Latest / Rusty's Garage / Victor Bray (Part 1)

Transcript

Victor Bray (Part 1) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:14
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:28
  In this episode, I'm in Brisbane at the workshop of one of the greatest drag races Australia has ever produced.
• 0:35
  Victor Bray's countless wins and jaw-dropping times aren't just limited to Aussie motor racing history.
• 0:41
  He's held world records too.
• 0:43
  The Black 57 Chev is like Victor's trademark.
• 0:47
  He loves them and has done since he was a young bloke.
• 0:50
  As you'll hear in this two-part chat, he's a car guy who can't help himself.
• 0:56
  Bray has quite a collection of resto projects on his to-do list.
• 1:00
  He's brilliant at the burnout and held down some of the longest sponsorships in sport.
• 1:06
  In recent years, his battle has been away from the quarter mile, tackling an aggressive form of skin cancer head-on.
• 1:13
  Getting back behind the wheel of his 3,000-horsepower top door slammer has been good tonic, and the support from fans overwhelming.
• 1:22
  The health issues may have taken a toll, but he's the same ripper bloke at heart who's proud of the family's farming roots.
• 1:31
  Well, my grandfather was a rev head.
• 1:32
  He had Buicks and old Pontiac and Harley, so he was a bit of a rev head in his younger days, of course.
• 1:38
  And he always used to be swapping cars and buying cars.
• 1:41
  I used to think to myself, you know, my dad used to buy a new car every now and then, but my grandfather seemed to be buying a lot of cars.
• 1:47
  And, but yeah, so, and he was always there.
• 1:49
  He was a jolly fella, you know, real happy-go-lucky.
• 1:51
  But what really got me going, my dad was an excellent bush mechanic and we repaired all our own, there wasn't a lot of money floating around in them days and we repaired a lot of, all the equipment on the farm ourselves, we did all the maintenance ourselves, all the repairs ourselves and most of the stuff that we wanted that you couldn't buy or we couldn't afford, we used to make ourselves.
• 2:09
  So we had welders and a little workshop over there.
• 2:12
  So that's where I sort of got the idea of mechanical stuff
• 2:17
  10 years old or something, one of the neighbours wanted to sell a Ford Prefect.
• 2:21
  I cannot imagine you in a Ford Prefect, mate.
• 2:23
  That was the first one, wasn't it?
• 2:24
  Yeah, the very first car was a Ford Prefect and I got it home here and I thrashed the living guts out of it.
• 2:29
  I learned how to drive it first and then, you know, things like batteries in them days didn't mean much to me.
• 2:35
  We had a tractor, had a push started and all the vac was dead.
• 2:38
  When I got it, it was mint.
• 2:39
  I had it nowadays.
• 2:39
  It would be worth gold.
• 2:41
  Anyway, so I just drove that around and around and around and just drove it around.
• 2:44
  I was a young kid.
• 2:45
  So I didn't do really too much hooning in and stuff.
• 2:48
  But then one day it stopped.
• 2:50
  It started getting a bit of a ch-ch-ch in the exhaust, you know.
• 2:53
  And then it stopped.
• 2:54
  It had no power anymore, so I parked it over there.
• 2:56
  And I says, oh, Dad, I need a new car.
• 2:58
  And he said, what do you mean you need a new car?
• 3:00
  I said, listen to this one.
• 3:01
  It doesn't go.
• 3:02
  It's got no power anymore or nothing.
• 3:04
  I just need another car.
• 3:05
  And he goes, well, just fix that one.
• 3:06
  And I looked at him and I said, what are you talking about?
• 3:09
  And he said, oh, let's get into it.
• 3:10
  So we ripped the head off it, and a couple of valves were burnt out in it.
• 3:14
  And we repaired the valves.
• 3:15
  I jumped back in and had power again.
• 3:17
  I was absolutely amazed that you can get one of these cars running good, thrash the living ring out of it, right?
• 3:24
  And then you can fix it up and do it all over again.
• 3:26
  You know, it just stunned me.
• 3:28
  It's something that, you know, I was a farmer, you know, I was a farmer's son, and basically we used to get up in the morning real early, go feed the potty calves, little potty calves that we had, and then I'd go to school at four minutes to eight.
• 3:42
  I had a leaflet there for the bus, and we'd go to school, and then I'd come home.
• 3:45
  When I come home, we'd have to feed the calves again, and then we'd pack tomatoes all night, and then I jumped in the truck with my dad and we went and dropped them off at the Rocklea markets.
• 3:52
  And that's pretty much what we did, you know, six days a week.
• 3:55
  So...
• 3:56
  having a car to thrash around on the Saturday when we weren't working.
• 3:59
  That was pretty cool.
• 4:01
  You became world famous for doing stuff in a straight line.
• 4:05
  But back then on the farm, were you Victor Bray wannabe rally driver?
• 4:09
  Were you trying to be Alan Moffat?
• 4:11
  What were you aspiring to do on the farm in the paddock basher?
• 4:15
  I'd call my mum and dad, if you like, Victor Bray idiot.
• 4:20
  We used to have, we'd had a lot of, I ended up having, you know, I had a neighbour here, Glenn Hullard, who used to live next door to me here, and he and me had 52 cars all together.
• 4:28
  They were all Holdens too, weren't they?
• 4:30
  FXs?
• 4:31
  Yeah, they were all, mainly Holdens, but there was a couple of ones that I don't like talking about.
• 4:35
  One was a 55 share we bought for 30 bucks.
• 4:37
  And it was mint, but geez, it lasted a long time bashing into the trees and stuff, you know.
• 4:42
  A bit disgusted about that in myself.
• 4:44
  But, no, we used to – we had – one of the great things we did have, and we had a lot of FJ Holdens and a lot of EKs and stuff like that.
• 4:50
  One of the best things we had was the FJ Vonnet turned upside down.
• 4:53
  We used to tow each other around, down the salt marshes in them, and, you know, you'd flick the thing out the back.
• 4:58
  And, look, thinking nowadays, you didn't have one of them shows, the goofy shows where someone hurts himself doing something stupid on television.
• 5:05
  But it was good fun.
• 5:06
  We used to thrash around.
• 5:07
  There were only six, you know, grave motors and stuff.
• 5:10
  We had a lot of them.
• 5:11
  And the reason I know we had 52, because that's what the council told me I had to remove when we had it, was his property backs my property.
• 5:18
  So we lined them all up and we just had to make them look neater because we had them upside down, jammed into trees, bogged in the flats and everything.
• 5:25
  So we actually just had to...
• 5:28
  line them up and make them look a bit neat.
• 5:29
  So we put them in a big line.
• 5:30
  There was 52 of them there altogether.
• 5:31
  So some were varied and half varied.
• 5:34
  But, yeah, it was good fun.
• 5:36
  The old phatic thrashing days teach you how to drive, you know, so teach you how to handle stuff.
• 5:40
  And, you know, we used to go pretty silly down there.
• 5:42
  And the worst thing was when we both had one going, that was ordinary.
• 5:48
  It's part of history, so I want to cover it.
• 5:51
  I know in later life now you talk to kids about, you know, not racing on the streets, about, you know, doing it in the right places, you know, racing on the track is the safest place for it.
• 6:03
  But...
• 6:04
  Your history in proper racing terms really began on the streets, mate, didn't it?
• 6:09
  Tell us about that and how it came about and what you did.
• 6:13
  Yeah, well, I mean, I used to race on the street an awful lot.
• 6:15
  And one of the things that I do explain before I ever talk to a group of young kids about, because a lot of them say, oh, yeah, you raced here, you did this, you did that, you know, because they read my history and stuff on the emails and on the web pages.
• 6:29
  is that you have to understand in my day, my car was running 17 seconds when I was racing on the street.
• 6:37
  If you've got a new car nowadays from the showroom floor, GDR or something, it doesn't run nine seconds, you take it back for warranty.
• 6:44
  You know what I mean?
• 6:45
  Like, it's a different world nowadays.
• 6:47
  The cars are super fast.
• 6:49
  Even the slow cars are super fast.
• 6:51
  So it's just a different world and that's why the street racing thing back then, you weren't running super fast cars.
• 6:57
  I was running guys in FJ Holdings with two carbies on it.
• 6:59
  You know what I mean?
• 6:59
  Like it was...
• 7:00
  But nowadays, that's a whole different world.
• 7:02
  These cars are fast nowadays.
• 7:03
  I jumped in a GTR once there and, you know, the guy showed me how good it went and it went good, believe me.
• 7:11
  We didn't have the facilities back then either, Victor, that we do now either, did we?
• 7:15
  No, you didn't really have a choice.
• 7:16
  Service Paradise was my closest drag strip back in them days.
• 7:19
  And look how I ended up going there when I went there and started having fun there.
• 7:22
  That's where I went and did it.
• 7:23
  I didn't do it on the street anymore.
• 7:24
  I got myself in a fair bit of trouble.
• 7:26
  I didn't actually organise them, but apparently the police thought I did all the time because I thought it was that all.
• 7:32
  But one of the things we used to do was...
• 7:34
  We were all right down the east coast of Australia, and all the cane farmers, a lot of rich cane farmers' sons had hot rod cars.
• 7:40
  So we used to cruise up and down.
• 7:41
  One instance was we went to Vunderville.
• 7:43
  You're going to be Vunderville, mate, so I love this.
• 7:46
  And we pulled in the main street, and there was all hoons there, because we knew that centre parking in the main street, and there was just hot rod cars, hoons everywhere, you know.
• 7:55
  So we pulled in the main street.
• 7:56
  I had an old grey 57 Chevy, and I was there with Brad Park, and my mates are nice-looking white Camaro.
• 8:02
  And, of course, they wanted to race the Camaro, because my old crappy Chevy wouldn't have been any good.
• 8:07
  He didn't race, he said I'm not racing.
• 8:08
  So one of the guys said to me...
