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The Motorsport Brief | On Safari with the Herridge’s and Tony Quinn · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:06
  G'day everybody, Rusty here with a special edition of the Motorsport Brief.
• 0:09
  I'm coming to you from Wentworth, about a half hour drive away from Mildura, only 270km from Broken Hill.
• 0:18
  We are on the edge of the desert and I am here for one of the longest, in fact the longest rally on the Australian motorsport calendar.
• 0:27
  1,200km, a safari that takes you through all sorts of terrain.
• 0:32
  And I am with...
• 0:33
  the record breakers for longest podcasts in the Rusty's Garage Library, in both Rob and Dean Herridge.
• 0:42
  This is a short cast, full transparency.
• 0:44
  I only need like 15 minutes here.
• 0:46
  Boys, what are we doing here?
• 0:47
  And what is it that keeps bringing you back?
• 0:49
  This is actually really cool.
• 0:51
  Motorbikes, cars and some remote parts of Australia.
• 0:55
  Well, he's to blame.
• 0:58
  So Dad's the one that, I don't know, I feel like a decade ago decided that when he'd retired that he wanted to have a little bit of a crack at doing some endurance-style events.
• 1:06
  And, of course, as the story goes, in the podcast, as you mentioned, that we had to do it in a Subaru, and that's where it sort of all formed from.
• 1:12
  And then...
• 1:13
  as my career changed a little bit and the option came up to do something like sunraiser, dad encouraged me to come and do it.
• 1:18
  I then stole what his, was his Evo too.
• 1:20
  He's, you know, the, the cross Trek that I now drive and put him back in the forester.
• 1:24
  And, um, we've done three years to this point and maybe we thought that might've been, uh, where, where it ended, but we've still got an appetite to come back, uh,
• 1:32
  And different challenges each time.
• 1:33
  I think that's the thing for us, even though it's an amazing event to do.
• 1:36
  And as you just covered in regards to the length, and it amazes me what it's like.
• 1:41
  There's still a bit of a story to tell.
• 1:42
  And every time we come here, we either come with a newer car or an upgrade and try and go as fast as we can in an outright term.
• 1:49
  But this time, rather than that, sort of take the old Forester, which has been tried and proven, we've given a different challenge.
• 1:54
  Lovely.
• 1:54
  We'll talk about that in a second.
• 1:55
  Is it nice for you to get back behind the wheel?
• 1:58
  Well, I've been behind the wheel because I've just done 10,000 kilometres in my ute time I caravan.
• 2:03
  And I'll probably want to try and drive a bit faster than I have been because I've been holding all the truckies up.
• 2:09
  It is nice, but it's been a year between drinks, and I sort of said last year it might have been my last event because it was a great event.
• 2:16
  Dean went close to winning the rally, came second, and I finished in the top six.
• 2:20
  I was pretty happy with that.
• 2:21
  The year before, it wasn't quite as successful for me with a few problems.
• 2:26
  But Dean conned me back off my holiday, and my long-suffering wife, Debbie, has put up with the fact that I went home for a week of that time to work on the wrecks that we're going to run.
• 2:37
  And, yeah, it's a challenge for us.
• 2:39
  So we're always up for a challenge.
• 2:41
  I love that.
• 2:41
  So, I mean, you're young at heart.
• 2:43
  You're still doing lots of things that keep you active.
• 2:46
  Are you saying that there's, you know, maybe only a couple of years left?
• 2:49
  And how nice to be able to do this with your son, to be competing together?
• 2:53
  Well, it's great to be able to compete in the Sunraiser Safari Rally into WRX, but what better than doing it with your son?
• 2:59
  And, of course, what you've seen on social media is by Dean's eldest daughter, Olivia, so it's a three-generation thing.
• 3:06
  It's great, and that's what keeps you into sport.
• 3:08
  I've been in the sport now for 40 years, and it's the people that keep you involved.
• 3:12
  And in my instance, it's mostly my family that's kept me involved, and who would have thought when I started rallying just for something to do for a little bit?
