably going to drop some grain down for sheep or something like that and
• 11:12
  I now think he must have gone, well, Dean will be all right here.
• 11:14
  We're in a closed paddock.
• 11:16
  I'll get the car running, put it on the choke on the four-wheel drive.
• 11:19
  So I must have been doing a whole three-clones an hour.
• 11:21
  Here I am behind the wheel at probably seven just thinking, oh, watch the trees.
• 11:25
  I'm probably miles away from them and keeping it straight and super concentrated.
• 11:28
  And Dad was probably then just sort of starting to snake the grain out the back so when we'd return for the loop back, he'd go, oh, you weren't too straight through here.
• 11:35
  I was like, hang on, I was dead, dead high down there where I was going.
• 11:39
  So he could see your kind of almost perfection streak back then, couldn't he?
• 11:43
  Yeah, I try and be.
• 11:44
  That's probably a feature of fault.
• 11:46
  The other part was, I don't know whether this was by design because he was so, you know, he was busy.
• 11:50
  Like he worked really hard and mum and dad on the business and things to make things happen for himself.
• 11:56
  We never went down the go-karting route or anything like that.
• 11:59
  And I don't know whether that was on purpose fully or slightly an excuse, but he followed through on his promise, which was be a kid, do your TE, do all the normal kid things, and we'll make something happen post that.
• 12:09
  So even though I would have loved to have done go-karting and who wouldn't have done it 15 or 14, 13 or something like that, I definitely had some toys to play around the back and I was probably getting some skill set.
• 12:20
  I did at one point, probably didn't tell mum, had a stopwatch experience
• 12:24
  So around the front handlebars of the four-wheeler and we'd make up stages.
• 12:28
  That's where the rally part was coming in and try and refine my driving or match down who the latest WRC driver at the time and run your own event almost out the back on a four-wheeler.
• 12:37
  Excellent.
• 12:38
  Yeah.
• 12:38
  Yannana, who was a real...
• 12:40
  competitive human being very good at sport and love a lover of sport you would do quite a bit of time with her when it came to learning for your actual road license i think in a land cruiser or something didn't you yeah correct because my grandmother's on the perth side who was my number one support when i rallied she was in perth so we would see when we came to perth which was quite regularly but nana on dad's side lived in northern along with my great-grandmother and so
• 13:02
  We would spend a lot of time there.
• 13:04
  They looked after us and my sister and my cousins a heap.
• 13:07
  And because she was so sporty, you know, I'd play golf and cricket at the back when I could talk her into it and all this stuff.
• 13:13
  But, yeah, she would take us out, I don't know, mushroom or something because, once again, you're on a closed property and you do a bit of driving.
• 13:18
  And I actually feel like those first lessons of, you know, proper gear changes and stuff before we ever looked again in a crawler at the back, I was steering around with Nana and people probably hanging on the side and jumping off to go and, you know, get some mushrooms together for the next thing she was going to, I don't know, make or give away or something.
• 13:32
  Yeah.
• 13:32
  Was she the one that would call and she would look at perhaps your starting position in a rally and then were you finished?
• 13:38
  Oh, yeah.
• 13:39
  And she'd often have a conversation with you about, oh, okay, okay.
• 13:41
  So you were 10th on the road, but you finished third.
• 13:44
  Oh, that was good.
• 13:45
  Yeah.
• 13:45
  And then as things got more competitive in life and it was harder to get that sort of advancement, that was her assessment of your performance, wasn't it?
• 13:53
  That was my Perth grandmother on my mum's side.
• 13:56
  That was Ethel.
• 13:56
  Yeah, because unfortunately, you know, Nana passed away quite young when I'd only probably rallied for a couple of years.
• 14:01
  So Grandma Ethel would be, you know, she would have supported me forever and, you know, from those times.
• 14:06
  And, of course, it's easy to sort of try and get a blanket view of rallying because you're seated, you know, and the fast guys start at the front and your numbers change all the time, right?
• 14:14
  50 cars, you'd be car 50 when you first start.
• 14:16
  So early on it was easy to impress because it was start a car, you know,
• 14:20
  Oh, Grandma had a good day, you know, won the class or didn't or whatever and got, you know, 14th outright.
• 14:24
  And, oh, what number are you?
• 14:24
  Oh, we're 46.
• 14:25
  Oh, wow, you've made up 30 spots.
• 14:27
  Got a little bit harder when I started driving for Subaru on car number two when she'd be, you know, we had a great weekend.
• 14:32
  We were on the podium, got third, and she, oh, we dropped a spot.
• 14:36
  Mega hard to impress.
• 14:38
  My mates were much more impressive later when they were rallying alongside me.
• 14:41
  Rally sprints or perhaps even autocrosses is the better way of starting, I guess, the foray.
• 14:47
  Is that kind of how it began?
• 14:49
  Was it a Corolla 2?
• 14:50
  It's the same car, but we didn't – that's the thing.
• 14:54
  We didn't do many events like that.
• 14:56
  Ironically, once again, because Dad was quite busy, we had some tarmac rally sprints that we had a bit of a crack at down in Kwinana when I was just on licence and Dad was either away driving.
• 15:06
  And I had to go quite young at a couple of autocrosses down south.
• 15:10
  And would you believe Glenn Dunkerton, so Jeff Dunkerton's son and the nephew Ross Dunkerton.
• 15:15
  lived in Northern as a teacher and, of course, he was having a bit of a crack in his rear-wheel drive car.
• 15:18
  So I think Dad must have done a deal and said, look, if you can take Dean down and do a few rallies or autocrosses in your car, we'll return the favour and you can have a run in that.
• 15:27
  And it probably also gave me someone to gauge to, even though I'd never done a rally.
• 15:31
  You know, Glenn was trying to sort of cut his teeth into motorsport and rallying in a general sense.
• 15:36
  So it gives you a bit of an eye on how you might be going, et cetera.
• 15:38
  So, no, in those early parts.
• 15:40
  We did a couple of them but not heaps.
• 15:43
  Your first real job is around real estate settlements.
• 15:46
  This is pretty much straight out of high school, I think, and then a little bit of work as a conveyancer too.
• 15:52
  Is that correct?
• 15:52
  Yeah, because funny time, after high school I went straight and did some CBH grain bin sort of seasonal work that my Aunty Pamela in Mongan Hills put us into along with my cousin Sally.
• 16:05
  You had to pocket some money from that too, didn't you?
• 16:07
  Yeah, and Dad then, you know, quite rightly, I put that into the first rally car.
• 16:10
  I think it took it off me pretty quick because they were already doing some stuff.
• 16:13
  So take that and then out of that I'm thinking, well, I better get a job.
• 16:17
  You know, there was a bit of a transition from Mum and Dad to come to Perth and what was going on there.
• 16:20
  And so I actually moved up to Perth with no idea what I was going to do.
• 16:23
  And clearly Dad's just started maximum.
• 16:25
  There's no room for some guy who's not got any interest in trying to be helpful out the back.
• 16:28
  So I was even naive, but I remember a couple of my friends going, it could take you some time to get a job.
• 16:34
  I'm like, oh, I'll just look in the paper and have a look.
• 16:36
  And I was so naive to the fact that when I went for the first interview, it was probably an agency.
• 16:42
  I go walk in and they go, oh, this looks pretty good.
• 16:43
  I could work in here.
• 16:45
  Not knowing this was just the front interview to go to the next one.
• 16:48
  And then I go to South Perth to a company called Century Settlements with a lady there, Rhonda, who ran it.
• 16:53
  And they were looking for an outside clerk because her daughter who'd been involved, Leah, was going to go into the office.
• 16:58
  you know, start actually being a conveyancer.
• 17:00
  So I don't know, I went in for an interview and they thought I must have done okay.
• 17:03
  They asked some interesting questions around horoscopes and bits and pieces as they did and then all of a sudden I got a job.
• 17:09
  To the amazement of everyone who said, what?