• 8:10
  Do you race?
• 8:11
  And I said, oh, yeah, I'll race, you know, no problem at all.
• 8:14
  And he goes, oh, do you want to race for money?
• 8:16
  And I said, you know, a bit of a hustle.
• 8:17
  I said, no, I don't really race for money, nothing like that, you know.
• 8:20
  Anyway, they started picking on me a little bit, you know, because I was a blue singlet, big fat tag, you know, like hair all over me.
• 8:26
  And old grey Chevy, which looks like it wouldn't even, you know, lucky to start.
• 8:30
  Anyway, it's...
• 8:32
  One guy sat up and he says, Oh, well, we only race for money around here, mate, so make it 50 bucks.
• 8:38
  And I said, make it 500.
• 8:39
  You get yourself a drag race, buddy.
• 8:41
  Anyway, these all, they quiet the boys down a little bit there.
• 8:44
  Then there must have been a guy in town called Lenny Miller.
• 8:46
  He was a bit of a hot rider and he had this beautiful GD Falcon.
• 8:49
  And man, it was fast.
• 8:50
  I didn't realise there was something that fast in town.
• 8:53
  But they had a lot of fast cars.
• 8:54
  Anyway, so they said, okay, get Lenny Miller, get Lenny Miller, you know.
• 8:58
  So they must have gone and rang him up and he must have brought his GD Falcon out.
• 9:02
  And then they said, oh, okay, follow us to Goodwood Road.
• 9:05
  And remember all that clearly.
• 9:07
  So I went to Goodwood Road.
• 9:08
  I took Ben out of the, he was in a vassanette in the back of the car.
• 9:11
  His son?
• 9:12
  Yeah, yeah.
• 9:12
  So I took him out and put him on the side of the road and took my two daughters out.
• 9:16
  And just wait here, you know, Dad's busy.
• 9:20
  And so I went out there, and these guys, they've obviously done a fair bit of it because they all went and lined up with their lights facing down the track, both sides of the track, and there was a herd of them.
• 9:28
  There would have been 30 to 40 cars there.
• 9:30
  It was like a movie scene, mate.
• 9:31
  Yeah, it was.
• 9:32
  And I went out there.
• 9:33
  Anyway, the first run, I won the first run, but this Lenny Muller, he was right there with me.
• 9:38
  And that hadn't happened.
• 9:38
  My car ran 11.2 on street tyres through the mufflers.
• 9:42
  Oh!
• 9:42
  in them days, and this guy was right there, you know, and I thought, wow, so it was them that went back to the start and I'm best out of three, so I go to the next one anyway.
• 9:52
  He mipped me by about half a mudguard on the second one.
• 9:55
  I thought, God, this guy's fast, so I turned another nightless kid on and went out and beat him on the third one, and that was it, you know.
• 10:00
  We got to make some good friends that night, and then me and Brad, we go back to a motel room for the night, too late to drive home, so, and we get back there in the morning at six o'clock, I hear this...
• 10:12
  Outside the front door, Lenny Miller had gone home, dropped his pipes, put these great big tyres on the back of Wunder Rematch.
• 10:20
  Oh, man, no, they were a great bunch of guys up there.
• 10:22
  You know, I'm still friends with them today.
• 10:23
  And Lenny Miller did have a fast car.
• 10:26
  He was quite a guy than what I would have expected to have a car like that.
• 10:29
  But there were some real rough fellas up there, and it was good fun.
• 10:34
  And like I say, still friends with them today.
• 10:36
  Your answer there lends us to the 57 Chev, mate.
• 10:40
  You and 57s, I mean, fans of the sport really can't imagine one without the other in so many ways.
• 10:48
  Correct me if I'm wrong here, you brought your first one in the late 70s.
• 10:52
  Is it the first black car you raced as well?
• 10:54
  And you still have it today?
• 10:56
  Is that right?
• 10:56
  Oh, yeah, still got it.
• 10:57
  Still drive it around quite regularly, you know.
• 11:00
  I've ordered off a guy called Wayne Varver, and I've paid $600 for it.
• 11:04
  He keeps saying he'll buy it back.
• 11:08
  $600.
• 11:09
  But $600, right, and I left.
• 11:10
  He lived at Varden.
• 11:11
  I went over there, and I was just amazed, and I jumped in the car, and I drove.
• 11:14
  home, I got to the very first corner and the front wheel fell off it.
• 11:18
  So I walked down to the barbers and I said, Wayne, because they call him Mr. Chevy, he owns a business called Chev City, and he's still around today, selling Chev's, and he just said, sorry mate, there's just no warranty on that car, I'm afraid.
• 11:31
  That's how I met Wayne.
• 11:33
  I actually had some Monaros, I think I had all together, seven HK and HGHT Monaros, all V8s.
• 11:40
  Prior to that.
• 11:41
  And the very first car I ever had, after, on the street, was an EJ wagon with Dad What For Me.
• 11:46
  And then after I thrust that pretty good, my grandfather, who was having a...
• 11:51
  He wasn't well one year, and there was a lot of rain around, and his pumpkin patch had got out of whack.
• 11:57
  And I was, you know, a young bloke full of fish and vinegar, and he said, look, he said...
• 12:01
  He said, if you look after the pumpkin patch, I'll go your halves in the profits.
• 12:06
  So I thought to myself, oh, that sounds all right.
• 12:08
  You know, not going to be much money in it, but he is my granddad and love him, so I'll go and do it.
• 12:13
  So I chipped them all and turned the vines back and done everything and scuffled up the middle and did all the stuff for them.
• 12:18
  And anyway, you wouldn't believe it, because of all the rain, it was an absolute record price for pumpkins, and I ended up with nearly $6,000 in them days was gold.
• 12:27
  So, you know, I was...
• 12:29
  I was still only 17 or something, 18 then, so I shot down the road and bought myself a brand new Sandman Fennel van.
• 12:34
  Man, that's interesting.
• 12:35
  Yeah, and had that for a while.
• 12:37
  And during the warranty, I hope GM isn't listening, but in the warranty, I used to like flat change in the gearbox, and the gearbox was underpowered for the motors, had a V8 in it.
• 12:47
  And I still got some of the cluster gears today, but I had seven warranty claims for gearboxes and that thing over the next 12 months.
• 12:53
  So it was a bit of fun.
• 12:55
  And then I sold that and bought a, I want some more power,
• 12:58
  I seen this beautiful red HK Monaro for sale in the car yard, so I done a deal with him.
• 13:04
  Much to my dad's unhappiness, he thought I should have kept the car that was worth a long time.
• 13:09
  I got the car, the red, this beautiful car, like black interior red HK, 307 it was.
• 13:14
  Drove it around for ages, and then I just had a series of HK Monaros after that, just loved them.
• 13:19
  And one of the issues with them, I got charged.
• 13:22
  When I pulled over one day and I got charged, because, you know, I used to...
• 13:25
  We were pulling them apart, putting them together and all sorts of stuff.
• 13:28
  I got charged.
• 13:28
  I got a ticket one.
• 13:29
  I've still got it around here somewhere.
• 13:30
  I got charged with having three different exhausts on the car.
• 13:34
  So I had... Yeah, it hasn't got the best part yet.
• 13:37
  I've got three different exhausts.
• 13:39
  I put extractors on it with a short pipe on the back.
• 13:41
  It still had the original pipe on there.
• 13:43
  And then I had another set of twin pipes that I tried to put on there on one side, right?
• 13:47
  So I got charged with having three different exhausts on the car and none working.
• 13:52
  So it was a, I've still got that ticket, I like that one.
• 13:55
  I've got a couple of good tickets over the years we'll get into shortly.
• 13:58
  But it's, yeah, the Monaros were great, I loved them.
• 14:01
  And then I bought the Chevy.
• 14:03
  I actually bought a, first Chevy I bought was a 1962 two-door Infala SS.
• 14:08
  And unluckily, I had a head-on collision in it.
• 14:12
  me and you had Marie and one of the kids in the car didn't you Kelly was it yeah Kelly was in the car I had Marie in the car she got she got her feet trapped between the wheel and the dashboard and she was she wasn't good and for some reason I don't know why grace of God I suppose about five kilometres before that I pulled up on the side of the road Kelly was on the back seat sleeping and
• 14:33
  And I got, I pulled out on the side of the road, just, I don't even know why, and I put Kelly between two pillows on the back floor behind my seat and a pillow each side of her.
• 14:42
  And she was completely unscathed, not touched.
• 14:45
  Like it was a head-on collision.
• 14:46
  We were both doing 100K.
• 14:48
  The other two were two police officers that were off duty that were...
• 14:51
  And he just drifted over my side of the road and crashed into me.
• 14:55
  Actually, he was coming over so far, I turned back to the right to get away from him.
• 15:00
  And then he hit a guard face, woke up and turned straight into me.
• 15:04
  So it was a very serious accident.
• 15:06
  And we were both lucky to get out of it.
• 15:08
  And, like, no seatbelts them days, you know, we didn't have seatbelts on.
• 15:11
  And, yeah, it was a bad deal, all that.
• 15:14
  And then, actually, while that car was down there, got towed after, no, a month or so later when Marie got out of hospital and I went down there to see what the car was like and that or pick it up or something like that.
• 15:23
  And I'm sitting in the car, like, opening the door, looking at it.
• 15:28
  I was just sitting in a garage tow joint on the side of the road down there at Voron Vais somewhere.
• 15:35
  Chick Henry drove past, and Chick Henry's the guy that started the Summonuts.
• 15:38
  And he's a real Chev freak, and he drove past in his Chevy.
• 15:41
  Anyway, he saw me there, so he pulled up and we had a chat, and that's how I met Chick Henry.
• 15:46
  It was crazy, just that he'd come past at that sort of time when I was just happy to be sitting in the car there.
• 15:50
  So yeah, after I bought the Chevy, I needed a car.
