Latest / Rusty's Garage / Michael Dowson | Part 2 - World class talent and two wheeling a Toyota

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Michael Dowson | Part 2 - World class talent and two wheeling a Toyota · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:19
  G'day, it's Rusty here.
• 0:20
  I'll set for part two of my feature ep with Michael Dowson.
• 0:22
  This one isn't just for bike racing fans.
• 0:25
  Although two wheels was his first love, you'll hear about his touring car exploits in this second part as well.
• 0:31
  What he's doing now and some of the standout moments at the peak of his bike career, not just in Australia.
• 0:37
  Now, if you've arrived here and somehow missed part one, make sure you check that out first.
• 0:41
  It should be immediately prior to this one in the garage library list.
• 0:46
  From being wowed by Greg Hansford at Wanneroo to the sage bike prep fundamentals that his father instilled in him.
• 0:54
  The incredible support of his family who moved east when it was clear that the Colonel had talent.
• 1:00
  We talk about those nicknames and more as well and reminisce about racing bikes at Bathurst.
• 1:06
  Man, they were brave.
• 1:07
  Let's crack into it now with part two.
• 1:10
  In order to come to the Japanese and international chapter, if you will, I want to wrap up a couple of things.
• 1:14
  Firstly, Roger Freeth I can remember from the rally days with Possum Born and so on.
• 1:20
  What was he like as a bike rider?
• 1:22
  Was he?
• 1:22
  Lovely guy, but you put his helmet on like most people, and they reckon you put your helmet on, the button goes on your head and you change to a beast.
• 1:30
  That was him.
• 1:31
  He was one of those guys.
• 1:32
  So in the pits, talking to him was just like talking to – again, I used to go to church with my mum a lot,
• 1:38
  So priests, you'd talk to priests a lot, and he talked like a priest.
• 1:42
  Really?
• 1:43
  In that soft kind of, yeah.
• 1:44
  Very friendly, soft-toned guy, which was amazing.
• 1:47
  So yeah, it was a bit of a surprise after meeting the likes of Andrew Johnson.
• 1:52
  Yeah.
• 1:53
  because he was a real rat bag.
• 1:55
  And to have someone, you think, well, okay, this guy's the same level as that.
• 2:00
  And to be talking like a priest was a bit bizarre.
• 2:03
  Yeah, before he goes and dons the helmet and away he goes.
• 2:05
  Yeah, turns into an animal.
• 2:07
  The results in some of the national stuff are amazing.
• 2:10
  You've reminisced about Bathurst, which I love.
• 2:13
  We haven't really talked about things like Swan Series or Six Hour and some of those things.
• 2:18
  How important in...
• 2:21
  shaping you for some of the the chances to go overseas and do some things were were the races there 100 back in our days we did a lot of production racing so there was uh gp style bikes that was one class and then there was uh super bikes obviously that that started to take off and then the the big thing and the big money thing for guys to make good income was the production racing because that was directly related especially the eight hour
• 2:47
  the Suzuka, the Gastro 6-hour.
• 2:49
  It was related directly to sales.
• 2:52
  They believed that if the bike won on Sunday, you'd sell on Monday, type of thing.
• 2:56
  So many names came through it too, didn't they?
• 2:59
  Oh, absolutely.
• 3:00
  So production racing for me was, again, being with Warren, who was able to manipulate production bikes to get the most out of them.
• 3:10
  And that to me, I think, was the main thing for us, was his capacity to make adjustments and stay within the rules and make it work.
• 3:23
  And we had situations where...
• 3:26
  tyre manufacturers wanted us to have their brand.
• 3:29
  But in a lot of cases, like the 87 Castrol 6-Hour, we had one brand on the front and another different brand on the rear.
• 3:36
  Oh, wow.
• 3:37
  Yeah, and he was never really liked for it.
• 3:40
  But he said, well, we don't care about your tyres.
• 3:42
  We want the tyre to win.
• 3:45
  So we ended up running a, in the 87 one, we had a rear tyre, I think it was a Metzler.
• 3:52
  Mm-hmm.
• 3:53
  a rear tire off an RZ350.
• 3:55
  So it was a rear tire for the RZ350, but we had that on the front of our FZR1000, which everyone said, oh, that won't work, that's crazy.
• 4:04
  And I put it on at the start of the eight hour, the six hour, and did the whole race, had more grip than anyone the whole race.
• 4:11
  So the Metzler at the time front that was available, we would have been having to at least change two or three times.
• 4:18
  So we put this front tire on that did the whole race.
• 4:21
  Again, whoever's got the throttle open the longest without being in the pits or off the throttle is going to win.
• 4:27
  And that's what Warren, how he looked.
• 4:28
  Was about, yeah.
• 4:29
  He just looked at whatever we could do to keep you on the track and not on the pits and not wasting time.
• 4:36
  So that sort of thing, suspension abilities, changing geometries.
• 4:42
  And he was able to listen to what, like Kevin and I, completely different the way we would express ourselves.
• 4:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 4:50
  But he was able to manipulate the bike and understand what we're saying to make it work.
• 4:56
  Make it work.
• 4:56
  Make it work.
• 4:57
  Just tell me about a takeaway from each of them, maybe from the Pittmans and then even from Warren Willing that really –
• 5:07
  you know you took through the rest of your career was there something along the way where you were talking technically about a bike the way you were going to ride it you mentioned even swapping the um the shift pattern around before is there is there a couple of takeaways that were you know really um significant for you
• 5:24
  I just think everything was about evolution.
• 5:28
  How could you evolve?
• 5:30
  How could you ultimately reduce your lap times?
• 5:34
  And then having guys with history, it's always the same.
• 5:40
  It's the same now.
• 5:41
  You've got guys that have got the history.
• 5:43
  I remember looking at the factory racing team.
• 5:46
  You watched Smarter GP or GP Racing from Mick's era or before.
• 5:51
  You'd see the engineers in the pits and they didn't change much because the evolution of those guys is what was making the bike and the rider gain in what they were trying to do.
• 6:04
  So I think for me it was Warren and Malcolm were the guys with all the tools in the toolbox.
• 6:11
  Okay.
• 6:12
  Okay.
• 6:12
  to be able to help me to go forward.
• 6:15
  And looking back at my time, that's exactly what happened.
• 6:19
  I was able to say, well, I'm not happy with this.
• 6:22
  This is giving me an issue, and there was always a way of making… Of listening to that and fixing it.
• 6:28
  Yeah, right.
• 6:29
  Yeah, pretty cool.
• 6:30
  You said before you were really kind of committed, dedicated racer, running the track, whatever it may have been, but you paused and you said, oh, there was a time where I…
• 6:38
  I wasn't.
• 6:39
  Can I tell you about that?
• 6:40
  Was there a brief moment where you – what happened there?
• 6:44
  Okay.
• 6:44
  So the early 86 period, we had the opportunity to go racing on with the Mulberry Yamaha team.
• 6:51
  So we were the first Mulberry Yamaha guys.
• 6:54
  One of our first races was in Victoria down at Calder.
• 6:58
  So Kevin was still living at Horsham.
• 7:01
  I was living in Brisbane.
• 7:02
  And we'd come together and stay at a hotel and then go racing not far from the hotel to the Calder raceway.
• 7:09
  Anyway, we hadn't met.
• 7:10
  Like Keylor or somewhere or wherever you might have been.
• 7:12
  Yeah.
• 7:13
  It was just a little hotel, whatever.
• 7:17
  And Yamaha had booked it for us.
• 7:19
  And we were feeling pretty Hollywood, the fact that we've made it.
• 7:21
  We've got the mobile Yamaha.
• 7:22
  They're the guys.
• 7:24
  So the race was coming up.
• 7:25
  We got there a day or so before the event started.
• 7:29
  And I'd got a rental car and Kev had his Mercedes.
• 7:34
  And we both pulled up and stayed at this hotel.
• 7:38
  And I think it was like a Thursday night.
• 7:41
  Kevin was working, had already worked for Trevor Flood.
• 7:45
  Trevor Flood done a lot for Kevin in his early career.
• 7:49
  Anyway, Trevor had come out one evening after, I think we hadn't even started riding.
• 7:56
  And he'd come out to see us and say, look, I'm just coming, I'm going to take you out tonight for a celebration because you guys have made it.
• 8:04
  And we thought, yeah, okay, no worries.
• 8:05
  So we parked our cars at the hotel, jumped in the Mercedes, Trevor's Mercedes, went into Melbourne for way too long and drank way too much.
• 8:15
  Okay.
• 8:16
  So we get back, and I'm not a big drinker, so I'm beside myself.
• 8:20
  get up with a hangover in the morning and I'm sort of laying in the pits, basically in amongst the bikes.
• 8:26
  Boys are flat sick getting the bikes ready because they've only just sort of prepped them to go racing and they're still getting the team together.
• 8:32
  So they're running around like blue-ass flies and Kevin's sitting there and I'm sort of laying comatised.
• 8:38
  And long behold, the main guy from Yamaha Australia come in, George Pine.
• 8:45
  George comes in and he goes, you boys, come out here, I want to talk to you.
• 8:50
  And straight away we thought, oh, no, he knows we've been out with Trevor bloody flood.
• 8:56
  Bloody must have told him.
• 8:58
  And I'm comatizing no way I should be riding a motorbike.
• 9:03
  And George gets us out the back and he says, look, I'd just like to tell you that I am so impressed with you, young blokes.
• 9:11
  I've turned up at the hotel that I booked for you.
• 9:15
  I've noticed both your cars were there.
• 9:18
  All the lights are out, and that is so professional, and I'd just like to thank you.
• 9:24
  Oh, fantastic.
• 9:25
  And Magoo and I'm looking at each other thinking, Oh, my God.
• 9:28
  If only he knew.
• 9:31
  That's all Trevor Flood's fault.
• 9:32
  Oh, fantastic.
• 9:34
  Fantastic.
• 9:35
  Your first international result at the eight hour, I think it's second with Magoo, wasn't it?
• 9:40
  Yeah.
• 9:41
  But it's a race that you would...
• 9:43
  you'd been in love with already before you even got there.
• 9:46
  What was it like to do that, mate?
• 9:48
  So you can watch the podcast.
• 9:49
  You can do the Suzuka 8-hour now is just so good.