• 17:11
  You looked this morning and you've got a job.
• 17:13
  What does it do?
• 17:14
  I don't know, I'm doing outside class.
• 17:15
  work, whatever that is.
• 17:16
  And as it worked out, it was real estate settlements.
• 17:19
  I would literally go into the city based on what the conveyances had booked in and have almost 15-minute slots to go to and from different banks, meet up with other conveyances and banks to discharge mortgages and all sorts of stuff.
• 17:31
  So for a couple of years I did that.
• 17:33
  You worked out pretty quickly how to be pretty good on timing with that because you were running up and down the terrace with a briefcase full of bank checks trying to be the last link of putting a settlement together where someone's ready to move that afternoon.
• 17:46
  Probably more pressure than I thought about at the time.
• 17:47
  But, yeah, you had to be organised.
• 17:49
  Back in the days of checks and things which are gone now.
• 17:53
  Crazy.
• 17:54
  But does that stuff, now you've ended up in, you know, an ownership and management position here at Maximum.
• 18:00
  Does any of that stuff sort of help?
• 18:01
  Probably, yeah, because, you know, we do a lot of logistics around rallying, so I think that probably did help.
• 18:07
  And I was pretty organised and I liked numbers.
• 18:10
  And ironically, you know, mum probably thought this is a good path.
• 18:13
  You know, your dad's trying to start this bloody motorsport business and had done trucking and whatever else.
• 18:18
  And, you know, they were sending me to get my licence, my settlement licence.
• 18:23
  So mum's thinking, oh, this is great, getting a bit of a career in a course.
• 18:26
  Then I pivot and turn right.
• 18:27
  Yeah.
• 18:28
  And still to this day, a good mate of mine, Paul Garnett, was under me when I started to do some conveyancing around Lounge.
• 18:34
  He's gone on to do some good things, hasn't he?
• 18:35
  Yeah, he went and took the company, he runs his own company, and we'd catch up at parties and my mum's going, geez, Paul's doing well for himself, isn't he?
• 18:41
  He'd look at me like, no, you keep going with what you're doing.
• 18:44
  But I think, yeah, you must do, and that was sort of, you know, you're working for somebody else, and we had a fair bit of responsibility, I guess, when I think back of it now.
• 18:52
  So from a competitive standpoint, somewhere here you begin, you know, success in the Clubman series and so on.
• 18:59
  Well, what's...
• 19:00
  transpiring?
• 19:01
  Do you take the money from the conveyancing?
• 19:04
  You're starting to plough it into a bit of competition?
• 19:06
  Are you gradually merging with some work at maximum?
• 19:09
  What are you doing here?
• 19:09
  Well, fill in the gaps.
• 19:11
  Definitely, you're expected to come in on the weekends and at least do something.
• 19:14
  Probably not hold anything dangerous like a grinder or drill too often because they knew I wasn't good at that.
• 19:18
  Trying to sort of, I guess, do your for want of a better term, apprenticeship of being around and around the people that are supporting you.
• 19:25
  In actual fact, my first rally car was...
• 19:27
  that dad had clearly done a deal on was a left-hand drive, almost, or basically brand new Hyundai Lantra.
• 19:32
  There's a bit of story about that too.
• 19:34
  They were used for an ad campaign or something like that.
• 19:35
  Yeah, correct.
• 19:35
  So out of, you know, I don't know who or how the contact happened, but, you know, Hyundai must have sent some cars out of Korea.
• 19:40
  They were a very new brand back then for an ad campaign in the middle of the desert.
• 19:44
  And, of course, they were left-hand drive.
• 19:45
  And once they'd finished doing the...
• 19:47
  the filming that it wasn't worth sending them back.
• 19:49
  So I guess they'd been dumped on the West Australian distributor who was a guy called Colin Norton.
• 19:53
  And Dad's probably thinking, geez, this wouldn't be a bad, you know, things started to move a little bit from rear-wheel drive to front-wheel drive cars, particularly in automotive, but then also for rallying.
• 20:03
  And that probably goes, well, this could be a good way to get what was very cheap, brand new car.
• 20:07
  Maybe this is what Dean should drive rather than a rear-wheel drive older car potentially.
• 20:11
  And so I think he might have done a deal where he was going to drive it.
• 20:15
  It was meant for me, but he'll do a steer in it to get a bit of promotion out of it.
• 20:19
  And I think there are some photos of like a car number five-seeded Hyundai Lantra front-wheel drive car doing like a 1993 Forest Rally.
• 20:27
  And, of course, Dad at that point had been the 91-92 champion or something like that.
• 20:30
  So to have a former champion driving a sort of fairly new Hyundai at the time and then that's what I jumped into and with the support.
• 20:37
  You know, Colin was great in my early days from a Hyundai point of view and leaning on some of their partners in regards to –
• 20:44
  security and tinting and leveraging a little bit out of them to support me in the early days.
• 20:48
  Excellent.
• 20:48
  So front-wheel drive is kind of how it is.
• 20:50
  Yeah, that's how.
• 20:51
  So I've never done, thinking about a rally in a rear-wheel drive car.
• 20:55
  No way.
• 20:55
  Even though round the back, autocrosses, et cetera.
• 20:58
  Yeah, no worries.
• 20:58
  Did a little bit of that.
• 20:59
  But my very first rally in, yeah, I'm thinking now, I don't think I've done anything in rear-wheel drive.
• 21:03
  It was front-wheel drive.
• 21:05
  And then, of course, when we progress through into four-wheel drive or four-wheel drive with Subarus, which is, I think, an easier transition, by the way.
• 21:11
  I think front-wheel drive into four-wheel drive has a similar style as opposed to, you know, steering on the throttle a lot and gripping the rear-wheel drives.
• 21:18
  I mean, other people can correct me if that's wrong, but I think as, you know, we evolve through automotive, I mean, now there'd be people who have never driven into front-wheel drive or rear-wheel drive.
• 21:25
  They've been jumped straight into an all-wheel drive car.
• 21:27
  Can we focus on this sort of front-wheel drive chapter then for a little bit before we get to Subaru and Maximum?
• 21:34
  Something here around, I want to say, some work with Kia too, isn't there?
• 21:39
  So some production spec stuff with them, is that right?
• 21:41
  So before Kia even came into Australia, they've come along to Rally Australia or come along to Perth to go, there's a round of the world championship held here, and they scouted around going to a few workshops on...
• 21:52
  who could we partner up with to potentially build a couple of cars and enter into a category-type car for World Championship?
• 21:59
  And so I think they come rattling on the door of Maximum Motorsport in, like, 95.
• 22:02
  So Maximum had only been around for a couple of years, but had built a few little cars.
• 22:05
  Kia was an unknown brand at that stage, wasn't they?
• 22:07
  Yeah, and they did sell a car here at the time.
• 22:09
  And, you know, obviously Dad and Steve, you know, Steve Wisby, who started Maximum with Dad, got the contract to build them.
• 22:15
  And so they entered, I'm going to say, in, like, 95, Rally Australia,
• 22:19
  Two front-wheel drive, you know, one was a 1.8 litre and one was a 1.6 and they had a Korean driver and dad drove the front-wheel drive car.
• 22:25
  Well, I think they both ended up with class victories and it was a good debut and then they wanted to expand the program into 96 and try and build an outright Group A type car to take on the likes of Wayne Bell in Asia Pacific and stuff.
• 22:37
  It was the Hyundai, of course, driver.
• 22:41
  And I think because I was, you know, bopping around in my front wheel drive Hyundai at the time, I must have been at the test or at Rally Oz and they thought I did an okay job and I'm sure Dad was pushing quite hard.
• 22:52
  They're going, well, we're on a third driver and I somehow sort of got the gig.
• 22:55
  I'm still not sure to this day how much, you know, Dad's clearly had an influence, but how much he pushed for that.
