Latest / Rusty's Garage / The Motorsport Brief: with Enduro Motorbike star Daniel "Chucky" Sanders

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The Motorsport Brief: with Enduro Motorbike star Daniel "Chucky" Sanders · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:04
  Welcome to the Motorsport Brief.
• 0:06
  It's Thursday the 14th of December 2023.
• 0:09
  While most forms of our game are now on an end of season break and Christmas is almost upon us, one of the most gruelling annual events is just around the corner.
• 0:19
  And today we'll talk about it with an Aussie...
• 0:22
  who is back from injury, a rider who was really impressed since he made his debut in recent years in a race that requires true grit, perseverance and the ability to bush mechanic your way around problems when they arise.
• 0:39
  Hi everybody, Greg Rust with you for this edition of the Rusty's Garage Shortcast.
• 0:43
  Of course, I'm talking about Dakar.
• 0:45
  The event that F1 stars, World Rally legends and more all hold in the highest regard.
• 0:52
  Tough isn't a good enough word for it.
• 0:54
  Quick plug for the latest feature ep with Marty Kragle.
• 0:58
  Do yourself a favour and have a listen to the story of a privateer motorcycle racer who wasn't afraid to put his bike on drip.
• 1:06
  It was a decent loan for the time too.
• 1:09
  He caught the attention of some big names in motorcycle racing.
• 1:14
  an Aussie superbike that is close to his heart, to racing in the United States and taking the learnings from the School of Motorsport and applying them to business.
• 1:25
  And why Marty would like the sport to work on programs to help racers make a meaningful transition to a new career when the racing stops.
• 1:35
  Even if you're more of a four-wheel than a two-wheel fan, you will still really enjoy that one.
• 1:40
  Today's guest is Daniel Sanders on the two-wheel side from a Victorian apple farming family who rides for the Gas Gas team.
• 1:48
  As you'll hear, he's been raised on some classic Aussie endurance events.
• 1:54
  Collectively, that should make for a hardened exterior.
• 1:57
  But he's got this wide, very welcoming smile.
• 2:01
  Beneath it is the heart of a lion, as they say.
• 2:04
  And the results, after only a few Dakars, reflect that.
• 2:09
  Hopefully Chucky, as they call him, has recovered well enough to be able to bag a podium this year.
• 2:14
  I spoke to him just before he jetted out to the US for some important pre-Dakar testing.
• 2:21
  Daniel Sanders, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:24
  Cheers, Drusty.
• 2:25
  Thanks for having me, mate.
• 2:26
  Hey, it was great to catch up with you at WSX in Melbourne before you head out on a big kind of, we would think of it as a Christmas vacation, but it's really going to be a lot busier than that for you, isn't it?
• 2:37
  Yeah.
• 2:38
  Yeah, mate, it's going to be torture.
• 2:40
  So, yeah, it was good to catch up down at the World Supercross in Melbourne at Marvel Stadium.
• 2:45
  And, yeah, I'm sending it off for two weeks to do a two-week training block ready for Dakar Alley in Jan. Now, you're coming back from injury.
• 2:54
  Can we just remind listeners about the leg break?
• 2:58
  You were in the Aussie Outback kind of just doing a training ride, weren't you?
• 3:01
  But you've bounced.
• 3:03
  How's the recovery been?
• 3:04
  Yeah.
• 3:05
  Yeah, that's right.
• 3:05
  I was training out at Alice Springs, getting ready for the Think Desert race.
• 3:09
  So I spent two and a half weeks out of the race itself and I was just cruising around on the rally bike, just learning the track a little bit more on a sort of a trail ride sort of session.
• 3:19
  And yeah, unfortunately on the way back, I crashed and I was about 100 k's out of town, 120 k's out of town.
• 3:25
  So...
• 3:28
  Yeah, I broke my femur in two breaks, one lower and one upper.
• 3:34
  So I was pretty lucky to survive that.
• 3:35
  It's in clit, the femoral artery.
• 3:38
  So sort of glad that didn't end up really bad.
