Latest / Rusty's Garage / Alister McRae - Part 2

Transcript

Alister McRae - Part 2 · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:19
  G'day, it's Rusty here.
• 0:20
  All set for part two of my feature edition with Rally star Alistair McRae.
• 0:24
  We've had a few messages in the past year or so asking to get him on.
• 0:28
  Thank you for those.
• 0:29
  And I'm really pleased that we did.
• 0:31
  This is a good conversation.
• 0:32
  Now, as I often say, if you've arrived here and not heard part one, you are missing out on some gold.
• 0:38
  From early life in Scotland...
• 0:40
  and a little connection to BTCC legend John Cleland, who you can also find in our garage library, to being wowed by the cool cars his dad Jimmy competed in, and also being able to understand for himself what it was like to rally a Sierra, those fire-breathing, seriously cool machines, and carving his own path that took him all the way to the WRC, the World Rally Championships.
• 1:07
  And we continue the chat now on that very subject.
• 1:10
  I hope you enjoy part two with Alistair McRae.
• 1:15
  Let's come back to Hyundai now.
• 1:17
  I can recall the accents in the WRC.
• 1:20
  How do you kind of compartmentalise that project now?
• 1:22
  Because you entered at a time, or Hyundai entered at a time, with that car where there were lots of players in the sport, lots of well-sorted cars.
• 1:34
  My grey matter is fading a bit here.
• 1:35
  Was it MSD that ran those cars?
• 1:37
  Who built those cars?
• 1:39
  MSD built the cars.
• 1:41
  We did originally F2 cars.
• 1:43
  The first of the F2 car was built by Wayne Bell here in Australia.
• 1:46
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:47
  And then I did, I'm not sure if that was nine, maybe 98.
• 1:52
  I did a couple of events for them with the car, a kind of rebuilt car from the design that Wayne had done here.
• 1:59
  They'd come across to MSD.
• 2:01
  We added a couple of events in the championship that year for them, Corsica and Cataloon, I think it was.
• 2:08
  But the idea was always to build the new F2 car for the following year, 1999, then on to World Rally Car.
• 2:15
  So the original cars were designed and built by Wayne Bell, and he actually came over and did...
• 2:21
  a season in the World Championship with us in the F2 car.
• 2:24
  I think that was his kind of payday.
• 2:27
  You'll come and do the championship over here.
• 2:29
  And then MSD then took over the rally program for Hyundai.
• 2:33
  Cool.
• 2:34
  I mean, fourth in rally GB for memory is a little bit of a highlight.
• 2:39
  When you look back on that car now and that whole project, what do you think?
• 2:43
  It would be, I think, if you look at it...
• 2:45
  Back then there was a number of manufacturers in there, as you said, that had been in for a long time.
• 2:49
  So we were a new player on a smaller budget.
• 2:54
  But I think on the smaller budget we managed to produce some good results.
• 2:58
  We actually had our first quickest stage time for Hyundai was in New Zealand.
• 3:03
  We did actually retire on the next road section, which wasn't so good.
• 3:06
  But for me, it was new.
• 3:09
  It was getting into the World Championship.
• 3:11
  It was early in my career in the World Championship.
• 3:13
  But to get the opportunity to do that was good.
• 3:16
  I think you now look at Hyundai as one of the top teams in the Championship.
• 3:21
  There's not so many teams now.
• 3:24
  But you always can look at anything, I just wish we had the budget or the commitment from Hyundai back then that you've got now.
• 3:30
  But for sure, it was a great experience for me and it got me into the World Championship.
• 3:35
  I think you joked with Josh Buchan, who won the Australian TCR series at a function not all that long ago, that...
• 3:43
  you kind of did all the groundwork.
• 3:45
  I mean, now we have N, Hyundai has this real kind of following and cult sort of status.
• 3:51
  I mean, the WRC campaign these days is different to when it was, you know.
• 3:56
  Yeah, yeah.
• 3:57
  I was just trying to get some commission out of them.