• 23:00
  And that saw me, I guess, very young, like we're talking like 1996, go and compete in the Asia-Pacific rounds of the championship, which included Indonesia, New Zealand and ultimately Rally Australia.
• 23:12
  Crazy.
• 23:13
  I mean, this is quite a...
• 23:16
  I'd probably been overseas once maybe with my grandmother and my cousin to Singapore and travelled.
• 23:22
  Well, we're a bit lucky.
• 23:23
  We travelled around a little bit following Dad's career, even in the early 90s and stuff.
• 23:27
  But to go to Indonesia and compete, that was an eye-opener when you're 19 years old to be driving just around on those roads and the lifestyle around that.
• 23:36
  So that was a big eye-opener.
• 23:37
  But I think we...
• 23:38
  Yeah, we did a good job in difficult conditions in that car and won the category and got a good outright result, like I said, in this front-wheel drive car.
• 23:46
  So you're learning quite quick and then went to New Zealand and they upgraded me into the second Group A car.
• 23:50
  So Dad and I effectively went head-to-head at rallying in New Zealand.
• 23:54
  And then, I don't know, maybe didn't do a good job because I got bumped back to the 1.6 car for Rally Australia back in the day for 96.
• 24:00
  But you learn so much.
• 24:02
  I mean, in those rallies I had Rod van der Stratton starting to do some co-driving for me because I did a little bit of ARC.
• 24:08
  He's like a six-time WA champion back in the day and very well known around the West Australian Rally.
• 24:14
  So clearly Dad was partnering me with people like Jim Carlton, who was my first co-driver ever, with experience, and then Rod, who loved the art of pace notes and made his own pace note books to the right degree of everything.
• 24:26
  Yeah.
• 24:27
  So, you know, he knew even then you're going to advance.
• 24:30
  There was a couple of things he used to say.
• 24:31
  He said, you don't learn anything walking out of stages.
• 24:34
  So that was sort of one of the things.
• 24:35
  And then, you know, put obviously good people with me because out in the stages, you know, you need the best sort of co-drivers you can have at the time.
• 24:41
  And I think the other part that a lot of people are surprised at is I don't think I've ever had a driving lesson from Dad, not at the paddock,
• 24:49
  Not in a rally.
• 24:50
  I'd reckon at pace with helmets on, he would have been with me five times in my whole career.
• 24:55
  It was about you have to have your own style and things.
• 24:58
  Your own motivation.
• 24:59
  But we would talk about it a lot and he would be in the mental side.
• 25:02
  Okay.
• 25:03
  As the team are getting excited and the family and that, that you're going pretty well and probably not managing that very well, he'd be very, you know, he'd be the last person in the window to make sure you were concentrating and thinking the right things, not get too wrapped up in yourself.
• 25:16
  He's got some great one-liners in that regard that really –
• 25:19
  on that mental side that really sink in, don't they, at the right time too?
• 25:22
  So he always said that.
• 25:23
  He said this game is 50% mental, and it is because you don't get to sight anyone.
• 25:29
  It's not like track racing on the circuit.
• 25:32
  You're losing a bit of time on certain corners or your competitors are getting away from you.
• 25:36
  You get an instant gauge on, oh, they're better here or gaining on them there under brakes.
• 25:40
  The thing that I love about rallying is we can do stages upwards of, you know, in competitive stage rallying, you know, 45Ks or it could be a super stage or a couple of Ks.
• 25:49
  You don't see anyone.
• 25:50
  No split times of sense of the car.
• 25:51
  You can have a different car, clearly different tyres at some points in the championships, and you would be seconds apart.
• 25:59
  It's crazy.
• 25:59
  I mean, sometimes it's so close and you can't even get that close on circuit racing and you're all in the same place doing the 9 or 10 or 15 same corners.
• 26:17
  It's a great chapter for you, that Kia couple of years there, and it probably feels like it's going all in the right direction for you.
• 26:23
  But the end of 96, that Kia chapter comes to an end, doesn't it?
• 26:27
  I think they had to change a direction or something.
• 26:29
  Yeah, I think they changed teams and moved on or whatever else, and I think they invented phasing out a little bit.
• 26:34
  You drove the legacy, your dad's legacy.
• 26:35
  Yeah, so I was doing some state rounds in the legacy, you know, his championship winning car that he still owned in bits and pieces and, again, put someone, you know, in the car with me to try and, I guess, you know, keep learning.
• 26:45
  Some of our state championship rounds were route charted and some were pace noted.
• 26:49
  So you're sort of learning to adapt them both and giving an opportunity and even rally sprints.
• 26:53
  You know, a lot of people now.
• 26:55
  Cool car to get to run.
• 26:56
  Oh, I mean, it was amazing.
• 26:57
  I mean, I was lucky enough to drive that car in what they called the West Australian Rally Sprint Championship on gravel, the place where most people test now, which is Tolly Chalice's and his father Theo's place, where, you know, we're very lucky to have like a rally complex here that he runs a rally school out of now.
• 27:14
  They used to have a side-by-side twin track there.
• 27:16
  with a bridge crossover and everything.
• 27:17
  So you'd rock down there and it would be almost shootout style.
• 27:20
  So, yeah, it was amazing.
• 27:22
  And, I mean, it would be awesome if we were going to get that up and running again, you know, just down in Bakers Hill, about an hour away from the city.
• 27:27
  And I remember lining up against state champions like Dennis Dunlop in his Evo and we'd go head-to-head in the Legacy.
• 27:32
  I'm just this young idiot who's driving Dad's car, et cetera.
• 27:34
  So I was driving cars around at that point.
• 27:37
  And I think maybe as an advancement on the...
• 27:41
  the legacy or his championship winning car, Subaru have, you know, they've landed this WX, this pocket rocket that has got a lot of credentials.
• 27:48
  And there's a great photo of Dad and Steve picking up a genuine RA, like brand new one from the WA distributor that he'd obviously ordered through Subaru.
• 27:58
  God knows how they were going to afford to run or pay for anything else.
• 28:01
  And earmarking that I would run it in 1997 in some capacity or,
• 28:06
  you know, build it up, et cetera.
• 28:08
  And then I think Colin Norton, going back to him from Hyundai, obviously still was keeping an eye on my career and got in touch and said, we've got this Hyundai coupe coming out, front-wall drive, cool-looking thing, you know, it's a two-litre or whatever it is and we'd like to look at campaigning it.
• 28:23
  And so they approached us on building one of those and then the whole thing sort of shifted.
• 28:27
  We sort of parked that.
• 28:28
  RA up and I think sold it on to John Farrell to build up to run.
• 28:31
  And we ended up with an amazing couple of years.
• 28:34
  And that started the journey around ARC and front-wheel drive competition.
• 28:38
  There's a couple of little footnotes here.
• 28:39
  Firstly, I think you got your first state win in your dad's actual championship winning car, the legacy, didn't you?
• 28:44
  And, I mean, you're up against Maka back in those days.
• 28:46
  Yeah, Alan McCarthy.
• 28:47
  Alan McCarthy.
• 28:48
  I mean, a sprint car racer, very well known in supercar circles and so on.
• 28:53
  And at that time, too, the whole –
• 28:56
  rise of Subaru.
• 28:58
  You talked about that red RA and so on.
• 29:00
  I mean,
• 29:02
  Colin McRae was becoming a huge thing.
• 29:05
  You're getting calls from Nick Senior, who was sort of respected management of Subaru Australia at that stage, weren't you?
• 29:11
  Yeah.
• 29:12
  People now see that to go, that was some pretty cool days for Subaru.
• 29:15
  They were really starting to land on the world map.
• 29:18
  You know, they'd started – you know, they were running the legacy as well.
• 29:22
  And, of course, this Impreza come along with the purpose and the idea around, you know, WX stands for World Rally Experimental.
• 29:27
  They were invested in rally.
• 29:29
  Yeah.
• 29:29
  And so to build a car based around trying to be a competitive rally car, that was like, well, let's take the legacy and turn it into what we think is going to be a, you know, what are we missing?