• 3:42
  But yeah, lucky enough, I had some guys following me on the bikes and in cars that could rescue me and get me into hospital.
• 3:49
  Yeah.
• 3:50
  Yeah, I was lucky for that.
• 3:52
  But, yeah, that's pretty much six months ago now.
• 3:54
  And, yeah, it's tracking a little slow with one of the breaks.
• 3:58
  But we're going to give it a crack and see how we go.
• 4:01
  Cool.
• 4:02
  Do you have to look after that then if that's the case?
• 4:06
  Yeah, I think we've got to look after it a little bit.
• 4:09
  It's a pretty big bone and a pretty serious injury as well.
• 4:12
  But I've just been in contact with the surgeons pretty much yesterday and we did a check-up with it all.
• 4:17
  And the last surgery I had, which was just before the Gold Coast 500, I literally had it a couple of days before that started, just to get two screws removed out of the rod in the leg, it was to help compress and bring one of the fractures closer together
• 4:34
  So, yeah, that's going in the good direction.
• 4:36
  I've got another four or five weeks of healing, but I've been back on the bike riding now for three weeks, just taking it easy and getting all the muscle memory back.
• 4:43
  It's feeling good, just not too fast on the right-handed corners.
• 4:47
  Got to work on that.
• 4:48
  Hey, obviously at the time it was tough for the team because, I mean, Sam Sunderland had been injured in the early part of the year as well.
• 4:57
  And you were coming off the back of that success in Mexico in the FIM World Rally Raid Championship.
• 5:03
  It was looking like being a ripper lead up to Dakar and rest of the year for you, wasn't it?
• 5:08
  Yeah, that's it.
• 5:09
  Like came off last year's Dakar, like the year before was 22.
• 5:13
  I broke my elbow and pretty much had that whole year off other than coming back for an Australian race and had a desert race and I won that.
• 5:21
  And then I rebroke it sort of in that transition of getting ready for that.
• 5:25
  And then I pretty much went into Dakar this year undercooked and, uh,
• 5:30
  somehow ended up leading the way after two weeks on the rally bike and had the race in control up until the sixth day where I got that food poisoning or sickness, whatever it was.
• 5:41
  So, yeah, it was a little bit of a bummer there in the race.
• 5:45
  And then I skipped the Abu Dhabi, the next one, just because my elbow wasn't quite 100% yet.
• 5:50
  So we sat on the sideline for that one just to make sure we'd get through a healthy year and came out at Sonora Rally in Mexico and took that win, which was my first World Rally win, which was awesome.
• 6:02
  All the riders were back, full, healthy, and yeah, had a pretty much good race there.
• 6:08
  And that gave me the confidence.
• 6:09
  And that was about a month and a half out from Fink, so...
• 6:13
  I was just living up pretty much in Alice Springs training for Think.
• 6:16
  I hadn't done it yet and just doing the time up there.
• 6:19
  And, yeah, this unfortunately happened and it's just been a massive setback.
• 6:23
  You are from Three Bridges in Victoria.
• 6:26
  Just share with people.
• 6:27
  That's kind of south-east of Lillydale around Yarra Junction, sort of in that vicinity.
• 6:31
  Whereabouts are you?
• 6:33
  Yeah, very close.
• 6:34
  We're in the Yarra Valley, so east of Melbourne, about an hour and a half out of the town in the winery and fruit growing region, which is where I grew up on an apple farm in Three Bridges there.
• 6:44
  So it's a big logging industry area and a lot of state forest and good forward driving and motorbike riding around here.
• 6:53
  And I've been lucky enough to grow up on an apple farm and
• 6:57
  A lot of land in the bush, so unlimited supply of riding in the bush here, which has been awesome, but just no sand dunes or desert anywhere near me.
• 7:05
  So I don't know how I stepped into that category, but, yeah, it's a good area here to live in and you can, you know, sort of get away with everything here.
• 7:14
  It's just out in the country enough where you can, you know, have some fun.
