Latest / Rusty's Garage / Neil Crompton (Part 2)

Transcript

Neil Crompton (Part 2) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:19
  G'day, Rusty here.
• 0:20
  All set for part two of my podcast with Supercars Hall of Famer Neil Crompton.
• 0:26
  If you haven't already, make sure you head back to the garage library and hit the start button on part one.
• 0:31
  There's some great yarns in there from his early years riding, racing and commentating.
• 0:37
  The man who once famously had to sit beside Dame Edna Everidge and play driving instructor during a celebrity race can talk in almost any situation.
• 0:47
  So chatting at speed at Bathurst when they crossed to him via race cam seemed to come as easy to Crompo as it did for the legends like Dick Johnson and Peter Brock.
• 1:00
  Look, the truth of the matter is that when you speak in a race car, particularly if you compare it to what goes on in the modern era, it is a distraction and it would cost you time quantifying it, I couldn't tell you.
• 1:09
  And obviously as you get older that probably changes.
• 1:12
  But...
• 1:14
  you know, the pressure around the game was different in those days.
• 1:17
  I mean, you've got to stop and think about the fact that there were no pit lane speed limiters.
• 1:21
  People kind of rolled off the throttle going into the pits when they thought it was about right and picked up the throttle on the other side when they thought it was about right.
• 1:27
  It's all that sort of stuff.
• 1:28
  So we all thought that we were space shuttle pilots of the day, but the rhythm of the game has changed and the margins have changed and it's tightened up enormously.
• 1:38
  You know, the boys can't.
• 1:40
  do the same sort of thing to this day.
• 1:42
  But I remember doing car-to-car between David Parsons and I one year at Bathurst in a Coke car, and Skippy and I were taught he was in Glenn Seaton's car and I was in the Coke car and we were just gibbering away.
• 1:53
  But these days it's sort of more about doing it when the safety car comes out or when there's other opportunities off the back of a lap or whatever, which is really cool to be able to join the drivers and get their point of view.
• 2:02
  But in those days it wasn't as big a deal.
• 2:04
  Mind you, it always kind of came under a somewhat...
• 2:09
  greyish, not necessarily black cloud at CAMS, now known as Motorsport Australia, because, you know, quite rightly you could suggest that it was a significant distraction.
• 2:21
  But, yeah, it was fun and, again, it's a different era.
• 2:24
  And, I mean...
• 2:26
  In 1988, as an example, we had the M3, which just wasn't competitive at Bathurst, and Peter was really battling trying to hold that mobile deal together.
• 2:34
  Was that a nice little car to drive?
• 2:36
  It was a beautiful little car to drive.
• 2:37
  It was an absolute thrill to drive that thing.
• 2:39
  And one of my greatest recollections and fondest memories and proudest moments was the toe-to-toe battles with Peter and Jimmy in those cars at Amaru Park.
• 2:47
  I loved Amaru Park, and I loved racing those two guys.
• 2:50
  who are just, you know, you know what they are, they're gold-plated when it comes to the history of motorsport in this country.
• 2:58
  So, you know, I just... We were kind of going nowhere at that stage.
• 3:05
  It wasn't the car to have.
• 3:06
  The Sierra was the car to have.
• 3:08
  And Peter clobbered a wheel or something and ripped the oil cooler out of his car.
• 3:11
  And if you remember in those days, everyone was cross-ended.
• 3:13
  So all of a sudden, we were all mixed and matched.
• 3:15
  You know, I'd been in a five-speed car with whoever I was with,
• 3:18
  Jimmy and Peter were in another car which had a ProDrive six-speed gearbox in it that David Richards flogged them for some extraordinary amount of money.
• 3:27
  It was literally like 35 grand, extraordinary amount of money.
• 3:30
  Hello, David.
• 3:32
  And, you know, so we were nowhere.
• 3:35
  Like we were after all the repairs and we've all swapped in and out of each other's cars.
• 3:40
  Suddenly I'm with Brock.
• 3:41
  You know, we're millions of laps behind.
• 3:43
  And that was the year that...
• 3:46
  Mike and maybe even Mulray, I can't remember, they called up and chatted.
• 3:52
  Now, that was all theatre and that actually saved our mobile deal.
• 3:56
  So that actually, that's a true story.
• 3:58
  So in 89, I'd left the team by then, but in 89, Bradley came in and drove in the Sierra.
• 4:04
  And that actually, the amount of publicity that it generated and the goodwill that it generated was enough for that deal to roll over into 89.
• 4:13
  So sometimes those things have got hidden benefits, even though we were nowheresville that day.
• 4:18
  I remember having, we had, Larry and I have a tremendous relationship these days and he helped a lot in my career, but I remember him growling at me about, you know, that's not what motor racing's all about.
• 4:29
  And he's right.
• 4:29
  You know, chatting out of a car when you're 10 laps behind or something is not what it's...
• 4:34
  all about or was all about in those days but that's what we did to survive that's that's how you on that particular day it was the card we played to keep the sponsor happy and to stay in the business so in that sense you do what you need to do to survive you have told this story a few times at various events
• 4:53
  You and Bradley hatch a plan because you've got an opportunity to go elsewhere.
• 4:56
  Yeah.
• 4:57
  But it would potentially, if you did things right, open the door for him with Brock.
• 5:02
  So it was kind of... Was it like good cop, bad cop?
• 5:05
  I don't know what the best description is here.
• 5:07
  Just share it.
• 5:08
  Share it.
• 5:08
  Well...
• 5:09
  I got an approach from Tom Walkinshaw and John Crennan, who were forming the Holden Racing Team in 1988.
• 5:17
  The plans were afoot.
• 5:18
  Now, if you remember, they'd been running as HSV and briefly had a couple of outings, and HSV had taken over the hotting up Holden's business from Peter, so there was no love lost there.
• 5:30
  But I'd done a couple of years with Peter.
• 5:32
  The BMW was not competitive, and there was no guarantee that there was necessarily going to be
• 5:38
  Ford Sierras or whatever was coming along.
• 5:40
  But then the opportunity to potentially be a Holden factory driver, to drive with the former British touring car champion, Win Percy, and to drive for the almighty international Tom Walkinshaw Racing and be paid was kind of monumental because you would have been the same.
• 5:58
  In that era, you sort of grew up thinking, oh my goodness, if ever you could be the factory Ford or the factory Holden driver or whatever, this would be like being
• 6:06
  blessed you know it was just an extraordinary thing to contemplate so I sat down with them and and would have been sort of towards the end of 88 and they'd made an offer and it was a it was a terrific offer at the time and um and I said yes but then the net effect of that is I had to square up and go and tell my existing they weren't even really employers I was just sort of a squatter at Brock's driving the other car but Peter and Bev were close friends um and
• 6:36
  Alan Gow was managing the team.
• 6:37
  He's gone on to be an FIA World Motorsport Council guy, runs the British Touring Car Championship, and he's somebody in international motorsport and British motorsport these days, even though for Bradley and I he's just Gow, so we have a lot of fun with him.