• 4:02
  Yeah, I think now if you look at Hyundai, what it's doing with the N model,
• 4:07
  I think it's awesome.
• 4:08
  You know, they're using the vehicles, they're advertising through Motorsport, which, back in the day, was something that built Subaru.
• 4:16
  If you look at Subaru, the Subaru came from rallying.
• 4:19
  And I think the same, probably, even to an extent, with Mitsubishi.
• 4:23
  So,
• 4:24
  I think they're now doing or replicating what these manufacturers did back then.
• 4:30
  They're using motorsport to advertise and to sell cars and to develop them.
• 4:35
  The technology that comes into cars nowadays, a lot of it does come from motorsport.
• 4:40
  So I think as a motorsport person, the more manufacturers that do that, the better.
• 4:46
  On that theme, just more broadly on the WRC at the moment, what do you think of it?
• 4:51
  The cars that are currently running and so on?
• 4:54
  be great to see more manufacturers in there for sure you know you've got
• 4:58
  I think you've got three manufacturers, but if you look at the M Sport team, it's Malcolm Wilson and M Sport that keeps Ford in there.
• 5:07
  They do an amazing job to be in there, but to fight against the likes of Toyota and Hyundai, who are full manufacturers, it's pretty difficult.
• 5:16
  They do a great job.
• 5:17
  So there's three manufacturers.
• 5:20
  I think it's heyday when I was there in the late 90s, early 2000.
• 5:23
  There were seven there, six or seven.
• 5:26
  some of the opportunities for drivers, for people that work in motorsport was massive.
• 5:33
  It would be great to see it come back to that.
• 5:35
  I think the cars now, they're seriously quick cars, there's no doubt about it.
• 5:41
  But we just need to, I don't know how they do it, but they need to think, promote the sport,
• 5:45
  on a wider level to the general public and not just to the diehard enthusiast.
• 5:52
  So I think that's above me, but I think they've got to get that back to the general public to make manufacturers want to do the sport to then sell cars.
• 6:02
  In reflecting on your own time in the WRC, there's a Mitsubishi chapter that I'd love your thoughts on.
• 6:09
  And it sort of probably has a bit of mixed emotions, Alistair, in some respects, because they've got so much heritage in the WRC.
• 6:15
  I think when you joined them, that was sort of the end of one model before a new one came along.
• 6:20
  You played as a privateer in one for a while too, didn't you?
• 6:22
  Yeah.
• 6:23
  Yeah, I think I always, when people ask me about Mitsubishi, I got to the right team at the wrong time.
• 6:30
  You know, they had been world champions, obviously, with Tommy.
• 6:36
  They had stuck with the Group A car when everybody else started to develop world rally cars, I think.
• 6:42
  It was almost a false confidence that the Group A car was still capable of winning, but they stayed there for too long.
• 6:50
  And then when they did change to World Rally Car, they didn't make a big enough change.
• 6:55
  And they were then using technology that other manufacturers had been using for two years or even three years.
• 7:02
  So I think the timing for me was for sure Mitsubishi.
• 7:07
  at that time was down.
• 7:08
  You know, Tommy left for a reason.
• 7:10
  But there was a three-year plan to get back to New World Rally car, to feel new build.
• 7:17
  But unfortunately, in the second year, through the management and through Mercedes-Benz in,
• 7:26
  they decided that they were going to pull out of rally, which obviously that's a bit of a sore point, but, you know, that's life.
• 7:33
  But I think I did get to the right team, but just at the wrong time.
• 7:37
  Was it compounded a little bit?
• 7:38
  Did you have a mountain bike crash too?
• 7:39
  Was there a mountain bike accident in there somewhere too?
• 7:42
  Oh, you have to bring things up.
• 7:43
  Sorry, sorry.
• 7:46
  No, I mean, I did.
• 7:47
  I come off a mountain bike and tore my liver and was pretty much...
• 7:53
  They reckon I would be out for kind of six months, but I missed New Zealand, convinced the team I should fly to Australia.
• 8:03
  and then do further scans in Australia and if it was okay they would let me drive.