• 29:36
  We need it to be lighter and a bit smaller.
• 29:38
  And, you know, then clearly ProDrive took it on.
• 29:40
  But very Japanese, they weren't going to debut that car until the legacy had won in World Rally.
• 29:45
  So when Colin won in the legacy of New Zealand, they immediately then sprang into action for Finland for the next round.
• 29:51
  And I think that's, you would have heard on Dad's podcast, him talking about doing gravel nights with the likes of Colin and Derek.
• 29:56
  Some very funny stories about don't mess up the notes and all that sort of stuff.
• 30:00
  You can find that in that episode.
• 30:03
  Let's come back to front-wheel drive here, ARC Hyundai, right?
• 30:06
  Beginnings two of a great...
• 30:08
  period for the sport, even globally and locally, with some of the names that were in what became basically Formula 2, weren't they?
• 30:16
  Yeah, or you had Outright and Possum potentially around with Neil in World Rally Cars and Group N was the production section of 4WD.
• 30:25
  But I found myself in a really good position where we had some manufacturers, different manufacturers and some great drivers.
• 30:32
  We had Brett Middleton in a Honda and Ross McKenzie in a Daihatsu, Lee Peterson in a Nissan, even Simon Evans in a Corolla.
• 30:39
  And this battle for F2 was awesome.
• 30:41
  And I actually think it was a great leapfrog for me to understand, one, running in the Australian Championship, being involved in tight and close competition.
• 30:50
  The next year in 98, Rick Bates came along in a Daihatsu in these Dita Masters that they used to run.
• 30:55
  That was a real, you know.
• 30:57
  What sort of horsepower?
• 30:58
  Front wheel drive, obviously, but what sort of numbers were you getting?
• 30:59
  I mean.
• 31:00
  As if you think I'd know that.
• 31:03
  But I mean, clearly more than production, they were a bit more.
• 31:05
  Oh, yeah, but you were allowed to.
• 31:07
  We still sort of stuck to the philosophy of don't get too crazy on horsepower, make the thing work and be as light as you can.
• 31:12
  You know, typical Rob Herring sort of engineering stuff that I guess I even appreciate even more now than I did back then.
• 31:17
  Yeah.
• 31:18
  We were chasing bits, but back then you were really relying on the production style still because tuning and rewiring cars, and that wasn't probably a big thing.
• 31:26
  It was more sort of trying to get the right base car, turn it in, put the safety gear into it, and then go rallying with it.
• 31:32
  But that was a great period.
• 31:34
  It had some good, the Super Series they called it, where heat format so you could rejoin and stuff had started.
• 31:40
  They had some good coverage around Channel 10 and things.
• 31:42
  So we almost became not...
• 31:44
  you know, we are a class car in a way, but became a category car amongst outright Group N and F2.
• 31:50
  And of course, internationally, places like, you know, the UK, their whole championship were based on like F2 kit cars.
• 31:57
  So, you know, I'm cutting my teeth in front wheel drive and there are other parts of the world who have some amazing manufacturer involvement around even then you're getting into the real high class, you know, properly engineered F2 cars around the world.
• 32:09
  Amazing.
• 32:09
  So there are some, you know, firstly from a 1998 perspective, am I right in saying you and your dad perhaps had a bit of a decent outlay to go and do this and that things may not have been fully formalised with Hyundai when you rolled up to round one?
• 32:27
  You were still sort of in conversation with them, is that right?
• 32:29
  Yeah, Craig, because 97's a great opportunity.
• 32:31
  You get a car to build into a rally car, and they lent on again some supporters.
• 32:35
  But, you know, we clearly wanted to make it the best car we could, and then you're travelling around the country from Perth to do, you know, ultimately all the rounds, which I think was probably five.
• 32:43
  So we definitely overinvested in the first year, both in car and then trying to compete.
• 32:48
  So, you know, for 98, we've, of course, put a proposal forward to Hyundai Australia to sort of say, hey, look, here's what we're doing.
• 32:55
  We're going to be doing TV coverage around the championship.
• 32:58
  You punted.
• 32:58
  You banked.
• 32:59
  bankrolled yourself, I think, to get to round one and so on, didn't you?
• 33:01
  That proposal was in place and we never had an answer when round one came along.
• 33:05
  So the first round was going to be in Coffs Harbour and the next round in Perth.
• 33:07
  So we made the decision to go across and maybe we had a couple of – Dad had a couple of cars or clients who were coming along as well to try and subsidise the deal.
• 33:14
  But we went to Coffs Harbour basically without that deal being signed, trying to do the first round of the championship.
• 33:20
  In actual fact, then I had Lyndall Drake as a co-driver in 97
• 33:24
  And, you know, I've known Glenn forever because of our dad's competing, and then he's forging his own career.
• 33:31
  We actually joined up, I think, for the first time at an event in 98 in Coffs Harbour without that fully locked away deal for Hyundai for the rest of the year.
• 33:39
  He's gone on to co-drive for all sorts of different people.
• 33:42
  Great partnership with you, and he's back now with Scott Petter, whose car is being run by this operation, which we'll kind of come to.
• 33:49
  Am I right in saying, though, that there were sort of still –
• 33:51
  convos happening with Nick Senior and Subaru.
• 33:54
  It sort of burbled away a bit in the background, didn't it?
• 33:56
  Well, the thing was we arrived at Coffs Harbour without the budget, but, you know, trying to continue and kick off what had been a great 97.
• 34:03
  And Possum had rolled in with then what was a Group A Impreza.
• 34:07
  You know, so...
• 34:09
  but with no teammate at that point.
• 34:12
  Previous rounds or previous year, I had Greg Graham, the New Zealand guy, in a Group N car with Glenn McNeil co-driving.
• 34:17
  So there was obviously an appetite around being able to run a Group N car alongside Possum.
• 34:22
  So I think Nick was probably at Coffs Harbour, had a conversation or a meeting, I remember, at Opal Cove.
• 34:29
  Here we were sitting out the back deck there.
• 34:31
  I love this stuff.
• 34:33
  Dad, myself, Glenn McNeil and Nick Senior.
• 34:36
  Clearly, Glenn and I are not saying a lot.
• 34:37
  But Glenn had some respect, clearly, for Glenn, Nick, that is, because he was in the co-driver seat with Greg Graham.
• 34:44
  So Glenn definitely had a relationship with Nick.
• 34:48
  And I think at that point going, well, is Possum coming back?
• 34:51
  How many runs is he doing?
• 34:52
  Is there a chance for a second car?
• 34:53
  And I think Nick's going, well, let's look into it.
• 34:55
  Yeah, I'm interested.
• 34:56
  Let's talk to STI about what they could contribute in...
• 34:59
  you know, either, you know, engines or parts or support.
• 35:02
  So I guess we left Coffs Harbour going, well, we've got a possibility happening on it.
• 35:06
  Let's see what that looks like with Subaru who are interested to see what a second car with Possum might look like.
• 35:11
  And of course we're still waiting for an answer back from Hyundai.
• 35:13
  Did that ultimately help open a door for Cody or am I a bit too soon in the storytelling there?
• 35:18
  No, no, you bang on because we basically get back from Coffs Harbour and I'm pretty sure back in those days, some stuff came through on fax.
• 35:24
  Oh, no.
• 35:25
  And almost the same timing, I'm sure it wasn't the same day, although my mind sort of has me think that when he under who had sat on this proposal for quite a while sent a fax back to say, hey, confirming we're on, we've got the budget, we're keen to run for whatever we'd proposed.
• 35:40
  Nick Senior's come back.
• 35:41
  We look, there's an appetite there.
• 35:43
  We have to build a car.
• 35:44
  We need you guys to get involved.
• 35:45
  Here's what you guys need to contribute.
• 35:46
  You need a couple of people.
• 35:48
  You need to have them help on the rallies.
• 35:50
  You need to put this much money into the program to help build it all.