• 15:55
  And I really loved the 57.
• 15:56
  The first time I'd seen a 57 Chev was at a guy called Russell Peters Place.
• 16:00
  He lives not too far from here.
• 16:02
  And I went up there.
• 16:04
  And he said, oh, I got the Chevy facade.
• 16:06
  And I said, oh, yeah, I'm looking for a Chevy.
• 16:07
  And I went up there.
• 16:08
  And it was a bit of a misty, rainy night.
• 16:10
  And he had a tarp over.
• 16:10
  And I walked out his backyard.
• 16:12
  I picked the tarp up, or he picked the tarp up.
• 16:15
  And I saw the rear fin of the car, all the chrome and everything on it.
• 16:18
  And I looked at it.
• 16:19
  And I said, I'd put it down.
• 16:21
  I don't know, something like that.
• 16:22
  I'd put the thing down.
• 16:23
  I just wasn't impressed, you know.
• 16:24
  And I got halfway home.
• 16:25
  And I thought, oh.
• 16:26
  That bloody chrome looked all right, didn't it?
• 16:29
  So it kind of wasn't love at first sight.
• 16:32
  It wasn't love at first sight, no.
• 16:33
  Then I sort of, because it had the Valair thing on the side, so I thought, I might go back and have a look at that one day.
• 16:38
  Anyway, Wayne Vava had one for sale, a lot cheaper, so I went and had a look at that one.
• 16:43
  And I bought it.
• 16:44
  So that was a six-cylinder.
• 16:45
  It was a beige in colour.
• 16:46
  And I drove it around for a big fat set of wheels on it, drove it around the six-cylinder for ages and then slowly put them over.
• 16:51
  Because I was earning 80 bucks a week at that time, you know, wasn't it?
• 16:54
  It was a different time to, like, these sort of days.
• 16:56
  And I would never have gone anywhere if it wasn't for Peter Smith and Dennis at DP Auto Farts.
• 17:03
  They allowed me to give them all my wages every week.
• 17:06
  and in return I could take whatever I needed to hop my cars up.
• 17:10
  So it was a good time.
• 17:11
  And obviously as the story goes, I met Mick Utherwood, and Mick sort of turned me from a hoon, because I was a hoon in them days, a bad hoon, into a drag racer.
• 17:21
  And I was racing at this track and that, but Mick sort of taught me that you're pretty good at this, you idiot.
• 17:27
  Why don't you try and do it properly?
• 17:29
  And that's sort of how the drag racing story went.
• 17:31
  But with the street racing stuff,
• 17:34
  It just sort of happened at the time, you know.
• 17:36
  It was just how it was at the time.
• 17:37
  We'd go out there, there'd be 50 cars out there racing.
• 17:40
  And, you know, then all these guys would come from out of town and that, and we'd travel and do it.
• 17:44
  It was just something that happened at the time.
• 17:46
  There's no way it could happen nowadays.
• 17:48
  You'd have all your cars confiscated and all the police holding yards would be full of all your race cars.
• 17:53
  I want to just finish up on that first car, if we can, before we move on to more of your racing career stuff.
• 18:00
  People would be interested in the authenticity of it and how you've kept it.
• 18:04
  I heard stories.
• 18:05
  Did you paint it with black house paint at one point or something?
• 18:08
  Is that true?
• 18:09
  I bought, well, it used to be undercoat grey with that black flick thriller.
• 18:14
  I used to love this movie called Toulon Blacktop.
• 18:16
  Oh, yes.
• 18:17
  And I used to love the colour of that 55 Chevy.
• 18:19
  And on a side note, I'm halfway through building an exact replica of that car right now.
• 18:25
  It's in New Zealand at Terry's Diffson Chassis because he has all the documentation on what sort of front end and rear end they had in it.
• 18:31
  Of the movie car.
• 18:32
  Of the movie car, yeah.
• 18:33
  We are building, it's an exact replica right down to part numbers.
• 18:37
  So I've got the Muncie here.
• 18:39
  I've got a lot of stuff I've been sourcing that for over the last 10 years.
• 18:42
  It's going to be, if I get around to finishing it in my time, it'll be a guy's car.
• 18:46
  It's exactly a replica.
• 18:47
  I couldn't see myself driving a replica that was fake.
• 18:50
  This is a replica that's real.
• 18:51
  But anyway, so I love the old grey car.
• 18:53
  The old grey cars was flicked through and they used to take down Service Paradise and race.
• 18:58
  I was having a lot of trouble.
• 18:58
  You know, night as well, shoved through the springs in the back seat and the line coming over the hill.
• 19:04
  And a good friend of mine nowadays used to be the scrutinier down there.
• 19:10
  We had a lot of run-ins in back then.
• 19:12
  But they made a rule that the car had to be one colour, okay?
• 19:17
  You know, it was based pretty much aimed at me.
• 19:19
  This is a service paradise and pretty much aimed at me.
• 19:21
  So I went home that night and I got some old...
• 19:24
  crap faint from somewhere, I don't even know what it was to tell you the truth.
• 19:28
  I said, oh, let's just faint a flat black, you know, because there was a guy called Speedy and he had a dodge and he used to roar around the streets around here and he used to be painting American flags.
• 19:37
  And I used to think, it's a bit flamboyant for me, something like that, you know.
• 19:40
  And then one day he just turned up and it's flat black.
• 19:43
  And I thought, God, now that's a car.
• 19:45
  That's a good-looking car.
• 19:47
  I love it.
• 19:48
  So, and Oz Speedy was sort of an icon in the area back in the day.
• 19:52
  And, yeah, so I just got this, found this paint.
• 19:55
  I don't know, it was a house paint.
• 19:57
  I think it might have been undercarriage paint for GM.
• 20:00
  And it was something like that.
• 20:01
  I don't even remember what it was, to tell the truth.
• 20:03
  And it was, so I painted the car flat black and I lobbed it down the next day.
• 20:07
  I've got a clip under the ear from it.
• 20:10
  for being a smart arse, I reckon.
• 20:12
  They said, look, this is worse than what it was.
• 20:13
  And I said, well, you said it had to be one colour.
• 20:16
  Well, there's one colour.
• 20:17
  It just stuck with me.
• 20:18
  I just liked the colour of the car.
• 20:19
  I found some nicer stuff.
• 20:20
  And Dick Langley, who was my painter at the time, we bought a 44-gallon drum of it.
• 20:25
  And that zittle had to go through the drum before I could get some more.
• 20:28
  So it was, yeah, that's where the flat black came from, for sure.
• 20:31
  The cars of your career would always, you know, as the professionalism of it kicked in, would always be immaculately presented.
• 20:36
  But I love the fact that that trademark flat black always remained, mate.
• 20:42
  Didn't it?
• 20:42
  Yeah, well, Castro always wanted us to do a flat black car.
• 20:46
  We did a back to the...
• 20:47
  that blast from the past car, if you remember, and ran here at a couple of events.
• 20:51
  And then even when Golf Western came along, they wanted me to keep my car flat black.
• 20:57
  So, yeah, it's good that the big companies like that do recognise something that you would think would only be in the minds of real fans, you know.
• 21:05
  necessity mate is the mother of invention so you said before about the lessons you learned on the farm from welding to you know fixing farm machinery and equipment tell me the story and and of an early car and did you not find a a one ton of chassis at a swap meet somewhere and you sort of molded bodies to chassis and all sorts of materials everyone
• 21:27
  Yeah, I've still got that car too, by the way.
• 21:29
  I've got every car I've ever raced, at least, and most of the cars I've ever had.
• 21:33
  And all my mates, they vag the hell out of me all the time, telling me I've still got my lunch money from grade one wrapped up in the corner of my hanky somewhere.
• 21:42
  I hear you buy, but you don't often sell.
• 21:44
  Yeah, that's pretty much how it is.
• 21:46
  So I was up at the Twilmwood slot, mate, and I'd come across the panels for a 57 Chevrolet two-door, and it was two side panels and the roof.
• 21:56
  And I thought, if someone had cut it up to import it or something cheap, you know?
• 22:00
  And I just thought, I could probably build a car out of that, so I grabbed it.
• 22:02
  It was cheap, cheap, cheap, you know, at the time.
• 22:05
  And I bought it back here, then we needed a chassis.
• 22:07
  Well, I was a good friend with Wrecks up at Narangalba Wreckers, so I went up there and I said, I need a chassis to put it on a race car.
• 22:13
  And my welder at the time, my fabricator was a guy called Jerry Gale.
• 22:17
  And took Jerry up there and that and he said, well, you know, you're not going to mess with this, you're not going to mess with that.
• 22:22
  But, you know, if you get a decent hold and one tonne chassis, that's going to be something you can really, you know, it's going to be strong, you can base the ring on.
• 22:28
  So I got a hold and one tonne chassis and I already had a mould for the front.
• 22:32
  So I had the two doors and one of the panels on the 57th share of the VAC left-hand panel was no good.
• 22:40
  and a mate of mine, Dick Langley, who I said before was my painter, who's also my panel beater, and he's a customiser nowadays.
• 22:46
  And he got a sheet, he cut the whole panel off, got a flat sheet of tin, of metal, and tack welded it to the back of my car and just sat there with a hammer and dolly and a pair of tin snips, and he made a rear...
• 23:00
  rear 57 Chevy back mudguard on the car.
• 23:03
  It was just amazing, yeah, the talent that the guy had.
• 23:05
  He still got it today.
• 23:06
  He builds GT Falcons nowadays, restores them.
• 23:10
  And, yeah, he just made this mudguard.
• 23:12
  And there's a few little idiosyncrasies, you know, that aren't exactly...
• 23:17
  57 Chev, the Dick, I like the way he rolled some stuff and this and little dinty and stuff like that, that have been in every, because we took a mould of that car and every 57 Chev ever had has had that exact things on the back of it.