• 8:07
  Well, I don't think Scotland's got the medical technology that Australia's got because when I arrived in Australia, I just happened to be one of the best specialists in livers in the world here.
• 8:19
  And when I went and had the scan with him, he pretty much told me I shouldn't even have flown.
• 8:23
  Really?
• 8:24
  I should be sitting wrapped up in cotton wool.
• 8:27
  So I couldn't do Australia and then Miss Rally GB.
• 8:31
  And then I was actually, I got signed off just the beginning of December.
• 8:34
  I actually stayed in Perth for that kind of three months.
• 8:40
  Signed off and literally two days later, the announcement came through.
• 8:44
  I got a phone call from John Easton to say that you're not going to be in Monte Carlo.
• 8:49
  You're not going to be testing Sweden.
• 8:51
  Mitsubishi's pulled the plug on the whole thing.
• 8:53
  So...
• 8:54
  For sure, the outcome would have been the same.
• 8:57
  I would just have done maybe three events prior to the pull-out from Mitsubishi.
• 9:02
  How did you step into privateer stuff?
• 9:05
  How difficult was it to switch from having been with those bigger manufacturers to embarking on something like that?
• 9:13
  For me, the first thing to do was obviously go to rugby, to the Mitsubishi Motorsport base, and sit down with it.
• 9:22
  Then it was Andrew Cowen and sit down, so where do we go from here?
• 9:26
  I had a contract for 2023.
• 9:28
  I basically went in and said, look, I want to renegotiate.
• 9:34
  So Sven Quant was the German that was coming in to take over from Andrew Cowen.
• 9:40
  So we basically sat down and renegotiated to look out
• 9:44
  I've got another year in my contract.
• 9:46
  Let's extend it for two.
• 9:47
  I'll work with the development of the new car.
• 9:49
  You don't need to pay me any money.
• 9:50
  I want to be here when we restart in 2005.
• 9:54
  So, kind of 2003, we did, I think, two events.
• 9:58
  We did Sweden and I think New Zealand was actually one with Mitsubishi and some fun with Mark II Escorts and whatever.
• 10:06
  But the idea was that in 2004, you know, we would be back developing then into the new car.
• 10:12
  But...
• 10:13
  Towards the end of 2003, they changed their mind and decided that they were going to go back and just pay me out my contract.
• 10:22
  At the end of 2003, they were going to start with a clean sheet.
• 10:25
  So at that point, you'd been out of the championship for a year.
• 10:28
  Yeah.
• 10:30
  Apart from a couple of events.
• 10:32
  And then at that point, you know, other manufacturers were actually pulling out the championship too.
• 10:36
  So the opportunity to drive as a manufacturer was very, very limited.
• 10:42
  So we decided to go back to Group N, the production cup with the Subaru, which...
• 10:48
  We almost won the championship.
• 10:49
  We retired while leading here in Australia with a rear diff broken in Bunnings with three stages to go, which was a bit of a bugger.
• 10:58
  But, I mean, you've talked about resting up in Aussie for a good period there.
• 11:03
  You've talked about that difficult moment in Rally Australia.
• 11:06
  There is a silver lining here.
• 11:08
  You meet your now wife in Australia, don't you?
• 11:13
  Yeah, I'm allowed to stay in Australia.
• 11:15
  You're allowed to stay in Australia.
• 11:17
  You are.
• 11:17
  You are.
• 11:18
  And that sort of changes course.
• 11:19
  You spend a bit of time south of the equator ultimately, don't you?
• 11:23
  Yeah, no, I met Tara here in 99.
• 11:28
  Tara actually come across to Europe and we did.
• 11:32
  We had a house.
• 11:33
  We lived in Scotland for probably six years.
• 11:37
  Kids got married.
• 11:38
  Kids were born there, but then I had to bring her back here to thaw it out a wee bit because it was too cold.
• 11:44
  When did it become apparent that Max had the bug and this was going to be another generation?
• 11:52
  I mean, when we moved here, I took him down to the kart track.
