Latest / Rusty's Garage / Marcos Ambrose

Transcript

Marcos Ambrose · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:14
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:28
  I'm in Tasmania for this episode, catching up with Marcus Ambrose.
• 0:32
  It's come about by popular demand, with so many of you eager to hear from the two-time supercars champion and former NASCAR racer.
• 0:41
  He's one of Australia's great motor racing export stories, particularly when you consider how difficult it is to break in and master the cars in the legendary American series.
• 0:52
  Ambrose is now back home, leading a quieter life.
• 0:56
  Well, sort of.
• 0:57
  This won't surprise you, but he's still full gas.
• 1:00
  It's just with other endeavours now, including a globally recognised award-winning eco-lodge in the heart of the Apple Isle.
• 1:08
  And he's big into simulator racing.
• 1:11
  Typical Marcus, it's done right.
• 1:13
  With motion rigs, he's built himself to complement the whole virtual reality experience.
• 1:18
  Our chat began in a cafe and finishes after he let me go for a quick blast on the sim.
• 1:24
  I was useless.
• 1:25
  He was awesome.
• 1:26
  A racer is a racer, even in retirement.
• 1:30
  You've changed gears, you've gone back to your roots.
• 1:33
  How are you enjoying life in Tasmania now?
• 1:36
  Well, you've come at probably the coldest morning of the year.
• 1:39
  I had to defrost the windows in the car to get here in time for my coffee.
• 1:44
  It's a great life.
• 1:46
  I've had a great time in racing and now it's time to shift gears, change gears if you like.
• 1:51
  and just raised my kids in Tasmania.
• 1:54
  It's a really safe spot.
• 1:55
  There's a lot of adventure to be had here.
• 1:56
  We've got some good friends and family here.
• 1:58
  So, you know, for now it's working out great.
• 2:01
  I've renovated a house, which has taken forever.
• 2:04
  one of those old heritage houses that my wife just had to have.
• 2:07
  And so that's been fun too to sort of do something very different and that's sort of coming to the end now and just becoming a normal person and just, you know, enjoying my weekends and seeing my kids flourish and be in Tasmania, which is a great spot to live, great food and great weekends.
• 2:24
  It's not very busy.
• 2:24
  You can be anywhere in 10 minutes.
• 2:26
  So, you know, I like the pace.
• 2:28
  You were all Bear Grylls, I think, when I last saw you two with a beard.
• 2:31
  You've tidied yourself up a little bit.
• 2:33
  Hey, fans have asked...
• 2:35
  about racing.
• 2:36
  Is it completely out of your system?
• 2:38
  They've seen you offering up tips on sim racing on YouTube.
• 2:43
  Tell us about iRacing Adventure.
• 2:45
  Yeah, so for me, I mean, I love racing for sure, no doubt.
• 2:49
  Me driving cars, you know, you never say never on certain things.
• 2:52
  I might do one or two things here or there.
• 2:55
  But, you know, that super high-end, ultra-professional car
• 3:00
  High pressure, no.
• 3:02
  No, that's not for me.
• 3:03
  I'm past it anyway.
• 3:04
  I'm in my 40s now, so you'd be mad to think you could come back and do something.
• 3:09
  But I love the sim world.
• 3:10
  You know, I really get a kick.
• 3:12
  I've built my own little sim rig.
• 3:13
  It's been fun to build, and it's got full motion, so it's a three doff, three directions of movement.
• 3:19
  I've built it myself, and it really mimics, for me, the feeling of a race car, around 80% to 90%.
• 3:25
  It's a great thing.
• 3:26
  So I really dig that, and I think it's great that I can be in my own house
• 3:31
  in my tracksuit pants if I like, and race Daytona with some people online.
• 3:36
  And where it's gone, I'm talking about iRacing.
• 3:38
  I'm not talking about anything else.
• 3:39
  iRacing is the service if you're a serious online racer.
• 3:43
  They used to sponsor me back in the day.
• 3:44
  That's why I know it so well.
• 3:46
  I was the first sponsored driver of iRacing when I raced a car at Pocono with iRacing logos over it.
• 3:52
  So my lineage with the company goes back a long way.
• 3:55
  And I've just been amazed when I came home and I
• 3:58
  a friend of mine was into it, and I jumped on his machine.
• 4:01
  I thought, wow, this has come a long way.
• 4:02
  And then I built my own rig and realised that once you get movement in simulation rigs, it's just absolutely incredible.
• 4:10
  So I'm a big fan of it, and I love to help that community.
• 4:13
  Bits and pieces.
• 4:14
  I haven't done much lately, but I did the Nürburgring 24-hour with some friends.
• 4:19
  We did a 24-hour race.
• 4:21
  I did about six hours of driving, and we've done the Bathurst 12-hour as well.