• 3:20
  Okay, so he's in the WRX Challenge car.
• 3:23
  We ordinarily, you know, see the fleet of those that you bring to the Australian Rally Championship rounds.
• 3:28
  How different is that to what you would ordinarily campaign in the ARC?
• 3:31
  Well, it's almost a WRX Challenge plus car.
• 3:34
  You know, I think what I propose...
• 3:35
  to dad was would you prefer to come around and do it in the forest and not do it at all have a challenge of trying to take a WRX and I think all those seemed appealing depending on the day that I asked him in that regard but I think the thing for us and why I think dad's the perfect person is that it's a massive challenge to get what is basically a current model WRX that's not a not one of our SUV in the range it's a WRX
• 3:57
  and take on the most demanding, longest event.
• 3:59
  I think that's where his storyline is.
• 4:01
  So I'm in the same cross track.
• 4:03
  I'll do the best I can in an outright terms and we'll see how the cards fall.
• 4:07
  But the storyline for me this time is, well, let's see, you know, we have very capable cars.
• 4:12
  You know, the whole fleet apart from BRZ are all wheel drive.
• 4:14
  And that's sort of where I think that's the cool part of Sunranger.
• 4:16
  And the bit that I think we're trying to...
• 4:18
  get out there is it's an adventure and just merely finishing this event is a feather in your cap.
• 4:24
  And the fact we've done it strongly before is amazing from an outright term, both Dad and myself.
• 4:30
  And now for Dad, if he can complete this event with Chris, that'll be amazing.
• 4:33
  It doesn't really matter where they finish outright, but if you finish, you'll be doing a great job.
• 4:37
  We've got a story to tell, the terrain we go on, the people we're around.
• 4:41
  And probably for me, it won't fully hit home, I reckon, until into the future.
• 4:46
  But
• 4:46
  You know, it makes us stop and do an event and we're around each other for a week.
• 4:51
  You know, there's no pressures of the workshop or daily lives or anything else.
• 4:55
  You know, we literally camp and, you know, we've got a great crew behind us and, you know, even the extension of the media crew that comes with us each round, Aaron and Sam, who have been with us the last few years.
• 5:04
  It's a great week.
• 5:05
  And I think we probably, you know, we'll look back and go, what a great period of our lives to be able to go off and do an amazing event, you know, four to five days altogether.
• 5:14
  Not quite camping.
• 5:15
  We don't fully camp it up.
• 5:17
  But it is becoming more special as we get a bit older, I guess.
• 5:20
  You've been great across your career at looking after machinery and, you know, taking a long view of the event and ensuring that you finish and finish strongly.
• 5:30
  I hear he's demanded a special handbrake.
• 5:32
  Is this true?
• 5:35
  I did back in the day.
• 5:36
  He might have demanded that, but I didn't see that on the email, I've got to tell you.
• 5:43
  I don't think the event's quite long enough for that.
• 5:46
  I did have a reputation with that in the early days, and in the early days that counted for a bit.
• 5:51
  But as the last 10, 20, 30 years has gone on, it's less of that because the ARC is a bit shorter.
• 5:59
  We don't rally through the night, although the last rally was a small exception.
• 6:03
  And the rallies have got a bit shorter for the encroachment of society and the problematic getting in the forest.
• 6:09
  So this is a chance for the long-distance rally to come back out.
• 6:13
  And I hope that I have been sympathetic with cars in the past, and I hope I'm sympathetic enough to do the WX justice.
• 6:20
  It's a tremendous road car, and it's proven to be a tremendous rally car.
• 6:24
  But now we're asking it to go up another level, and I reckon it could surprise a few people.
• 6:30
  I reckon it could too.
• 6:31
  He's kind of rolled back from, you know, the business side of things and you're very hands-on there now.
• 6:37
  But he alluded to the fact before that you roped him back out of family travels to come home and he was hands-on, wasn't he, in the build?
• 6:45
  think apart from the driving, I mean, Maximum Motorsport has an amazing reputation for the quality of the cars we built.