• 7:18
  And still be close to the city if you need it to.
• 7:20
  Chucky, I think that the thing about that is, does it collectively give you, because in a farming sense, you learn to be resourceful, right?
• 7:28
  You've got to be hands on with different things.
• 7:30
  And then at the same time, as you said, there's a variety of riding.
• 7:34
  Looking at it, those ingredients are actually very good grounding for the rider that you've become in some respects, aren't they?
• 7:41
  Yeah.
• 7:42
  I think it definitely is like coming up on a farm, not like the farming, no one's sort of unless you're massive, but just a family-owned farm.
• 7:51
  No one was in our families loaded with money.
• 7:54
  We weren't just handed things as kids like Santa had to bring me the farm
• 7:58
  And Santa had to give me the first bike.
• 8:00
  The parents couldn't buy it, so Santa had to drop me off a little 80 when I was about eight years old.
• 8:05
  And thankful for Santa for dropping that bike off because I'd always watch Dad ride around the paddock on his bike, and he used to race.
• 8:12
  So that was all there.
• 8:14
  But, yeah, growing up on the farm, you never –
• 8:17
  you always made use of everything on the bike.
• 8:20
  Like you pretty much wore the tie down until you could see the tube or the sprocket until there's only like two, two teeth left on it or the O-ring chains, like just hanging off and shredding itself.
• 8:31
  So it was good like that.
• 8:32
  I didn't need much growing up.
• 8:34
  Like I used dad's secondhand boots, his helmets, like cause we had big heads as kids.
• 8:39
  So we never really got spoiled as a kid.
• 8:41
  And that sort of grounded me a lot.
• 8:43
  And, you know, just, you know,
• 8:45
  not taking anything for granted and it makes you work hard for it as well so i've seen what they've what they've done with the apple farm here and it's all you know they're all happy how my whole family's grown up and we all live a healthy happy lifestyle so it's good i love it love it did you take to it like a duck to water when that bike arrived courtesy of santa
• 9:05
  Ah, look, I wasn't – I was playing a lot of other sport at that time, like basketball, footy, cricket.
• 9:10
  And, yeah, it was just the motos.
• 9:14
  A lot of friends in our area, a lot of us ride.
• 9:16
  And, you know, there's a couple of other professional racers that live within 10Ks of me as well.
• 9:21
  So it's sort of a good motorbike area and a couple of good clubs around for racing and, you know, getting into it, which has really helped myself just having good events.
• 9:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 9:32
  And, yeah, for the bike stuff, just, I don't know, just to work harder.
• 9:37
  I wasn't the most talented kid, but just the work ethic that I had, I guess, just paid off and I was so driven to make something happen, which, yeah, I just love doing it.
• 9:48
  The individual of the sports, like whatever work you put in is what you're going to get out.
• 9:52
  Get out of it, yeah.
• 9:54
  So just in terms of the potential pathway, it could have been motocross or supercross as we were at the other night, circuit racing, whatever.
• 10:01
  What made you gravitate toward the endurance racing?
• 10:03
  What was it that kind of hooked you there?
• 10:06
  Yeah.
• 10:06
  Well, I sort of like when I was a kid, I was a bit of a daredevil as well.
• 10:10
  So I like jumping, you know, the flames going, you know, you see nitro circles or crusty demons and like my older cousins had like a freestyle ramp and stuff.
• 10:19
  So they were doing jumps and tricks and stuff.
• 10:21
  So I like, you know, jumping.
• 10:23
  That was one of the cool things as a kid on it, whether it was BMX or mountain bikes or whatever, I was always jumping and that was a cool thing to get airtime or how far you could jump.
• 10:31
  Yeah.
• 10:32
  I don't know.
• 10:33
  Dad used to race enduro, and that's sort of where we started, in grass paddocks and all the bush around here we rode.
• 10:38
  And there's a couple of jumps around to ride and jump.
• 10:42
  But, yeah, obviously you only go where your dad's going to take you.
• 10:46
  So we go to an enduro event, and that's where we go.