• 6:53
  Anyway, so they were out in Coburg, and in these days, remember Brock went through all sorts of phases, including taking...
• 7:03
  to clay modeling larders and putting spoilers and things on them and I think the current the at the time the current iteration of the madness was he was going to do something with falcons of all things and I think the joint was called AusTech or whatever it was called but anyway it was all crazy so um I said to Bradley um you know obviously we were mates you know I've got a I'm gonna have to go and tell them what's going on here this is going to be pretty tough but you know
• 7:28
  one door closes another one opens you know why don't you just hang and then maybe at the right moment you just should bowl in there because if you're in the right place at the right time you might jag a drive so i go in there fall on my sword you know brock couldn't believe it made me feel uncomfortable you know gau shaking his head you know oh you know everything we've done for you and i'm like yeah yeah i know guys but you know you know what it's like you know you've driven for holden they're gonna pay me we would have
• 7:55
  paid you yeah well where's the money gal you know like so there's all that so anyway i slink out and it was like a hi ralph hi sam moment and uh so i high five bradley i walk out he we're parked around the corner where they can't see us he leaves it for three or four five minutes then bowls in hey guys how's it going and they oh you're not gonna believe it bloody cromley's just walked out of the joint no way has he he's such an asshole
• 8:21
  What are you going to do for a driver?
• 8:24
  So that's what happened.
• 8:26
  And away he went.
• 8:27
  So he was in the Sierra the next year.
• 8:29
  And, yeah, that's, yeah.
• 8:32
  There had to be a statute of limitations on telling that story.
• 8:35
  So I think we're probably okay to tell it now.
• 8:37
  But I don't think I've actually squared up and looked at Gao in the eye.
• 8:41
  I only see him in London every now and again.
• 8:43
  Every now and again he comes down here and acquaints us with his royal dignity.
• 8:48
  And, yeah, so anyway, that was that story.
• 8:52
  We'll briefly get to Formula Holden in a second.
• 8:53
  There's a great little chapter there.
• 8:54
  But in your office, you showed me a photo once which really got my attention.
• 9:00
  Did you go to Le Mans one year?
• 9:03
  Were you working with Ross Braun, maybe?
• 9:06
  Was it Silk Cut Jags?
• 9:07
  I'm trying to join the dots here.
• 9:08
  I don't know if I've got all that correct.
• 9:09
  Well, today I've just done some work with Martin Brundle, ironically, and Martin Brundle won the 1990 Le Mans 24-hour driving the Silk Cut Jaguar.
• 9:18
  So one of the things that Tom said at the cockroach-infested travel lodge at the Melbourne airport was that, and I can't do a Scottish accent, but when you drive one of my cars, laddie, it'll be like pulling on a familiar sock.
• 9:29
  You know, you'll be living in the thing and...
• 9:32
  And one of the things we want you to do is we want you to get crazy fit and we'd like you to be involved in the sports car program because we're going to run, you know, multiple cars as we have over the years.
• 9:42
  And, you know, if you go okay, there will definitely be an opportunity for you internationally.
• 9:46
  Now we're talking.
• 9:47
  Like this is just like holy crap.
• 9:49
  So and that was a big project in those days.
• 9:53
  I mean, Larry got to drive for them in 8080, finished fourth there.
• 9:56
  And I've got photos of the squadron.
• 9:58
  I went...
• 9:59
  to Silverstone with them, testing at one stage.
• 10:02
  And in their day, they were pretty magnificent things.
• 10:04
  Scafie got to drive the Nissan equivalent at the time as well.
• 10:08
  So, you know, pretty amazing cars, the Group C sports cars back in that era.
• 10:13
  And...
• 10:13
  Formula One paddock, mate, weren't they?
• 10:15
  Oh, yeah, well, yeah.
• 10:15
  And ultimately, as you say, Ross Braun was the...
• 10:19
  the technical director of that program worked for Tom.
• 10:21
  And, you know, I still remember all those guys, Andy Morrison, Ken Page.
• 10:27
  You know, there was a whole bunch of people that were very talented, hardcore racers that were involved in Tom's projects.
• 10:36
  Anyway, so prospect of doing that, you know, now I'm hopping, skipping, jumping, eating lettuce.
• 10:41
  I mean, my typical kind of normal weight, if I'm actually not like I am now, you know, as a lazy television commentator, but, you know, my typical kind of...
• 10:52
  mid-level training weights kind of 84 85 maybe 86 kilos i got down to like 78 79 kilos so it's kind of a crazy shadow um and there's actually photos lurking around of me doing all this silly training and stuff because tom said so well the reality was i didn't end up driving those cars and that's a whole nother story but um
• 11:12
  I was trying to do some Formula 3000 in the UK and you'd do anything to make a dollar.
• 11:17
  So our publicist for Brock's racing team in 1988 was... Go to memory.
• 11:26
  Yeah, go to memory.
• 11:27
  I can't think of the name of it.
• 11:28
  Anyway...
• 11:29
  CSS International, I think they were called, and it was run by a guy called Andrew Marriott.
• 11:34
  Andrew Marriott, you probably know, is kind of involved in broadcasting over many, many years.
• 11:39
  Anyway, out of the blue, he connects with Neville and Richard Hay, who'd done some work with Mike.
• 11:46
  and says, oh, you know, as Crompton, I've heard he's over here somewhere in the UK, would he be interested in doing something at Le Mans?
• 11:51
  I don't know, anything to make a dollar.
• 11:54
  Anyway, so I ended up saying yes to it because it was paid $1,500 or whatever it paid, and I went and worked at Le Mans that weekend, and I did it with James Allen,
• 12:02
  Wow.
• 12:03
  And I think your mate Tom Clarkson was involved in that weekend as well.
• 12:08
  I remember about three or four o'clock in the morning having to sleep under the bench and the commentary box because I couldn't spell my own name at that stage.
• 12:15
  I was so tired.
• 12:16
  But anyway, so Brundle and those guys won the race and so they sent me up on the podium and I'd completely forgotten about this until someone showed me the photograph recently and here's me standing there next to Martin interviewing him on the podium at 1990.
• 12:30
  I mean, really being on the podium at Le Mans, everyone's done that, but for a slightly different set of reasons.
• 12:37
  But yeah, funny memories.
• 12:38
  Mark Scaife, Neil Crompton and several others have raced a great little open wheel category that this country had called Formula Holden or Formula Brabham.
• 12:49
  When Scafie came on the podcast, I hit him up with a story about the pair of you being at Winton in these cars and him asking you, Hey, Crompo, can I go flat through the sweeper?
• 13:01
  You're testing or something or other.
• 13:03
  And you stitched him.
• 13:05
  Is that true?
• 13:06
  No, it's absolutely true.
• 13:08
  So I did the 89 season in the open wheeler.
• 13:12
  And, you know, they were pretty cool cars, Formula 3000 cars with the Holden V6 engine, which was based on the Buick engine.
• 13:17
  So a lot of torque.
• 13:18
  It didn't sound great.
• 13:19
  Wally was the engineer?