• 6:50
  And that's basically that at the end of the day, you know, a lot of the engineering side and the attention to detail has been dead over many, many years, you know, whether that be the early days of, you know, WRXs and things.
• 7:01
  And I'm still amazed at some of the ads and stuff that go, you know, it's a Maximum Motorsport built car.
• 7:05
  We probably haven't seen them for 15 years, but it was one of our original cars.
• 7:08
  So we're very proud of that.
• 7:09
  And
• 7:10
  Right up to the point that the WX Challenge and the way those cars are built to do the Australian Championship has dad's fingerprints all over it.
• 7:17
  And so, you know, I hand on heart, I actually can't think of anybody else who would be the ideal person to give the WX a real chance at, you know, first and foremost finishing, knows where the strengths and the weaknesses of the WX.
• 7:31
  Any of the cars or automotive cars are going to be in this event and give it its best chance.
• 7:35
  And like I said, the fact it has a cool family element is just the sharing on top.
• 7:41
  How demanding is this thing?
• 7:42
  And it is a safari in the sense of, I mean, you're going through rural properties, you've got gates and things.
• 7:49
  I mean, it's quite different to what we would normally think of in a traditional ARC event.
• 7:54
  Well, it is.
• 7:55
  It can be rough and it can change quite quickly.
• 7:58
  We don't get to go and see the course beforehand.
• 8:00
  That's the biggest problem.
• 8:00
  We're running blind.
• 8:02
  We have enough information to keep us on the road or the track.
• 8:06
  You get it at 7 o'clock the night before the book, do you?
• 8:08
  Is that right?
• 8:08
  Something like that.
• 8:09
  I don't get involved in that too much.
• 8:12
  I've only been rallying 40 years, but what do I know about that?
• 8:14
  But I think the biggest weakness might be the driver and the co-driver because we're both in our 70s.
• 8:21
  We both do okay for our age, I suppose.
• 8:25
  First battle was to get back in the driving seat, so I haven't actually tried that yet, so that might be the first job.
• 8:30
  Yeah, it is different, and we were told at the driver's briefing last night that this will be by far the toughest safari, the toughest Sunraiser safari
• 8:40
  yet out of the last, you know, since it's been re-vigged and that's in the last eight years.
• 8:46
  So I have that in the back of my mind.
• 8:48
  I'm not at least Carl One.
• 8:49
  Dean's Carl One.
• 8:50
  That's something for him to consider.
• 8:52
  But...
• 8:53
  It is tough, and I think as long as we don't get caught out tremendously, we have a bit of an eye for what we're looking for, but we've got to try and generate the speed as well.
• 9:03
  I mean, if you drive slow enough, you can finish anything, can't you?
• 9:06
  Absolutely.
• 9:07
  Motorbikes in the field, I mean, it's quite – what happens when you come up on – there are rules and regulations around that, aren't there?
• 9:14
  Yeah, well, what happens late in the day is the bike guys who are doing an amazing job and on their own adventure, you may catch in stages.
• 9:20
  We do with RallySafe nowadays and technology, have a push to pass, but there's a fair bit of old school rallying mentality around it, which is something I'm still getting my head around a little bit.
• 9:30
  And to the point, Dad's downplaying it, but I think that's where his experience comes in on knowing when to push, how to push, when to back it off, et cetera.
• 9:37
  Us a bit more younger, enthusiastic tend to get a
• 9:39
  carried away with some of that stuff and you're thinking more so in sprint terms.
• 9:44
  But it's Australia's mini version of Dakar.
• 9:47
  I mean, it's nothing, you know, Dakar's unbelievably tough and anyone who sort of pays attention to that stuff, but it's our version of it.
• 9:55
  It's 1,200 competitive Ks.
• 9:56
  The longest stage is 250 Ks.
• 9:57
  And, you know,
• 10:00
  there was a lot of concentration and there's a lot of camaraderie between the teams because, you know, we're all on our own adventure.
• 10:05
  Some are, you know, aiming for outright.