• 23:30
  It's crazy because old Dick was just such a talented guy and to turn a flat sheet of steel into a 57 Chev guard in less than two hours was just amazing.
• 23:38
  Amazing.
• 23:40
  I want to move to Wild Bunch.
• 23:43
  as the name suggests, kind of wild cars, wild characters coming together to race, that really was the inspiration for Top Door Slammer, the class or category we now know.
• 23:54
  How important was that period of your career and for the sports, for that matter, and your fondest memories of it, mate?
• 24:00
  Just recall some of those thoughts.
• 24:02
  Well, we were going to, you know, there was a higgily-vee-ly bunch of us, you know, they were racing in double V gas and all sorts of classes, you know, the Gats and all that in Sydney and everything.
• 24:13
  And there was a lot of cars and everyone loved them, you know.
• 24:14
  The supercharged door slams were doing big burnouts and they had lots of hair in them days.
• 24:18
  You know, not much nowadays, but lots of hair in them days and they were loud and, you know,
• 24:22
  And the variety of cars were just unreal, you know, like there was just so many different varieties.
• 24:26
  Custo and his customised, me and his Chevy and, you know, late model cars and Falcon Utes.
• 24:31
  And, you know, there's so many.
• 24:33
  And we just had this idea, why don't we all get together one day and have a state origin?
• 24:37
  So we had a state origin and it was, you know, New South Wales versus Queensland.
• 24:41
  And while we're sitting around having a state origin, you know, us versus them, you know, we're all sitting around thinking to ourselves, why don't we just stick together and go racing out and down the coast?
• 24:49
  Yeah.
• 24:50
  You know, Gladstone was strong in them days and Townsville was strong in them days and Sydney and Melbourne.
• 24:56
  And we thought, yeah, let's end even over in Adelaide.
• 25:01
  And that's where John O'Kerny first, that's where I first heard a supercharged automatic door slammer rumping.
• 25:09
  Yeah, rump, rump.
• 25:11
  So that was it.
• 25:12
  He started the craze and we all had to have one then, you know.
• 25:14
  But it was good and everyone got together and we just decided to do it.
• 25:20
  So whoever was available, we just looked into Gladstone, looked into Townsville, looked into Mackay and looked into Surface Paradise or Willowbank, I think it was at the time.
• 25:31
  And it just grew and grew and grew and grew and it was very, very good.
• 25:34
  And obviously everybody wanted to win everything and so...
• 25:39
  even though we're still getting good crowds and that.
• 25:41
  Some people like David Vaxer, for example.
• 25:44
  I'm running a small block Chevy, and David Vaxer turns out with the Keith Black.
• 25:47
  Hang on, Dave.
• 25:50
  What's going on here, mate?
• 25:51
  And Graeme Witters from the other Dolby turns out with the Keith Black.
• 25:55
  And I'm thinking to myself, you know, this ain't too fair here, so we had to get some rules together, you know.
• 25:59
  And the rules were never going to happen in Wild Bunch because it was like a slam fest.
• 26:04
  It was a display.
• 26:05
  It's like Graham Cowan's, you know, Outlaw Nitro Funny Cars.
• 26:09
  It's there as a, it's not a competition.
• 26:12
  It looks like a competition, but it's actually there as a...
• 26:14
  It's a show for the fans.
• 26:15
  It's a show for the fans.
• 26:16
  Yeah, it's a show for the fans.
• 26:18
  And that went on for years and years, so we started... We had some great times there, too.
• 26:24
  And it just...
• 26:25
  It sort of morphed into Door Slam, and then one day, you know, 1994, 1993, 1994, we had some meetings in Sydney.
• 26:31
  1995, we consolidated the rules, and the first Door Slam rounds in 1996.
• 26:37
  Luckily I won it.
• 26:38
  Well, this time Zaff had turned up over here, you know, so now we've got this mad...
• 26:42
  Rivalry.
• 26:43
  ...mad bloody West Australian guy coming over here and driving like an absolute frigging lunatic.
• 26:50
  But, you know, we can see nowadays how good he actually is.
• 26:53
  So, yeah, so some of the good times there was, I think, you know, the one we had at Service Paradise.
• 26:59
  at Colt of Hark, I should say, when Zach went out on the grass.
• 27:03
  That was something like that.
• 27:04
  Stuff like that was just really good, really friendship, a lot of good friendship, a lot of good wild vats races in Sydney, you know, and, you know, up and down the coast, especially up in Townsville and Mackay and Gladstone, you know, when we did a northern tour, that was good because all the guys, you know...
• 27:20
  Clouble is, nowadays I like sleeping in motel rooms.
• 27:23
  Them days I was happy to sleep under the truck.
• 27:25
  And I did plenty of times, you know.
• 27:27
  Marie would sleep in the car and I'd sleep under the truck.
• 27:29
  And then we started getting motel.
• 27:30
  Things just started to get more professional as times went on, you know.
• 27:33
  But, you know, I still remember the times when, you know, we used to get on the piss at night and, you know, you really...
• 27:40
  by 11 o'clock at night at 12 o'clock, and he'd go, oh, shit, we need somewhere to stay.
• 27:43
  You know, like, the whole rain wasn't in gear.
• 27:46
  So, you know, we were getting great crowds in them days, and the fans were fantastic.
• 27:49
  Our merchandise sales were terrific, and all the promoters loved us turning up there, and there was a lot of good time.
• 27:56
  I have to say, a lot of the best times I had was racing Cusso, Alan Valgen and his custom line.
• 28:00
  You know, he had a Chevy in one lane and a Ford in the other lane, both in the 50s, mid-50s.
• 28:06
  Oh, yeah, it was great stuff, and...
• 28:07
  And he used to do these monstrous burnouts, you know, and I used to do them next to him.
• 28:12
  And it was just good fun.
• 28:14
  The cars were of a way that...
• 28:17
  Like today, the cars are highly stressed engines, you know, making 3,000 and 4,000 horsepower.
• 28:20
  Them days, the engines were – they'd run all day.
• 28:25
  You know what I mean?
• 28:26
  Someone had – well, I had a radiator in mind.
• 28:27
  Most guys had radiators in them still to keep them cool.
• 28:30
  So you're driving, you do your – you're driving back to the pits.
• 28:32
  And it was nothing.
• 28:32
  That's just how everybody was.
• 28:33
  These are the cars that we'd been racing for years in other classes.
• 28:37
  So they were heavy old things and they didn't go too fast, you know.
• 28:40
  I think they –
• 28:41
  Les Winter, I think he was the first one to break into a six, something like that.
• 28:46
  It was just an interesting time and a very entertaining time, and it was just a very good, fun time.
• 28:51
  The door slammer nowadays turned into a fierce competition, you know what I mean?
• 28:55
  And that's where we wanted it.
• 28:56
  And I used to say to myself in them days, after I got them all going, I said,
• 29:02
  Sort of instigate.
• 29:03
  A lot of people were there when we sort of turned Wild Bunch into Door Slammer, but it was a very, very strong passion of mine.
• 29:10
  And, you know, after nowadays I sort of think, just be careful what you wish for because it's tough out there.
• 29:16
  I reckon that was – was that a saying of your dads or your grandfathers, be careful what you wish for because –
• 29:21
  In a strange way, mate, you were a bit of a victim of your own creation in that sense.
• 29:25
  You passionately immersed yourself in this thing from, you know, wanting to see it succeed, and succeed it did, but also for others, didn't it?
• 29:35
  Yeah, it did.
• 29:35
  My grandfather and my dad always had sayings.
• 29:37
  I mean, we were farmers, you know what I mean?
• 29:39
  They were going to dust farmers, and so were my uncles, and, you know, they had all these sayings and things all the time.
• 29:44
  I thought it was normal.
• 29:45
  When I went to Gatton College...
• 29:47
  when I was 15 years old, I would have been the most naive guy there, you know, because all I'd done my whole life was go to school and only listen to what I wanted to listen to, you know.
• 29:56
  I like maths, I like English, that sort of stuff.
• 29:58
  And some of the stuff I didn't know, French, what are we doing French for, you know?
• 30:03
  No one on my farm speaks French, so, you know, none of the cows speak French.
• 30:06
  But, you know, so I was just – used to work on the farm solid all the time.
• 30:09
  So I didn't really know –
• 30:11
  what was going on when I went to Gatton.
• 30:14
  So I basically had to learn social life from there on.
• 30:18
  And living at Gatton College, I was living up there, Vauda, so living with 2,000 other guys, you learn pretty quick what's going on around the place.
• 30:25
  And then getting out of there and getting into the cars and stuff like that, it was just my first EJ wagon.
• 30:30
  I wish I could find it now.
• 30:32
  I think the way I left it probably wouldn't be too good at Nick anywhere.
• 30:35
  But, you know, I just like your first car.
• 30:37
  And the old prefect I had, we parked it in the back one day and she went up through a fire and went through it.
• 30:42
  So I lost that one, you know.
• 30:44
  And it's just, you know, you just look back on a lot of things, the way things, a lot of things happen.
• 30:48
  Yeah, I think my grandfather and my father, they had a lot of sayings.
• 30:52
  And, you know, it was just the way it was.
• 30:54
  It was just a farm.
• 30:55
  I was a farm boy, genuine farm boy.
• 30:57
  You know, loved the farm.
• 30:58
  Didn't know there was anything different.
• 31:00
  Didn't know that, didn't know anything.
• 31:02
  You must have been, at the same time, enormously proud, because when it transitioned to that professional period that you're talking about, you're talking 20 cars, I think, phenomenal racing.
• 31:13
  It was a great patch for the sport, wasn't it?
• 31:16
  Yeah, it was.
• 31:16
  It still is, and it could be a lot better too.
• 31:18
  The sport's a little bit fragmented at the moment.
• 31:20
  What does it need, in your opinion, then?