• 9:52
  Back in those days, you really had to pull some strings to get any information about the 8-hour of those days.
• 9:59
  But we had Croz and we had guys, Tony Hatton.
• 10:02
  We had all these guys who were already doing it.
• 10:05
  So the media was – we had to wait for the monthly magazine to come out.
• 10:08
  in a lot of cases, to see what was going on in an international sort of program.
• 10:12
  But the eight hour was always something that was very intriguing.
• 10:16
  And as we started to do in production racing ourselves, it became even more interesting to us.
• 10:23
  And Kevin's saying, Kevin had already been over, and I think he rode for Marawakie earlier.
• 10:27
  So he already had a background from the 8-hour that we got to go there.
• 10:30
  So the contract for 86 was we're going to the 8-hour.
• 10:35
  So the 8-hour situation happened through Yamaha Australia, through the Japanese of Australia, and then we got to go over there and do that.
• 10:42
  And probably the biggest thing for me with the 8-hour was the amount of people.
• 10:48
  I've never been to a place with so many people.
• 10:49
  It was like a carpet of blackheads.
• 10:52
  And the temperature.
• 10:56
  The temperature in the 8-hour was their summer.
• 10:58
  90% humidity, 40 to 45 degrees Celsius.
• 11:04
  Mega track, mega track.
• 11:05
  Mega track.
• 11:06
  So, yeah, it was an eye-opener for sure.
• 11:09
  What's the zenith moment in that race?
• 11:11
  I mean...
• 11:11
  Joe's very kindly reminded me of some standout stuff along the way from you, from multiple six-hour wins at home here, some of the stuff you've loved about Bathurst and so on.
• 11:21
  What about at the eight-hour?
• 11:23
  Uh, the Suzuka circuit itself is, uh, some, it's like Bathurst.
• 11:29
  You know, it's an extremely high speed circuit.
• 11:31
  It's extremely dangerous.
• 11:34
  Um, what's the race that stands out is what I mean.
• 11:36
  Sorry, I probably didn't articulate my question.
• 11:38
  Well, the eight hour, to be there at the eight hour to even get the opportunity to go there.
• 11:41
  But the first year we went, we were on a, uh, pretty much a production bike.
• 11:46
  It was just a road bike with the lights on it.
• 11:49
  Um, so we rode the wheels off that and luckily a lot of teams failed.
• 11:53
  Like all that, Kenny Roberts was there, Mike Baldwin, whole, whole leap of top riders were there, but their bikes failed.
• 12:00
  So Gardner and Saron, Dominic Saron, they, I think they ended up about a lap or two ahead of us.
• 12:06
  But we were on a production bike and we got second.
• 12:09
  Bottom line is we got it home.
• 12:10
  Yep.
• 12:10
  We didn't crash.
• 12:11
  We didn't do anything wrong.
• 12:13
  Our guys worked – like our Yamaha guys from Australia were in with the – I think it was just a production-type crew that weren't even racing people.
• 12:24
  So our guys from Australia pretty much pointed all that in the right direction.
• 12:27
  Nice.
• 12:28
  So, yeah, it was pretty damn cool.
• 12:29
  And to be second on the –
• 12:31
  To be second on the podium with all these people and knowing that we were on a bike that wasn't competitive was extremely valuable to us.
• 12:43
  I think from the Japanese point of view and also for us, I think that really helped us in the future for the Japs to say, well, these guys are obviously pretty good.
• 12:54
  We know that bike's not competitive.
• 12:55
  Did you enjoy the endurance style of racing?
• 12:57
  I mean, clearly some of the longer races and the results that you've had.
• 13:00
  Yeah, I just like racing.
• 13:02
  So short distance stuff, long distance stuff, always.
• 13:06
  At that point in 86, we'd already done quite a bit of endurance racing.
• 13:10
  Kevin and I, in the Toshiba year in 85, we'd already done all the main production races in Australia.
• 13:19
  And so we'd done a lot of racing together.
• 13:22
  And that was gelling.
• 13:23
  So that was something that we could always work with.
• 13:25
  We always had similar bike setups.
• 13:27
  We could work within the realms of what my requirements were, and we're able to make it work.
• 13:35
  Without being sort of polar opposites, so to speak.
• 13:38
  And that happened a lot.
• 13:39
  Talking to Mick Doohan in his factory years with the Hondas, I think he was with Wayne Gardner.
• 13:48
  And they had pretty much polar opposites in regards to requirements on the bikes.
• 13:53
  And I know they had all kinds of issues.
• 13:56
  So it was nice to be able to do the stuff that we did and go, well, we don't have that problem.
• 14:00
  Fundamentally complement each other.
• 14:02
  You might have had subtle things that you wanted, but fundamentally did it.
• 14:05
  And I think that is a huge issue for endurance racing.
• 14:10
  If you've got two riders that can't ride each other's riding style or bike set up,
• 14:16
  You can only think that that's going to harm them at some point in the race.
• 14:21
  So we never had that.
• 14:23
  You have at this point, if I'm wrong, it's quite a good association, quite a close association with Yamaha.
• 14:32
  But somewhere here an opportunity emerges with Kawasaki, doesn't it?
• 14:36
  Can you tell me about that?
• 14:36
  Yep.
• 14:37
  Okay, so I had a really good year in 1989.
• 14:41
  So Kevin and Mick, who were my teammates previously, they'd both gone to Europe.
• 14:46
  And I was still the Aussie guy.
• 14:49
  We're still getting plenty of opportunity from 1986 through, had plenty of opportunity of racing the Formula 1 bikes in Japan.
• 14:55
  So we used to go to Japan.
• 14:57
  Whenever we didn't have commitments in Australia, we'd go and race in Japan.
• 15:00
  So the Japanese got to know us quite well in their sprint racing and endurance racing.
• 15:06
  89, had a really good year in Australia and in Japan.
• 15:09
  So I raced a lot in Sugo and a few other circuits and had good results.
• 15:16
  So that gave me the opportunity to sort of go into the factory side of things.
• 15:23
  And then knowing the management, knowing the mechanics within the factory side, we got along well.
• 15:30
  They understood that we understood.
• 15:33
  And that overall package worked for quite a long time.
• 15:39
  89 said, look, I had a really good year.
• 15:41
  Then they said, righto, we want you to ride the Australian Grand Prix on a 500.
• 15:45
  And it was Takahiso Tyra's bike, his second bike.
• 15:51
  So I got to ride that, finished ninth.
• 15:53
  And my whole game plan for the Australian Grand Prix, I'd been once to Japan to have a ride at the test circuit and then go back to Phillip Island, which is...
• 16:04
  Phillip Island is a different animal to most circuits.
• 16:07
  So that was really difficult.
• 16:10
  I had the B-level tyres, but I was up against Mickey and Gardner.
• 16:15
  That's still on balance and a pretty damn good result, don't you think, when you look at it in that perspective?
• 16:20
  Yeah, so I was happy with that.
• 16:22
  But getting back to what happened with 1991, so I really thought I had a good year.
• 16:28
  But I also knew that Wayne Rainey, John Kaczynski, there was a bunch of guys that were already in the top seats for Europe.
• 16:39
  And I knew that in my situation, I was going to miss out.
• 16:43
  So I was looking at where I could do, what I could do, where I was going to go.
• 16:47
  Had a really good year.
• 16:49
  Ninth to me at the Australian Grand Prix.
• 16:53
  To me as a rider, it wasn't very good.
• 16:55
  I look back at it now and I think with all things looking at the past, it wasn't a bad result, but I wanted to be able to be, for me to feel like I was going to get a chance to go to Europe, I would need to be knocking on the door of top five
• 17:10
  and being there, you know, within a second or two of the front guys, to be considered from all the – what normally happens with MotoGP now, even now, if there's a standout rider, four or five teams want him.
• 17:25
  And that's what elevates your position.
• 17:27
  Yep.
• 17:28
  And that's the guy that goes forward.
• 17:29
  And probably the best way to, the guy to explain now is Acosta.
• 17:33
  Yes.
• 17:34
  He's been a standout.
• 17:35
  He's blown all his teammates away.
• 17:37
  He's been at a different level.
• 17:39
  So now everyone wants him.
• 17:41
  So that's all I've been to say.
• 17:42
  That's what you wanted to be, yeah.
• 17:43
  You needed to be like that to be able to go to MotoGP.
• 17:47
  Anyway, end of the year happened.
• 17:48
  Nothing really happened.
• 17:49
  So we had, still had a bike shop in Bunbury.
• 17:52
  I'd actually gone home.
• 17:54
  and talking to my parents, not sure what to do.
• 17:57
  And Peter Doyle started to give me a call.
• 18:02
  And he goes, look, there's some opportunities in Japan for you with us, with Kawasaki Heavy Industries.
• 18:09
  And I still hadn't heard anything from Yamaha.
• 18:12
  I thought, no, I'm not going to ring them.
• 18:13
  I'm just going to, you know, I've had a good year.
• 18:15
  I should be getting a phone call.
• 18:16
  Every year up until then, I've got a phone call early in the peace.
• 18:19
  You're doing that next year.
• 18:21
  That's it.
• 18:22
  And I've not got anything.
• 18:24
  So we're in Bunbury and talking to Doily and they're saying, right, the plan is we've got a 250 project going back into MotoGP in the 250 class.
• 18:36
  And they said, we want you to start that.
• 18:38
  And the Japs want you to be in it.
• 18:40
  So, yeah, that sounds pretty good.
• 18:42
  And then also- So you can lead development of it.
• 18:44
  You can do all these things around it.
• 18:46
  Yeah.
• 18:46
  Yeah, right.
• 18:47
  Okay.
• 18:47
  R&D are 250 Grand Prix bike, which was, that was me.
• 18:50
  I've been riding 250, 350, 500cc, two strokes forever at that stage.
• 18:55
  In your sleep, yeah.
• 18:56
  So I thought, no problem, that sounds great.
• 18:58
  It's an engineering thing.
• 19:00
  It's a development thing.
• 19:02
  I'm going to get my fingers into the nitty-gritty of the bike itself.
• 19:07
  So that was very interesting.
• 19:09
  And then he said, and then also race the Formula One championship on a 750 ZXR while you're doing this.
• 19:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:17
  Anyway, so, yeah, that sounds good.