• 13:20
  Yeah, Wally was the engineer.
• 13:23
  Mine was a Rolt RT20, which Nakajima had driven in the European 3000 Championship.
• 13:30
  Scaifee initially had this thing called an SPA or a SPA, and later had a Lola.
• 13:38
  Gibson Motorsport did a beautiful job of preparing their cars.
• 13:42
  and running their cars.
• 13:43
  And Ross Holder, who now these days has been also my engineer in the journey, but also just a great mate.
• 13:49
  And Harry Galloway and a whole bunch of really talented people were on his side of the garage.
• 13:53
  Anyway, you know, early on, he's a sponge for knowledge.
• 13:57
  And I don't know, the truth of the matter is, I don't know whether it was Fred or Mark that rang me.
• 14:01
  I've got a feeling it was actually Freddo.
• 14:04
  I can't vouch one way or the other, but the bottom line to the story is, can you get through the Turn 5 sweeper at Winton Flat?
• 14:11
  So without even batting an eyelid, I go, oh, yeah, like, of course you can.
• 14:16
  Open wheeler with arrow on it like that.
• 14:18
  Jesus, if you can't get through there flat, there's something massively wrong.
• 14:21
  So never one to shy from a challenge, particularly a dare, even something as simple as an arm wrestle.
• 14:29
  Buffhead goes roaring around there.
• 14:31
  It probably was in the spa, probably in the SPA, I imagine, in year one because I think he did that in 1990.
• 14:39
  So he would have gone and warmed the tyres up and all that, because those Dunlop tyres that were on those things were pretty slippery when they were cold, so it would have taken a couple of laps to sort of get them up, and then he would have come out of turn four and brum, brum, brum, because these cars were quick, and he would have arrowed into turn...
• 14:52
  I wish I was there.
• 14:53
  God, I wish I was there.
• 14:55
  So he would have arrowed into turn one with his little size 8 jammed on that pedal.
• 14:59
  flat out and just to see the rooster tail of grass and dirt come off that thing when it fired off the edge of the road would have been worth the price of admission, but he can't get through there flat.
• 15:08
  But nor can you get off the end of the back straight flat when you're contesting a pole position with him at Sandown.
• 15:14
  So tell us that one.
• 15:14
  Well, yeah.
• 15:16
  So in those days, we didn't have data.
• 15:19
  So everything was a lap board, which was therefore delayed a lap in terms of the information.
• 15:23
  And so Boothhead and I are...
• 15:25
  Toe to toe.
• 15:26
  Toe to toe, tenth apart, you know, goes one way, goes the other way, goes one way, goes the other way.
• 15:31
  It's like, jeez, I can't have that more on pole.
• 15:34
  So I think intelligently, not, that the answer to this, instead of having that tiny little safety lift at the end of the back straight at sand down is, you know, I'm just going to commit to flat here.
• 15:44
  I just need to grow up here and get this done.
• 15:47
  So, and in doing so, because you half poop yourself about what you're trying to achieve, I turned it in too early.
• 15:52
  And in those days, it wasn't the nicely profiled sawtooth Valalunga curbing on the inside.
• 15:58
  It actually had this sort of nasty little concrete rise.
• 16:01
  So I hit this thing and as soon as you break the air gap between the floor and the road, they lose aero.
• 16:07
  So this thing spun in about its own car length from 170, 180 miles an hour.
• 16:12
  and rotated and went into the fence.
• 16:15
  Luckily, backwards it sat and broke the engine off it and literally turned it into a bathtub.
• 16:21
  And, of course, who the first bloke was that came around was Dickhead.
• 16:25
  And so I had not only the indignity of sort of unbuckling and getting out of this thing with not much more than a steering wheel...
• 16:33
  But the first bloke that arrived on the scene was the bloke that I was arguing with for pole.
• 16:37
  But I mean, you know, being Mark, you know, he did take me for a ride back on the side pod back to the garage, charge me 20 bucks for it.
• 16:44
  But no, so he's a good sport.
• 16:46
  But yeah, that was, that was actually a little bit spooky.
• 16:49
  And I was supposed to qualify the HRT car and I was shaking that bad.
• 16:53
  And it rattled me that I said to Bradley, you're qualifying today.
• 16:56
  So, yeah, so that was 1990.
• 17:00
  And probably a little bit lucky because if I'd gone in feet first, I reckon I'd probably be dead.
• 17:05
  We cherish touring cars in this country.
• 17:07
  We love them, supercars as we know them now.
• 17:10
  But you and Scafie and others still react, as many purist racers do, about an open wheeler is just this very...
• 17:18
  So A, to drive those Formula Holdens, there's probably even F3000 stuff that we could discuss, but also, too, you got to test and drive on more than one occasion a champ car.
• 17:30
  Yeah.
• 17:30
  Does that rank right up there for you?
• 17:33
  Yeah, it does, and...
• 17:35
  That's another chapter, another story.
• 17:37
  But Steve Horn was a guy that I tried very hard to do an IndyCar deal with back in the day.
• 17:42
  And I really cherished my moment in the Formula Holden category.
• 17:47
  And I remember coming back from the UK via America at one stage and stopped at Long Beach and saw the IndyCars run for the first time at Long Beach in, I think that would have been 1990.
• 17:57
  And it was phenomenal.
• 17:59
  The cars were amazing and the
• 18:01
  event was amazing and the crowds were amazing and I thought, gee, this would be fantastic to try and be a part of something like this.
• 18:07
  And my friend, engineer, Car Fettler of the day, was a guy called Bob Murphy and he and his brother John had worked in Formula One and in IndyCar and in fact they'd worked for Steve in the US.
• 18:19
  Steve's an expat Kiwi who'd made a life over there, initially running and part-owning the Budweiser team which was called TruSports.
• 18:29
  and then ultimately started his own operation called Tasman Motorsports.
• 18:33
  So I worked away on him for a long period of time to the point where it sort of became apparent that I was never going to be able to get the dough together to be able to do it.
• 18:44
  But we ended up being good friends, and ultimately I drove his touring car, which was an out-of-the-blue call I took in 1996 while I was over in Perth with Wayne Gardner, and so I went to the US in 1997 for a couple of years.
• 18:56
  But...
• 18:58
  Long story short, I got to drive his IndyCar at a test.
• 19:01
  They were testing a new hub device.
• 19:04
  And actually, I only just found just recently the set-up sheet, the travel manifest, everything to do with that test.
• 19:12
  I kind of unearthed it.
• 19:13
  So that was a really cool thing.
• 19:15
  But, yeah, to put that car or those cars in perspective at that time, it was a highly competitive manufacturer environment.
• 19:23
  They sent me out initially with 40 inches of boost,
• 19:26
  which was about 750 horsepower, a quad cam, 32-valve aluminium twin-turbo V8.
• 19:33
  And then once they look, you know, you look like you're on top of the game, okay, Mr Crompton, full Japanese engineering squadron there, managing the engine, we'll give you the extra five inches of boost.
• 19:45
  It's another 150 horsepower.