• 11:56
  I think he was five years old.
• 11:58
  And through Tara, I knew the guy that owned the kart track.
• 12:02
  So we went down to the kart track to watch.
• 12:05
  And we watched the kart race.
• 12:07
  And we were standing talking to Mike, was his name.
• 12:09
  And Mike said, what do you think then, Max?
• 12:11
  He said, can I come down?
• 12:12
  Can I try it?
• 12:14
  And he said, no, you can't do it until you're seven years old.
• 12:17
  So when you're seven, you can race.
• 12:18
  And Max went, all right, okay.
• 12:21
  Didn't mention it again.
• 12:22
  And then on his seventh birthday, he actually said to me, right, Dad, we can go to the car track now and see Mike.
• 12:27
  So there was no, it wasn't like a build up to it, just we'll go.
• 12:31
  And then from then on, you know, he's, he loves motor, he loves motorsport.
• 12:36
  He used to ride motorbikes and then the go-karts.
• 12:40
  But for sure, he's always said that he wants to go rally.
• 12:44
  And that was, that's what he wanted to do.
• 12:46
  So.
• 12:47
  Fantastic.
• 12:47
  Nobody's doing it.
• 12:48
  I love that he kept that in the back of his mind in the moment that he turned seven.
• 12:51
  He was onto it.
• 12:53
  Now, there was some competition in Australia.
• 12:55
  We're going to get to what he's doing on the international stage in a moment.
• 12:59
  You had that Dirt Fishback WRX.
• 13:02
  I think maybe Maximum Motorsport might have helped prep it for you and so on.
• 13:05
  How important was that ARC grounding for him?
• 13:10
  For sure, obviously.
• 13:12
  We did his first event here, he must have just turned 16, so we bought a fiesta from a local guy here in WA.
• 13:21
  to get him out and then I did a few events there but then for the following year it was going to be let's do the ARC.
• 13:28
  So we bought an M Sport Fiesta, brought it in but then Covid hit and the car was stuck on one side of the country, we couldn't travel.
• 13:37
  So he kind of lost I think, Max really lost a year of rallying because we just hired some cars here in WA to get him out.
• 13:45
  And then the following year was speaking to Dean, speaking to Subaru, and they liked the idea of a McCrane-Aim in there.
• 13:53
  So we worked a deal together for Max to do that.
• 13:56
  And I think that was his learning period of understanding a bit about rallying, obviously driving the car.
• 14:05
  From then it was, right, okay, you know, if you want to try and make a career of this, as I said, rallying is quite a small sport in Australia.
• 14:12
  You're going to need to go to Europe, which I knew anyway.
• 14:14
  So we kind of took him over to get a taste of it.
• 14:17
  And then, you know, last year was his first full season.
• 14:21
  to get the chance to drive at 16 here was better than we managed.
• 14:24
  We had to wait till we're 17.
• 14:27
  But I think the downside of Australia, as we all know, it's a massive country.
• 14:31
  And being on the west side, it's a long way to go to get to any rallies.
• 14:37
  But for sure, it was a good grounding for them.
• 14:40
  What has that been like for you, that whole process?
• 14:42
  Because, you know, you grew up around it with your dad.
• 14:45
  You've competed in it yourself.
• 14:46
  Now it's your own flesh and blood, Alistair, doing this.
• 14:49
  How do you cope with all that?
• 14:51
  Yeah, I know I've got a lot more respect for, especially my mum.
• 14:56
  You know, at some point she had my dad calling and myself all rallying.
• 15:00
  I know who difficult that is just with Max out there.
• 15:02
  So, you know, for sure it's...
• 15:06
  With him growing up and watching wheeling go-karts, you can see everything on the track.
• 15:10
  But rallying, as you know, you see them at the service area, they jump in the car and they disappear.
• 15:16
  And you don't, as a driver, as younger, I never thought, I wonder what mum and dad are thinking when I'm off.
• 15:23
  driving around the forest and they don't know what's happening.