• 10:07
  We've had some amazing cars here, like really specifically built, purpose-built cars, almost worth a million dollars when this event in the past, you know, last year, a case in point, right down to the adventure motorcyclist and, you know, in this case, even some rally cars and things.
• 10:20
  So, that's cool in itself.
• 10:23
  And, you know, like I said, I think it's just, you know,
• 10:25
  It's something different and it does take you some time to get your head around how to tackle an event like this and take on 1,200 competitive Ks.
• 10:32
  Quickly about the team.
• 10:34
  I mean, the trucks come across the Nullarbor, two cars that you're running and so on.
• 10:37
  Final preparation literally happening behind us as we speak.
• 10:40
  And they are still unmistakably Subaru, but a little tougher in stance and wheel size and so on and geared for, even the snorkel on the WRX Challenge car, geared for this event, aren't they?
• 10:52
  Yeah, I mean, the WRX is essentially, like I said, a challenge car plus.
• 10:55
  It's got slightly longer suspension, a little bit of changing in the rear arms to make for a bigger tyre.
• 11:00
  It's running the same wheel, actually, would you believe, 15-inch, but trying to take advantage of a good all-terrain tyre.
• 11:05
  You know, the snorkel in the front nudge bar, a little bit of a throwback to the late 90s and early 2000s, and, you know, the tinting and things.
• 11:11
  So, you know, this is a sort of event that can maximise those little mods.
• 11:15
  I mean, it's exactly the same as the African safaris of back in the day, and like I said, when Subaru did that, so there's a bit of a throwback there.
• 11:23
  The bit that I'm amazed at, and I mean, Dad's the one who took the Subarus on and built them over the years to be as competitive as they are, you do look at them and they're a family of parts.
• 11:33
  There's nothing bolted on them that's out of Europe, sequential gearbox, whatever else it is.
• 11:38
  It's literally from the family of Subaru parts, from the lower arms to the gearboxes to the drivetrain and everything.
• 11:45
  Yeah.
• 11:46
  Apart from the normal specs that you change suspension-wise on any rally car, it's a Subaru through and through.
• 11:51
  And that's why I think this is the one event where back in the day when Dan and I had both been sort of works drivers, you've got the target on the back because you're in the works car or the best car of the period.
• 12:02
  We're the underdogs here in a lot of ways because the fact that the Subaru's finished, I think, amazes most people.
• 12:08
  The fact that they can win stages amazes most people and that's cool.
• 12:11
  It's David versus Goliath, but we're the David on this one and I think we have a few people in our corner and I feel like we punch above our weight.
• 12:17
  You sure do.
• 12:18
  Okay, finally, you have always, in just about every sporting pursuit that you've done over time and even still do to this day, had an interest, let's call it, in the mental side of the game.
• 12:29
  How important is that here and what is the key to surviving and succeeding over the 1200 Ks of Sunracia Safari?
• 12:37
  Well, of course, it's the psychology of winning or the psychology of losing, isn't it, really?
• 12:41
  Yeah, it is important.
• 12:43
  It is especially important on this game because we could put a young tear-away kid in the car and probably the car might last five kilometres until it broke or he broke it.
• 12:53
  But by the same token, it is a rally and we go as fast as we can when we can.
• 13:00
  But I think the key to it is go, and it sounds so basically simple it's ridiculous, go fast when you can and slow when you can't.
• 13:07
  I love it.
• 13:08
  Simple philosophy go well to the both of you.
• 13:10
  Thank you.
• 13:10
  I was just about to say, you know that Dad sat with me three times my whole career, but the big point he made was the mental side.
• 13:16
  He said, this sport is 50% mental.
• 13:18
  That's when I was like 17 or 18 getting involved in rallying at that point.
• 13:21
  That really stuck with you, sunk in, didn't it?
• 13:23
  Yeah, because I never had a driving lesson from Dad.
• 13:25
  I think I got more lessons from Nana, actually, in the old days when I was 14 from a driving point of view.
• 13:31
  One, we're not great passengers.
• 13:32
  In actual fact, man, I'm not a driver.
• 13:32
  Most people would do this adventure together, right, in the same car.