• 19:21
  Still haven't heard from Yamaha.
• 19:23
  And then eventually, I still haven't heard from Yamaha.
• 19:25
  I was in Bunbury mid-summer, I was.
• 19:28
  I said, well, I haven't heard from him, so I rang Peter Doyle up and said, right on, I'm in.
• 19:34
  So 1990 and 91, I'll do it.
• 19:38
  Sounds great.
• 19:39
  And two weeks later, my mum comes out from the retail shop.
• 19:44
  She goes, Michael, there's someone on the phone.
• 19:49
  I think it's Maikawa.
• 19:50
  Yeah.
• 19:51
  I've gone, oh, really?
• 19:53
  Yeah, so Mike Howell from MS1 factory in Japan.
• 19:58
  And I said to him, oh, how you going?
• 20:00
  Yeah, he's got good English, speaks American English.
• 20:03
  And he goes, righto, we've just put our plans together and we've got a ride for you next year in Japan.
• 20:13
  What do you want to do?
• 20:16
  And I said, what do you mean, what do I want to do?
• 20:19
  He said, what do you, do you want to ride a 250?
• 20:21
  Do you want to ride a 500?
• 20:22
  Do you want to ride a superbike?
• 20:24
  What do you want to do?
• 20:26
  And you know what?
• 20:27
  I stood there thinking, he's giving me a frigging retirement frigging village.
• 20:32
  Oh, right, right.
• 20:34
  Oh, that's what I'm thinking.
• 20:35
  Okay.
• 20:36
  So I'm thinking he's saying, well, you know, we're happy with what you've done.
• 20:40
  Yeah, I think at that stage I was.
• 20:41
  This will be like a swan song kind of thing, you know.
• 20:43
  Yeah, right.
• 20:44
  That's how I took it.
• 20:45
  Okay.
• 20:46
  Frickin' dickhead.
• 20:48
  In fact, it was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with the golden ticket.
• 20:51
  Is that what you're saying, mate?
• 20:52
  Isn't it funny how you look at things differently?
• 20:54
  But that's what happened.
• 20:55
  So I'm still thinking, you're setting me up for retirement here.
• 21:02
  So I was a bit angry.
• 21:04
  So I've said to him, no, look, Mike, son, I've actually taken a factory ride with Kawasaki.
• 21:12
  And he goes, oh, are you sure?
• 21:15
  I said, yeah, I've signed.
• 21:17
  And he said, I haven't spoken to anyone from Yamaha up until now, which is Christmas.
• 21:23
  And I really thought that I was out.
• 21:24
  On the out, yeah.
• 21:26
  So I kind of figured that rather than calling you and see what's going on, I just, I got someone that's all over me and then you guys hadn't said anything.
• 21:33
  So I've signed with Kawasaki.
• 21:36
  So be it or be it.
• 21:37
  Well, it was a good and a bad thing.
• 21:41
  I got over to Japan with the Kawasaki boys.
• 21:44
  And unfortunately, again, if you talk about it, we spoke earlier about what I saw Greg Hansford do on the green meanies.
• 21:54
  The green meanie 250, the 350, the 500 of my earlier days was the bike.
• 22:02
  But in that time until my time, they'd been out of racing.
• 22:07
  So all their people had gone, moved on to other things.
• 22:11
  So when I got over to the factory and started riding their bikes.
• 22:14
  You are at ground zero here, mate.
• 22:15
  I realized too late after signing that I've signed with a team that really had no idea.
• 22:24
  Okay.
• 22:24
  And the 250 thing I saw never rode it.
• 22:28
  Really?
• 22:29
  So that didn't happen.
• 22:30
  So that was another sort of negative for me.
• 22:33
  I'm thinking, well, there's this poxy-looking 250 thing that looks like it's somewhere to start, but it never slung a leg over it.
• 22:42
  Wow.
• 22:42
  So to me, it sounded like they just wanted me to be in the 750 thing because I'd done good in Japan with Yamaha three years earlier.
• 22:51
  So...
• 22:53
  Without them saying as much, that's what I think.
• 22:55
  I think that they said, well, we'll throw the little bait out saying there's a 250 Grand Prix bike for you to develop.
• 23:01
  But all they really after was developing their 750.
• 23:04
  750.
• 23:06
  A Formula One bike it was called back in those days.
• 23:08
  So I did that for two years.
• 23:10
  And I remember at the end of the first year, I just crashed my brains out.
• 23:14
  had all kinds of issues.
• 23:16
  I had two teammates, Japanese teammates.
• 23:19
  I had no Japanese language knowledge.
• 23:23
  I had no English.
• 23:25
  But I ended up getting an interpreter, a friend of mine that still I communicate with from Kobe.
• 23:31
  Chandri Matani is an Indian guy that lives in Japan.
• 23:35
  Nice.
• 23:36
  So an old factory rider who lived in Kobe, had a bike shop there, Kiyohara's son, he got in touch with Chandru and said, this guy needs an interpreter.
• 23:49
  Would you take on the job?
• 23:50
  So halfway through the first year, Chandru gave me a hand.
• 23:53
  Then I could start understanding what the hell's going on.
• 23:56
  I could see that they had no freaking idea.
• 23:58
  So at the end of the first year, I said to them, you know, I really beat my head against a brick wall.
• 24:03
  I've broken all kinds of bones.
• 24:05
  And I think that either you release me from my two-year contract or you give me a satellite team.
• 24:12
  So I don't have any influence from your two Tsukamoto and so to me were...
• 24:19
  not good for the team.
• 24:20
  They'd put new tyres on every ride.
• 24:23
  They'd go out in practice.
• 24:24
  They'd go in qualifying with new tyres, go and hold their breath, do a lap time, and then ring the factory and say what lap time they did.
• 24:30
  But come race day, when you needed to do 30 laps, they were nowhere.
• 24:35
  And at the end of the first year, I was sick of this because I'll be using my old tyres, trying to work out what I'm going to be doing at the end of the race.
• 24:42
  What the bike's like.
• 24:43
  And these guys had no freaking idea.
• 24:44
  So I said, right, end of the first year, here's the deal.
• 24:47
  Let me have the contract or give me a satellite team that I'm not influenced by the other two guys and give me the opportunity to move forward.
• 24:54
  But on your own, separate, to a degree, to a degree, to a degree.
• 24:57
  Yeah, and they said yes.
• 24:58
  Okay.
• 24:58
  Which is good.
• 24:59
  So I got my own engineers.
• 25:01
  So I sat down with, what was his name?
• 25:03
  I can't remember his name now.
• 25:04
  So I sat down with a team of engineers and said, well, righto, your Formula One bike that we're riding this year, you tell me why you've come up with crank position, counter shaft position, swing arm position, all these things that contribute to the bike's usability.
• 25:22
  Why have you set at these points?
• 25:24
  Why has this bike got all these dimensions and specifications?
• 25:30
  None of them knew.
• 25:32
  So what was the history behind why these things are in these positions?
• 25:37
  So I got on to the head engineer that spoke good English.
• 25:40
  I said, well, look, here's what I want to do.
• 25:42
  Like it might be my reflection on Yamaha, but I don't care.
• 25:46
  Here's what I think.
• 25:47
  Here's what I – the engine made heaps horsepower, but he just couldn't put it down on the track.
• 25:52
  So I got him to change things around.
• 25:56
  My son, I think his name was My son.
• 25:58
  He was the top engineer.
• 26:00
  So I said, well, here's the things that I need for us to start.
• 26:03
  So I said, we'll go into the start of the second year and we'll do this.
• 26:07
  So they ticked the box and said, yeah, you can have a satellite team.
• 26:10
  We'll put this together.
• 26:11
  These guys will build you the bike you need.
• 26:14
  My son come in not long after the new year and said, Dawson's son, we have a problem.
• 26:20
  It's going to take me most of the year to make these changes, to make the bike as you see fit, because it was major.
• 26:29
  And at that stage, the Japs moved so slowly.
• 26:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:32
  So I rode my ass off on the old crappy thing for like most of the season.
• 26:38
  And then the last race of the second year for my contract was a race at –
• 26:45
  near Tokyo, Sendai.
• 26:49
  Not Sendai.
• 26:50
  Skuba.
• 26:51
  Skuba.
• 26:51
  Yes, thank you.
• 26:52
  Sorry, thank you.
• 26:52
  Yes, Skuba.
• 26:53
  So I got to Skuba and Noel McKenzie had been doing good in Europe.
• 26:57
  Doug Polman just won the world championship on a Ducati.
• 27:00
  All these guys were at this big bike race at Skuba.
• 27:04
  And my bike that I wanted arrived at.
• 27:10
  And we smashed them.
• 27:11
  Finished the race, I reckon, a good 15 seconds, 20 seconds ahead of everybody after a 30-up race.
• 27:19
  I was stoked.
• 27:21
  Got on the rostrum.
• 27:24
  took all my Kawasaki stuff off, threw it into the crowd, walked back to the pits in my undies, got in my civvy clothes and said, That's me.
• 27:34
  I'm done.
• 27:35
  Wow.
• 27:36
  And the issue, the reason at the end of it, there was a bunch of things that was leading up to it, but...
• 27:43
  When they were sort of talking about 1993, through my interpreter, Chandru, he was able to understand that the factory had appointed already for the next season a new team manager.
• 27:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:58
  And it appeared that the way Chandru was speaking to the team, the racing team, they reckon that the guy that was getting the job for the next year as team manager was an engineer, but he had produced a power product, a power product which is an auxiliary motor that sold really well in Asia.
• 28:24
  So his reward for making really good money from this power product thing was, now you've done so good with this, run the race team.
• 28:35
  And that was my main reason for leaving.
• 28:37
  Okay.
• 28:38
  Because as I said earlier, talking to you, the Yamaha, the Honda guys.
• 28:42
  DNA in the racing.
• 28:43
  There's always guys that you've seen for 20 years in there.
• 28:46
  They might be really old, but they keep them there just to keep everyone.
• 28:49
  Oh, no, we've done that.
• 28:50
  They're in the fabric of the whole thing, mate, aren't they?
• 28:52
  Evolution is that way.
• 28:53
  And when they did that to me, for potentially, I could have easily signed for another two years and said, well, right, I need to move forward.
• 29:01
  The bike now looks like it's going to be a good thing.