• 19:47
  So it was a 900-horsepower exercise, and, I mean, it's hard to describe.
• 19:52
  So, you know, I love those cars.
• 19:55
  that period of the sport, you know, at that point it was an amazing category.
• 20:00
  So to be able to drive one was a great thrill.
• 20:03
  Sad that never able to get my ability squared away sufficiently or the money or whatever was required to get the job done to be able to ultimately race one, but to at least test one was very, very cool.
• 20:16
  Bounce for a couple of other cars.
• 20:17
  You mentioned about
• 20:20
  North American Touring Car Championship, Super Touring.
• 20:22
  That car, that Honda, now resides in Christchurch, New Zealand.
• 20:26
  I've seen it.
• 20:27
  I've seen the beautiful set-up sheets that you did back in the day, the very detailed stuff.
• 20:31
  That car has heritage back to David Leslie, British Touring Car Championship.
• 20:35
  That was a great little rig, wasn't it?
• 20:36
  It was, and the very first time I drove it was at a place called Putnam Park outside Indianapolis in the US, and I thought to myself, what have I done?
• 20:46
  What?
• 20:47
  Like it was just so cold over there and it was profoundly evil to drive, you know, like it was front wheel drive, you couldn't get the rear tyres to work.
• 20:58
  We had set up issues, wheel alignment issues.
• 21:01
  I mean, it was just like it wasn't no fun at all.
• 21:05
  And I thought, my goodness, you know, like how do I get on the plane and head back down here?
• 21:11
  But as time went by, we started to understand how to get the most out of it.
• 21:14
  And by the time I got to the end of that championship season, it was probably to this day one of my favourite cars to drive.
• 21:20
  Just a beautiful little car, really beautifully engineered by MSD in the UK.
• 21:25
  And...
• 21:27
  Eddie Hinckley was the engineer back in the TWR days when I first started driving for Tom.
• 21:32
  And ironically, he was the engineer at MSD that was involved in that Honda program.
• 21:35
  The world connects in motorsport, which is an interesting thing.
• 21:38
  But yeah, I really love that car.
• 21:40
  Unfortunately, it's sort of funny, like, you know, reputationally, I never had the black hat in Australia.
• 21:48
  And, you know, like every other driver, you had good days, middle days and bad days.
• 21:51
  Yeah.
• 21:53
  But when I went to the US, I got off to a good start at Long Beach and I think I won one or maybe both the races there.
• 21:59
  I can't remember now.
• 22:01
  And, you know, I had some pretty monumental battles with a guy called Peter Cunningham who ran the Honda program over there for his own business called Real Time Racing.
• 22:09
  And David Donoghue, who was in the Chrysler or the Dodge program.
• 22:13
  He's the son of the late, great Mark Donahue, who was Roger Penske's first real full-blown factory driver back in the day.
• 22:20
  Well, they were not huge fans of Uncle Neil.
• 22:23
  And only because of the brand of racing here was that, you know, the guys here...
• 22:29
  Race tough.
• 22:30
  You know, it's not a after you, please, I insist kind of set up here.
• 22:35
  It's, you know, it's dog eat dog as it is in Europe.
• 22:38
  And Australian touring car racing is pretty robust.
• 22:41
  So I certainly wouldn't have regarded myself as being a dirty competitor.
• 22:44
  But we went to Detroit and I put a move on Pete Cunningham, which was 100% legit.
• 22:52
  I got down the inside of an entire car, but it was a skinny field.
• 22:56
  It was 15 cars or whatever it was.
• 22:57
  So, again, from an organiser's standpoint, I understand the angst.
• 23:00
  But anyway, Pete bounced off me and ended up in the wall down the back of Belle Isle in Detroit.
• 23:06
  And then with, like, a lap to go, I'd hunted David down and got to him, and this was a marginal one.
• 23:13
  Like, it was maybe, maybe not at the B pillar.
• 23:15
  I don't know to this day.
• 23:16
  Who cares?
• 23:16
  Who cares?
• 23:16
  But anyway, so I've half-punted him.
• 23:19
  And anyway, the whole paddock wanted to lynch me.
• 23:21
  So they disqualified us.
• 23:23
  I've never been disqualified from a car race in my life.
• 23:25
  And Steve Horne was livid.
• 23:27
  Like Steve, I think you know him.
• 23:29
  You know, this is a man of very, very, very few words.
• 23:33
  And he was livid.
• 23:35
  And he went, that is it.
• 23:36
  So we parked up.
• 23:37
  We didn't do the next two races at Portland in Oregon, which is on the other side of the country, but we didn't do it.
• 23:43
  That definitely cost you the championship.
• 23:45
  It cost me the championship, which was a bummer.
• 23:46
  Now, I mean, Larko and Scaife, you go, you know, you're wanker.
• 23:49
  What are you doing over there?
• 23:50
  You know, the fistful of cars.
• 23:51
  But it's like any category.
• 23:52
  There's good guys, bad guys, and in between guys.
• 23:55
  Certainly wasn't the depth of talent in the field that we had here.
• 23:58
  But it's still a moment in your life that you regard as being important.
• 24:01
  And it would have been nice, particularly in...
• 24:05
  looking back phase of your life now on the motor racing career to go, well, I actually won the American touring car championship.
• 24:11
  Anyway, it didn't happen.
• 24:12
  So that's life, but, um, never got any trophies either, which is a sore point.
• 24:16
  Can I tell you what my sore point of that journey was the guy that bought Tasman motorsport was a guy called Jerry Forsyth who used to run the players IndyCar team and he bought Tasman out and we'd won a fistful of trophies and, you know, various stuff junk that you earn when he bought the team.
• 24:34
  Um,
• 24:35
  He operated for a while and then ultimately he closed that business and he went and put everything from that team in a barn somewhere where he lived near Chicago or whatever.
• 24:44
  And so Neil Mickleright was the team manager of the day who lots of mutual friends knew.
• 24:49
  So I went, oh, jeez, I'd really like to get hold of my trophies because one thing the Yanks do is they do a cool trophy.
• 24:55
  So I thought this will be pretty good, you know, something to put the, you know, like McLaughlin does, put the chicken McNuggets into the state.
• 25:02
  And bugger me, he wouldn't give me the trophies.
• 25:05
  So they're locked up in a barn somewhere, probably bulldozed in a tip somewhere these days, but they wouldn't.
• 25:11
  They went, no, no, we bought the team, we own them.
• 25:13
  And I was like, but you didn't earn them.
• 25:14
  It's bad luck, we own them.
• 25:16
  Yeah, so you can imagine what I'm thinking about them.
• 25:21
  Of all the supercars that you've driven, is there a favourite one that you have a soft spot for?
• 25:30
  It's a very cynical business, Gregory, motor racing.
• 25:33
  So you tend to have love for those that you did well in and you loathe those that you did poorly in.
• 25:39
  And ironically, that can change from day to day.
• 25:41
  And I think that's one of the real key points.
• 25:43
  You know, if I look back now...
• 25:47
  through a truth serum prism.