• 13:35
  We don't want to sit with each other.
• 13:36
  So that costs a bit more because we've got two cars.
• 13:39
  But it is.
• 13:40
  It's a big part that I learnt very early.
• 13:42
  Yeah, there's times that absolute speed will make the difference and ARC is probably a point to reference there.
• 13:49
  But this is rallying motorsport as a mental game ultimately.
• 13:53
  Great story.
• 13:53
  The pair of you go well over the coming days.
• 13:56
  We'll look forward to seeing how the cars go.
• 13:58
  We'll grab a break here on the short cast more in a moment.
• 14:04
  For the second part of the shortcast, we have tracked down someone who's gone from salubrious Supras to the almost outback in a Nissan that is absolutely Dakar ready.
• 14:16
  Hello, Tony Quinn.
• 14:17
  This thing is a beast, isn't it?
• 14:20
  Yeah, it's meant for Dakar.
• 14:22
  It was built for Dakar.
• 14:23
  And we actually bought it, me and Harry went to South Africa and bought it just before COVID.
• 14:30
  And COVID was just breaking out globally when we were on the return.
• 14:34
  And we thought, Christ, I hope we get out of South Africa.
• 14:38
  Yeah, it was right in the start of it, you know.
• 14:41
  And we managed to get out.
• 14:43
  In fact, I would say that Johannesburg Airport was far more aware of COVID than Sydney was.
• 14:50
  And anyway, we got out, ordered the car, drove it around the streets of Johannesburg, to be fair, to test drive it.
• 14:57
  And because the factory where Redline is is right beside Kailami, the track.
• 15:03
  And so we drove it around the streets of there and it was cool.
• 15:08
  Yeah.
• 15:08
  And the thing that sort of happened just before that was that me and Harry talked to each other about what are we going to do.
• 15:19
  you know, where are we going?
• 15:21
  Are we carrying on?
• 15:22
  Because we were at the point of, should we retire and just hang out the boots?
• 15:27
  And Harry basically said to me, well, what are you going to do?
• 15:29
  And I said, well, look, I'm kind of committed.
• 15:31
  I've got some tracks and things, you know, I kind of have to keep on going.
• 15:36
  And he said, well, I'll keep going if you keep going.
• 15:39
  And here we are, you know, what, five years later, still going, albeit a lot slower and a lot...
• 15:46
  But the deal was that we would buy...
• 15:48
  brand new equipment and not muck around with fixing things and developing things.
• 15:53
  Because, you know, to be fair, the two of us don't have that much time left to do that.
• 15:59
  So we decided to buy brand new stuff.
• 16:01
  So that's why we got the brand new, I think maybe in Aston or something at the time, we got this thing brand new so that when we go to an event, at least it keeps going, right, you know, because we've been to plenty of safaris and stuff.
• 16:14
  and bits break and stuff like that.
• 16:17
  So we just decided we'd buy something that would last.
• 16:20
  And look, I think that I could sell it today for as much money as I bought it for.
• 16:28
  I think they're pretty prized weapons for this kind of stuff.
• 16:32
  As always with you, savvy investment.
• 16:35
  Tell me about the event and what draws you to it.
• 16:37
  I mean, it's the antithesis of anything circuit racing that we were doing a week ago, isn't it?
• 16:41
  It's stupid, to be fair.
• 16:44
  And it's great for one day.
• 16:47
  And, you know, it's a great change and it's a great challenge.
• 16:50
  But the second day, it's like, what, again?
• 16:53
  And the third day, it's like, not again.
• 16:55
  So what brings you back then?
• 16:57
  I know.
• 16:57
  And the fourth day, well, stupidity, really.
• 17:00
  But I think the fourth day is just one more day and that's it.
• 17:04
  But, you know, when you go and do a rally stage in World Rally, you know, the longest you'll do is maybe, what, 40 Ks maybe or whatever, average being about 14 or something.
• 17:16
  These things here, I think there's one on Saturday that's 250 or something.
• 17:21
  And I remember last year or the time before,
• 17:24
  We did 95 kilometres on one person's property.