• 15:25
  Now I realise what it's like because obviously when Max disappears, okay with technology now you can watch and you can track the cars, but you still don't actually know what's going on in the car.
• 15:36
  So I think that's probably one of the hardest bits to work on, is just letting them go and let them do that.
• 15:42
  And, I mean, it's a game when you start climbing the ladder like that that has politics and all sorts of other pressures, and you've walked that road.
• 15:49
  So there's probably part of you that wants to put your arm around him and protect him from that, but then also let him experience it and walk it himself too.
• 15:58
  Yeah, no, he's got to learn.
• 16:01
  I think from the first year in Europe,
• 16:05
  After the first couple of events I actually had to stand back because the engineers, he was young, he's still young, but his first year in Europe, obviously I help him as much as I can with set up and with ideas and so on.
• 16:20
  But it was getting to the point where, you know, the engineer or the team would come and talk to me before they would speak to Max.
• 16:25
  So I had to kind of consciously step back and speak to them and say, look, guys, you actually need to speak to Max.
• 16:31
  He'll come to me if he needs advice.
• 16:33
  I said, but I'm going to step back a bit.
• 16:35
  He's got to let...
• 16:36
  He won't learn if I'm giving you all the answers.
• 16:38
  So you can let him come, let them speak to him, then he can come to me if he needs a bit of advice.
• 16:44
  But definitely, you know, consciously step back a bit and let him... You've got to learn if, you know...
• 16:49
  You've got to make mistakes.
• 16:50
  You've got to get it right.
• 16:51
  You've got to make mistakes.
• 16:52
  If you don't do that, then you don't learn.
• 16:54
  And he's at a point where he's got to learn.
• 16:56
  He's got to soak everything in.
• 16:57
  Is Gramps involved here too?
• 16:59
  That's his nickname.
• 17:00
  That's Jimmy's nickname, Gramps, is it?
• 17:01
  Yeah, Gramps.
• 17:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:04
  Yeah, he's still, I mean, Max is, he went off to Europe.
• 17:08
  I went back with him in March, end of March, April.
• 17:11
  And Max will be there until probably November.
• 17:15
  I go back and forward a bit.
• 17:18
  And then if I can't be on events, then my gramps, my father, he heads out.
• 17:22
  So he's still involved.
• 17:23
  I think he's still, for my dad, it's probably better than it was when we were doing it.
• 17:29
  You know, as he said to me, he doesn't need to pay for it anymore.
• 17:33
  So he thinks it's quite funny that it's more expensive now than it used to be.
• 17:37
  It used to be.
• 17:37
  Yeah.
• 17:39
  So no, for sure, for sure, my dad likes that.
• 17:41
  He likes, and he likes having Max, you know, back in Scotland.
• 17:45
  Max is kind of staying 10 minutes from Graham.
• 17:49
  So I'm sure he heads round there for a decent meal once or twice a week.
• 17:53
  That's excellent.
• 17:54
  And any questions he's got, he can give him a shout.
• 17:56
  Now, some recent results.
• 17:57
  We should tackle a little bit of that.
• 17:59
  I think there was a junior ERC win in April.
• 18:03
  And was Sweden or Scandinavia a little on the tough side for him, maybe?
• 18:06
  Yeah, he went off.
• 18:07
  He won the first round, which was a great start to the year.
• 18:12
  He finished fourth in Gran Canaria.
• 18:15
  So he went to Scandinavia.
• 18:17
  He was, I think, two points off the lead in the championship.
• 18:20
  And I know from back in the day, the thing, you know, the first time I went to Finland, it was about trying to beat the guys that were in the British championship, Roven Perra, Gardemeister, all these guys.
• 18:31
  You were fighting with them in the UK, but you wanted to try and beat them on their home turf.
• 18:36
  And I'm sure there was a bit of that with Max.
• 18:39
  There's three of the other top guys are Scandinavian, so Max was going, not to make a point, but obviously he wanted to fight with them.
• 18:51
  was very unlucky, just got it cut out just a little bit wide in the ditch.
• 18:55
  And then as the car was coming back out onto the road, there was a farmer who had put a road into the field.