• 25:49
  I think there are days where what I was able to do was equal to best practice, but there are other days where you weren't probably too fussy sometimes trying to find perfection in setup, and you dip your hat to those that did it really well.
• 26:04
  So, and that's why I've always thought that the guys that stacked on the results
• 26:10
  you know, guys like Mark or Marcus Ambrose or Russell Ingle or any of the, Larry Perkins, all those people back in that era that had success, you know, Jimmy Richards, you've got to dip your hat to their ability to be consistently successful.
• 26:22
  So, you know, so there are cars along the way that there are days that you recall that you clicked and you sort of felt like you could do no wrong.
• 26:32
  Ironically, you probably...
• 26:35
  You'd probably be surprised by the answer.
• 26:37
  So, for example, in 1998 at Bathurst, because I think it's about the honesty of looking in the mirror and knowing whether or not on that day you were doing absolutely everything you could do to get a result.
• 26:49
  And the result may not have...
• 26:51
  manifested in terms of a race victory so in 1998 we had a very fast car glenn seaton and i what was it an el i think it was called in those days falcon um and it didn't start that way we we made some damper changes on the run during the day and it sort of came into phase and it got better and better and um we were contenders and
• 27:13
  And then about lap 800, which always seemed to be my Bermuda Triangle up at Bathurst, the thing had a power steering malfunction, much to Glenn's disgust.
• 27:26
  And then I double-stinted, maybe even triple-stinted near the back end, but got us unlapped, and I think we came home fourth or fifth or something that day, and that was a really beautiful car.
• 27:38
  That particular car on that day and that track and the mindset –
• 27:43
  You know, I just remember it being, that's about as harmonious as you get.
• 27:47
  Oddly enough, at Bathurst, which is a place where you often have really strong recollections of the place, I don't know what it was, but on the evens, as in 94, 6, 8, 2000, 2002, it was like those cars were good and on the odds, they were crap.
• 28:03
  Wow.
• 28:04
  And I don't know, yeah, yeah, really strange.
• 28:06
  So then that might just be, you know, manipulating data in your head in the years following.
• 28:12
  But the 98 car was good.
• 28:13
  The 2000 car was very, very good.
• 28:16
  And that was the year that I was leading from Mark when Matt Neal, who was some lap or laps down...
• 28:24
  who I'd passed cleanly, decided to dive bomb it down the inside at turn one and whacked it and ripped the front spoiler off it and destroyed that day.
• 28:31
  So that was pretty painful.
• 28:33
  Um, and 2002, that car was very fast.
• 28:37
  It wasn't great in a straight line, but it was very, very fast over the top of the hill that I shared with Lowndes.
• 28:42
  And, um, um,
• 28:43
  you know, that was involved in a great battle when I got out of it, that it involved Russell, Jimmy and myself at the front of the field.
• 28:50
  So, yeah, I haven't really answered the question.
• 28:53
  But, yeah, there is certainly a small percentage of cars that you sort of look back at fondly now.
• 28:57
  But it's really hard to isolate...
• 28:59
  a car as such i mean if i actually had to probably pick just a car i'd say towards the end of its life that little honda record was about as sweet a race car as you drive for balance and braking stability and mid-corner grip and but you know not they don't have the squirt and a point-to-point squirt that a supercar had
• 29:31
  If you Google the phrase, Dobo Boost, instead of getting pictures of cars into coolers and boost gauges, you get results for fast computer chips.
• 29:40
  What happened to the world?
• 29:42
  I want to touch briefly on 1992, an even year.
• 29:45
  You're on the podium in a crazy race in what was the Nissan GTR then, and young Greg Rust was standing under the podium that day.
• 29:54
  You were one of the arseholes, were you?
• 29:56
  I was blown away by the craziness of it.
• 29:58
  I was actually kind of speechless that...
• 30:02
  Okay, there was division.
• 30:02
  There's always been that in motor racing.
• 30:04
  But at that time, I was blown away by people's reactions to it.
• 30:11
  Scaifey wanted to put cans in his pocket, which I think Jimmy coaxed him out of.
• 30:14
  Jimmy then went on to say, you're a pack of arseholes.
• 30:17
  But you got a half-eyed up, didn't you?
• 30:19
  Yeah, well, that's right.
• 30:20
  So we were parked off to the side of what was then known as the TUI Centre and the reaction was real.
• 30:26
  I mean, I can't say in this broadcast what was being chanted, but it was pretty foul.
• 30:30
  And, look, I understood it.
• 30:32
  It was a four-wheel drive car in an era where everything else was two-wheel drive.
• 30:37
  I mean, in the parody world that we live in now...
• 30:39
  I mean, it would never fly, but it was permitted within the rules.
• 30:44
  Nissan maximised their opportunity and they built a Sierra Beta and that's what it went and did.
• 30:49
  So we'd stopped for, I think it was rear pads actually, not even front pads, for the team to have a look at the pad wear just so that they could assess what our car was doing.
• 30:59
  and then determine what they wanted to do with the lead car, which was Jimmy's and Mark's car.
• 31:03
  But it took us out of being first and second and put Anders, Olofsson and my car into third position.
• 31:09
  So the sandwich in the middle was DJ and Bowie in the Sierra, who did an amazing job that day in really dangerous, horrible conditions.
• 31:20
  This is a...
• 31:21
  deeply saddening day, shocking weather.
• 31:23
  We lost a friend in Dennyholm, you know, who, you know, I just used to love leaning on the garage walls, talking about Can-Am cars and Formula One of yesteryear, and the guy was just a gem.
• 31:36
  So, yeah, tough circumstances and just filthy rain up there like you can't believe.
• 31:42
  But anyway, so you get on the podium, so whether or not you're in a car that did or didn't have an advantage or not just seemed to us as though it was an un-Australian thing for people to be chanting the word that they were chanting that we were a bunch of.
• 31:57
  And so when I went out and did my thing, you know, there was Anders and I and...
• 32:05
  the crowd was very pro DJ and John, as you'd expect, but I thought the best way to deal with it was to flip the bird.
• 32:13
  So I made sure that everyone that I could make eye contact with got the middle finger, you know, thrust upon them from the two-eat centre as best I could, which didn't help.
• 32:25
  So if the decibel racket was...
• 32:28
  95 dB, it went to 110, and then I was an even bigger one of one of those that they were... ..which just set the scene perfectly for MS and Richo to arrive on the scene.
• 32:40
  And the true story is, and he still had them in his pocket, MS was armed with fully charged cans of Tuis.
• 32:46
  So he was ready to pitch them back because we were getting stuff thrown at us.
• 32:49
  There was Grog flying.
• 32:50
  And if you look back at the tapes now and you have a look at Mark's face...
• 32:56
  It's very funny.
• 32:57
  And, you know, you and I know him quite well.
• 32:59
  We've spent half a lifetime or more with this bloke.
• 33:02
  And when he gets that look on his face, he's up for a stoush.
• 33:05
  So I think he was quite prepared to go downstairs and take on 500 people, which probably would have been, you know, he likes a battle, but maybe that one was a good one to avoid.