• 10:48
  So, yeah, I never really got to race.
• 10:51
  motocross or supercross and to race supercross, you really got to, you know, start sort of at a young age to get that, that flow.
• 10:58
  It's like BMX racing, you know, that rhythm compared to just normal mountain biking or something.
• 11:03
  There's a, there's a special skill and, and unique style to, to tackle that.
• 11:08
  But yeah, it's just,
• 11:10
  just was enduro from the get-go as a kid.
• 11:12
  And somehow just once I sort of got onto a motocross track and built one myself with a couple of mates, that's sort of where I made the next level.
• 11:20
  You had to have a really good crossover between multiple disciplines and especially for where I'm at in rallying now, I've got that whole background for motocross, enduro, desert racing.
• 11:30
  Bring it together and that pretty much makes you become like the best Dakar rider.
• 11:35
  You mentioned before Hatta Desert Race, which is kind of legendary in Aussie racing.
• 11:40
  On the CV, as a young bloke, I mean, there's Australian Off-Road Championship wins, more than one.
• 11:46
  International six-day Enduro winner.
• 11:48
  What makes you ready for Dakar, though?
• 11:50
  And how big is the step from something like that to the rigours of Dakar?
• 11:56
  I think all that stuff that I've got on that CV right there, it's literally what you need to become the best rally Dakar rider because coming from an enduro background or extreme stuff, you've got to have that technique and the skill of slow speed riding, reading terrain, the rocks, the routes, the...
• 12:16
  the type of soil.
• 12:18
  And then motocross, you've got that intensity and the speed and, you know, the jumping skill, that style of handling a bike in the air and then the desert racing here in Australia, that's where your speed and the sand and the terrain really kick in and you're not scared of anything flying out here at 140, 170 k's an hour.
• 12:34
  So...
• 12:37
  It's sort of like I stepped into rally at the best time.
• 12:40
  I was at the peak of sort of my enduro career and I was going to look into start doing some motocross stuff, Australian stuff as well.
• 12:48
  Then, you know, this Dakar opportunity popped up.
• 12:51
  So I thought, why not?
• 12:54
  Cool.
• 12:55
  The terrain, mate, in Saudi is nuts.
• 12:59
  How difficult is it from a riding perspective?
• 13:01
  Do you even get to stop and – or not stop, but do you get to even take it in?
• 13:06
  You do a little bit if you're in a big open valley, sand valley, you have a look around at the mountains.
• 13:11
  But, yeah, you do.
• 13:14
  Like there's a lot of the footage that comes through the event and you just look back at it and you go crazy how you got to just ride through that or you speak to fellow competitors and like, how good was the start of the section?
• 13:23
  They always start us or finish us in a really, really unique area.
• 13:29
  which is always cool to ride through.
• 13:30
  But the thing is we're focused so much on our navigation and our road book.
• 13:34
  We try not to drift off and start thinking about where we're riding or in the awesome valley there is, but it'd be cool to go back and free ride through there just to have that adventure and go through there without racing.
• 13:46
  Yeah, days are long too, mate, aren't they?
• 13:48
  Just give listeners a snapshot because there's map preparation before you even kind of get on the bike, big distances that you're covering, sleep deprivation must be a thing too.
• 13:56
  Yeah.
• 13:57
  Yeah, it is.
• 13:59
  Average, I think we're getting up at 3.30, 4 o'clock.
• 14:02
  That's sort of average.
• 14:04
  And then it's about an hour to get ready and we'll leave, yeah, whenever we have to and then do our road section.
• 14:10
  So say if we get up at 3.30, we'll leave by 4.30.
• 14:14
  We'd arrive maybe first light of the day.
• 14:17
  We'd arrive probably 30 minutes to the start line before we'd actually have to start.
• 14:22
  Yeah.
• 14:23
  We'd arrive, eat some more food, go to the toilet, all that important stuff, and then get our road book 20 minutes before the stage.