• 29:03
  But when they told me that this guy that made power products and he's going to be our new guy, I said, no.
• 29:09
  I don't need more egos coming in pretending to know which way to go.
• 29:14
  That's it.
• 29:15
  That's pretty massive, mate.
• 29:16
  So did you – you know, some people do a Nelly Melba and they come back and do another race.
• 29:20
  Was that literally it from a two-wheel professional standpoint?
• 29:24
  Goober was my last race.
• 29:26
  And then Mel Pittman rang me for 93, and I did the Peter Jackson Yamaha team with –
• 29:36
  Sean Giles.
• 29:36
  Giles, yeah.
• 29:37
  Yeah, so Giles and I did that year.
• 29:39
  Nice.
• 29:40
  And then that was the end for me, end of 93.
• 29:42
  How do you frame that now with the benefit of time, right, when you look back on it?
• 29:46
  I'm not a believer in regret.
• 29:47
  I say that often here on the podcast because you make the best decision with what you have at the time.
• 29:53
  In the Yamaha Kawasaki example, you'd held out a long period of time.
• 29:57
  There was no phone call.
• 29:58
  You moved to what you thought was...
• 30:01
  A project.
• 30:02
  A project, a logical thing that you could sink your teeth into and so on.
• 30:05
  Yeah, correct.
• 30:06
  There's time.
• 30:07
  Time's passed, right?
• 30:08
  But when you look back on that, how do you feel about that whole thing now?
• 30:11
  Yeah.
• 30:12
  Well, there's just so many.
• 30:13
  Racing is always a dangerous thing.
• 30:14
  We know that.
• 30:16
  Nagai, a young guy called Nagai, was my team rider in Yamaha in 88 and 89.
• 30:24
  And didn't know him very well.
• 30:26
  He didn't like us Aussies very well.
• 30:28
  He just, you know, we were at a Japanese championship.
• 30:31
  Really had not much to do with him.
• 30:32
  But...
• 30:33
  Good rider.
• 30:34
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:34
  And, again, never really socialized with him.
• 30:37
  He wasn't interested in learning any English, and I really was struggling with Japanese.
• 30:42
  So we never really had a relationship.
• 30:45
  But I just know that he went on from my career, and I think it was 95 he was killed either at Aston or somewhere at a World Superbike race.
• 30:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:54
  So there's just so many ways of reflecting your path.
• 30:57
  Yep.
• 30:58
  And I think when that and Wayne Rainey having his paralysis situation and he was way more talented than I ever would be.
• 31:07
  So all these things help you to say, you know what?
• 31:11
  I did a pretty good job.
• 31:12
  I had a kneecap.
• 31:13
  It was never any good for my whole series of racing.
• 31:16
  I struggled with that every race.
• 31:17
  Mm-hmm.
• 31:18
  So really for a guy from One Thaggy or a guy from Bunbury in Western Australia, it didn't do too bad.
• 31:23
  Yeah, we're better than that.
• 31:24
  You undersell that.
• 31:25
  You did way better than that.
• 31:26
  Can I come to a couple of things to finish the two-wheel chapter?
• 31:28
  And there is a natural crossover to four wheels that we've almost sort of ventured into already.
• 31:33
  Firstly, on the two-wheel side, somewhere along the line in the Aussie period,
• 31:38
  You come across this almost ragtag guy in a Holden ute with a German shepherd called McDewan.
• 31:46
  But you introduce him, I think, to the team camo guys.
• 31:49
  You might have even encouraged him to go and get a haircut along the way.
• 31:52
  I paid for it.
• 31:52
  Did you pay for it?
• 31:54
  Did you?
• 31:55
  He speaks.
• 31:56
  He, among others that I've spoken to in the lead up to this, speaks glowingly about you, mate, and the things that you did to sort of...
• 32:04
  help open the door.
• 32:07
  The Mick Dillon story, I'm just the fortunate one to be around at the time and things align for me to look for a young guy.
• 32:18
  Someone would have picked him up and he would still be five world championships, the owner of five world championships with or without me.
• 32:25
  I know that.
• 32:26
  I was just bloody fortunate to be the guy that...
• 32:30
  that was asked to look for somebody.
• 32:32
  So the team camo guys were all Gaythorne Yamaha guys.
• 32:36
  So Robbie Asink and all his mates, they come to me and say, look, you're the guy in Australia.
• 32:41
  Find us a rider.
• 32:42
  We want to give a rider an opportunity to go racing.
• 32:45
  Fantastic.
• 32:45
  And I said, yeah, no worries.
• 32:46
  And they said, we don't care where you get him from, just a young guy.
• 32:50
  And the guys from Gaythorne and the guys that stayed with Mick through his racing career are still my friends.
• 32:56
  Yeah, nice.
• 32:57
  Jono, Eden, all those boys.
• 32:58
  Yeah, all those guys.
• 33:00
  I lost contact with them a lot, obviously, living over here.
• 33:03
  Speak to Eden a fair bit because we've got the AMA series sort of thing in connection.
• 33:09
  Yeah.
• 33:10
  But, yeah, those guys gave me the opportunity to look for someone for them.
• 33:14
  You know, Mick Doon, I remember watching him.
• 33:17
  He'd turn up at Adelaide.
• 33:18
  He'd turn up at Victoria.
• 33:20
  He lived in the Gold Coast.
• 33:21
  I knew that.
• 33:22
  I watched him ride at the Surface Paradise Raceway.
• 33:26
  He'd come to Lakeside.
• 33:28
  He was everywhere in that old ute.
• 33:30
  The ute must have done 100,000 kilometers.
• 33:32
  And the dog.
• 33:33
  So...
• 33:35
  I just remember watching him at Surface Paradise.
• 33:37
  I'm standing up on the Mulberry Amaha truck watching him.
• 33:40
  I finished for the day, and he was on a teaser, R250, I'm pretty sure.
• 33:44
  And he was out there amongst his group doing his qualifying for the weekend.
• 33:49
  And I don't know if you know the Surface Paradise layout.
• 33:52
  Sure do.
• 33:53
  Yeah, sure do.
• 33:53
  So the back straight, and then you've got a high-speed left-hander.
• 33:56
  And the back, before you go into that tight stuff around the hill.
• 34:00
  So coming through the left-hander at extremely high speed.
• 34:04
  and then it's got to burn like a curb on the outside of the circuit for cars to stop going in the bush and rolling over or whatever.
• 34:11
  Mick's come through that thing on a TZR250, and most people have slowed down for corners.
• 34:18
  He never did.
• 34:19
  Yeah.
• 34:20
  And he's come through this turn, lost it, drifted sideways, hit this, like a burn on the outside of the track.
• 34:28
  And both he and the bike have cartwheeled through the air at pretty much whatever speed he went into the corner at before he hit the brakes.
• 34:34
  It's launched off the burn that way.
• 34:36
  He was still doing that.
• 34:36
  Okay, okay.
• 34:37
  Hadn't changed.
• 34:38
  And here he is, him and the body cartwheeling.
• 34:40
  It's like, oh, my God.
• 34:41
  So go and find him at the ambulance, broken collarbone.
• 34:46
  Anyway, I went home, he went home, and kind of figured that he's the guy.
• 34:51
  Okay.
• 34:52
  So I went back to the Gold Coast, lived in Brizzy, and went down the Gold Coast, didn't know where he lived.
• 34:59
  Spoke to Donnie Pasch.
• 35:01
  Donnie Pasch was a bike dealer, a Suzuki guy, and he'd also supported him.
• 35:05
  And I said, look, I'm after Mick.
• 35:07
  How do I find him?
• 35:07
  He said, well, his mum lives with a policeman.
• 35:12
  His stepdad's a policeman.
• 35:15
  So give me a hand there, found his mum, went to his mum's place.
• 35:20
  Where's Mick?
• 35:20
  Oh, here's his address.
• 35:22
  Went around to this address and the front door was hanging off.
• 35:25
  The grass was up over the fence.
• 35:27
  Walked up the door.
• 35:28
  Mick comes out.
• 35:30
  He said, how are you going?
• 35:31
  How's your shoulder?
• 35:31
  He said, oh, yeah, it's mending.
• 35:32
  It's just going good.
• 35:34
  I said, are you keen about this stuff?
• 35:36
  Is this what you want to do?
• 35:37
  He says, oh, yeah, I do.
• 35:39
  So I got a bunch of guys that are keen as to meet you.
• 35:42
  Are you free?
• 35:44
  He says, yep.
• 35:45
  And obviously, if I had time, we would have mowed the lawn, I think, but he decided he had time, but the lawn could wait.
• 35:52
  So he stuck in my car, went into Brizzy, got him a haircut, took him to Team Camo.
• 35:58
  Excellent.
• 35:58
  And there we went.
• 35:59
  That's how that started.
• 36:01
  You told me off mic today before I hit record,
• 36:05
  and maybe it's an extension of that crash you described before and the way that he could ride it.
• 36:09
  But those boys, and there's a few of them, that do this thing that end up playing, I called it rarefied air.
• 36:16
  You gave it a better description than that.
• 36:18
  But they can play fundamentally beyond the limit.
• 36:20
  Above traction.
• 36:21
  Above traction.
• 36:22
  Just describe that.
• 36:22
  Just describe that.
• 36:23
  Well, I think it's something not everyone can do.
• 36:26
  I think we can all do it in a car.
• 36:28
  We can all do it on gravel.
• 36:30
  But to do it on two wheels is a completely different ballgame.
• 36:34
  Um, limited contact patch, blah, blah, blah.
• 36:37
  Just, yeah.
• 36:37
  Yeah.
• 36:37
  You know?
• 36:38
  And I, my analogy of car racing and bike racing, you know, it probably changed now.
• 36:44
  I like, I look at what Brock's doing with all those guys and they're all, there's 15, 20 guys within half a second of a lap time of each other.
• 36:52
  That's damn cool.
• 36:52
  And that's pretty much where it's at.
• 36:54
  If you can have 20 vehicles on the track and they're all within half a second, that is off its chops.
• 37:00
  And therefore, for you to be able to...
• 37:02
  So racing now, I think, in the Formula One, whatever, it's all at that level now.
• 37:09
  So that's the thing.
• 37:09
  I think bike racing and car racing will always have that difference, I think, in what it takes to be able to do both the sports.