• 33:15
  But he was fully armed with at least a couple of well and truly live shells in his pocket.
• 33:21
  So, yeah.
• 33:23
  I don't know whether it would have got him very far, but it would have been good to drink.
• 33:26
  It would have been.
• 33:27
  You don't make a lot of noise about it.
• 33:29
  I want to highlight it in this conversation.
• 33:32
  You played a significant part in the formation of what we now know and love today.
• 33:40
  How did that supercars...
• 33:42
  aspect and the part that you played in it come about.
• 33:45
  There's some talk about a plane flight and Tony Cochran or something along those lines.
• 33:50
  Did it sort of start in some fashion like that?
• 33:53
  Well, I was hustling to do the IndyCar project and Tony in those days was the, whatever his title was, maybe chairman of the Grand Prix, I beg your pardon, of the Indy Grand Prix or the IndyCar event on the Gold Coast.
• 34:07
  So, you know, I'd been talking to him about how
• 34:10
  We might be able to put a program together to drive at surfers in an IndyCar.
• 34:16
  And he and I formed a friendship.
• 34:19
  And he had a very mild curiosity about what the... Well, in those days it was called Group A Touring Cars, which is a pretty ordinary name when you think about it.
• 34:32
  And the short version of this yarn is that...
• 34:39
  I had been involved, together with other colleagues, in attending various meetings about the category and its future and where it was going.
• 34:49
  And remember in these days, these particular days, it was the polar opposite to what it is now.
• 34:54
  So if we were the equivalent of a rock band, we were
• 34:59
  as teams paying to play.
• 35:02
  We weren't being paid to play.
• 35:04
  So the promoters were the risk takers in the sense, but they took the bounty and even worse, the teams had to pay to enter.
• 35:13
  So it was kind of a really weird deal.
• 35:16
  So the conversation evolved with Tony and I was frustrated at the time.
• 35:22
  Motor racing people are my life and my love and my brethren.
• 35:27
  And I'm one of them, but I've probably always had a slightly different view of it in that I see it in entertainment terms, as well as the purity of the driving and the engineering, which I love and revere.
• 35:38
  But without the entertainment, there is no box office.
• 35:40
  Without the box office, there is no money.
• 35:42
  Without customers, there's none of any of the above.
• 35:45
  So for me, the number one core to everything that we do is the customer, the box office,
• 35:50
  the entertainment value, and then the engineering and the driving follows.
• 35:54
  Whereas obviously if you were from a period in the 40s or 50s or whatever, it was illegal to have sponsors on the car.
• 36:00
  So it was pure.
• 36:01
  It was about the engineering and the driving, but that's not how it was in the 80s or 90s.
• 36:06
  So I used to get frustrated listening to, I don't know, I'll just be facetious here, but people arguing about whether the valve caps on the...
• 36:18
  on the rims, you know, should have been anodised.
• 36:23
  I don't know, I'm grappling here.
• 36:24
  Whether they should have been anodised pink or green or blue, who cares?
• 36:27
  Who gives us stuff?
• 36:28
  It's got nothing to do with anything or some other obscure thing that only the industry cares about, you know.
• 36:33
  It's sort of...
• 36:34
  It can't always be for mechanics and engineers, particularly if it ignores the customer along the way.
• 36:40
  So it was a lot of that kind of – I'm trying to choose my words carefully – navel-gazing.
• 36:47
  And I said this to Tony, you know, and he was involved in much bigger, broader entertainment –
• 36:53
  projects in those days that you know we needed someone like him who saw it for its show business value and then let the engineers the drivers and the mechanics and everybody ply their trade after it but first and foremost get the show right so that conversation warmed up and uh
• 37:10
  We had various meetings about it.
• 37:11
  I only just recently found the letter that I wrote to him to say, yeah, following our conversation, I'll come up.
• 37:19
  And so I went to his place and we spent a lot of time talking about who's who.
• 37:26
  did a SWOT analysis, went through the monkeys in the zoo and talked about who they all were and what their politics was and what mattered and what didn't.
• 37:34
  And that would have been early in 1996.
• 37:40
  By the latter part of 96, he pulled everybody together at Sandown and by 1997, the business that we now know as supercars was pulled together.
• 37:49
  And so I didn't really have anything much to do with it after that.
• 37:53
  other than being participant.
• 37:54
  But remember, I'd gone to the US in 97 and a fair chunk of 98.
• 37:58
  But Tony, to his credit, delivered everything that he said he would.
• 38:02
  He was a crash or crash through merchant.
• 38:04
  Some people didn't like the way in which he went about doing what he did.
• 38:08
  But without him, the business would have been, I mean, it just wouldn't exist like it currently exists.
• 38:14
  So we owe him that.
• 38:15
  a debt of gratitude, like almost no other person.
• 38:19
  And it was probably done concurrently with David White from Network 10.
• 38:22
  So the fact that David was driving the television side of it for 10, who then...
• 38:28
  created a franchise based on it being the home of motorsport.
• 38:31
  And Tony in the engine room of the company and Wayne Caddick ultimately as sort of the balancing business act, offsetting Tony's entrepreneurial nature, was a tremendous, powerful triangle.
• 38:44
  So you had...
• 38:46
  David White leading the television charge and then he annexed ARC, WRC, IndyCar, Formula One, supercar, invented RPM.
• 38:56
  It was a powerhouse, as you know, because you were a part of it.
• 38:59
  Tony made sure that supercars was on the up, saw it for what couldn't give a flying you-know-what about
• 39:07
  valve spring tensions or whether or not you had toe in or toe out, but cared a lot about the customer and the show.
• 39:13
  And then, you know, Wayne was clearly a very good business brain in the background, having had a corporate background and done a lot in racing and with Shell and with others.
• 39:22
  And we had good sponsors, we had good broadcasters, we had good management, and we also had a healthy competitor base with a lot of OEM support as well.
• 39:30
  So like most things, there's a thousand elements to its success.
• 39:35
  but Tony's role in all that was really significant.
• 39:38
  So, yeah, somewhere in there I was one of the threads.
• 39:42
  Hall of Fame.
• 39:45
  Life membership at Motorsport Australia.
• 39:47
  Now, what you've done in broadcasting terms with your love of the sport, with your immense dedication, if our listeners were to walk into the commentary box, you would see plastered from floor to ceiling...
• 40:02
  valuable information that enhances the broadcast you've got all this sort of stuff at your fingertips you do an amazing job with it crompo it's it's world class and even now it still gives you a massive buzz yeah it does thanks rusty and it's nice you know when you when you cop an accolade from a peer so thank you very much for that and um look it's a
• 40:23
  It's a passion and it's a life really.
• 40:27
  It's kind of, I think in many ways, the fanatical kid fan, the motorcycle racing exposure, the little bit of exposure to business, the race driving and then...
• 40:46
  all of the wheeling and dealing that it takes to make that happen ended up effectively being what I describe as the University of Motorsport so really all those learnings have been applied into the commentary box and I mean our job is to inform and entertain that's it that's what the role is that's
• 41:05
  That's what we need to do.