• 19:01
  So a bit of a culvert hit that and it flipped over.
• 19:04
  So he was, I think from where he went off,
• 19:09
  the consequences were more severe than it should have been.
• 19:12
  But that's the learning process.
• 19:15
  If you don't have an accident now and again, you're not trying hard enough.
• 19:19
  So he's come away from there.
• 19:20
  I'm sure he's learned a lot.
• 19:21
  He's still lying second in the championship, which is good.
• 19:24
  And he actually goes to Estonia in a week and a half's time.
• 19:27
  So he's not long out of the car before he can try and rectify what he did in Sweden.
• 19:33
  Is there a funny story about you maybe going to Dirtfish for the first time and you snapped a photo as you were going through it and you sent it to him?
• 19:42
  Just share that with everyone.
• 19:43
  Just share that.
• 19:43
  That's quite funny.
• 19:46
  I'm not sure what year that was.
• 19:47
  Max would have only been, it might have been eight or nine.
• 19:50
  I'm not sure.
• 19:51
  But I was going to Dirtfish because we were doing a bit of coaching at the school and with the rallycross team.
• 19:58
  And as I was driving down into Dirtfish, I stopped and took a photograph of the area.
• 20:03
  And I sent it to Max and Max's reply was, it's amazing how they've made it look like the game, Dad.
• 20:21
  These rally drivers are made of true grit.
• 20:23
  Rob Herridge actually won his second Australian title before an exhausting appeal in the courts ultimately decided his first.
• 20:31
  My mum is a competitive person, remember, of course, and I said to my mum, sometimes, mum, when you pick a fight, you've got to fight.
• 20:37
  And I don't want to be on my deathbed thinking, I'll let that go.
• 20:44
  Sticking to his guns is something that's been a bit of a trademark of Rob's career.
• 20:49
  He's a good talker too.
• 20:50
  It's one of the rare three-parters in the garage library.
• 20:53
  Now back to the flying Scott Alastair McCray and our wannabe Scott McCrastee.
• 20:59
  In your own career, you've competed in the WRC, in Asia, the UK, lots of different cars.
• 21:05
  What's the one for you, Alistair, that you have the fondest memory of where you go, you know, if you go to sleep and dream at night and go, that car, that thing on that day was amazing?
• 21:14
  I think in...
• 21:16
  In the Formula 2 days, to win the British Championship, obviously you would say Nissan, but it was Volkswagen and Steve Bagnell that was the head of Volkswagen Motorsport in the UK.
• 21:29
  He really gave me my break into the World Championship because the second year at Volkswagen, we did the British, but we also did, I think, six or seven World Championship events.
• 21:40
  I had my first win in Formula 2 with Volkswagen.
• 21:43
  I won a great number of events, almost won the championship if it wasn't for an accident on the Manx Rally.
• 21:49
  I think Formula 2 would probably be the Volkswagen.
• 21:52
  And then in the World Championship, I probably never got to drive the car that I really wanted to because I wanted to be in a position to try and fight for a championship.
• 22:03
  The first time I drove a World Rally car was in Rally GB and that was the Subaru.
• 22:09
  And that was in a team with Collins.
• 22:10
  I think probably the 98 World Rally car Subaru was a car that was fighting for the championship.
• 22:16
  So to be in that was great.
• 22:18
  But to pick one car is very difficult.
• 22:21
  So hard.
• 22:22
  That moment, you two together in the same team, that's pretty magic, mate.
• 22:26
  Yeah, no, it was.
• 22:27
  That was great.
• 22:28
  And I'd just come from the British Championship from F2 and jumped into the car.
• 22:34
  We did one event in Wales prior to the...
• 22:37
  the Rally GB as a test, and, you know, stepping up from Formula 2 into the world rally car, it was a pretty awesome feeling, and great, obviously.
• 22:47
  I was still a fairly young guy then, but to get that chance and to be in the team with Colin was pretty cool.
• 22:53
  Massive.
• 22:53
  What about the piece of road?