• 35:53
  So we sat there with what was two great opportunities and going, well, one's costing X and we're already in the red from last year and we've got one that's now going to sort of probably backfill from last year and continue on our journey.
• 36:05
  And we actually knocked back the Subaru deal to take the Hyundai deal.
• 36:10
  And then –
• 36:11
  Yeah, we think that's that, but clearly the seat had been sown with Subaru.
• 36:15
  So next thing you see roll into Perth, he's a young Cody Crockett time who I sort of roughly had known from when he was driving Legacies and winning ARN Junior Challenges and things that he's on the mic interviewed by John Smiles saying, I got this phone call from Nick Senior out of the blue.
• 36:30
  He's saying, do you want to drive this car?
• 36:33
  And you don't say no to that was his comment.
• 36:35
  I'm like, shit, I think we basically said no to that.
• 36:37
  But...
• 36:38
  Theirs was a one-off opportunity.
• 36:40
  They got heavily involved and, you know, that's Code Story, and they absolutely made the most of it.
• 36:44
  And at that time, we made what we thought was the best decision for us.
• 36:49
  And it probably took a number of years for them to be convinced that that was still the right thing to do.
• 36:54
  I must get Cody on the pod.
• 36:56
  Coming back to the Hyundai side of things for a second, the scheme that you had on the car was quite memorable too, wasn't it?
• 37:03
  It was like Team H, Hyundai, H for Heritage, maybe a bit of a snap-on down the side or something.
• 37:07
  I can't remember what it was now.
• 37:08
  Yeah.
• 37:08
  Yeah, Craig, it was.
• 37:09
  Well, I think Colin Norton wanted to leverage the Herridge name because of what Dad had done more than what I'd done.
• 37:13
  So it was Team Herridge Hyundai and it had the Hyundai H with a sort of flick through it in different colours.
• 37:18
  And we had a guy called Gary Speak who's done a little bit of stuff and made the Max from Motorsport logo for us back in the day and,
• 37:25
  He's done a really good painting of some of Dad's cars for me as a birthday present once.
• 37:29
  So we had the design done up.
• 37:31
  And then full circle, Phil Myers, who had rallied and done all this speedway work, we commissioned him to come in and actually paint that back on the day because it was a pretty complicated logo on the front end of it and the rear end.
• 37:43
  Super.
• 37:43
  And, yeah, so Flyers Myers came in and put all that on the car.
• 37:46
  And we did.
• 37:47
  We had Hyundai support and that Snap-on support, which came all the way back from getting a lead in from Gordon and Sheila with Snap-on and some of those parties, et cetera, back in the day, which was cool.
• 37:56
  The WRC round in this town, in that wonderful chapter, in this sort of period and into the 2000s, just epic event, great end of year thing, it becomes a little bit of a –
• 38:11
  litmus test for you, I guess you could say, in the sense that you go well against some of the front-wheel drive regulars here.
• 38:17
  And it either gets you thinking, or maybe there's a conversation with Derek Ringer, I don't know, but it gets you thinking about maybe the British Rally Championship too, which back then, I mean, Vauxhall, Seat, VW and more were all in it in these sorts of cars, weren't they?
• 38:31
  Yeah, well, obviously Dad had an association and a connection with Derek Ringer and Derek at that point was out of the car with Colin and was doing some, I think, some logistics work around M Sport.
• 38:42
  So, you know, there was a few times with a few teams when, you know, Max from Motorsport and Dad and Steve were sort of earmarked to help do logistics for international teams who would come over and need a workshop space for two or three weeks and help with, you know, phone, buddy SIM cards and other connections and hire cars and things.
• 38:57
  Fixers.
• 38:58
  Yeah, correct.
• 38:59
  And so I think from that, clearly conversations and we went and had dinner with Derek and going, you know, I'm trying to work out what's the best play for my son.
• 39:05
  And I think because I was doing front-wheel drive, the next step was to go, well, what would going to somewhere like Europe and trying to advance your career?
• 39:12
  Clearly we'd done at that point two years of Australian Rally Championship and Glenn's still there, highly motivated, trying to make something of it with us and he's still doing some side sort of gigs with Monster Tajima who's in a front-wheel drive car and other things like that.
• 39:26
  Yes.
• 39:27
  It was, well, if you're going to try and make a go of it, you have to basically head to Europe or slash the UK and drive.
• 39:34
  So you've got to be in front of people.
• 39:36
  It's all well and good to have a CV and send it to the right people.
• 39:38
  And so we, I guess, looked at options of leasing a car, which seemed to, by the time you...
• 39:42
  In towns.
• 39:43
  Yeah, in towns and converting, going, jeez, this seems hard.
• 39:47
  And looked and we thought the best option, still with a bit of Hyundai connection, we actually shipped the car, our F2 car, all the way to the UK and...
• 39:56
  with once again some connections with people like Tony Grisdale and his wife Sue to be a base because he worked for M Sport and got to know Steve and Dad really well and they were great characters.
• 40:07
  That would be the pre-team would come in and got to know us really well and said, no, bring it to our place and I'll help you out and look after and give it a spot and stuff.
• 40:12
  So I basically went and lived with them.
• 40:14
  So it was another option just trying to keep the budget down, fly over and look at doing – ultimately we did the Wales rally.
• 40:22
  That's your first one.
• 40:22
  How did you go?
• 40:23
  Yeah.
• 40:24
  I think we got points.
• 40:26
  I won't bore you with the story of the mechanical drama we had around Avgas Fuel and it blocking up in fuel pumps and stuff like that.
• 40:33
  I think we're the only team, Glenn reckons, that pushed their car around the ceremonial start because it was just, yeah, anyway.
• 40:39
  We limped and spluttered our way through the round but did enough to show that, one, we were serious, two, when we were going, we were going okay.
• 40:47
  And the idea then I actually went, you know, Derek had at that point
• 40:51
  Jumped in with Martin Rowe in the Renault team.
• 40:54
  I stayed with Derek in his place in Scotland for a little bit and he helped me out and put us up for a little period of time and I went to Portugal with them.
• 41:01
  That's a bit surreal.
• 41:02
  That's pretty cool.
• 41:03
  Now I think about it.
• 41:03
  It seems like it was a dream.
• 41:05
  Here I am sitting in the back of the service car with the Michelin engineer and the Renault engineer and they're speaking French and I don't speak any French but I could still tell some of the conversations they were having around things and so...
• 41:18
  That was a real buzz to be in and around.
• 41:20
  And they were running these, you know, cool Renault Megane F2 cars, if people can remember from that.
• 41:24
  And I'm going, shit, I'd love to be in a car like that.
• 41:27
  And the opportunity was coming up that Renault were paying attention and, you know, you were sort of around some of the right people.
• 41:32
  And so… They wanted to do an assessment here, didn't they?
• 41:35
  Yeah, well, they don't just chuck in one of those cars just for fun.
• 41:37
  Karting, which you hadn't done.
• 41:41
  Well, they had a contract with Zip Karting over there to, I guess, keep their drivers match fit.
• 41:46
  So they basically had a kart for Martin and a kart for Tapio Lalkanen and they would every now and then go off and do kart days and keep them rather than taking the cars out because there was quite a few rounds in the UK that were obviously tarmac-based, so having a bit of tarmac steer and it was an easy way for them to –
• 42:01
  assess you before and go, look, what's this kid actually like before we go and spend heaps of money on them and try to run them in the forest.
• 42:07
  So I went off to Huddleston, which was, I can't remember now, I feel like it's probably three or four hours away from what it was.
• 42:11
  No karting experience.
• 42:13
  No, well, apart from, you know, trying to drive my mate's kart, you know, Colin McGuckin had a twin kart.
• 42:17
  He's a friend of Dad's who put us in and I had a run before I went because I knew this kart thing was coming up.
• 42:21
  Hmm.
• 42:22
  I don't know if it was any good or not.