• 41:06
  And I think people recognise whether you're passionate or not.
• 41:09
  They recognise whether you know your stuff or not.
• 41:13
  And it doesn't necessarily come easy.
• 41:15
  I mean, some of it, obviously, from recalling a track or why someone's making a particular move or considering what they're doing is probably innate.
• 41:25
  But some of the other stuff is just hard work.
• 41:27
  So, I mean, it's typically...
• 41:29
  It's about a two-week process to get ready for a race, with the last week going into it being hardcore, and everybody in the broadcast unit, and especially my wife Sarah, go, why are you doing that?
• 41:43
  You know, because, you know, surely you must know it by now, but I don't – I treat every event – you know, you and I were at an event this weekend, and I treat everyone like the –
• 41:53
  the first one.
• 41:54
  And I try to make sure that I understand it from an engineering standpoint as best I can without trying to pretend I'm an engineer because I'm clearly not.
• 42:04
  From a competitor standpoint, from a statistical standpoint, you know, I try and make sure that I know and understand the track and I kind of switch my brain onto it.
• 42:12
  And
• 42:13
  I run my own paperwork over it all, but I've got a lot of great support.
• 42:17
  You know, Aaron Noonan does all the hardcore statistical tracking.
• 42:20
  Oscar Fioranotto, who was an engineer of Craig's and mine back in the early 2000s when we were at Gibson's, you know, he provides a lot of the engineering answers.
• 42:30
  And, but I still, you know, they're up, it's actually upstairs in my room.
• 42:34
  I still, I still pull out the trusty little pocket notepad and pen and I wander around and I talk to people and I don't,
• 42:42
  I don't sort of ask them, you know, where did you finish in last week's race or whatever, because that's all kind of out there in the public domain.
• 42:50
  But I kind of like to know how they are, where they've been, what they've been up to, are they well, what have they been driving, you know, what's going on in their lives, and sort of hopefully bring the viewer...
• 43:02
  you know, who is our customer and our friend into the party and share the experience of what it's like to drive the car or why certain things are being considered in the adjustment of the car or what it's like in the pit lane or what's happening in the paddock or, you know, just try and give proximity to it.
• 43:21
  So yeah, look, I really love it.
• 43:22
  And it's given me a life that's a privilege that I would never have imagined when I was a kid.
• 43:31
  And it's given me
• 43:32
  friendships and opportunities and travel uh that i could never possibly hope to have you know achieved probably any other way thank goodness or i'd be i don't know what i'd be doing you know i'd be i'd be licking stamps in the post office at ballarat or something i'm not sure but it yeah so yeah very grateful um to be able to do it but yeah i um it's it's something that i like it's a weird thing you know because you do it too but you know my job is i scream at a television most people do but they don't get paid
• 44:02
  So it's fun.
• 44:04
  Did it help you in the whole stopping from professional driving thing to keep you involved, keep you immersed in it, or was it hard to stop that stuff, mate, too?
• 44:12
  Because it's like a drug.
• 44:14
  Yeah, I think you were there, and you probably remember.
• 44:17
  I was pretty grumpy and pretty...
• 44:20
  I didn't want to do it.
• 44:20
  So off the back of professional driving, the truth of the matter is I didn't want to be a commentator.
• 44:25
  And to David White's credit, who was the head of sport at Network 10, he kept insisting that I do it.
• 44:31
  And it was only after a lot of arm twisting.
• 44:33
  It had nothing to do with money or I just didn't want to do it.
• 44:37
  You know, I kind of felt like it was, and I remember grumbling.
• 44:40
  I reckon our first one was at Phillip Island.
• 44:42
  I reckon you were there.
• 44:43
  And I reckon I arced up going, you know,
• 44:46
  kind of why am I here?
• 44:48
  Because when you, the intensity of racing the car and trying to be successful at racing the car is so all consuming.
• 44:55
  It's every granule in your body.
• 44:58
  It consumes you 25 hours a day, eight days a week and anything less than that when you're a driver and you have to be selfish when you're a driver, you've sort of view as being inconsequential, inconsequential, I beg your pardon, or, you know,
• 45:11
  who cares, it doesn't matter.
• 45:13
  So for me, even though I had some proximity to the broadcasting thing, and I certainly knew and understood aspects of it, if it was going to be like I'd failed, you know, to not be in a race car when all my colleagues and peers were hitting the starter button, there I am on the side talking about it.
• 45:30
  So I hated it to start with.
• 45:33
  And I remember that David White, Scott Young, who these days is the head of Sky's F1 coverage,
• 45:41
  and uh steve wood um and possibly andrew radford who were kind of part of the management team in the sport department at 10 they sort of had to re-inflate me and put me back together a little bit because i certainly wasn't a happy camper but i think as time went by the wounds heal and then you get on with it and then as i began to
• 46:03
  find a rhythm and a and a and and some cadence and some pace in the whole thing i you know i warmed up to the task and i and i think what i tried to do at that point was bring a little bit of a race team mentality to what we did in 100 percent did that yeah yeah so you know tried to think like a race team tried to you know instead of just going it's car number 19 and it's red and
• 46:26
  Joe Bloggs is driving it and he's 3.2 seconds in front of Fred Nurk, was try to understand the deeper questions.
• 46:33
  And to understand the deeper questions, you had to introduce a bit of the motor racing complexity.
• 46:38
  But then the trick with that, which broadcasters for many decades had always run from, instead of running from it, my view of it was simplify it.
• 46:46
  So try and take the complex and crush it into something that was simple.
• 46:49
  Mike Audson was another person who
• 46:51
  He used to be a huge supporter and we sadly lost him not terribly long ago.
• 46:56
  And he was the predecessor of David as the head of sport at 10.
• 47:00
  He actually dragged me in initially.
• 47:03
  And he was always of the view that he loved the fact that he felt that I...
• 47:07
  had an act to be able to simplify complex.
• 47:09
  Unfortunately, I don't get to do it as much these days just because of the structure of the telecasts.
• 47:14
  So I'm sort of more stuck in the comm box than, but, you know, I still enjoy explaining what's going on and why when I do get the chance.
• 47:22
  But yeah, it's, um, it's been an amazing journey and one, um, that I'm extremely grateful, uh, for having had the experience and, and still being permitted to do it to this day, because obviously it's a business that chews people up and spits them out as well.
• 47:36
  Final one.
• 47:37
  you
• 47:39
  The success is also, I think, down to the wonderful team on air that you have and the friendships.
• 47:45
  So clearly, you know, you, Mark Larkin, Mark Scaife are good mates and that shines through in the coverage.
• 47:53
  And Larko and you have a funny story in Darwin one year about, what was it, the warbler?
• 47:59
  Was it the warbler?
• 48:00
  Yeah, it is.
• 48:01
  Well, to your point, I mean, I think one of the things that shines through and Australian audiences in particular are very good at picking this up, they...
• 48:09
  They smell BS from a long way out.