• 17:28
  Like, it's crazy.
• 17:29
  And the thing that gets me about doing this event, because I did it in Western Australia a few times and I've done it here a few times, there is nothing out there.
• 17:40
  And you come across a broken-down house, shack, and you think, who built that?
• 17:47
  When did they build it?
• 17:48
  Why did they build it?
• 17:49
  And it's just run down, broken down, water tanks around it, and you rally past it and stuff.
• 17:55
  It's just, it's a real eye-opener, to be honest.
• 17:57
  I mean, people that live in Sydney and Melbourne and Brisbane on the Gold Coast have got no idea.
• 18:03
  what's out there and how the people live.
• 18:07
  You know, it's really weird.
• 18:10
  I like it because it's a different discipline to circuits and even rallying is quite different.
• 18:16
  The people are different.
• 18:18
  There's no room for woke sort of...
• 18:23
  values there is no value in woke out here and it's just your good old bloody fly swatting you know like cobbers you know that want to go racing there's some really fast guys and stuff like that
• 18:40
  and some really good guys.
• 18:41
  And, you know, they're all characters, you know, and it's enjoyable.
• 18:47
  Any longer than three or four or five days, no, I don't think so.
• 18:51
  It's not worth it.
• 18:52
  Harry's done the DACA, and he said never again.
• 18:55
  Yeah, he said that was way too long for what it was.
• 18:58
  So I have no ambition to do the DACA.
• 19:01
  This is long enough for me, and it's good.
• 19:03
  I've won it.
• 19:04
  I've tried it, I don't know, 10, 15 times.
• 19:06
  I've no idea.
• 19:07
  I've won it.
• 19:08
  two years ago.
• 19:10
  And then last year we came back as defending champions and went 11 kilometres into the first stage and hit a gate post and that was the end of it.
• 19:19
  So, you know, who knows what it's going to throw up.
• 19:22
  But, you know, you run over...
• 19:25
  Well, I've run over sheep, but they were dead before I run over them.
• 19:28
  But you run over bloody animals, like dead animals, and logs, and you dip down into riverbeds.
• 19:36
  And, you know, it's incredible.
• 19:38
  I've rolled away in the beginning.
• 19:41
  I rolled and had to wait for the guys to come along and tip you back over.
• 19:45
  And it's just, it's a real, it's a boy's stroke man's trip.
• 19:53
  You are a long way from Aberdeen.
• 19:55
  It is a very, it's very unique, but very cool countryside out there.
• 19:58
  Can I reflect on last Sunday?
• 20:00
  But I want to talk about your grandson.
• 20:03
  What Clark did in that GT4 race, that was one of the best races we've seen in a packed and stacked field.
• 20:10
  His drive in that BMW was remarkable.
• 20:13
  Yeah, to be fair, I could not believe what he was doing.
• 20:16
  And it reminded me of, like, I remember watching Rick Kelly at Sandown in the wet in the form of Ford, just picking off drivers every lap.
• 20:26
  Marcus Ambrose in Perth.
• 20:28
  picking off drivers every lap, you know, Shane Van Giz, picking off people every lap.
• 20:33
  It reminded me on that.
• 20:35
  And he just, yeah, I know he's my grandson and he's a handy driver, but that was, you know, that was pretty professional what he was doing.
• 20:43
  This weekend, you're here.
• 20:45
  The team are in Adelaide for the 500.
• 20:49
  Are you keeping an eye on things as you go?
• 20:51
  Are you going to duck down there on Sunday when this is all done?
• 20:53
  What will you do?
• 20:54
  Look, that's been an absolute pleasure too, the Triple Eight team.
• 20:58
  And, you know, everybody talks about the drivers and stuff.
• 21:01
  But to be fair, I am proud of the whole team.
• 21:04
  It's a whole team effort.
• 21:05
  And, you know, when you go up and down Pit Lane, I just think that Triple Eight are a level above.
• 21:11
  They don't need me there.
• 21:12
  I mean, they like it when I'm there or whatever.