• 42:23
  You had a twin car that was pretty cool to drive around in.
• 42:25
  And apart from an odd steer, clearly, like I said to you before, I'd never done karting.
• 42:29
  But I rock up there and they go, well, right, you're a bit taller than Tapio Lalkan.
• 42:32
  So we had to play around with the pedals a little bit and steering.
• 42:34
  And then eventually they let me lose.
• 42:35
  Gary Paffett's involved here too.
• 42:36
  Yeah, because he was a...
• 42:38
  He was a young guy at the time and he was their sort of ace driver and said, right, on this one, go out and chase Gary the closest you can.
• 42:45
  This one, hold him off and just put you through these paces and basically give you an assessment at the end of it.
• 42:51
  And then I drove all the way back hoping I'd done a good job.
• 42:53
  I think they'd sent one or two pages through on a report card with me that gave me a pretty good sign.
• 42:59
  And they went, right, well, you've ticked a few boxes.
• 43:02
  Let's look at doing a forest test with you later in the year.
• 43:04
  So you went, I think, to that test in November.
• 43:07
  Is that right?
• 43:07
  Yeah.
• 43:08
  When was that?
• 43:08
  No, it was mid-year for that test.
• 43:09
  Mid-year, sorry, sorry.
• 43:10
  With the idea that we would go back in November in the forest.
• 43:13
  So at that point we'd done the Perali Rally and probably thought, you know, we're struggling for budget to clearly do some of these rounds.
• 43:20
  We've probably done enough now.
• 43:22
  We're getting the test.
• 43:22
  That's what we wanted.
• 43:23
  We wanted to get a foot in the door, be around, show that we're serious, and now we've got this opportunity that's going to come up in about two or three months' time to be able to go and have a run.
• 43:30
  and hopefully fly back to the UK and have a proper forest test in it and began.
• 43:34
  But as sometimes happens with manufacturers, either like a management change or a philosophy change, Renault decide they're going to kind of get away from aspects of motorsport at about this time, didn't they?
• 43:47
  So like a month or two before that test rolled in, Renault make a worldwide announcement they're pulling out of all motorsport, which included the time they were involved in British touring cars, they were involved in –
• 43:57
  rally championships, et cetera.
• 43:58
  So now all of a sudden this door that was open and it was an opportunity is now being well and truly shut.
• 44:03
  It was fine, but I guess now I think about it, add sort of insult to injury.
• 44:08
  They then contact you and go, we're now in our final year.
• 44:10
  We're doing okay in the F2 World Championship.
• 44:13
  We didn't actually have Perth on our radar to do the final round with.
• 44:15
  And you're welcome.
• 44:16
  Can you help us?
• 44:17
  You do a little bit of this stuff apparently.
• 44:19
  Can you come and help?
• 44:19
  So we literally, and at that stage I'm a bit more around maximum motorsport, help do some logistics around getting us camper vans and hire vans and all that sort of stuff.
• 44:29
  Same thing, doing some logistics for them.
• 44:31
  And the only difference between that and the M Sport thing was that they spent a lot of time focusing on me trying to find a chef for them.
• 44:36
  So clearly the French team liked a chef somewhere in Perth to be able to look after their team.
• 44:42
  Food was important.
• 44:42
  But I mean, clearly –
• 44:45
  no, a thing that I've always known about you around your loyalty and so on.
• 44:48
  You clearly realize, even though that would have left a sour taste in your mouth, they're out of it.
• 44:53
  That, that,
• 44:53
  you know, leaves you at a bit of a crossroads and so on.
• 44:56
  You just never know where things in motorsport will ultimately lead people-wise.
• 45:00
  So you guys helped basically.
• 45:02
  Yeah, and to be honest then, that actually continued on for a little bit, you know, skipping forward another year.
• 45:07
  David Sutton Cars are coming to Perth with their Group N cars, with Martin Rowan, Stig Blomquist driving Group N cars.
• 45:12
  We helped with logistics on that because some of the team from Renault had shifted across to help that program out.
• 45:17
  So you had these touch points.
• 45:18
  Yeah.
• 45:19
  We therefore were lined up going, well, wow, we've sort of 98, we've finished there.
• 45:22
  We'd said no to Subaru.
• 45:25
  99, we're spent around the British Championship, probably still kicking around doing some odd rounds here and there.
• 45:29
  I think there's probably vision of me doing Forest Rallying once again in Dad's Legacy, cutting our teeth.
• 45:33
  There's Cody Crocker still bloody spraying champagne around, giving me the shits probably back then.
• 45:38
  And then therefore at the end of that year we're going, well, Hyundai's still in the UK.
• 45:44
  You know, you can't enter the legacy, et cetera.
• 45:47
  So that RA, that red one that I spoke about, it got sold to John Farrell and he'd been competing with Max from Motorcycle doing state championship.
• 45:54
  He'd won a state championship in it.
• 45:55
  We did a one-off deal because it was a Group N car to go, well, let's use that car, do a deal with him to be able to use that for Rally Australia that year.
• 46:03
  So the 99 year was my first time ever driving a Group N Subaru Impreza
• 46:08
  In Rally Australia, you know, got some support.
• 46:11
  You'd once again see Snap-on Tools on the back of it and Sonic Signs, Mike, who'd done all our signs at that point on the car, just putting a deal together to try and give me a crack at – Yeah, privateer Group N car.
• 46:22
  And Group N was getting some momentum.
• 46:24
  You had, in Australia, Ed Ordinsky v Cody Crocker and all those sorts of things.
• 46:28
  And so Group N was really becoming the next step away from sort of Group A and stuff.
• 46:32
  So that was my first chance to try that.
• 46:34
  Did you track down a better engine for it too of some kind?
• 46:36
  No, what had happened was –
• 46:38
  Because now you're in that car, I'm doing my very first rally in a Group N car.
• 46:43
  Glenn, I think, was still going with Tajima, so he was in and out with me, and so I put Jim Carlton back in the car.
• 46:48
  And the Japanese were gobsmacked that this was my first time driving a Group N car.
• 46:53
  I think we won a few stages.
• 46:55
  I was going to say five.
• 46:56
  That's probably too many.
• 46:56
  But enough for STI and some people in Japan to turn and go,
• 47:02
  Shit, this kid's not – you know, he's done stuff.
• 47:04
  We've heard of him.
• 47:04
  We know about it a little bit and stuff.
• 47:07
  But, yeah, I think they're like, this can't be right.
• 47:10
  How can you win stages in a WRC event in Group N against some good guys?
• 47:13
  And so I think what had happened post-rally, same thing.
• 47:17
  They've got workshops and stuff.
• 47:18
  We got invited around on the Monday or Tuesday to come and see their cars, and they were running Arai and Konishi at the time.
• 47:23
  So Toshi Arai's running –
• 47:25
  in these cars and they've gone, well, are you interested?
• 47:28
  We can probably do you a deal on some better, a newer style engine, so like off the current model car and a rear diff and all the rest of it.
• 47:36
  So we thought, well, she was paying some attention and we can do a deal and then ultimately did a deal with John Farrell to buy that car from him and sort of reinvented it to be what was going to be the current engine
• 47:48
  2000, 1999, version five.
• 47:51
  And, you know, if you think of the Max for Motorsport Yellow Impreza from back then, that's when we then, you know, go back to try and run the Australian Rally Championship again.
• 47:58
  So tell me a bit more about that because I think you're up against sort of Stewie Reid in this period here.
• 48:04
  The Hyundai thing's done.
• 48:05
  Cody's at Subaru, as you talked about, on that deal that you not bet.
• 48:09
  He earned his own stripes, by the way.
• 48:10
  Of course, of course.
• 48:11
  No, no, I know that.
• 48:11
  I know that.
• 48:12
  I'm being cheeky.
• 48:14
  But it gets to the final round in Tassie.
• 48:16
  I may have fast-forwarded a little bit here.
• 48:19
  Cody rips a wheel off.