• 14:33
  And then we put our road book in, and that's the first time we see the route and the sort of –
• 14:39
  I guess, a difficultness of the road book and if we can find anything in there that's dangerous or tricky, we'll highlight it, but we've only got 20 minutes to put in a 350K stage or something like that.
• 14:52
  So quickly zing through it, make sure there's no modifications that we miss.
• 14:56
  Speed reading.
• 14:57
  Speed reading it, basically.
• 14:58
  Exactly right.
• 14:59
  So that's the only time I read a book is a scroll.
• 15:01
  And it pretty much happens at every race.
• 15:04
  So, yeah.
• 15:05
  Crazy.
• 15:06
  That's probably the hardest.
• 15:06
  And then we're on the bike from eight.
• 15:09
  7.30, 8 o'clock until 2, 12 maybe we'll finish the stage.
• 15:14
  It'll be about four to five hours on the bike where we're full focused and then we'll have our road section back to the pits which is try and shut the body down a bit and relax and just do a little bit of a road cruise back to the pits and then eat lunch and dinner within those two hours and try and get to sleep at 7.30.
• 15:34
  What about when stuff goes wrong with the bike, repairs on the run, the improvisation we talked about a little earlier and so on?
• 15:41
  Yeah, we pretty much carry some, like, basic stuff on the bike, some tools, some parts like gear levers, brake lever, clutch lever, and maybe a few extra bolts, nuts and bolts that we could probably fix something with or some duct tape, all the important stuff, zip ties and putty to bog up the...
• 16:04
  Bog up the radiator if we've got a leak.
• 16:07
  Yeah, just some basic tools that we need to swap something out on a bike or if we can fix something there.
• 16:14
  Yeah, just nothing too crazy.
• 16:16
  But we try not to use that.
• 16:17
  I haven't really had to use those tools yet, so it's been pretty handy.
• 16:21
  Cool.
• 16:22
  We hope you don't have to use them this year either.
• 16:23
  I mean, if you look at your time in Dakar, mate, and although it is relatively speaking short, there's some great stuff in there from your debut in 2021 with fourth overall highest rookie, stage wins in 2022.
• 16:38
  I know there was a crash there on stage seven and so on, but some real highs, some real positives to take for you going back into this year's race.
• 16:46
  Does it evoke some good memories in that sense, mate?
• 16:49
  Yeah, there's a lot of highs and sort of a lot of, you know, sort of I guess for myself letting myself down.
• 16:56
  Like I've been in really good positions a lot of years and something's happened.
• 17:00
  Like obviously the first year there's no pressure.
• 17:02
  You're going in and just, you know, taking it as it comes and everything works out well and you finish fourth.
• 17:08
  So that's a super high.
• 17:09
  And then the next year I went in.
• 17:11
  Still sort of the rookie, not many races or much time sort of on the bike and fresh to it and was in a good position when I crashed out, sitting in third but close for the lead.
• 17:19
  And I knew I had more in the tank.
• 17:21
  And then, yeah, last year's was –
• 17:26
  The sickness, I went in sort of underprepared with the elbow, didn't think much, just wanted to survive and get through the days.
• 17:33
  And after the second, third day, I was like, dude, I'm like the fastest guy here and I can sort of control the race.
• 17:41
  And I was doing that comfortably and was feeling really good on the bike.
• 17:45
  And then, yeah, you just have something out of the...
• 17:49
  out of the random knock you about and you get sick and you lose 27 minutes one day, but then you lose the race for 22 minutes behind the lead.
• 17:55
  So, you know, just that day taken out can, can change that much.
• 17:59
  So it's, uh, and coming in for this year, just same, same approaches last year, just undercooked.
• 18:06
  We're just going to go in and hope for the best.
• 18:08
  And it's sort of a good way to do it.
• 18:10
  And the race is 14 days long.
• 18:11
  So it's not like the first week's going to be real hectic and hard.
• 18:15
  So...
• 18:17
  It's going to be pretty busy.
• 18:18
  Most of the days are like 400K stages, so they're going to be at least five hours on the bike racing every day, so the first eight days.