• 31:22
  It needs unification, there's no doubt about that.
• 31:24
  And we need a solid track.
• 31:26
  I think there's opportunities with Tal and Vend and the family that owns Tal and Vend down there to get a good track.
• 31:33
  Well, there's a good track there now, but we don't seem to use it very often.
• 31:36
  It needs some upgrades.
• 31:38
  And that house at the end comes up real fast nowadays.
• 31:42
  Years ago when you're running 180, 200 mile an hour down there, you know, you could stop and you'd see the house down.
• 31:48
  There's a house right at the end of the track.
• 31:49
  You'd see that.
• 31:50
  You'll see the house, you'll think, gee, I hope my parachutes work every time.
• 31:54
  Nowadays, going through the top end at 250 mile an hour is crazy.
• 31:59
  It's just really bad.
• 32:00
  So they've dropped the vac to 1,000 foot.
• 32:02
  And I think that's what we need.
• 32:03
  You need the racetracks.
• 32:04
  Oh, and Alice Springs, the track at Alice Springs.
• 32:06
  There's a track out at Alice Springs.
• 32:08
  Because of the stability of the ground out there, it's like racing on glass.
• 32:11
  It's just so flat.
• 32:13
  And when they get the traction, if you've been there for the second day, the traction comes good.
• 32:17
  And the breaking area, you don't think you can knock any neutrin roll to a stop, you know what I mean?
• 32:21
  It's just a great place and it's all just getting the people there, you know, to race.
• 32:25
  So, you know, we certainly have the tracks and the ability for the tracks to get better over the next year or two.
• 32:29
  More often, I'm sort of saying, they can't get much better.
• 32:31
  Some of them are fantastic now.
• 32:34
  And then we just need unification in the management of the sports somehow.
• 32:38
  You know, those sides are so passionate about retaining what they've got that I don't know, you know.
• 32:43
  And as far as the races go, we don't care who sanctions the racetrack.
• 32:46
  We just want all the racetracks running and we'll just go to all the racetracks, you know, and if some IHRO sanctioned one or Andrew sanctioned some, so be it, you know, we'll hold two licences, we'll go to two centres.
• 32:57
  Everyone's of the same mind.
• 32:58
  There's no one that doesn't think that.
• 33:00
  everybody in all the competitors think well looks like you guys aren't going to ever get your act together and join up again so we'll just race under those sanctions and happy to do so
• 33:21
  Top Door Slammer is a professional class of Australian drag racing.
• 33:25
  It caters to full-bodied racing sedans which are replicas of Australian or US production vehicles with supercharged V8 engines which are fuelled by methanol.
• 33:36
  I want you, if you can, to put our listeners as close as possible into your driver's seat.
• 33:43
  So you talked whatever it was before, three to three and a half thousand horsepower.
• 33:48
  There is a competitor beside you that you're endeavoring to beat.
• 33:51
  There is reaction time to think about, and there is this constant quest to beat the clock, mate, isn't there?
• 33:58
  Just describe what it's like and what you go through for that five to six seconds.
• 34:04
  Yeah, it's changed a lot over the years.
• 34:06
  Once upon a time, all the cars were variably different.
• 34:10
  Some people had much better tune-ups than other guys.
• 34:12
  And nowadays, it's still a little bit that way, but nowadays you can vibe pretty much all the real good stuff.
• 34:18
  And a lot of the teams in Australia rely on American cars.
• 34:21
  American tuners coming out here to help them.
• 34:24
  And so it's really closed up a lot in that area.
• 34:27
  So the reaction time, which is separate to the ET, when the green light comes on, you can sit there for five minutes and then still run the same ET.
• 34:35
  Or you can be right on the ball and hit that second light that starts the timers within .001 of a second.
• 34:41
  Some people do 0000.
• 34:43
  So, you know, the reaction time has become very important because...
• 34:47
  Even though some guy might be running a 560 and you're only running a 570, you can gain that on the tree.
• 34:52
  Easy, easy, easy.
• 34:55
  So when you get in the cars, the first thing is they've changed a lot over the years.
• 34:59
  I'm very fortunate, as guys like Gary Phillips and a lot of people are.
• 35:03
  We started with 15 and 16 second cars and then it's 16, 15, 13, 12, 10, you know.
• 35:08
  We always said it'll never go any faster.
• 35:10
  Well, now we're down to mid fives in door slammers.
• 35:13
  It's ridiculous.
• 35:15
  And I can see a couple of cars that are going to run 540 shortly, which is...
• 35:19
  That's nuts, mate.
• 35:19
  It's nuts.
• 35:20
  It's weird.
• 35:20
  Well, a guy in, I think, a mauler down Sydney the other day ran 273 mile an hour in a door slammer, you know.
• 35:29
  That's fast.
• 35:30
  And he didn't do it once or twice.
• 35:31
  He did it all day.
• 35:32
  You know, he did it all day.
• 35:34
  So, yeah, they're fast.
• 35:35
  That's a twin turbo car.
• 35:37
  And that's another story, turbos versus blowers.
• 35:39
  That's a whole different ballgame at the moment.
• 35:43
  Yeah, so it's really got down to the fact now where, you know, I was fortunate that I started slow and I got used to the cars as they went.
• 35:51
  And these guys that jump in these cars, 550, 560 cars, and haven't driven anything that fast before, I take my hat off to them, mate, because it's got to be daunting, to say the least, you know.
• 36:04
  And I got a bit of a taste of it the other day when I had my health issue and I was out of the car for a year and a half, which...
• 36:10
  When I jumped back in the car, I did my first run at Willowbank.
• 36:13
  It was only a 6.30 or something like that.
• 36:15
  I got down the other end and I said, freaking hell, that was fucking fast.
• 36:20
  Bloody hell, you know, I got there and I thought, then I got the other end and I thought, that must have been fast.
• 36:24
  I got down the other end and it was a 6.30, you know.
• 36:25
  What happened when you looked at the time?
• 36:27
  Yeah, yeah, and I thought to myself, geez, you know, that's going to take some getting used to it.
• 36:32
  It still is, you know.
• 36:33
  I went 5.80 the other day and, you know, and that feels fast.
• 36:37
  So I've got to...
• 36:39
  When you're in there every second week or every third week, you don't really feel it, you know what I mean?
• 36:43
  That situational training is the best thing for you, isn't it?
• 36:46
  Yeah, yeah.
• 36:47
  I took Wayne Gardner for a run at Western Sydney once at Eastern Creek, and he got at the other end of the race track and he said...
• 36:55
  how the hell do you know what's going on out there?
• 36:56
  You know, I couldn't see anything for the first half of the racetrack, you know, and I sort of thought to myself, oh, yeah, I was afraid, you know, I don't really want to jump on a motorbike either and let it sideways around a corner.
• 37:06
  But it's, yeah, you know, when you've been doing it a long time, you can sort of, it just feels normal, you know what I mean?
• 37:12
  Your brain must just get used to working with it, you know.
• 37:15
  So you get in the car and you're sitting in the stage in the lanes, you work the tune out, you're hoping that you've got something pretty right, you know, you sort of laid it out.
• 37:22
  A lot of stuff we've got nowadays assists us, computer technology, you know, programs that let us know how much oxygen's in the air, devices that tell us how much traction there is on the racetrack, a lot of that sort of stuff.
• 37:34
  And we can really alter anything to do with the timing of the car now and the fuel.
• 37:39
  We've got complete control.
• 37:40
  You can have any timing anywhere on any cylinder and any fuel anywhere along the track.
• 37:45
  So a lot of that stuff is in.
• 37:47
  We're not supposed to be having electronic assistance,
• 37:51
  So all that stuff has to be pre-set.
• 37:52
  You can't have anything that's reactive on the run, and I hope they keep it that way, or else it'll just turn into a bunch of experts sitting on the side of the racetrack racing their cars for us, you know.
• 38:03
  So it has to stay that way, I think, and everyone realises that and hopes it does.
• 38:09
  And so you put a pretty hot tune-up in, you know, especially qualifying is always, you know, I need to get down the track, I need to get in the field kind of thing, you know.
• 38:16
  So some guys that go like Zapp will go hell for leather every time, you don't care.
• 38:19
  Well, the same as Paul Moyet, you know, those two guys going head-to-head at them.
• 38:24
  They just go as fast as they can every time, you know.
• 38:27
  And sometimes it screws up and they don't get in and don't go as fast as they want.
• 38:32
  In general, yeah, so qualifying's a bit different.
• 38:34
  When the first round comes, then it's just year on.
• 38:36
  First round's always the toughest round.
• 38:39
  It's the one that you've got to win.
• 38:41
  It's easy to, you know, so it's the first round.
• 38:43
  And second round's always, I suppose, very similar.
• 38:47
  And then if you get to the final, it's all cool then because you're...
• 38:49
  in the final you know if you win or lose you only get worse you can do is runner up so uh but the cars themselves you strap yourself in obviously head restraints in that nowadays a lot of stuff different to the early days you know when you had nothing and uh then we had head we had neck races and now we've got uh you know hands devices and stuff like that and so you do feel a bit better in the car actually to tell you the truth with all that gear on you know you know the safety side of it's really working and it was good as it can be anyway
• 39:14
  So, you know, check all the shoots.
• 39:15
  The boys have checked everything.
• 39:16
  You go out there and you're up, so they fire the car up and burn out, nice long burn out.
• 39:23
  Well, it depends on the day.
• 39:24
  If it's a really hot day and a really hot track, you've got to keep the burn outs down a little bit worse.
• 39:27
  But Edwin and Astles and places like that, you can do long burn outs because the track's cold.
• 39:32
  You've got to get some tyres.
• 39:33
  They do recommend, I think it's five seconds at so many revs, but who cares?
• 39:40
  The longer the burn out, the better.
• 39:42
  And we love doing it.
• 39:43
  I love doing that sort of stuff.