• 48:20
  There's a bit of a story here, isn't there?
• 48:21
  Yeah, because he's lucky Pierre Crocker, I tell you.
• 48:22
  He's only got to rip a wheel off and still finish the stage and be in the point somewhere.
• 48:25
  But anyway, yeah.
• 48:27
  So we've done all the season, and this is probably where Dad's going, this doesn't look great.
• 48:32
  What do you mean in terms of a business proposition?
• 48:34
  From the fact that you're trying to steer your son the right direction.
• 48:37
  And, you know, a couple of years back we'd knocked back a deal with Subaru.
• 48:40
  They're clearly still invested in the championship.
• 48:42
  Cody's made the most of his opportunity and we are now back in our own car, painted a different colour, trying to beat the guy who's been doing it for a couple of years.
• 48:50
  So he's going, missed opportunity.
• 48:51
  Yeah, I think at that point Dad's ready to fall on his ceremonial sword going, jeez, I think we might have snuffed that one up.
• 48:56
  Yeah.
• 48:57
  I still believe you make the right call at the right time.
• 48:59
  So you can't look back at that stuff.
• 49:01
  And I never did.
• 49:01
  And he never said anything.
• 49:03
  But I think he's thinking, you're kidding me, we're now spending some hard-earned money again trying to compete against these guys, against Ed.
• 49:09
  And so that season, you know, we were really just aiming for Privateers' Cup.
• 49:13
  When we could break through and maybe beat them on stage is great.
• 49:15
  But Stewie Reeds in an Evo 6, you know, he's a gun driver.
• 49:19
  He was terrific.
• 49:19
  So...
• 49:20
  Yeah, we cut our teeth pretty well and we're competitive and sort of in the top five and things.
• 49:23
  But back then the privateers' championship wasn't just, well, you're first and second, you split the points.
• 49:29
  The privateers' was actually done on outright results.
• 49:31
  So it could sort of tip around the place a little bit that if you got an outright fourth, well, that was, you know, you might have been, you know, first production or, sorry, privateer, but it was affected by outright results.
• 49:40
  And so we'd sort of come into Tasmania the final round,
• 49:44
  Once again, trying to find money from bits and pieces to try and put it all together.
• 49:48
  You're literally going round by round, like most people, trying to gain an opportunity.
• 49:52
  Glenn's on board with us, co-driving in the ARC in that car with me.
• 49:56
  And we end up after the first day.
• 49:58
  Co's ripped a wheel off.
• 49:59
  So let's say he's finished sixth.
• 50:01
  We're fifth.
• 50:02
  Stewie beat me.
• 50:03
  He's fourth.
• 50:03
  And he was really close battling with Ed.
• 50:05
  Ed's third.
• 50:05
  Neil and Possible won.
• 50:06
  Yeah.
• 50:07
  So with that result locked away on Saturday, I now have the luxury that if someone wedges between Stewie and I, I can still win the championship.
• 50:14
  But, of course, Crocker's finished sixth.
• 50:17
  He'd had a pretty good year.
• 50:19
  If he'd finished fifth, he locks away the title that night.
• 50:22
  So clearly a phone call comes through from Nick to Dad to say, any thought processes about being going to help us out here?
• 50:31
  I'm asking the question.
• 50:33
  We have a bit of a quick chat and go,
• 50:37
  probably the right thing to do.
• 50:38
  We're trying to make something work here and you're trying to – we were getting some art support and some other stuff.
• 50:43
  So they were helping where they could.
• 50:46
  So we make the team decision to go and sacrifice the spot to give Cody – Check in late.
• 50:51
  Check in late.
• 50:52
  So we checked in late to the end of service.
• 50:53
  And this is like super serious.
• 50:54
  It's a two-hour service.
• 50:55
  So most people probably – you can check in early and go to bed.
• 50:57
  I think only Brett Middleton drove past us going, what are these guys doing hanging out the front of the gate by –
• 51:03
  And we check in late.
• 51:04
  Most people didn't know because the results were – Everyone goes to bed.
• 51:08
  None the wise.
• 51:08
  Well, they sort of do.
• 51:09
  And like I said, it wasn't so like you could look up your internet at night, et cetera.
• 51:11
  You probably had to look at the results board or something or sheets in the next morning.
• 51:15
  Code clearly knew because the next morning he comes up and thanks me so much and just took the pressure off.
• 51:19
  Nick Senior does not like leaving things to chance, and it's likely, because this is motorsport, and likely is not good enough.
• 51:25
  You need to lock stuff down.
• 51:26
  But the knock-on effect is this puts you in a real tricky scenario on your side, doesn't it?
• 51:31
  For Sunday, and luckily no one knew, but Stewie Reid's having the bloody rally of his life.
• 51:36
  He's knocking off Ed Ordinsky at the time going, shit.
• 51:38
  So I think Kobe was still kicking around third.
• 51:41
  I think Ed's fourth, probably scrapping away a little bit with difficulties with his tyres.
• 51:45
  Stewie's fifth and I'm sixth, but Stewie's battling Ed.
• 51:48
  Like they're to and throwing.
• 51:49
  And if he beats Ed, even though our points might tie, I lose on a countback.
• 51:53
  So everything's coming down to Ed and Stewart.
• 51:57
  I've really got no involvement.
• 51:58
  I'm not close enough to battle them by the time we get to the DEC, final super stage.
• 52:02
  I reckon there's a second or so in it.
• 52:04
  And no one would have known.
• 52:05
  I actually have a vague recollection that Ed bolted on some mud tyres.
• 52:09
  You know, they were sponsored by Yokohama, which probably, you know, would be pretty cool for a couple of Ks, but they're going to destroy themselves.
• 52:15
  And anyway, we've done.
• 52:17
  I think they might have reversed the seed.
• 52:18
  We've locked away.
• 52:19
  And our whole privateers championship that we aimed for that year came down to what time Ed Ordinsky does around there to beat Stewie Reid.
• 52:25
  So either there's some vision or pictures that,
• 52:28
  Have you guys were in a real sort of heartfelt celebration?
• 52:31
  Well, I think there's, yeah, we're sort of the, you know, all the people are watching, the crowd there.
• 52:35
  There's no vision, I don't think, but I definitely recall us all, you know, heart and mouth waiting for the PA to come over with the time that Eddard Dinsic has done and he's done the time and he's finished fourth out, right, and that's us.
• 52:45
  We win the championship.
• 52:46
  Mega.
• 52:46
  And we copped some shit that night at the party from a few bits of fishing people about what we'd done for Subaru, et cetera, you know, helping out the blue team, et cetera.
• 52:54
  But, you know, it was –
• 52:56
  That loyalty thing, they were supporting and keeping an eye on us.
• 52:59
  We made a calculated call.
• 53:00
  If we were being selfish about it, we could have just gone, no, look, we've got too much of our own to gain here.
• 53:05
  And you'd have to ask Nick how much of a sway that does or doesn't have on what my career does from that point.
• 53:11
  But it clearly showed that, you know, the Heragers are willing to play the team game here.
• 53:15
  So tell me what transpires next then because, I mean, you talked about your dad before not –
• 53:21
  being, this is a term that not a lot of people will like, but he wasn't a minibike dad.
• 53:26
  He wasn't a push my son, push my son type.
• 53:29
  You had to sort of have your own hunger, have your own determination.
• 53:32
  He would happily, maybe as you were driving home from an event or whatever, give you advice or impart his knowledge and so on.
• 53:40
  But I think there is a phone call here, and forgive me if I'm talking out of school, where he says to Nick Senior, if you're going to help my son here, you're getting Dean Herridge.
• 53:49
  You're not
• 53:50
  getting Rob here.
• 53:50
  It's like the inference was more or less like, yeah.
• 53:55
  Well, you know, you're exactly right because I think Dad wanted to make sure that he wasn't going to impact the deal.