• 18:26
  It's going to be challenging, and we're just going to prepare for that as well as we can and try not to make those little navigation mistakes where you do lose that time and your fatigue will kick in.
• 18:37
  I'll try and chill out the first week and see how we go in the second one.
• 18:41
  I'm intrigued a little bit about mindset there, right?
• 18:43
  So, I mean, you talked before about what you put into something is what you get out of it and so on, and the kind of commitment that you have, the hunger that you have.
• 18:52
  So do you go into this thinking, righto, let's just be in the moment here, go day to day kind of thing, don't overthink it?
• 19:01
  Or have you had to sort of look back on...
• 19:03
  a little bit of that challenging stuff you just talked about and went, right, that's the learning out of that.
• 19:07
  This is how I'm going to do it this year.
• 19:09
  What approach have you had in a kind of mind sense?
• 19:13
  Yeah, there's a lot of learning going on all the time, especially rally.
• 19:16
  It's so different to any race I've done.
• 19:19
  Normally you're trained to be the fastest, the fittest, the strongest for the race, but for rally, sometimes it doesn't matter.
• 19:25
  Like last year, you can just be on that day out front leading and it's just one road book.
• 19:33
  One year we had a massive storm come through last year when I was leading the stage and we come across these notes that it's just flooded.
• 19:39
  And there's no roads we can't even see where we've got to go.
• 19:41
  So it's like you just got to be the wrong end of the stick that day and it can ruin your whole race.
• 19:47
  So it's kind of good coming in from my side this year.
• 19:51
  Like coming in, no massive expectations.
• 19:55
  Obviously you're one of the big names to be there.
• 19:57
  But for myself, just go in with that mindset, same as last year, and take day by day.
• 20:04
  just try and be there at the end of the race.
• 20:06
  Like so much can happen.
• 20:08
  But I think I'm in a good position with some of the...
• 20:12
  Some of the time bonuses they're doing this year, it's not going to be a massive benefit to open the stage, which is normally where I'd benefit.
• 20:19
  So if I can hover around the top five every day and just try and hold myself back and not go full gas every day, which I think that's one of my biggest problems is just in that race mentality of just going, I have to be the fastest, I have to win every stage, where it normally bites me in the butt one of the days and I'll lose 20 minutes.
• 20:39
  Hopefully this year we get some luck on our side and we can, yeah, be at least close to the podium.
• 20:46
  I need a good result.
• 20:48
  Great stuff.
• 20:48
  Couple to finish here.
• 20:50
  What is it about Aussies, right?
• 20:52
  Yourself, Toby Price, there are more examples I know.
• 20:55
  Why are Aussies good at this?
• 20:58
  And what are we doing in a kind of motorcycling sense that, you know, what's in the water?
• 21:04
  Yeah, that's it.
• 21:05
  We're just tough.
• 21:06
  We're just bred tough.
• 21:08
  Yeah, Toby's just one of those natural talented dudes on a bike, whether it's supercross, motocross, and all that.
• 21:15
  And he's done the rounds around the paddock around Australia and the world.
• 21:21
  So, yeah, he's one of the most talented dudes.
• 21:23
  And to have him as a teammate back in the day and kind of now as well, it's always good and good.
• 21:30
  It just helps put Aussies on the map, I guess, as well.
• 21:32
  And I don't know what it's about.
• 21:35
  We do have the best backyard for a rally, but there's just no rallies on anymore.
• 21:39
  There's no big desert races other than, you know, think Qatar and, you know, the Don River Dash.
• 21:45
  And there's a couple more.
• 21:46
  Kalgoorlie's got a desert race now, but we really need to get this safari going or something with the road books.
• 21:54
  There's a lot of interest for it, and we could do it here in Australia so easy.
• 21:58
  We could pretty much do a rally on someone's farm out on someone's station.
• 22:03
  So it's definitely possible.
• 22:05
  We just need a good crew that are willing to get it up and going again.
• 22:10
  Dakar is clearly the focus, the main objective right now.