• 39:43
  But nowadays, the cars are so...
• 39:46
  The valve springs and compression ratios, it's just so stressed.
• 39:50
  If you do too big a burn out, say you can just break a blow valve on the hit of the throttle.
• 39:53
  Oh, yeah, there.
• 39:54
  When you open the throttle, you can just bust the blow valve.
• 39:57
  It'll just snap if you've done too much stupid shit with it.
• 40:00
  So, yeah, and...
• 40:01
  They've recently allowed auto shift in.
• 40:04
  So we've had to shift gears right up until now.
• 40:06
  And, you know, it's not hard once you get used to it.
• 40:10
  Do you prefer the old way or...?
• 40:12
  It's actually very controversial within the sport because a lot of guys say it took a lot of the driver away.
• 40:18
  But, you know...
• 40:21
  I used to be able to shift within 30 or 20, 30 revs every time, and so could Van and so could everyone pretty much.
• 40:28
  And everyone gets used to shifting, so I don't really know that it made that much difference.
• 40:32
  What it did when newbies come along, they had trouble with it.
• 40:36
  It was very difficult for someone to get used to shifting those things that quick.
• 40:39
  You have shift lights and stuff, but the auto shift just makes it foolproof.
• 40:45
  You just go down.
• 40:46
  The first time I went down there with Auto Shift, which was in Sydney a couple of meetings ago, I sort of drove the car down the racetrack and the thing's shifting itself and taking off and shifting itself and taking off.
• 40:56
  I'm sort of looking around going, there's not much to do anymore, is there?
• 41:01
  because really the shifting is something you've got to concentrate on to get the revs right to get the car to go fast and it just there's multi-speed transmissions nowadays with the advent of converters like most cars have got converters in them nowadays and they still have a manual transmission so you've still got to be shifted but they've got a converter instead of a clutch and
• 41:20
  I run a four-speed now.
• 41:22
  A lot of guys run five-sweeds.
• 41:25
  We're not allowed to, but in the US they run seven-sweeds.
• 41:28
  And the thing is that years ago when I first built the car with the Holden chassis in it, we had four-sweeds in the cars, you know, and then the progression was, oh, look, you know, I've got better clutches, more power, three-speed, you know.
• 41:43
  Some guys even went to two-sweeds.
• 41:45
  Well, then we went back to three-sweeds.
• 41:47
  Now we're back to four-sweeds.
• 41:48
  Right.
• 41:48
  You know, so it's just how the sport goes.
• 41:51
  It's crazy.
• 41:52
  You've got to put in what you need, and that's what's happened.
• 41:54
  So we're back at four and five speeds now.
• 41:57
  So, yeah, the auto shift has made a lot of difference to the way the car goes down the racetrack.
• 42:01
  It has its advantages and it has its disadvantages.
• 42:04
  and there's been a couple of accidents caused by the auto shifts, what happens if the car starts spinning the wheels or shaking the tyres, which happens a lot in drag racing, and it's not pointing down the racetrack anymore, the possibility is it might shift.
• 42:18
  And you can lock that out with time, but it's not foolproof.
• 42:22
  So the car might be heading for the fence, you shift it.
• 42:24
  So what we do on a normal run, if the car shakes, you shift it and it stops shaking and drives off.
• 42:29
  So if the car is sitting sideways, aiming for the wall, and it shakes, and then it shifts itself, you don't, you would never shift yourself when it's aimed for the wall.
• 42:37
  It shifts itself straight into the wall.
• 42:39
  And it's a dangerous thing.
• 42:40
  You do have to learn that you can't, if a car's not going dead straight in the track with an auto shift, you can't fettle it or anything like that.
• 42:49
  You know what I mean?
• 42:49
  You've just got to get off it.
• 42:51
  Yeah, so the cars, they're fast early in the run nowadays.
• 42:54
  Once upon a time, 105s were fast, 1.1s were fast in the 60 foot.
• 42:57
  Now you've got Moit's running 0.93.
• 42:58
  In the States, they've got doorstands running 0.88, 0.87 in the 60 foot.
• 43:03
  So they're doing 100k at the 60 foot mark.
• 43:04
  That's incredible.
• 43:10
  It is.
• 43:10
  It's ridiculous, you know, how fast they're going.
• 43:13
  And then you've got, you know, with the time they're going, well, they're doing...
• 43:17
  I can remember Bill Kuhn in the United States, he turned the door slammer world upside down when he ran 200 mile an hour to the quarter mile.
• 43:25
  Nothing like that had ever been done, you know.
• 43:27
  Like, it was just, how the hell did they do that fast?
• 43:29
  Gee, this sport's gone somewhere now.
• 43:31
  If you don't run 200 mile an hour now to half track, you're not going to win the race.
• 43:35
  You know, it's just how it is.
• 43:37
  We're running 200 mile an hour now to half track, so...
• 43:41
  some cars run, like the turbo cars, can run 213 to half track, 214 to half track, and I think Venn's been 206 to half track, so it's just crazy how fast it's come.
• 43:52
  A lot of it's technology in the chassis of the cars, and more power, more engine.
• 43:56
  The torque converter thing's helped a lot, although guys like John Zapp here, who's stuck with clutches because he has the same clutch knowledge, and he's always had the very best...
• 44:06
  clutch program, you know what I mean?
• 44:08
  Whatever he's doing in his clutch is working super well, always has, and so he won't change over to a converter quickly, you know, because he's winning now with what he's got, so.
• 44:18
  But, you know, the clutch thing, a lot of people, we had a good clutch program, not as good as his, but we had a good clutch program, used to work well for us, but we found the converters to be a lot better.
• 44:26
  Everything we got's automatic nowadays.
• 44:28
  And even the 57, the old 57 Chevy black one that I drive in the street, it's auto.
• 44:33
  Everything's auto.
• 44:35
  All the guys that still run the clutches and stick with their world, the clutches, all they're saying to us all the time is, yeah, but you know, I can see why you'd go to a converter because it'd be good for hill starts, wouldn't they?
• 44:45
  You know, smart asses.
• 44:48
  There's a bunch of jokes getting round about, you know, we cop it pretty bad from the clutch boys.
• 44:52
  But, yeah, it's good rivalry in the sport, the clutch and the whatever.
• 44:55
  So, yeah, as you're going down the racetrack, with a converter, the big difference with the converters is and leaving the start line, when you've got a clutch in the car, you've got your foot on the clutch, you've got a handbrake, you push the handbrake hard, and you've got one on the clutch.
• 45:08
  You have no footbrake in the car.
• 45:10
  So you're revving the thing up, you're ringing up to the revs, and you let go of the handbrake a little bit.
• 45:14
  You ride the clutch just a real little bit so the car moves forward.
• 45:17
  And then when the light turns amber, when it flashes amber, you've got to let go of the rate, flatten it and drop the clutch.
• 45:25
  Now, swapping feet is important.
• 45:27
  How do you swap feet?
• 45:28
  If you get your foot down first before you let your clutch up, and this all happens in a split second, the engine revs come up high and you're more likely going to blow the tyres off it.
• 45:38
  So...
• 45:39
  And the other way around is if you get your foot off the clutch first before you get the throttle down, it'll bog the motor down harder to the start line.
• 45:46
  So some guys are really, really good at it, you know, and experience matters a lot, obviously.
• 45:51
  And swapping feet is just a really tricky thing in clutch cars.
• 45:56
  Okay, that's another thing that, another controversial thing, when they let autos in, and Zapp's one of the ones that hates them.
• 46:02
  All we do in the automatics nowadays, we just have a button, the converter drive that drives the converter instead of the clutch.
• 46:09
  It has a big brake inside, a pressure brake.
• 46:12
  So when you're on the start line, you just pull in and you push a button on the steering wheel and that locks the transmission and then you just go flat to the floor.
• 46:20
  As soon as the end of the light comes, you just go flat to the floor on the throttle and an electronic two-step holds the engine at whatever preset rev you have.
• 46:28
  So you're sitting there and all you do is just...
• 46:30
  flick your finger off the button.
• 46:31
  There is no swap feet.
• 46:32
  There is no...
• 46:33
  It's perfect every time, you know what I mean?
• 46:35
  And the clutch boys hate it, you know, because they just say... Well, you know, guys like Zap, and, you know, because he's so good at what he has, he says things like, you know, you've taken away the start line.
• 46:49
  Gary Phillips is the same.
• 46:50
  Gary Phillips hates converters because he says you've taken away the fact, the swapping of the feet, which is something that he's extremely good at, you know.
• 46:58
  And...
• 46:59
  I think 21 championships, like Gary's got, sort of proves the fact he knows what he's doing in that area.
• 47:04
  And so he just doesn't like the auto, leaving off a button.
• 47:08
  You know, he said it just gives inexperienced guys a major advantage that they wouldn't normally have had.
• 47:14
  And same as the auto shift, you know, he just doesn't, him and Gary and Zav and all the other things, you know, you're just taking away the driver.
• 47:21
  But I think the sport's got to move on and, you know, it's got to progress as things go.
• 47:27
  A lot of sports now see into turbo cars come along.
• 47:30
  Turbo V8s are just absolutely incredible.
• 47:34
  I think we'd be lucky to have 3,500 horsepower in one of our engines on the very best day blown.
• 47:40
  They dynoed a twin-turbo Hemi in the United States.
• 47:44
  Yeah, they had 5,700 horsepower.
• 47:47
  5,700 horsepower, and they commonly have 5,200, 5,300, and there wouldn't be one out there that hasn't got 4,000.
• 47:55
  So they're a whole new ballgame, that is, and they want to get in a race with us.
• 47:59
  In the United States, they race blown cars against turbo cars and nitrous cars, and obviously the problem for the sanctioning body is keeping the parity there.
• 48:09
  And so they've got real small turbos on them, and they limited the boost, right, which they can do with turbos.