• 54:02
  And because I think, you know, Dad was a colourful character and I think he always told the company line perfectly.
• 54:09
  I mean, in his stories, you know, he talked to you about that sort of stuff.
• 54:11
  So, you know, he liked having a good laugh and being a bit of a funny guy at the presentation.
• 54:15
  So he wasn't.
• 54:15
  Captain Corporate necessarily.
• 54:17
  So I think he wanted them to know that Dean Herridge is a different person and I am different to Dad in a lot of ways.
• 54:24
  We might be hungry and competitive and stuff the same way, but we are slightly different personalities in regard and I think we're a good yin and yang together.
• 54:30
  So I think he wanted to make sure...
• 54:32
  You get Dean Herridge.
• 54:33
  Whatever you see in Dean Herridge, you don't get me over the top either, being the guy or the dad sitting in the service park with the finger pointing to why my son's not getting this or not getting that if that sometimes happens in sports.
• 54:44
  So, you know, like I said, Nick would have to be the one to answer to know whether that meant something to him or not.
• 54:49
  But clearly I honestly don't know how the Les Walkden deal happened for 2001.
• 54:53
  So that's 2000.
• 54:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 54:55
  Clearly, and maybe that stuff in Tasmania showed, we still think this guy's got something.
• 55:01
  We don't have a seat necessarily at the table because Code's doing a good job.
• 55:05
  Possum's possum.
• 55:06
  For 2001, the opportunity came up for me to drive for Les in a group anchor.
• 55:10
  He's a great character.
• 55:12
  He reminds me at times of a little bit like Gary Rogers from Circuit Racing, but for Rally.
• 55:19
  So this deal happens.
• 55:20
  Clearly, Nick has played some sort of significant part here
• 55:25
  if you like.
• 55:26
  And it's your first time really away from the maximum umbrella, isn't it?
• 55:30
  And maybe that's the test to see how you go outside of not running your own team and having your dad's influence and stuff like that.
• 55:36
  So good opportunity for me to run with Les.
• 55:38
  And Les is, you know, look at the –
• 55:41
  People have been through that place, haven't they?
• 55:42
  I'm through, yeah, yeah.
• 55:43
  I mean, Odinsky and Michael Guess at that point, and then even beyond me, you know, you had Juhar Kangas come across and then some young guys, Eli Evans, and then Molly won a championship with him.
• 55:50
  So he's got an age of specifics with Cody, et cetera.
• 55:54
  So that's cool that I still affectionately call him boss when I catch up with him.
• 55:57
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I think he was good for me that year.
• 56:00
  In what way?
• 56:01
  Well, I think because...
• 56:03
  of that being outside of your own environment.
• 56:05
  There's probably a comfort zone about being around your dad, your team at that point, Steve, who would just absolutely back you to the hilt.
• 56:12
  You had to sort of perform here and you played your role.
• 56:14
  Even Les embraced Nat coming along.
• 56:18
  We got married that year.
• 56:18
  We didn't have any kids and things.
• 56:19
  But normally there's a bit of a standoff about doing that stuff.
• 56:22
  But they sort of really embraced that and probably tried to work with Nat on
• 56:26
  How does Dean work?
• 56:27
  Because was I a closed shop?
• 56:28
  I don't think so.
• 56:29
  But Nat says, oh, they used to ask, is he happy?
• 56:31
  Is he sad?
• 56:32
  Like, as soon as I have this race face on all the time, and Nat refers to that quite often in regards to you sort of get race face on.
• 56:38
  I think Olivia's got it as well apparently.
• 56:40
  But...
• 56:41
  And so I think that year tests you in a lot of ways.
• 56:45
  And from that point of view, it was a junior car.
• 56:47
  We were still somehow still categorised as a privateer, which probably some people didn't agree with.
• 56:52
  But it allowed me to showcase, I guess, being an outsider maximum, running in that corporate sphere.
• 56:58
  I started to do drive days with Subaru along with Cody.
• 57:01
  So you're sort of accepted to be, like I said, the junior in the family, so to speak.
• 57:06
  Yeah.
• 57:06
  If you just pause to think about that number for a second, that's like 25 years of doing corporate related.
• 57:12
  I mean, you've done – I've seen you do everything from drive days with customers to working with their sales team.
• 57:19
  You know, not everyone has that sort of longevity.
• 57:22
  No.
• 57:22
  That's pretty impressive.
• 57:23
  And the next story in that when I eventually went with Subaru a year later, part of that was we thought there was better longevity there.
• 57:31
  I do now think back.
• 57:32
  It's unbelievable.
• 57:34
  I really believe in the brand.
• 57:35
  And that's the good part because I believe in the product.
• 57:38
  I'm passionate about it.
• 57:39
  There are amazing cars, amazing value, amazing people around it.
• 57:42
  So it makes that easier.
• 57:44
  And so that is very cool and probably unique.
• 57:48
  And I think a little bit of that comes from Nick.
• 57:51
  Very Japanese in that way.
• 57:52
  I've stayed loyal to them and they've backed me.
• 57:54
  Even through some lean times that we weren't necessarily running, I wasn't driving cars.
• 57:58
  I might have been overseas doing some stuff with China and stuff.
• 58:01
  But Subaru Australia backed you the whole time.
• 58:03
  And I actually look back now and go, I reckon Nick particularly had Cody and Myers back for a long time.
• 58:08
  you know, once the team even finished, the Super Rally Team Australia finished at the end of 05, both Cody and I stayed with the brand.
• 58:14
  We didn't have to.
• 58:15
  We were offered up different projectories on where it went and we stayed loyal to them and they've stayed loyal to us.
• 58:20
  And then, you know, you then start doing a little bit more in business with what I do now and then, you know, management change and...
• 58:26
  you still sort of got a touch point and then management changes again and they get a bit more excited about motorsport and things.
• 58:31
  And so it's one thing that I'm very proud of.
• 58:34
  And it's ironic that Dad won his championships in the early 90s, nearly 30 years ago around the same brand.
• 58:39
  And I think to your point when you first started about some of the history and things around, we just by probably hoarding and collecting stuff, there's a unit across the road here that ultimately I think Dad and I will always hold on to.
• 58:52
  We don't have big sheds in our properties or anything like that.
• 58:55
  that, you know, museum's too strong a word, but man cave, but it'll be a cool space for us, for Dad and I, and we'll put some memorabilia on display and we'll have some of the cars there and stuff and I hope it'll be, you know, an event space of some sort.
• 59:09
  It was my vision.
• 59:10
  Subaru will do some technical training out of there.
• 59:12
  And even for people, there are...
• 59:14
  many just as passionate people around Subaru's as me.
• 59:16
  They can tell you the nuances of a certain model.
• 59:19
  And that's the bit of the brand that a lot of people don't get, the passion around the car and the brand and what was built, whether it tips back to Possum if you're a Kiwi, if it's Colin because of your era.
• 59:32
  And there's people who have owned literally tens of dozens of these cars.
• 59:36
  They don't sell them.
• 59:36
  It was an issue at one point because people would buy a new Subaru and not sell their old one.
• 59:40
  They go to a family member or something like that.
• 59:42
  And I think if I remember this correct, I think Subaru had one of the best retention rates for selling cars to customers, continuing to do those cars.
• 59:52
  And we're known at one point in the 2000s to be nearly behind Ferrari, one of the most known successful automotive brands from that point of view.
• 1:00:06
  That's the end of part one of my podcast with Aussie rally driver turned team owner and commentator Dean Herridge.
• 1:00:12
  We have only just finished stage one here.
• 1:00:16
  Jump back to the library when you're ready and hit the gas on parts two and three.
• 1:00:22
  From rallying in Asia and why the longer events seemed to suit him.
• 1:00:27
  to the chance of a lifetime, driving for the factory Subaru squad in Australia alongside the legendary Possum Bourne, plus the Sunraiser Safari and competing against his dad.
• 1:00:39
  It's all ahead here on Rusty's Garage.