• 22:13
  What is more beyond that?
• 22:15
  What is on the to-do list for you?
• 22:18
  Well, first thing is just get this leg right and then anything is possible for me.
• 22:23
  Like Dakar, then we've got the five rounds of the World Championship.
• 22:28
  So Dakar is in Jan and then February is Abu Dhabi.
• 22:31
  The next round is end of March in Portugal.
• 22:34
  Then we go to Argentina and start of June.
• 22:36
  Then we've got a big gap into Morocco in October.
• 22:40
  Maybe if everything's good in between that big gap, which will be our winter, maybe zing over to America and try and get myself on the start line of one of the motocrosses on the outdoors in the AMA circuit.
• 22:52
  So that's the goal.
• 22:54
  That's definitely one of the end of my career goals I want to definitely do.
• 22:58
  So I just want to get back to how I was riding last year.
• 23:01
  Before all these crashes and this fitness, I needed a lot of building up.
• 23:05
  But, you know, that's maybe something I can aim for.
• 23:08
  I want to get back to that skill and that intensity again.
• 23:11
  That level of my riding, because I know it helps a lot with my rally.
• 23:15
  So I need to get back there.
• 23:17
  That's a pretty cool thing I want to go do.
• 23:20
  Awesome.
• 23:21
  To finish, they tell me that you're a handy beekeeper.
• 23:25
  Is this true?
• 23:26
  Yeah.
• 23:27
  What type of honey?
• 23:28
  Have you ever been bitten?
• 23:29
  Tell us about this.
• 23:30
  Yeah, look, I've sort of dipped into the, when I got into my diet stuff in like 2015, 16, I cut the sugar away and I was like, one of the things you can add in is honey and then it was just honey on everything.
• 23:43
  And because we've got the apple farm here, we get honey in, like the bees in for pollination.
• 23:48
  And then I was just like asking the guy, oh, can we get some honey?
• 23:51
  He goes, no, sorry, mate, I sell it all.
• 23:53
  And I was like, but you've got 100 hives in, we pay you to bring it here, but pay the dude like 10 or 15 grand just for a month just to hire the bees.
• 24:01
  And I'm like, you know what, I'm going to get into my own bees and start it.
• 24:04
  So, yeah, I've got about 30 hives now.
• 24:07
  So hopefully I poured about 1,000 kilos of honey this summer.
• 24:10
  We'll see how we go.
• 24:12
  And, yeah, there's a lot.
• 24:15
  Hopefully I'll be selling it.
• 24:17
  Just a nice little hobby to do and supply some friends with the best honey going around.
• 24:21
  Yeah, Chucky's Honey.
• 24:22
  Yeah, I know.
• 24:24
  I've got to come up with a really cool name with it.
• 24:27
  Something sweet, but with a sting, you know, because how the flavour is strong.
• 24:33
  That is you to a teammate.
• 24:34
  We look forward to seeing that on supermarket shelves somewhere or maybe being sold locally there.
• 24:40
  From all of us and our listeners, have a great Christmas.
• 24:43
  Most importantly, kick butt in Dakar.
• 24:46
  We hope it goes super well for you, and we look forward to getting you back on for another chat again at some stage.
• 24:50
  Thank you for talking to us today.
• 24:52
  Yeah, thanks, mate.
• 24:53
  Hopefully we can get in and do the recap of it all and we can tell all the stories of what happened because it's never boring.
• 25:02
  Hope he gets to enjoy a brief break back home for Christmas before he heads off to the UAE for Dakar.
• 25:08
  That is it for today.
• 25:09
  A little thanks for all your messages on the Supercars Media Award in the Pod Division 2.
• 25:15
  Adding this motorsport brief to our offering in 2023 really seemed to strike a chord, and we are so pleased that you like it.
• 25:24
  Santa will join us next week.
• 25:26
  sort of.
• 25:27
  Our guest could certainly pass for St Nick if they ever cast him as such.
• 25:31
  It'll all make sense then, I promise.
• 25:34
  Bye for now, everyone.