• 22:55
  Could be something from your early days, could be something from those ball-bearing roads in West Australia, New Zealand.
• 23:01
  What about the piece of road where you connected with it and you were, like, far out?
• 23:05
  Yeah, yeah.
• 23:07
  Again, there would probably be a number of them.
• 23:09
  If you go to Sweden and it's full snow and proper snow banks, actually there's nowhere better to drive.
• 23:16
  That doesn't happen very often.
• 23:18
  At the moment now, they keep sending the Swedish rally further north to find snow.
• 23:22
  If you get real snow, it's amazing.
• 23:25
  You'd either look at New Zealand or I think the one that sticks out is Unampoia in Finland.
• 23:31
  The year I won Formula 2 there.
• 23:33
  And that was basically the time where all the young guys are coming up through.
• 23:38
  There was Rovan Perl, Gardemeister, Perce fan.
• 23:40
  And we went there and my goal was, I was beating them in the UK.
• 23:44
  I'm going to beat them in their home turf.
• 23:47
  And we were leading week and we fought in the top three from the start.
• 23:53
  and we were actually leading the event and it was Unampoja was the stage where on the Saturday and the Finns kind of say I know you're leading the event now but when you get to Unampoja you're finished you know there's nobody other than Scandinavia can be as quick in there and we got we actually took I think what were quickest by 11 seconds mega and I reckon that that stage there and the way I felt and the way it drove that's probably one of the best in my career for sure
• 24:20
  Is that like filming your mind?
• 24:21
  Can you still vividly?
• 24:22
  Yeah, yeah.
• 24:23
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:24
  You can still, and at the end, towards the end of the stage, you went, it was really, it's always an amazing stage, very quick jumps, double width road the whole way through, but then at the end, you turned off onto a narrower section.
• 24:37
  And there was a guy that was actually, he worked with the Swedish General Motors team, I knew him, and he was actually where we turned off onto the narrow.
• 24:47
  and we got there and he put a board up and he said, I think it was minus 13.
• 24:53
  And I'm looking at it as a turn on the narrow.
• 24:56
  I'm going, I can't be right.
• 24:57
  Not in the quicks.
• 24:58
  I'm thinking I'll take more time in the narrow stuff.
• 25:00
  Well, actually dropped a couple of seconds in the narrow stuff.
• 25:03
  And I don't know whether it was with shock at the fast part, but for sure, I can still feel bits of that and bits of it that...
• 25:12
  You don't get it perfectly often, but it wasn't far off.
• 25:15
  Mega.
• 25:16
  What about Max's grand plan?
• 25:18
  Are you just going to go kind of step by step?
• 25:20
  Is there a hope that within a few years he might be WRC?
• 25:23
  What's the... Yeah, I mean, that's obviously the plans to try and get to that point.
• 25:28
  This year, you know, it's the European Junior Championship, but we're doing four events in the BRC as well and the British Championship in a Rally 2 car.
• 25:39
  Probably not ideal mixing front-wheel drive car with the four-wheel drive, but it's giving him the experience.
• 25:46
  So Andy's learning to jump between cars.
• 25:49
  So I think this year for sure is build that experience.
• 25:52
  Hopefully we can get him into Junior World Championship next year.
• 25:57
  And then obviously the idea for sure is Junior WRC, WRC2, and then if he can get it then obviously to become professional at it.
• 26:08
  The front wheel drive stuff that you've spoken about so fondly here in the chat, how valuable has that been from a driving standpoint for you, do you reckon?
• 26:18
  I think, you know, for me...
• 26:20
  If you look at previously, and it was rear-wheel drive, they went from rear-wheel drive to four-wheel drive.
• 26:27
  The change from rear-wheel drive to four-wheel drive is quite big.
• 26:31
  A front-wheel drive car is very similar in driving style to a four-wheel drive.
• 26:34
  So learning your craft in a front-wheel drive, underpowered car, it teaches you to carry speed speed.
• 26:43
  where you normally don't need to worry about it so much in a high-powered four-wheel drive car.