• 37:18
  You know, yeah.
• 37:19
  To be able to be beyond traction in a car, I think we all can have a crack at that.
• 37:23
  But the guys that are really good at it are the guys who can do it for three or four hours at a time.
• 37:29
  That's your fitness level and your capacity.
• 37:31
  Your awareness.
• 37:33
  Yeah.
• 37:34
  Yeah.
• 37:34
  And I'm not saying that cars aren't there now, but bike racing now, bike racing before, doing, beady, beady.
• 37:45
  all the guys from Australia, you know, Baylis, all these guys that have got there, you know, I think they've got this special capacity to ride beyond traction.
• 37:57
  Okay.
• 37:58
  And there's not many people who can do it.
• 38:09
  Dawson quietly helped open some doors for McDughan, at a pivotal moment of his career.
• 38:15
  What followed is the stuff of legend.
• 38:17
  Five straight world titles in what we now know as MotoGP.
• 38:21
  But I never tried to be too technical.
• 38:23
  I'd just give the feedback of what I wanted the bike to do.
• 38:26
  You know, I didn't tell them that I think we should change to this spring or, you know, we need to adjust that like this.
• 38:33
  I'd be speaking with Jeremy Burgess and the chassis engineers and the engine engineers, just telling them what I'd like.
• 38:41
  That no-nonsense but ultra-competitive nature still serves making business today and has no doubt rubbed off on his son Jack, who is waiting in the F1 wings.
• 38:50
  Let's get back to Mike Dowson now.
• 38:54
  In describing before about contesting the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix, getting the chance to do that, finishing ninth and so on, you have a rare statistic in that year, and that is that you got to race a car in the Australian Touring Car Championship, and I think you even did the Bathurst 1000 that year, did you not?
• 39:08
  Yeah.
• 39:09
  So that's amazing, mate.
• 39:10
  Firstly, how did the chance to go and play on the four-wheel side, when did that really first entertain the idea of that?
• 39:17
  How did that come about?
• 39:18
  Again, I had a really good year in 89.
• 39:19
  My profile was high.
• 39:21
  Joe has just handed me this awesome shot of you in a Corolla.
• 39:26
  That thing is within a whisker of rolling over.
• 39:28
  It is on two wheels.
• 39:30
  Safe as a judge, mate.
• 39:31
  Safe as a judge.
• 39:31
  Where are you?
• 39:32
  Is that Orin?
• 39:33
  Turn one at Bathurst.
• 39:34
  Bathurst.
• 39:35
  It is two.
• 39:35
  It is two.
• 39:36
  That's crazy, mate.
• 39:38
  So what's happened is the year before...
• 39:41
  Well, earlier in the year, or the year before, I think, 88, Toyota decided to have a... A star search competition, didn't they?
• 39:48
  Correct.
• 39:48
  Yes.
• 39:49
  So they had Neil Bates, Graham Bailey from Formula Boats.
• 39:53
  Yeah, I think, was Terry Sawyer in there too, and a few others?
• 39:55
  There's a bunch of guys.
• 39:57
  Ronnie Cricky had his name in for it.
• 40:00
  So they put all these people together to drive Formula Group C production cars at certain events around Australia.
• 40:08
  So you'd be invited.
• 40:09
  They'd fly you in, give you a suit.
• 40:12
  You'd drive this car.
• 40:13
  Then they'd ascertain if you were able to be competitive in any way.
• 40:18
  And then from there, they would pick who would race a Corolla Corolla.
• 40:23
  Tom's Racing Corolla.
• 40:25
  It wasn't a bloody shopping car, Joanne.
• 40:29
  No.
• 40:30
  If you're calling her by her full name, she's in trouble there.
• 40:31
  But yes, no, I know.
• 40:33
  It's damn good, that thing.
• 40:34
  She goes, that's a Corolla.
• 40:36
  It's a shopping vehicle.
• 40:40
  So the deal was if you get through the Group C stuff and they think, well, you're compatible, you're competitive,
• 40:47
  We'll put you in the group to have a crack at driving with Johnny Faulkner.
• 40:53
  Excellent.
• 40:53
  In the other Toyota Corolla in the Touring Car Championship.
• 40:57
  So I raced the Touring Car.
• 41:00
  I drove the Group C, I think it was Salica, I think, in a production thing at Calder, which I loved.
• 41:07
  It was great fun.
• 41:08
  And then I went back to doing my road racing stuff.
• 41:11
  Again, a great year in 89.
• 41:12
  I was racing in Japan and Australia.
• 41:15
  Pretty busy period.
• 41:16
  And then I got a phone call to say, yeah, we got you.
• 41:20
  You can drive the Corolla at the Touring Car Championship at Lakeside, my home track.
• 41:27
  Yeah, that sounds great.
• 41:28
  I'm available.
• 41:29
  I'm not stuck doing my bike stuff.
• 41:32
  So the gap was there.
• 41:34
  So yeah, I'll be in that.
• 41:35
  So I get there and Faulkner's my teammate and get out on the track.
• 41:40
  And it was a wet weekend.
• 41:42
  I think it was on Friday or I think it was Friday afternoon.
• 41:45
  I was third on the grid amongst the Sierras because it was wet.
• 41:49
  Yeah, yeah.
• 41:49
  I could drive that.
• 41:50
  I could drive anything around.
• 41:51
  I blindfolded around Lakeside.
• 41:52
  Lakeside, yeah.
• 41:53
  So I'm third or fourth and here's his Corolla in amongst all the V8s.
• 41:58
  Sierras.
• 41:59
  All the turbo charts.
• 42:01
  It's tough.
• 42:01
  So anyway.
• 42:02
  That's all right.
• 42:03
  I'm thinking that this is great.
• 42:04
  And the boys are quite happy and they're thinking it was pretty good.
• 42:07
  And getting along nicely with the mechanics and stuff.
• 42:10
  And they could see that I had an input with knowing what was going on.
• 42:15
  And qualifying, I think, on Saturday.
• 42:18
  Still wet.
• 42:19
  And all the guys liked to have their throttle and their brake and their clutch pedals.
• 42:26
  Just shiny metal.
• 42:27
  Uh-huh.
• 42:29
  And, you know, when I saw them getting in their car to put their five-point harness on...
• 42:32
  This is still wet, though, you're talking, obviously.
• 42:34
  Yeah, yeah.
• 42:34
  Yeah, I'm thinking they get in and they wet, they dry their feet off and they get in the car.
• 42:39
  Fucking ****.
• 42:42
  So I get in the car, get out in there in the wet and getting into it and getting faster and faster and get down through the chase and into their first right-hander at the end of the straight.
• 42:52
  Yep.
• 42:54
  In way deep under brakes, foot comes off the pedal...
• 42:59
  Get back on the pedal, trying to slow it, but now I'm in the air, and now I'm flying through the air into the tyre barrier, wiped out the Corolla.
• 43:10
  get out of the car, thinking, well, that's it now.
• 43:12
  These boys won't like me anymore.
• 43:14
  Anyway, they said, man, you're qualified on pole.
• 43:18
  So you're in.
• 43:19
  So they busily put the car back together.
• 43:21
  And then Sunday, the Sunday race comes, and it was me and Faulkner.
• 43:25
  That's amazing, mate, against RS500 Sierras and everything like that.
• 43:29
  Oh, man.
• 43:30
  It was pretty funny.
• 43:31
  Yeah.
• 43:31
  Anyway, so Sunday comes.
• 43:35
  The thing was dry.
• 43:36
  The track was dry, but it was still wet grass and stuff.
• 43:39
  We're into it.
• 43:39
  So I'm going for it.
• 43:41
  Down through the chase, unbeknownst to me, down through the kink on the main straight.
• 43:45
  On the outside is Toyota dealer team people with a big kink.
• 43:50
  On the, like, yeah.
• 43:51
  Just watching the race.
• 43:52
  Hold your mic so... On the outside of the track, big bunch of guys from Toyota.
• 43:57
  Yep.
• 43:58
  Sorry.
• 43:59
  And then, so I didn't know this.
• 44:01
  So I'm coming through.
• 44:02
  We've done four or five, six, ten laps, whatever, and Faulkner's all over me.
• 44:06
  No big deal.
• 44:07
  Early in the race.
• 44:08
  Anyway, coming down one lap, he's got a bit of a run on me down the straight, so he's poked his front wheels alongside my right-hand wheels, and I'm inside the white line.
• 44:21
  So here I am drifting sideways through the kink full throttle, and John's tapped me on the back wheel, spun me around.
• 44:30
  Now I'm spinning around, out of control, in the grass, taking out the 300, 200, 100-meter marks, the foam markers.
• 44:36
  Yes, yes.
• 44:36
  And now one of my wheels, I'm just spinning around out of control.
• 44:40
  As I get back onto the track, because that's the way the car was going...
• 44:44
  One of the Sierra, I think the Texas Sierras was coming through from a bad start.
• 44:49
  Okay.
• 44:50
  And he just ran into me and wiped us both out.
• 44:53
  So now one weekend I've had two major wipeouts.
• 44:56
  Not a Caltex Sierra?
• 44:57
  Which one was it?
• 44:58
  No, it was a Caltex.
• 45:00
  Texas Car was Bathurst at the international event there.
• 45:03
  Yeah, no, no.
• 45:04
  It might have been Caltex.
• 45:05
  Anyway, so anyway, yes.
• 45:06
  So anyway, he, you know, doing his own thing.
• 45:10
  I'm running around and spinning around because Faulkner ran into me.
• 45:13
  It was his fault.
• 45:16
  A little footnote here, round three of the 1989 Australian Touring Car Championship at Lakeside was originally scheduled for early April, but it was wet, as Dowson said.
• 45:25
  So much so, the lake eventually overflowed and the track flooded, forcing the postponement of the event by a fortnight.
• 45:32
  Now, you can find the legendary Gary Wilkinson, Wilco for example, telling seven network viewers that the...
• 45:40
  first attempt to run the meeting is off and they'll take you back to normal programming etc the running prior to the postponement the sessions the times etc where dowson recalls being quick well they were scrubbed from what i can gather the toyota team's corollas understandably because they were class cars actually qualified 24th and 25th when they came back in drier weather
• 46:08
  Man, that race meeting had some incidents across different categories.
• 46:12
  Auto Action ran a headline, Black Sunday.