• 48:13
  So they know whether there's a rapport between the various people that occupy their televisions.
• 48:19
  And so, you know, we have got a very good team.
• 48:21
  And we have had for a long period of time, and yourself included, there's been a whole lot of people that have been a part of this journey since that point in the mid-'90s right through to this very day that are delivering the passion of motorsport in varying forms through forums like this and other broadcasting platforms.
• 48:37
  through various broadcast partners.
• 48:39
  So certainly Larco, Scafie and I are mates.
• 48:43
  There's a great photo and, you know, how Larco loves to do artwork.
• 48:46
  So we all raced in a Formula Holden race at Oran Park in 1992 and the three of us were on the podium.
• 48:51
  So Larco managed to transpose the three of us on the podium together
• 48:56
  and called it the three musketeers.
• 48:57
  And then here we are in the modern era with a little bit of grey hair appearing on the scene and we're still working together and we're still just as passionate about oversteer and understeer and race cars, silly buggers, that we are to this very day.
• 49:09
  So that is special.
• 49:10
  And I think particularly as we get older, we'll appreciate all of that stuff even more.
• 49:15
  But to your question, Mr Rust.
• 49:19
  we were in Darwin.
• 49:19
  I've got a ritual on a Monday after the race meeting there, I've been going there.
• 49:24
  I missed the first one.
• 49:24
  I was at Malala in a sports car but we've been going there since 97 as a category, me since 98 and on the Monday after Darwin I go down to the Mary River to the to the Billabong down there and I always try and catch a barramundi which is a complete and utter waste of my time and the barramundi's time.
• 49:43
  I'd be a whole lot smarter to go to the local fish and ship shop and part
• 49:48
  you know, server chips and some barra.
• 49:50
  But that's not the point because the whole idea is to get down there with the wildlife and it's warm and it's Darwin and it's winter in the rest of the country and you just go, how good's this?
• 49:58
  So anyway, Scaife doesn't want to have a bar of this, never has.
• 50:02
  He went once with Barretta down there because he managed to go down in a gold-plated chopper and then...
• 50:07
  had a limo take him out to meet Mr. Crocodile, and then he waved to him for five seconds and then got out of there.
• 50:12
  But I did manage to con Larco to come down at one stage.
• 50:16
  So Larco's come down there, and I think Simon Fordham-Fordo, who was our senior producer of motorsport for a while, and Nathan Prendergast, who at the time I think was the...
• 50:25
  the director, who now is the head of the broadcast unit.
• 50:30
  Anyway, I think they had to go to the airport for some reason, Fordo and Nath.
• 50:36
  So it left Larco and I in the little aluminium boat.
• 50:39
  They call it a barbecue boat.
• 50:43
  Yeah, I want to correct something.
• 50:45
  I want to put this on the record.
• 50:47
  I am not a bird lover, right?
• 50:49
  I am not a bird lover.
• 50:51
  But these idiots reckon I am.
• 50:55
  And it's only because occasionally I can go, well, that's what this thing's called.
• 50:59
  It's not because I love them.
• 51:00
  It's just like it's general knowledge, you knuckleheads, if you're listening.
• 51:04
  So anyway, so I've gone, oh yeah, whatever it is.
• 51:06
  Actually, I can tell you, there's a thing up there in Darwin called a rainbow bee eater and it's because it's like a rainbow.
• 51:11
  It's actually quite a cool looking thing and it eats bees.
• 51:15
  Go figure.
• 51:16
  So anyway, so I'm, you know, look at that.
• 51:18
  And there's crocs and there's fish jumping and we're not catching anything.
• 51:21
  But what did happen on that day, despite Larco just hammering the living daylights out of me, plus I made the fatal mistake because there's crocs everywhere.
• 51:30
  Like I'm not reaching over the side.
• 51:32
  You end up getting bitten by one of these frigging things.
• 51:35
  So I took, because I thought if I do catch a fish, how am I going to manage holding it, you know, cleaning my hands afterwards and all that.
• 51:43
  So I bought some wipes.
• 51:45
  Oh, my God.
• 51:45
  So these idiots, especially Larkham.
• 51:50
  have never let me off the hook, pardon the pun, because I took wipes on a fishing trip.
• 51:54
  But the truth of this story is that it had nothing to do with the crocodiles and nothing to do with the frigging birds.
• 52:01
  What happened was he's such a numpty that at one stage he cast, cocked it up, and then somehow the two of us, in ridiculously close proximity, like we were lovers, ended up stuck together, hooked.
• 52:17
  Right?
• 52:18
  Right at that point in time while we're like almost lip to lip...
• 52:24
  I mean, you idiot, get this thing out.
• 52:26
  God, Jesus, that.
• 52:27
  And it's ripping our shirt and all the rest of it.
• 52:29
  And, you know, and we looked like we were straight out of, you know, middle Australia.
• 52:33
  Like we're just, you know, you can imagine what we look like.
• 52:36
  We do not look like Darwinians or Northern Territorians.
• 52:39
  We're not.
• 52:40
  And past us come these blokes in a much bigger boat.
• 52:43
  You know those bigger boats that they have up there?
• 52:45
  They've got giant engines on them and they're burly blokes and they're out fishing and having some beers.
• 52:49
  And they're like, hey, hey.
• 52:51
  You too.
• 52:51
  You can imagine what it was.
• 52:53
  Oh, right.
• 52:54
  So, hi.
• 52:55
  Oh, yeah, you blokes, you too.
• 52:57
  You know what?
• 52:58
  You're the motor racing blokes.
• 53:00
  Yeah, no, no, actually we're not.
• 53:01
  We're just sort of stuck this way.
• 53:03
  So that's the truth of the story.
• 53:04
  Larco cannot cast.
• 53:06
  We didn't catch a bloody fish.
• 53:07
  No, I don't love birds.
• 53:10
  And the crocs up there are cool.
• 53:11
  I recommend a trip to Darwin.
• 53:13
  You've got to do it.
• 53:14
  You've got to.
• 53:15
  Mate, there is Bathurst 12-hour wins, podiums at the Great Race, award-winning stuff that you're doing in television, even separate from the broadcast with your production of the Fink Desert Race plus running the 86 series.
• 53:29
  Congratulations on everything you've done, mate.
• 53:32
  It's been nice to walk down memory lane.
• 53:34
  And one day you must, must do a book.
• 53:37
  Yeah, Noonan keeps belting me around the head, so maybe one day I'll relinquish.
• 53:41
  But thank you.
• 53:42
  Kind words.
• 53:43
  Nice to have a bit of a yak.
• 53:44
  And you've been chasing me for about 48 years to sit down.
• 53:48
  You finally pinned me down.
• 53:49
  If you can just take your foot off my throat now and let me go.
• 53:52
  But nice to share a few yarns, and hopefully we didn't put everybody to sleep.
• 53:56
  Thanks, Krompa.
• 53:56
  Thanks, Rusty.
• 54:02
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 54:07
  Series producer and editor is Alex Mitchell.
• 54:10
  Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
• 54:19
  Listener.