• 48:16
  And then the nitrous cars have struggled keeping up with anyone.
• 48:20
  So they're allowed to do virtually anything they want to do, pretty much.
• 48:23
  And they do.
• 48:23
  They win races, but not as much as the turbo cars.
• 48:26
  The Vlanca.
• 48:27
  So what it is now in the States, because you've got all three in there,
• 48:30
  Depending on the weather and the track on the day, who's got the advantage, basically?
• 48:34
  And, you know, if it's really good weather, the lower cars come good.
• 48:37
  If the weather's crappy, the turbo cars come good.
• 48:40
  If the track's, you know, really, really crappy, the nitrous cars usually come good.
• 48:44
  So that's where they are.
• 48:45
  That's why we've really pushed hard not to allow the turbo cars, the nitrous guys want to come and race in door slammer.
• 48:52
  You know, but no one really wants them in there.
• 48:54
  But now there's so many of them.
• 48:56
  that they started a new class called Pro Extreme, which is unlimited everything.
• 49:00
  So you can do anything you like, which gives the blown cars a disadvantage because the turbo car, we can't make the horse for how they can make.
• 49:07
  And I'd say if they ever put some rules into that Pro Extreme class, it would morph into...
• 49:13
  the two class would morph together, you know.
• 49:15
  So, um...
• 49:17
  But, so, driving the turbo cars is a whole different ballgame again.
• 49:20
  You have little boxes and stuff, so they're pretty much, you know, traction-controlled, engine-controlled, ECUs, everything is...
• 49:27
  They're completely controlled by computers, and, um...
• 49:31
  And they have to be, you know.
• 49:32
  I wouldn't be totally against turbo cars if they limited the turbo to one, because we only got one lower.
• 49:39
  They can only have one turbo.
• 49:41
  And gave them, instead of computer control, gave them pop-offs, check valves and fills, like we're going to use.
• 49:47
  And then it would be fair.
• 49:49
  Problem is they wouldn't go very good.
• 49:51
  So they would never agree to that.
• 49:52
  But I think there's enough of them now to build a class, a strong class of turbo and nitrous cars and any blown cars that want to go and fly.
• 49:59
  The zap could fly.
• 50:00
  They're easy.
• 50:01
  We're limited to blowers.
• 50:03
  Our blower.
• 50:03
  There's bigger blowers out there than what we're allowed to use.
• 50:06
  and you can put more overdrive on them.
• 50:08
  So there's a lot of things happening at the moment, and I think one of the biggest problems is going to be the racetracks to hold the cars in the braking areas.
• 50:17
  That's the biggest thing facing the promoters and the sanctioning bodies right now in Australian drag racing and probably drag racing in the world is how much braking area...
• 50:28
  you've got to pull off a 20s because we're heavy.
• 50:30
  That you need.
• 50:31
  2,700-pound cars.
• 50:32
  If anything goes wrong, anything goes wrong, you're in a bit of trouble, you know what I mean?
• 50:37
  If one parachute doesn't come out and, like, Steve Hand the other day, 257 mile an hour or something, he ran in Sydney.
• 50:43
  One parachute didn't come out and he went, like,
• 50:47
  30 metres into the sand and couldn't do anything about it.
• 50:49
  He's got four wheel carbon brakes and Sam Fenwick, a couple of months ago, neither shoot come out and he hit the sand and the nets at over 220 mile an hour and he's so lucky
• 51:04
  that head and neck restraints, seat belts, and he had all the best stuff.
• 51:08
  He had one of the best cars he can buy.
• 51:10
  And, you know, by the time the other driver got down to see if he was all right to try and help him out of the car, standing beside the car.
• 51:17
  You know what I mean?
• 51:18
  So it damaged the car and wrecked everything.
• 51:21
  But, you know, the nets and so on.
• 51:22
  And that's going to be one of the biggest problems because there is racetracks like Adelaide and other tracks in the country that don't have the big, long raking areas and don't have nets.
• 51:31
  Like in Darwin, you can't have a net there because that's a V8 supercar track.
• 51:34
  And I'm sure they're going to want a net set in the middle of the race, right?
• 51:37
  But, you know, so that's the biggest issue facing everyone at the moment is how to control that.
• 51:44
  You say, a lot of people say, let's slow the cars down.
• 51:46
  Okay, so what do you do?
• 51:47
  You make them lighter to make them safer.
• 51:49
  Oh, they can go faster, won't they?
• 51:51
  Yes.
• 51:51
  So that's no good.
• 51:52
  Okay, we're going to limit the motors.
• 51:54
  Well, every time they limit the engines in the United States, they work out how to make them go faster.
• 51:58
  Alcohol funny cars in the States used to run 570s, 580s.
• 52:02
  They said they were going too fast, so they took overdrive off them.
• 52:06
  Instead of running 125% over in the lower, they dropped it into 92% over in the lower, and now they're running 540s.
• 52:13
  So nearly 280 miles an hour.
• 52:16
  So a crew chief in a drag car will always work out, they up the compression, they up the revs, and they just make the cars go fast.
• 52:23
  Because even if the car goes fast is what the basic thing is,
• 52:27
  So I don't think they'll ever get it that way.
• 52:29
  They've tried putting RPM limits on the cars.
• 52:31
  You just put a taller diff gear in the car, you know, and you get around that.
• 52:34
  In NHRA in America, you are limited to diff gear, and that's why they've done it, to keep the mile-and-hours down a bit, you know.
• 52:41
  But I know the Sanxing bodies are talking about it all the time.
• 52:43
  We're talking about it all the time, especially after Sam Fennick's accident.
• 52:46
  That was a scary accident.
• 52:47
  I mean, you know, he got to go home to his family that night, which is just so good.
• 52:51
  But the accident, when you see, Google it up and have a look at it, it was just horrific.
• 52:56
  Horrific, frightening.
• 52:57
  You're hitting a net at 220-plus mile an hour.
• 53:00
  You just wouldn't think you had any chance at all.
• 53:04
  And the nets did their job, I suppose, but they wrecked the nets and everything and wrecked the car, but at least he got out and walked away.
• 53:10
  At least it worked.
• 53:12
  It is heaven to come here, mate, because we're in your workshop as we record the podcast, surrounded by race cars and other bits and pieces.
• 53:20
  Give people that are perhaps listening that aren't diehard drag racing fans but are fans of motorsport a sense of what it takes to run a team like this in terms of personnel.
• 53:32
  You don't have to give us an exact budget, but maybe a range of what's involved.
• 53:36
  I mean, it's a big undertaking, mate, isn't it?
• 53:40
  Yeah, we've got a lot of stuff here, and I've got a big workshop, a lot of gear, probably more than anyone else that's drag racing in the country, but I've been doing it for 40-plus years.
• 53:52
  Gary Phillips is probably another one that's got a lot of good stuff, and he's just recently upgraded his workshop over where he lives too.
• 53:58
  But we've got a massive workshop.
• 53:59
  You've got to understand that this workshop here, and I spent my whole career knowing that I love old cars.
• 54:06
  I love restoring them, or let's say customising them.
• 54:09
  Acquiring them.
• 54:11
  acquiring them and customising them.
• 54:13
  So I've built, as well as the workshop, just in a basic overview, my workshop here is probably half and half drag racing and the other half is restoration.
• 54:23
  So I've got a panel shop here.
• 54:25
  I've got a carbon fibre shop here.
• 54:26
  I've got a 3D printing shop here.
• 54:28
  I've got vacuum forms here.
• 54:30
  I've got a lot of stuff for manufacturing here.
• 54:32
  Hopefully, if I get an opportunity after...
• 54:35
  after racing when venny takes over and that's what that's what i've always wanted to do ever since i was a young fella racing i wouldn't say it got in the way because i love doing it but racing's like if i didn't do this i'd be i'd be would have customized 200 cars by now you know what i mean that's just what i would i really love just doing that stuff and i got um i think it's 47 cars here at the moment vivix cadillacs chevvys uh
• 55:01
  you know, pickup trucks, all sorts of stuff.
• 55:02
  And some are restored, some I bought half restored, some are customized.
• 55:07
  And my little mick, he's done a bit of work on a couple of them for me and a few other guys.
• 55:11
  Dick Langdon's done a little bit of stuff over the years for me.
• 55:14
  And, you know, there's still a lot here that need a lot of work and I've got a lot of plans.
• 55:18
  I lay in bed every night working out what I'm going to do, just don't ever get time to do it.
• 55:23
  Some of the stuff I want to build.
• 55:24
  You know, Street Machine Magazine, the Summer Nats, all that sort of stuff.
• 55:27
  That's what I really was sort of into.
• 55:30
  Drag racing was sort of a side love, you know what I mean?
• 55:34
  It sort of obviously blossomed into what I did for a living.
• 55:37
  And while I've had good income from drag racing, and, you know, me and Marie live pretty basically –
• 55:44
  And, you know, I've put a lot of stuff aside, what equipment that's all ready to go, some of the best equipment you can buy in the world for restoration and customisation and stuff.
• 55:53
  And that's where I want to go.
• 55:54
  So basically the workshop's half and half.
• 55:57
  But to run a draggler, you need a good engine room.
• 55:59
  Obviously you need a good engine room.
• 56:00
  People come here and reckon I've got a...
• 56:04
  Lamborghini engine room, you know.
• 56:06
  But, you know, there is two of us racing the team, and I've got actually four cars here at the moment.
• 56:11
  We've got two friends from New Zealand, Trevor Smith and Rod Harvey.
• 56:14
  They're both based here.
• 56:16
  And, you know, we do a lot of building engines for ourselves as well for some of the other cars.
• 56:22
  So we've got four spots in our engine room.
• 56:24
  Most people have one.
• 56:25
  We've got four vays in our engine room.
• 56:27
  Are you hands-on in the engine room?
• 56:29
  Not so much since the accident, since the cancer, you know, but then he's sort of taken over that.