• 46:16
  Thankfully, everyone was OK, but CAMS launched an inquiry into the various incidents.
• 46:22
  CAMS is now known as Motorsport Australia.
• 46:24
  The touring car race was actually stopped because of a huge accident and fireball involving Andrew Miedeke's Sierra...
• 46:32
  Glenn Seaton, the John Lusty entry and Murray Carter were part of that story too.
• 46:36
  The Seven coverage doesn't have much on an earlier incident which Dowson is describing.
• 46:42
  It's in fact Ken Matthews in the second Caltech CXT Sierra that he's talking about where we were a little unsure.
• 46:50
  What isn't clear is what triggered it.
• 46:53
  Now, I've left my guest in his own words because...
• 46:57
  That's how he remembers it.
• 46:58
  I prefer to do that.
• 47:00
  I am a huge believer in balance, as you know.
• 47:02
  So I really need to get John Faulkner's take on it too.
• 47:07
  So just bear that in mind.
• 47:08
  And we'll do that at some stage because I'd love to get John on the pod.
• 47:12
  The only reason I've broken in here is that one media race report suggests the initial tangle was in fact with Joe Somariva's BMW.
• 47:21
  Dowson then fishtails in the AE-82 Corolla from the Kent to almost the carousel at Lakeside, taking out the metre markers, as he said, and then having contact with Matthews Sierra, which you get a glimpse of damaged back in pit lane on the 7 broadcast.
• 47:39
  As it unfolded,
• 47:40
  Faulkner and Ross Burbage in a Nissan Gazelle sneaked through and basically escaped the wild end to it all.
• 47:46
  That's how it was reported, but I can't verify the accuracy of the journalist's account either.
• 47:53
  Regardless, Toyota was still clearly impressed and Dowson got the Bathurst call-up.
• 47:59
  A little thank you to Aaron Noonan and the incredible V8 Sleuth Archive for their help on that as we take you back to the convo.
• 48:08
  And then walk back to the pits holding our helmets, and I've just gone home.
• 48:13
  Because I think the Toyota boys don't want to talk to me, so I'm done.
• 48:16
  That's it.
• 48:17
  So I didn't even talk to anybody.
• 48:19
  I had my car on the outside of the track, so I went home.
• 48:23
  I wasn't living far from there.
• 48:25
  Why since go in there and talk shit to them?
• 48:27
  Because they don't want to listen.
• 48:28
  They've got a broken car for the second time in a weekend, so that's done.
• 48:32
  It's got to be done.
• 48:34
  Yeah, I've just got to think about going back to Japan.
• 48:36
  Anyway, sometime later I get a phone call from, I think, a guy called Michael Breen.
• 48:41
  Yes, that's correct.
• 48:42
  He was the marketing guy for Toyota.
• 48:45
  And he goes, no, you're in.
• 48:48
  We want you to go to Bathurst with Neil Bates.
• 48:51
  I said, sure.
• 48:52
  I've totaled two cars.
• 48:56
  In that day, bike racing, you totaled a bike, borderline...
• 49:01
  Job over.
• 49:02
  End of your career.
• 49:03
  So I took it very seriously that, you know, these guys probably don't want to talk to me.
• 49:08
  Anyway, so Tony Levereth or something was the team manager.
• 49:12
  He supported me.
• 49:13
  He said, yep, you're in.
• 49:14
  He said, the reason I'm telling you why we're letting you in is at the end of the race, all the guys from the Toyota dealer team that was in the tent all come into the pits and said, who's that dickhead that took out the leading car?
• 49:31
  So the boys in the pit couldn't see it.
• 49:34
  So they got onto the team and said, the guy that was behind took out the lead guy, and that's why he crashed.
• 49:41
  So they've taken that on board and said, you're off to Bathurst.
• 49:44
  I'm thinking, really?
• 49:46
  Are you serious?
• 49:49
  Batesy's been on the podcast.
• 49:50
  I was with him at the weekend for the rally.
• 49:54
  And he can fondly recall, I'm certain it's in this race,
• 49:59
  that at some point there is maybe a bit of nerves around, we've just got to get the car to finish or something.
• 50:07
  And they're trying to calm everything down at a team or a management level.
• 50:13
  And he said, I'll never forget how...
• 50:17
  almost like serious or stern you were with him, you were like, mate, we are here to win this thing.
• 50:22
  Don't you dare roll off or do whatever they've told you to do.
• 50:27
  You give it 11 tenths or something along those lines.
• 50:29
  So what was happening was...
• 50:32
  I understood, not very limited car racing, but understood what it took to get a car.
• 50:37
  Again, it's all about being able to control a car when it's floating.
• 50:42
  So how you can make a car float at high speed above traction or beyond traction and stay away from things that will wreck your car or your life.
• 50:52
  So that's very important.
• 50:55
  You watch now, the cameras now have got a lot of cameras on the guy's feet, how busy they are in a car, like throttle, brake, and you've got your feet doing multiple jobs.
• 51:06
  and I was very much a part of left foot braking.
• 51:09
  Okay.
• 51:10
  Left foot braking was me because that allowed me to manage the car at this period beyond traction.
• 51:17
  So I said it's important.
• 51:19
  And I think one of the guys was sort of saying, keep your left foot off the brake.
• 51:23
  It's just for the clutch, and you've got to do the old foot throttle with your right foot and your brake.
• 51:29
  Heel and toe.
• 51:30
  Heel and toe you're talking about.
• 51:31
  Is that what you mean?
• 51:31
  Yeah, whatever it was, they said do not use your left foot for your brakes.
• 51:36
  Okay.
• 51:37
  And I said to Batesy and said, well, I don't know what they're talking about, but I think that's what they mean.
• 51:41
  But as far as I'm concerned, you've got to do what's going to make that car finish the race, firstly.
• 51:47
  And you also need to do what you've got to do to make the vehicle do the fastest times you can do.
• 51:53
  And that's a part of it.
• 51:54
  And I said, I won't let them.
• 51:55
  They might tell me not to do that, but I think they were thinking that you're driving with the throttle on and you're pushing on the brake and you're going to...
• 52:04
  You know, the clutch is going to burn out and the brake's going to burn out the sun because you're pushing.
• 52:09
  So you'll compromise it mechanically is what they're worried about or something, were they?
• 52:12
  Yeah, right.
• 52:13
  Without understanding exactly what we're doing, they're just thinking you're torturing the brakes, you're torturing the clutch.
• 52:18
  How can it be any good?
• 52:19
  Over 1,000 k's.
• 52:20
  Those things aren't going to last.
• 52:21
  They say, well, if you don't know what you're doing, I agree.
• 52:24
  If you're going to pull the steering wheel off and you're pushing your foot on the throttle and the brake, that is dumb.
• 52:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 52:30
  Give me a break.
• 52:31
  Give us a little bit more sort of consideration of what we're capable of.
• 52:34
  And that's why I said to Batesy, I said, I do it and I'm not going to stop it because that's the only way to control a vehicle problem.
• 52:41
  So there was little things like that.
• 52:42
  So, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here because Joe has kindly helped me here, class win, lap record, I mean, very cool.
• 52:50
  Okay, so this is where this fighter come in.
• 52:51
  Yep.
• 52:52
  So that was when we won and I was –
• 52:56
  Batesy had to do the last hour, I think it was.
• 52:59
  So I come in.
• 53:01
  They give me the pit sign.
• 53:02
  So, right, I pit in next lap.
• 53:04
  And at the end of that straight, when they're giving me the pit in sign, there was a Commodore that was smoking like it was on fire.
• 53:12
  Obviously, failed engine.
• 53:14
  So the guy that was driving it saw me coming.
• 53:17
  So coming into the first turn, he's actually pulled infield and allowed me to stay on line, go around him, and then go up into the hill.
• 53:25
  But when he's done that, with all these smoke and stuff, I've lost all my braking markers.
• 53:32
  So I've come in way too deep with no tyres left, empty fuel tank that was across the rear axle.
• 53:38
  So I've gone, oh, shit, there's a corner.
• 53:39
  So I've just flicked it in.
• 53:41
  It's oversteered, slid sideways.
• 53:44
  So I've got tapped the throttle back on.
• 53:46
  Now I'm sort of running the kerbs here, and I'm running like that, drifting.
• 53:50
  Let's tap the left-hand inside wheel, and that's boarded up on the two outside wheels.
• 53:55
  Now I'm balancing it, got it back onto its feet, went in through the last part of the gravel trap into first gear and got going.
• 54:03
  By the time I got back going again, the guy in the Commodore was going, Yeah, big thumbs up.
• 54:08
  Man, that was cool.
• 54:11
  And my heart's going, oh, God.
• 54:13
  And straight away I'm thinking, I can't tell these guys that I've done this to their car.
• 54:17
  You know, I've smashed it back on the ground.
• 54:19
  We have photographic evidence.
• 54:21
  What have I done?
• 54:22
  What have I done?
• 54:23
  Come in the pits.
• 54:24
  Pull up, get out, Batesy gets in.
• 54:27
  The guy that's on the pit sign eventually comes over and he goes, hey, look, that last lap when I gave you the pit in, what happened when you went through the corner?
• 54:36
  I said, nothing.
• 54:37
  Why?
• 54:38
  I never told him.
• 54:39
  Really?
• 54:39
  I never told him anything.
• 54:40
  But the crowd must have cheered like crazy, mate, or something, didn't they?
• 54:42
  That's what he said.
• 54:43
  He said, the crowd went mad.
• 54:45
  Something must have happened.
• 54:46
  I said, it must have been that car.
• 54:47
  It must have been the Commodore on fire or whatever.
• 54:50
  So that diffused that because I thought, I can't tell these guys.
• 54:54
  I want to do this again.
• 54:56
  Can't tell them.
• 54:57
  Anyway, not that long after, Michael Breen rings me.
• 54:59
  Yeah.
• 55:01
  Mate, have you seen Racing Car News or whatever?
• 55:04
  Yes, I would.
• 55:04
  Racing Car News or something?
• 55:06
  Have you seen that magazine?
• 55:07
  No, I don't get them car magazines.
• 55:10
  Go and get it.
• 55:11
  Anyway, he says, I go and get it.
• 55:13
  Ring him back.
• 55:13
  He goes, oh, my God.