• 26:48
  For me, I think that's your apprenticeship, that's your grounding, and it's definitely one of the best things for me.
• 26:55
  And I think for any young guy, I always advise them don't stick them into four-wheel drive cars straight away.
• 27:00
  Put them in two-wheel drive with no horsepower, and you'll see that they can actually drive.
• 27:04
  And then that translates as you come into four-wheel drive and higher speeds.
• 27:09
  crazy to think that it's been 17 years since we lost your brother.
• 27:12
  I can't imagine what that was like for you all and how you dealt with it.
• 27:15
  And I got to work with Barry Sheen for a little while in the Channel 10 days.
• 27:20
  And I often wonder what people like he and Colin would be doing now.
• 27:24
  If anything, mate, I would imagine he'd still be living life to the max and enjoying it.
• 27:27
  I'm sure, just living life to the max, enjoying it.
• 27:30
  I'm sure there would still be
• 27:32
  motorbikes, they'd still be cars, they'd be jet skis, you've got to enjoy your life.
• 27:38
  So I'm sure it would be the same.
• 27:40
  Exactly.
• 27:40
  Have you kept a little restoration project, two wheel, four wheel, what is in the Alistair Macrae garage?
• 27:47
  at the moment I've got a Fiesta that Mark's run last year two years ago I've got that I've got a Mark II Escort body shell that I bought I think probably three years ago and hasn't been touched I've had other Escorts here which you know I've built and used I've got a
• 28:05
  I like my bikes.
• 28:06
  I've got my first R1 Yamaha enduro bikes.
• 28:11
  There's a few things there, but I don't really have time to use them.
• 28:16
  Certainly I haven't had time to build the Mark II Escort yet.
• 28:20
  Are you using the R1 at places like Wanneroo or anything along those lines when you get the chance?
• 28:25
  No, I've used it.
• 28:26
  We've actually got a driver training business here in Perth and we've got a short track.
• 28:32
  It's 1.6 kilometres, fairly technical.
• 28:34
  So I get out on that now and again.
• 28:36
  Once I'm fed up looking at the computer and trying to work out figures, I can jump out on the R1 and de-stress.
• 28:43
  So I get out now and again, but not nearly enough.
• 28:46
  Perfect.
• 28:46
  Let's finish with that.
• 28:47
  Just tell people a bit about the business that you're doing now and what daily life between, you know, jetting off to check on Max and, you know, catching up with him on the odd rally and then running the business as well.
• 28:57
  Tell us about that.
• 28:58
  Yeah, no, we've got as a driver and safety training business.
• 29:00
  It was, it's next to the airport in Perth.
• 29:03
  It was opened, I think, 20 years.
• 29:05
  22, 23 years ago and actually the facility, the business that was in there closed down.
• 29:10
  We went in five years ago and opened it back up so as I say it has got an asphalt track there, 1.6k, it's got a couple of skid pans, four wheel drive area but believe it or not even though you're next to an airport we get noise complaints.
• 29:23
  No way!
• 29:26
  So my idea when we opened was it was more of performance and motorsport but that's going to
• 29:32
  The noise complaints or the noise restrictions have made that a bit more difficult than we thought.
• 29:37
  So we do defensive driver training for the mining industry for resources.
• 29:42
  We do a bit of truck training.
• 29:43
  So it's basically driver training and safety school.
• 29:48
  Awesome.
• 29:48
  It's been fantastic to spend about an hour with you and to reminisce a bit about your own career and to hear importantly about Max and his journey too.
• 29:57
  We wish you continued success with that and we can't wait to see what the years to come bring for him.
• 30:03
  Thank you very much for chatting with us.
• 30:05
  No worries.
• 30:05
  Thank you.
• 30:13
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 30:17
  Series editor and producer is Thomas Dullard.
• 30:20
  Audio production by Link Kelly.
• 30:23
  If you've got a guest suggestion, get in touch with me via social media.
• 30:27
  The Garage, that's where a journey begins with a tank full of passion-fuelled stories.