• 56:35
  We had Graham Frawley working here for a while and that took a lot of load off us because he was an excellent engine builder and he's someone we could trust, you know, and we could trust to do the engines.
• 56:46
  But he left when we had, I think we lost a sponsor or something and we had a few months with it and I couldn't pay, you know, and that's nothing about payrolls and stuff.
• 56:54
  You've got to keep that role in the long too, you know, so...
• 56:57
  They've got a nice big engine room, good cleaning room out the back, because that's where a lot of it is.
• 57:01
  It's maintaining the engine.
• 57:03
  Preventative maintenance is what keeps drag race teams going.
• 57:07
  If you try and get their last five runs out of a set of Conrod, you're probably going to blow the motor up.
• 57:10
  It's going to cost you $50,000.
• 57:11
  So you're better off putting a $2,000 set of Conrods in and having a program that puts them in at a specific time that you – like 22 runs, we say we replace our Conrods, right?
• 57:24
  We had, when we didn't have some cash there a few years ago, when Vin was running a funny car as well, we did 47 runs on a set of Conrides with no problem.
• 57:32
  So you probably could do that.
• 57:34
  But then I've also seen them break at 10.
• 57:36
  So, you know, 22 and we just take the risk at 22.
• 57:39
  And Vail Springs, Vail, we do 50 runs on the Vails.
• 57:42
  Crank shafts usually crack before you get to your 50 runs, you know.
• 57:47
  If you have trauma and you break a block and stuff like that, Valsprings used to last about 10 runs once or less with the technology.
• 57:59
  Jamie Noonan, Noonan Race Engineering, he's in the States now, but when he was here he had a Sprintron.
• 58:05
  So you could put your engine and your head onto a Sprintron that would spin it up and he had it all...
• 58:13
  radar and stuff watching the valve open and shut and the valve spring.
• 58:17
  And you could see it on the graph what was going on.
• 58:19
  And while we had that, we developed technology.
• 58:22
  We did it, Zap did it, and a few other guys did it individually, not together.
• 58:27
  And we all developed camshafts, camshaft profiles that are a lot softer.
• 58:31
  Once you see it in front of you,
• 58:32
  Simple, you know, and Jamie had that thing going.
• 58:35
  We all went over there.
• 58:36
  We did about 100 hours on it, and I know Zap did a lot on it, and a lot of other teams did a lot, and Jamie did a lot on it too, you know, and you learn an awful lot.
• 58:43
  So now, you know, touch wood, we can get 60, 70 runs out of the Wells Springs, you know what I mean?
• 58:48
  It just changes because the – and you can still rate one on the first run, don't get me wrong, you know.
• 58:53
  There's still issues with manufacturing and stuff that still go on, but –
• 58:57
  Yeah, so a lot of stuff has changed, a lot of stuff.
• 59:00
  The magnetos are a lot better nowadays than they used to be as well.
• 59:02
  So it's in the workshop, and then we've got an assembly area for the cars.
• 59:06
  It holds three cars.
• 59:08
  Then allows me to have one they, which is really good of him.
• 59:12
  And he's got his door slammer in one way, and then he's got his turbo Toyota Solara in the next way.
• 59:20
  And then Rod Harvey's got another way to himself, and so has Trev Smith got a way to themselves.
• 59:25
  And then Ven's also got another street car that he races, a Datsun.
• 59:31
  Yeah.
• 59:31
  Dad, Ven's a bit of a Datsun.
• 59:32
  You walk in this workshop.
• 59:33
  It's 1600, I think, is it?
• 59:34
  Yeah, I think so.
• 59:35
  You walk in the workshop, there you go.
• 59:37
  Hang on, 57 Sheriff, Corvette.
• 59:40
  Who's is this Datsun?
• 59:41
  What are them Datsuns doing over there?
• 59:44
  And, yeah, that's just Vinny loves them.
• 59:46
  He's got one that he races.
• 59:47
  He's also in the middle of building a radial car.
• 59:49
  So drag racing's...
• 59:51
  spearing out a little bit in a couple of areas in Australia, in the world actually.
• 59:55
  We've got big fat tyres in the back of our car and they've got bigger and bigger over the years and we've learned how to use them.
• 1:00:00
  And some guys got sick of that, didn't like it.
• 1:00:03
  They used to have a class in called 10.5 racing where they used to have a tyre 10.5 inches wide and they started going real fast and that.
• 1:00:10
  So now they use these little fish-arse little radials on the back of cars.
• 1:00:14
  And they run the door slammer type engines in them.
• 1:00:18
  Big twin turbo V8s and blown, supercharged, screw blown, engines with 3,000 and 4,000, you know.
• 1:00:24
  And they get these things and they've learnt, they've learnt by...
• 1:00:30
  changing the suspension in the car, and they change it radically, and they change the suspension and the way they run the clutch and the timing and all that in the car.
• 1:00:38
  Those cars nowadays, a radial car, even though they're a bit lighter, a radial car with a, I think they have a 365-mil tyre on the back of them, will go faster and quicker than a door slammer.
• 1:00:50
  No way.
• 1:00:51
  Yeah, the tracks have to be a lot better, right?
• 1:00:54
  The tracks have to be prepped in a certain way, but they've got them now going, you know, I think the vest now is a three, five, eight to half track.
• 1:01:02
  Well, I don't think any blown door slam has gone that fast.
• 1:01:05
  That is nuts.
• 1:01:05
  It is, and it's just because they were given, here's your parameters, right?
• 1:01:09
  this is what you got, this is the tyre you got, you guys work out how to go fast.
• 1:01:13
  And they started off not being very good at it because while they were experimenting with their suspensions to put more load on the vac tyre and they were changing it in ways that they were just experimenting with stuff, they'd get down the half track and the thing would blow over backwards.
• 1:01:29
  You know, they'd be doing a big wheel stand.
• 1:01:30
  Some guys are doing wheel stand the whole way down the track and it was just dangerous.
• 1:01:34
  But nowadays they've got them just going straight down the racetrack.
• 1:01:40
  Yes, it works on a much more variety of racetracks, but these radial guys, just different branches in drag racing now that are sort of taken off and stuff that I never thought would ever, ever, ever happen.
• 1:01:53
  I love the constant quest, mate, the fact that we'll get to a little bit of the key ones in a minute, the constant quest to, you know, set specific times or to break certain barriers.
• 1:02:03
  I think that's remarkable.
• 1:02:05
  You are the undisputed...
• 1:02:08
  godfather of door slammer mate some of the stuff you've done changed blown sedan racing in this in this country and globally for that matter you know the the records you've achieved let's deal with the the six titles here which i think is remarkable is there one that's special to you and and why
• 1:02:28
  It was 1996 is the one.
• 1:02:30
  That's for sure.
• 1:02:30
  There's no doubt about that.
• 1:02:31
  It was the first one, I think.
• 1:02:32
  And the reason was because that year, on the 9th or the 6th in 1996, I became the world's fastest door slammer.
• 1:02:42
  I was the quickest and fastest door slammer.
• 1:02:43
  And it was recognised in the United States too.
• 1:02:45
  What did you do at the time?
• 1:02:46
  Tell people.
• 1:02:47
  The time?
• 1:02:47
  Yeah, the time.
• 1:02:49
  It was 629 at 225 mile an hour.
• 1:02:53
  Street Machine actually put out a video on it, so there you go.
• 1:02:55
  It was a good thing, and it made me feel good.
• 1:02:59
  It's just, after all the work and everything that we'd done, Murray Anderson, his input with the race car, and the fact that I had Greg Gow help me with the tune-up at the time, who had recently ran the first five-second run in a funny car.
• 1:03:14
  It was just a lot of people, a lot of input from a lot of people.
• 1:03:16
  And then, uh, Norm Drazer, who invented the PSI supercharger, he actually was over here.
• 1:03:21
  And, um, you know, we had the car running what I considered pretty good.
• 1:03:25
  It was running, and no one had run a 620.
• 1:03:27
  No one in the world had run a 620 at that time.
• 1:03:29
  We went 629, 225, and the mile an hour was high.
• 1:03:33
  And then it was really about the time, that's when my big, um, shit fight started with Peter Gratz, um,
• 1:03:39
  Peter Gratz was another great racer from over here in Queensland.
• 1:03:42
  He had me and he had a hell of a rivalry, you know, going for a long, long time.
• 1:03:45
  And he actually, I ran just a mile on our side of it.
• 1:03:49
  I went 229.22 or something and he went 229.40 or something like that.
• 1:03:55
  And then I went 229.70 and he went 229.80 something.
• 1:03:59
  And then I went 229.90 something.
• 1:04:01
  I thought you're gone boy, the next one he went 230.
• 1:04:03
  What a bastard.
• 1:04:06
  But yeah, things like that, that's what makes the sport interesting.
• 1:04:08
  It still does today.
• 1:04:09
  You know, guys like Paul Moit the other day went 5.58 racing in Sydney.
• 1:04:14
  Wow, you know, 5.58 in a sedan that weighs 2,700 pounds.
• 1:04:19
  It's crazy.
• 1:04:20
  I would never have thought it would have happened.
• 1:04:21
  But I would never say that we won't see a four-second door slammer one day.
• 1:04:25
  I might not see one, but I'd say we're going to see a four-second door slammer one day.
• 1:04:29
  No doubt about it.
• 1:04:31
  Yeah, it's just a mate.
• 1:04:32
  Those turbo cars, a twin turbo car made light enough now would probably run closer than anything else we've got at the moment.
• 1:04:41
  So we'll see.
• 1:04:43
  I'd like to see one.
• 1:04:48
  That's the end of part one of my chat with Victor Bray.
• 1:04:50
  To continue listening, head across to part two, where we talk about the rivalries, the next generation.
• 1:04:56
  He opens up on the seriousness of the cancer scare and getting back to his beloved drag racing.