• 55:15
  I really didn't want you guys to know about that.
• 55:19
  And he goes, doesn't worry to me.
• 55:21
  He says, I'm in marketing.
• 55:22
  I don't care.
• 55:23
  Because I explained to him that I'm really sorry.
• 55:25
  It was a mistake I made and I hope I didn't hurt the car.
• 55:29
  We got it home.
• 55:30
  Bates, he did another hour.
• 55:31
  No problem.
• 55:32
  I obviously didn't hurt it.
• 55:33
  He goes, I don't care.
• 55:34
  Bottom line is we want that to become part of our service programming.
• 55:40
  So they did a poster and put it all through their marketing for their shops.
• 55:44
  And they said, if you don't race, rally or roll in this photo, you can have our extra care warranty.
• 55:50
  I love it.
• 55:51
  So that's how that come about.
• 55:53
  Anyway, so I went back in 1990 and drove from again.
• 55:57
  Yep.
• 55:57
  And they brought out a young guy from Open Wheelers in Europe, Aussie guy.
• 56:01
  The car broke for whatever reason.
• 56:02
  I can't remember why.
• 56:03
  So we never finished again.
• 56:05
  Yep.
• 56:05
  Then the next year they said, look, we're keen for you to go.
• 56:07
  We want you to be our driver.
• 56:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 56:09
  But there's six guys that are talking five figures to have your seat.
• 56:15
  So if you can bring some money, it's yours.
• 56:16
  I said, see ya.
• 56:17
  Yeah, yeah.
• 56:18
  Yeah.
• 56:18
  Was there a point, though, I mean, in the midst of juggling two-wheel stuff in this period, obviously, as well, was there a door opening beyond the money scenario that you're talking about?
• 56:30
  Was there a door opening at Toyota maybe early on where you could have ended up in a... Well, again, an interesting thing, the Toyota thing sort of got some inertia in Japan.
• 56:40
  I got a phone call from Tom's Racing in Japan.
• 56:44
  Tom's Racing.
• 56:45
  I've gone, what's Tom's Racing?
• 56:46
  LAUGHTER
• 56:49
  So I know now it's touchy and oishy motorsport.
• 56:52
  I met them.
• 56:52
  Mega mate.
• 56:53
  Yeah, yeah.
• 56:54
  And I met these guys.
• 56:55
  It was amazing.
• 56:56
  So I was up there at Mount Fuji and doing some stuff with Yamaha and they were there doing stuff as well.
• 57:02
  And Toyota made a connection so I got to meet them and they said, oh, we've heard what you've done in Australia and they said, we've got to open wheel, like a little four-cylinder engine, have a drive with this.
• 57:15
  But he said, the only problem, it's not going to go anywhere because we're off to Europe.
• 57:18
  So that was before Toms went to Europe and did the endurance stuff and went into their Formula 1 stuff.
• 57:25
  Okay.
• 57:26
  So that was right up the cusp of they've said, we've got all this money.
• 57:29
  And the two of them that I spoke to, they spoke really good English, touchy and oishy.
• 57:33
  He said, you know, if we were staying here, we'd probably give you a crack.
• 57:36
  We're off to Europe.
• 57:37
  See ya.
• 57:38
  But at least I got to see.
• 57:40
  See, yeah.
• 57:41
  And now I know that they went to Europe and that was them.
• 57:43
  Yep.
• 57:44
  And they never asked me to come, but anyway.
• 57:46
  Yeah.
• 57:47
  I have a few to finish here.
• 57:48
  You've been great with your time, mate, and we're probably starving for a little bit of lunch.
• 57:51
  But let's – a couple of things.
• 57:53
  Doily tells me to ask you about go-karts and golf buggies.
• 58:00
  Have you got some stories?
• 58:03
  No.
• 58:04
  Nowhere near as many as he and Phyllis have got.
• 58:09
  That period of – There was a go-kart thing.
• 58:11
  Phyllis, again, was always the ringleader.
• 58:12
  Let's go and race the go-karts.
• 58:14
  So we'd gone up to Sugo.
• 58:16
  This is one I remember.
• 58:17
  And Pete might remember more, but I tried to wash it from my mind.
• 58:19
  Yeah.
• 58:20
  But we went to Sugo and there was a big race there.
• 58:23
  I was on Yamaha.
• 58:25
  They were there with Kawasaki.
• 58:26
  We're all buddies.
• 58:27
  And by the way, Rob's a lovely guy.
• 58:30
  Yes.
• 58:30
  You know, he was a really hard-fought competitor.
• 58:34
  I caught up with him in the last 12 months.
• 58:35
  He's been on for a chat.
• 58:36
  What a sweet person.
• 58:37
  You know, lovely guy.
• 58:39
  I broke my leg at Lakeside, broke my femur.
• 58:43
  When Doolin got his real first chance to go to Japan, me and Warren were all set to go in 87, 87, 88.
• 58:50
  I can't remember which one it was.
• 58:53
  It was 87.
• 58:54
  I broke my femur and Mick was coming along, being involved with the Yamaha thing.
• 58:58
  Broke my leg at turn one at Lakeside.
• 59:04
  And I remember I knocked myself out.
• 59:07
  I come up with Robbie cradling me crying.
• 59:09
  Oh, wow.
• 59:10
  Really concerned for me.
• 59:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:12
  And, you know, because I was out.
• 59:13
  I come to it, and here I am cradled by Robbie Phillips, and he was just super concerned about, you know, dropped his bike.
• 59:19
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:20
  Could see he was just behind me when I crashed.
• 59:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:22
  Could see that it was pretty bad.
• 59:23
  Okay.
• 59:24
  And, you know, I never really thought of him like that until that day.
• 59:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:29
  But that's the kind of guy he is.
• 59:30
  Yeah, because that's beneath all the craziness, all the fun and stuff.
• 59:32
  Yeah.
• 59:33
  Yeah, it was a real serious.
• 59:35
  But, yeah, going back to the go-kart, so we –
• 59:37
  Robbie goes, let's go racing the go-karts at Sugo.
• 59:40
  It's a Yamaha-owned circuit, and I'm a factory Yamaha rider.
• 59:45
  Anyway, we're out there cracking around on these go-karts, and anyway, we come together, and I've put mine over the fence, wrecked it, and had to go and see the circuit manager.
• 59:58
  who was also running the hotel area.
• 1:00:00
  Okay.
• 1:00:01
  Spoke good English, unfortunately.
• 1:00:03
  He said, Dawson, son, you've broken these go-karts.
• 1:00:07
  No, very expensive.
• 1:00:10
  You're going to have to pay.
• 1:00:12
  I said, well, and at that stage, I didn't think I was going to do any good that weekend, so I couldn't see any extra money coming in.
• 1:00:19
  So I'm thinking, oh, no, now I'm going to have a debt for the Sugo circuit for a go-kart that I wrecked.
• 1:00:26
  Anyway, end of the weekend, I win.
• 1:00:30
  So I won the weekend.
• 1:00:31
  And I'm thinking, oh, now I'm thinking, shit, this freaking...
• 1:00:34
  Go-kart.
• 1:00:36
  The manager's going to come over and say, well, righto, you know that money you've just won, I'm taking it.
• 1:00:40
  He comes and finds me, and I'm thinking, oh, here we go.
• 1:00:43
  And he goes, Dawson, son, congratulations.
• 1:00:46
  I'm at it all for the race win.
• 1:00:48
  Don't worry about the go-kart.
• 1:00:52
  Thank God.
• 1:00:53
  Thank God.
• 1:00:53
  I don't know.
• 1:00:54
  We would have taken it all, I guess.
• 1:00:55
  Yeah.
• 1:00:56
  There's some great, I know.
• 1:00:59
  Don't get me started about Doily and bloody.
• 1:01:02
  Shenanigans.
• 1:01:03
  Oh, shenanigans.
• 1:01:04
  Oh, my God.
• 1:01:05
  No, it was a good time.
• 1:01:07
  It was a great time.
• 1:01:08
  We had a bit of fun.
• 1:01:09
  They had probably more fun than I did, but we were all pretty serious.
• 1:01:13
  Come time when it comes to racing, all the jokes aside, we all tried Tam Harden.
• 1:01:19
  Yeah, definitely.
• 1:01:20
  And it's a good thing to reflect and look back on.
• 1:01:22
  What's the bike?
• 1:01:23
  If I said to you now, what's the bike?
• 1:01:25
  I mean, Joe's got these amazing pictures all in front of us, great memories.
• 1:01:29
  What's the one that you maybe have a fondness or an attachment to and why?
• 1:01:36
  I think it would have been the factory Formula One Yamaha 750 in 89, 88, 89.
• 1:01:45
  You know, they – initially when we rode them, we weren't happy.
• 1:01:49
  It turned out just to be adjustment.
• 1:01:51
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:01:52
  The bikes were very capable, fully adjustable, and at that time, we had the full respect from the factory MS1 division boys to allow us to do any adjustments.
• 1:02:03
  Okay.
• 1:02:03
  And the thing had, like we were racing 750s in Australia and 750s over there, and these things like had a third more power.
• 1:02:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:11
  And through the range, usable.
• 1:02:13
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:14
  It was just amazing to think that we were struggling in Australia against most of the competition with what we thought was pretty good super bikes, but the Japanese stuff was just at a different level.
• 1:02:26
  So when Mick and I raced super bikes at Orrin Park, he was first by a mile.
• 1:02:34
  I was behind him, and I'd gapped the rest of the field.
• 1:02:38
  But they were on factory spec bikes.
• 1:02:40
  And they were excellent.
• 1:02:42
  They're just so usable.
• 1:02:44
  Yeah, so there's a bunch of stuff.
• 1:02:46
  All the Japanese Yamaha factory machinery was just so cool.
• 1:02:51
  Actually, I had another good story.
• 1:02:53
  engineer that was always a dino guy um i can't remember his name but he had good english we spoke often over you know three year period i love to hear his stories about how they're developing or whatever in 89 he come and said to me that i'm leaving the factory i said what are you doing he was off to start the development of yamaha marine four-stroke engines
• 1:03:17
  So I was there then.
• 1:03:18
  So good.
• 1:03:19
  So it was a pretty cool bunch of stuff, including it was all two-strike outboard marine engines.
• 1:03:23
  Yeah.