• 21:14
  I don't even make the coffees.
• 21:15
  I don't even do anything.
• 21:17
  But, you know, I think we all get on well together.
• 21:20
  And, you know, I think they'll do well, for sure.
• 21:25
  You know, Brock, particularly this year, has risen.
• 21:28
  You know, he's the cream of the crop at the moment.
• 21:31
  Will's a good, you know, a good second driver, if that's what you want to call him at the moment.
• 21:37
  But, you know, second in the championship or whatever.
• 21:40
  I mean, but in general, the team's just way up there.
• 21:45
  My plan is, absolutely, if we don't make it through to day three or four...
• 21:51
  I'm heading down there and I'll spend a day or so there.
• 21:53
  But, you know, honestly, I don't need to be there.
• 21:57
  And there is quite a bit going on in V8 land at the moment that we're all sort of in tune with.
• 22:05
  But, you know, during race weekend, the guys are singly focused on the weekend.
• 22:12
  So, you know, I think I'll leave them to it unless they phone me up and want me to step in for...
• 22:19
  Scotty Pye or something, you know, I'll reluctantly have a look at it, you know, depending on what they're paying me, of course.
• 22:25
  He and Will were mighty at the 500 last year.
• 22:28
  They're a good combo, aren't they?
• 22:29
  And I know Brock's in red-hot form at the moment.
• 22:32
  Can we talk just state of the nation of supercars generally?
• 22:35
  James has come back, new TV deal and so on.
• 22:39
  Yeah, look, I guess I don't know.
• 22:42
  I don't know what the TV deal is that hasn't been shared.
• 22:46
  There is discussions at the moment.
• 22:48
  They're still discussing about the 14 rounds, but they've come out loud and proud and said we're doing 14 rounds and now they're trying to make the teams help pay for doing it.
• 23:00
  It all seems a wee bit cockeyed to me.
• 23:02
  And if I was...
• 23:06
  Yeah, I think there needs to be a couple of changes in the whole thing.
• 23:10
  Maybe that's just my view, but I don't think that it's just, I don't think that the balance in supercar land is quite right at the moment, and I think it needs to be a few tweaks, I'd say.
• 23:25
  Okay.
• 23:25
  I sense that's a conversation for away from this forum.
• 23:27
  I appreciate that.
• 23:28
  No problem.
• 23:29
  Queensland Raceway, what you guys did for that round was mighty.
• 23:34
  You should be massively proud.
• 23:36
  The turnout of people there and everything was incredible, wasn't it?
• 23:39
  Yeah, I mean, but it's pretty obvious.
• 23:41
  It's like a simple formulation, isn't it?
• 23:43
  Like you fish where the fish are.
• 23:46
  And, you know, Ipswich is the V8 capital.
• 23:50
  It's the raw material is all there.
• 23:52
  And, you know, the facilities now, you can take your wife and children there and they're not going to want to go home within five minutes.
• 24:00
  So I think it's poised for a long-term position in the calendar
• 24:09
  just as a decent, warm-ish winter event.
• 24:15
  And, you know, it'll continue to draw large crowds.
• 24:18
  I mean, I loved what Paul Morris said about the car park thing.
• 24:22
  I mean, and I remember, we used to go to racetracks and events and we used to queue for an hour to get out because there were so many people there.
• 24:30
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:31
  And if you want to have an easy car park, you go to an event that there's nobody going to go to it, you know.
• 24:36
  And we were fortunate that a lot of people wanted to come.
• 24:38
  A lot of people enjoyed it.
• 24:42
  We do have plans for next year.
• 24:46
  I'll give you a wee snippet.
• 24:48
  You know, the V8 guys, and God bless them, they're good guys.
• 24:51
  But they were looking at plans from 2019.
• 24:55
  And that's how they were setting the place up.
• 24:57
  And we tried to sort of advise or consult or whatever you want to call it.
• 25:01
  But, you know, it was their venue.
• 25:03
  It was their event for that week.
• 25:05
  But I think next year it's going to be a little bit different and we have some plans to make that whole thing a bit easier.