• 1:03:24
  And it was probably three or four years later when they hit the market.
• 1:03:27
  This stuff was going to start coming through.
• 1:03:28
  Wow.
• 1:03:28
  But this guy was actually taken from the factory dyno team, and he was like, right, you're one of the guys in for our marine engines to go forward.
• 1:03:36
  Yeah.
• 1:03:37
  So that was some pretty cool stuff.
• 1:03:38
  The race, the place.
• 1:03:40
  You've talked about Suzuka and some of the special memories there, what Bathurst was like, what's the race and the place.
• 1:03:50
  You know, it's always the ones that you win, which unfortunately compared to Doon and Beattie and Stoner and bloody Bayliss and Courser and all the guys that are around now, my career pales into insignificance compared to what they've done.
• 1:04:12
  For me, looking back on my career, Bathurst, I think.
• 1:04:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:04:17
  Yeah.
• 1:04:17
  I just love Bathurst.
• 1:04:18
  I rode from 1980 through to 1989.
• 1:04:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:04:22
  Got to ride Mel Pittman's machinery.
• 1:04:24
  Yeah.
• 1:04:25
  Got to ride Warren Willing's machinery, and we were very successful.
• 1:04:29
  And, yeah, I think those bikes at that circuit to me was probably the pinnacle of what I've done.
• 1:04:37
  Of what you've done.
• 1:04:38
  Finally, we are here on the outskirts of Perth at a beautiful farm, but you spend a lot of your time south of Perth, don't you?
• 1:04:45
  And I think you've had a charter boat and so on.
• 1:04:47
  Tell me what life is like now.
• 1:04:48
  What are you doing now?
• 1:04:49
  So Joanne and I married about 10 years ago and got a commercial river vessel that we- If Barry Sheen was here, he might say, did Jo draw second prize there?
• 1:05:02
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:03
  Thank God he's not here.
• 1:05:06
  Barry used to call me Ace.
• 1:05:07
  I thought, oh, my God.
• 1:05:09
  Barry's calling me Ace.
• 1:05:12
  But then I started hanging around him with me.
• 1:05:13
  He called everyone Ace.
• 1:05:14
  When he couldn't remember you, when he couldn't remember your name, he would say that.
• 1:05:18
  Hey, Ace, how you going, Ace?
• 1:05:19
  He would say, who's that geezer over there?
• 1:05:21
  And he'd go, Barry, Barry.
• 1:05:22
  I thought I was very special for about five minutes.
• 1:05:28
  So, yeah, so you've got a… So we've got our little riverboat.
• 1:05:32
  Magic, magic.
• 1:05:33
  We just specialise in taking retirement village people out.
• 1:05:37
  Okay.
• 1:05:37
  Zimmer frames and all kinds of stuff and give them a bit of entertainment.
• 1:05:41
  Look at dolphins, come up the river and do barbecue cruises with them.
• 1:05:44
  Lovely.
• 1:05:44
  So that's what we do.
• 1:05:45
  We do that.
• 1:05:46
  It's kind of part-time because it's really a seasonal thing over summer.
• 1:05:51
  Yep.
• 1:05:51
  And a friend of ours has got a couple of farms and a big commercial boat.
• 1:05:55
  And we've been involved with the commercial boat.
• 1:06:00
  It's a big girl.
• 1:06:01
  And you go right up the kind of west coast kind of thing, do you?
• 1:06:03
  We've been through from Fremantle all the way through to Wyndham.
• 1:06:06
  Amazing.
• 1:06:07
  In the Kimberley, taking guests to and from the Kimberley.
• 1:06:12
  So we did that for seven years.
• 1:06:14
  And now we're basically off that boat.
• 1:06:16
  I still do engineering to that boat.
• 1:06:18
  I love it.
• 1:06:19
  Got a couple of big MTU V12s.
• 1:06:21
  Nice.
• 1:06:21
  So I still do the engineering to it.
• 1:06:23
  A friend of ours is still operating it.
• 1:06:25
  Yeah.
• 1:06:25
  And so still involved with the boat, but not as much as we used to.
• 1:06:29
  and we just help out here at the farm to give the boys a hand with their farming equipment.
• 1:06:34
  Love it.
• 1:06:34
  Daz tells me, and I don't know if this is an old story, whether it's been coloured up or whatever, was there a little moment with a great white shark?
• 1:06:41
  What is that story about?
• 1:06:43
  Well, yeah, it wasn't to me.
• 1:06:44
  It was in the period from probably 93 through to 2008, my brother and I had a retail business where we had bikes, boats...
• 1:06:59
  and diving.
• 1:07:00
  Okay.
• 1:07:00
  We had diving facilities.
• 1:07:01
  We had an instructor, and over summer, again, social, seasonal stuff.
• 1:07:06
  Yep.
• 1:07:07
  So one of our clients, a Kiwi guy,
• 1:07:12
  Alan O'Pard, his name is, lovely guy.
• 1:07:14
  He's actually a prison warden.
• 1:07:17
  He was one of our clients, would come and go getting air for his, servicing his diving requirements.
• 1:07:24
  And he eventually was on the news.
• 1:07:26
  He was attacked by a great white.
• 1:07:29
  And he was out with his Kiwi mates, big rugby guys.
• 1:07:33
  Yep.
• 1:07:34
  And they're out on his boat.
• 1:07:36
  And they had done a whole heap of diving, got a bunch of craze.
• 1:07:40
  And then they had one tank left, one full tank.
• 1:07:43
  And Alan said to his mates, well, you guys, who wants the last tank just to observe this new reef we're looking at with their sounder?
• 1:07:52
  And the boy said, no, Al, it's your boat.
• 1:07:54
  So, yeah, you do it.
• 1:07:55
  You can do the observation of the new area before we come back and hit it for craze.
• 1:08:00
  So Al puts the tank on.
• 1:08:03
  Beautiful clear day, no wind, and didn't even anchor.
• 1:08:06
  They just dropped him over the side, and he was making his way down in about 30 metres of water.
• 1:08:11
  Yep.
• 1:08:11
  And he was coming down, blowing his BCD valve off, so he was basically going feet first down.
• 1:08:17
  First down, yeah.
• 1:08:19
  And he observed a shark on the bottom, and he said, when he looked at it, he said, it looks like it's looking for something.
• 1:08:26
  And once he saw that, he thought, I better power inflate and stop descending and then head to the surface slowly.
• 1:08:33
  So he's done the old, as soon as he's hit the trigger for his inflator,
• 1:08:36
  This shark's identified him.
• 1:08:38
  Yep.
• 1:08:38
  Now the shark's coming at him.
• 1:08:40
  So it's opened its mouth and put his feet and fins and everything in its mouth and hit him with so much force it took him to the surface, bent his knees.
• 1:08:48
  His knees hit him in the chest.
• 1:08:50
  His mast come down around his face and he come to the surface right alongside his boat.
• 1:08:55
  Luckily, if there was wind or anything, the boat would have been moved.
• 1:08:58
  Yeah.
• 1:08:59
  So this thing had come to the surface.
• 1:09:00
  Luckily, he had his spear gun down in his jaw.
• 1:09:03
  And he reckoned it released him.
• 1:09:05
  It would cut him up.
• 1:09:06
  He'd end up having 300 stitches.
• 1:09:09
  But luckily, his Maori mates were able to pick him, hold him.
• 1:09:11
  I think he said to me, don't let me die, boys.
• 1:09:14
  Something to that effect.
• 1:09:15
  They're probably big units too, so they grabbed him, did they?
• 1:09:17
  And with a bit of adrenaline.
• 1:09:18
  Yeah.
• 1:09:19
  And they just picked him up, put him in the boat.
• 1:09:20
  End of story.
• 1:09:21
  Off to hospital, stitches, and the guy lives today.
• 1:09:25
  To tell the tale.
• 1:09:26
  Yeah, I'm pretty sure I told Darrell that one.
• 1:09:27
  Amazing.
• 1:09:28
  It was around that period, I reckon.
• 1:09:29
  Yeah.
• 1:09:30
  Amazing.
• 1:09:30
  You're a great storyteller, mate.
• 1:09:32
  And it's been a joy for me to spend a couple of hours with you.
• 1:09:34
  So from me and particularly for the deep bike racing fans that have been around for a long time, it's been nice to share a bit of your story.
• 1:09:43
  Thank you for doing that.
• 1:09:44
  I hope you're proud of what you've done.
• 1:09:46
  There are some fantastic achievements and there are many more I know than what we've covered here today.
• 1:09:53
  Congratulations and thank you for letting me share a bit of that today.
• 1:09:56
  No, thanks for that, Rusty.
• 1:09:59
  So what you've put into the sport has been amazing.
• 1:10:01
  I've watched you.
• 1:10:02
  I've not known you, but I kind of feel like I've known you because I've been watching you on telly for so long.
• 1:10:07
  I feel like I know you.
• 1:10:08
  So guys like yourself and Lee Diffie and those sort of guys.
• 1:10:14
  You follow the Supercross super closely.
• 1:10:16
  You love it, don't you?
• 1:10:17
  The Lawrence Brothers and Cole Davies.
• 1:10:19
  So I'm talking to Diffie every day.
• 1:10:22
  We watch AMA.
• 1:10:24
  I know he does a lot more than that, but he does an exceptional job with the two goats.
• 1:10:29
  Ricky Carmichael and Barber Stewart.
• 1:10:33
  They do a great job, and it's great to see.
• 1:10:35
  We've got Aussies over there kicking their ass on the track.
• 1:10:38
  We've got Kiwis kicking their ass on the track, and we've got guys in the commentary kicking their ass.
• 1:10:43
  What a great thing.
• 1:10:44
  And you're still as passionate about it as ever and watching all.
• 1:10:47
  Absolutely.
• 1:10:48
  Watch it religiously.
• 1:10:48
  We know exactly what's going on.
• 1:10:50
  Cool stuff, mate.
• 1:10:50
  Thank you very much.
• 1:10:51
  Pleasure.
• 1:11:00
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 1:11:04
  Series editor and producer is Joel Harrison.
• 1:11:07
  Audio production by Link Kelly.
• 1:11:10
  If you've got a guest suggestion, get in touch with me on social media.
• 1:11:15
  The Garage, it's where a journey begins with a tank full of passion-fueled stories.