• 25:13
  But, you know, I can't...
• 25:15
  I can't help that people want to come and they want to come in their cars.
• 25:18
  I mean, we'll put on buses next year.
• 25:21
  You know, we left it too late to apply for the necessary public transport to take people from the Ipswich Centre.
• 25:32
  You know, that was too late in the piece and we didn't have time to do that.
• 25:36
  Whereas next year, obviously, if they come into Queensland Raceway, we'll make sure that there's ample public transport from train stations and all that stuff.
• 25:45
  It'll be a lot better for people to use.
• 25:48
  And, yeah, maybe the V8s, a sponsor of the V8s, might give everybody a bottle of beer as they're leaving the car park just to keep them happy.
• 25:56
  I don't know.
• 25:58
  One thing about you guys, I know from New Zealand, even first you with Topor and so on, you're great at reviewing whole experience, good or bad, and what can we tune it up for the following year.
• 26:06
  So I know that you'll do that.
• 26:07
  Let's finish with New Zealand.
• 26:08
  Summer's going to be ace for all sorts of reasons over there.
• 26:12
  I'm looking forward to the next gen series and so on.
• 26:14
  And you've wrapped up some great meetings recently around TQF and so on.
• 26:18
  It's got a good feeling about this summer, doesn't it?
• 26:20
  Oh, look, you know, I mean, behind the scenes, taking on that project a year ago or 14 months ago to rescue the summer series was a massive unfair task on Josie particularly.
• 26:35
  And, you know, it is true that I had to bring her back from the brink
• 26:39
  a couple of times, you know, seriously, because it's just, it's a tough gig to turn that thing around.
• 26:46
  And we did it.
• 26:48
  We lost some money, but we knew we were going to lose some money, so it wasn't unexpected.
• 26:53
  But this year, we've had great support from...
• 26:58
  existing and new people, which hopefully means that we won't lose money this year, but we'll reset the business or the program, the events so that they're, and it's a horrible word, everybody uses it, but so that they're sustainable, you know?
• 27:16
  That's the important thing with...
• 27:18
  With any business, you need to make it sustainable first.
• 27:21
  And then if you can make a little bit of profit, then that's fine.
• 27:25
  And in motorsport, profits are very hard to find.
• 27:28
  But what people don't understand is that profit is a marvelous thing.
• 27:32
  It's a great thing.
• 27:34
  Profit enables companies to pay their employees, to pay their suppliers, to develop the community.
• 27:42
  It helps the community, helps people pay mortgages.
• 27:44
  It's a very positive thing, profit.
• 27:47
  The opposite of that is the exact opposite, where you can't pay your people, can't pay your suppliers, the community suffers, and the whole thing's an absolute negative.
• 27:57
  So I've always been, and I'm sure people will know that, but I've always been, I've always celebrated profit and, you know, not excessive profits like the miners seem to make.
• 28:10
  But it's just got to be, I mean, you use the word, it's got to be a workable, sustainable thing.
• 28:14
  100% because that's what pays the bills and everybody knows now that coffee used to be $3 a cup.
• 28:20
  It's now $7 or $6.
• 28:22
  The world's marching on and I don't know where it's going to stop, but we need to keep pace at the very least.
• 28:28
  And we need everyone rowing in the right direction.
• 28:31
  Less politics, good for the game.
• 28:36
  We are out of time for this edition.
• 28:37
  We've exceeded what the definition of a shortcast is by many, many minutes.
• 28:41
  Who cares?
• 28:42
  Hope you've enjoyed the catch-ups with Rob and Dean Herridge and with Tony Quinn as well.
• 28:45
  If you haven't already, check out the shortcast recently with Ant-Man 2.
• 28:49
  We beamed into his Gold Coast studios where he has been painting away and making some world-class pieces of art.
• 28:57
  helmets for racing drivers, mainly for this part of the world, but also for those on the international scene too.
• 29:03
  That is a great chat, that one.
• 29:04
  Catch you next week, everybody.
• 29:05
  Bye for now.