• 4:25
  And so, you know, I pick events off on the online space, and I've got a good friend of mine, Kevin O'Keefe, who runs a little channel, Discord and a YouTube channel called The Warm-Up Lap.
• 4:36
  It's just a great space to be because he's a lawyer in the middle of America.
• 4:41
  You know, I've never met him before.
• 4:42
  I've only met him online.
• 4:44
  And then you've got my local friends here in town.
• 4:47
  They race on a Monday night league and a Wednesday night league.
• 4:51
  And you tune in there one night and Verstappen might be in there or Shane Van Gisberger might be in there.
• 4:59
  It's a place that a plumber or a kid getting through school, it's a place where you can literally race against world championship level drivers and you can be the Joe Blow plumber down the street.
• 5:13
  if you've got a passion for racing.
• 5:15
  So really for me it breaks down a lot of those barriers of what racing is.
• 5:19
  Racing is expensive, it's elitist, it's difficult to get into, it's time-consuming, it's a selfish sport when you get to that stage because you're pouring so much time and money and effort into it.
• 5:31
  Whereas online racing, you literally can just turn on the computer and two minutes later you can be racing anywhere in the world.
• 5:37
  So I think it's a future really.
• 5:39
  I think it's just a great space and it hasn't even scratched the surface of where it's going to go.
• 5:44
  I think there's going to be professional leagues, I think there's going to be dedicated stadiums or areas that people go to to race.
• 5:50
  Maybe they'll bet on it, who knows where it's going to go, but it's pretty fun to see it grow and that's a real interest of mine, especially here in Little Tasmania where you're a mile away from any racing, especially American racing or European racing and you can run these tracks and events and sort of mimic the real thing.
• 6:09
  Tell me about that.
• 6:10
  Our bacon eggs have just arrived, so we'll have a break in a second here to enjoy that.
• 6:14
  I mean, you can race anything, as you say.
• 6:15
  Is it NASCAR?
• 6:17
  Is it sports cars?
• 6:18
  What are you driving?
• 6:18
  Well, they've just bought out Pro 4 and Pro 2 trucks, so that's off-road stadium trucks.
• 6:22
  So that's sort of been keeping everyone pretty busy there.
• 6:26
  It gets popular.
• 6:27
  But there's a real mainstay of Americans.
• 6:30
  predominantly Americans that dominate the NASCAR scene online, and they've got all different tiers in the racing side of ovals, asphalt ovals and IndyCar and so forth.
• 6:40
  And then you've got, like, another wave of sort of road racing guys from Europe, and so they sort of dominate the GT sports car space.
• 6:49
  So open wheel is not that popular on there.
• 6:52
  And then Australians, they love V8s and they love a bit of dirt as well.
• 6:57
  So there's all dirt ovals as well.
• 6:58
  So there's midgets and sprint cars and wingless and wing cars.
• 7:03
  And so that's very popular in Australia.
• 7:05
  It's probably dominated by dirt, dirt ovals for the Australian stuff.
• 7:10
  Most of the racing in Australia is done at night time.
• 7:13
  But then if you're keen enough and get on during the day, maybe not a work day, but if you're keen enough to get on, then he raced the Americans during their night.
• 7:20
  So, yeah, most guys get on.
• 7:22
  Most guys and girls get on.
• 7:23
  you know, after dinner in two or three hours of racing or whatever.
• 7:27
  And there's people earning, you know, $30,000, $40,000 to win series.
• 7:33
  Crazy.
• 7:33
  So it's big money.
• 7:34
  It's over $300,000 in the US.
• 7:36
  It's around $450 Australian dollars in prize money that iRacing have put up this year for the top three series.
• 7:43
  So it's real stuff.
• 7:45
  I mean, you've got an impeccable record, mate, both in supercars and NASCAR and things like that.
• 7:49
  But you have to kind of...
• 7:51
  get licensed and prove yourself and win races?
• 7:53
  Yeah, you do, and my license and rating is not that great.
• 7:57
  Well, I just don't dedicate myself to it, so I'm a casual guy.
• 8:01
  That's why I like the endurance races, because I can team up with someone who has a good license, so you can get in what they call a top split or a good split, where you're up, you know, because for the Daytona 24-hour, for instance, it's over a...
• 8:12
  well over a thousand teams turned up to race.
• 8:16
  So they've got to split it into different events.
• 8:18
  So you have the top 60 teams race the top splits and then the second best 60 races, second splits, so forth, all the way down to sort of eight or nine or 10 splits.
• 8:28
  So you like to race with the good guys up in the top splits if you can, but I haven't spent the time and energy to get my licenses upgraded.
• 8:36
  And I get beaten on there too, because I don't spend enough time setting the cars up, because there's a full set-up program there, you've got to really set the cars up in there and
• 8:44
  and they've got full dynamic patterns.
• 8:46
  So the weather's dynamic, the track conditions dynamic, the daylight's dynamic, it goes from full day to night, the tyres wear out, the fuel burns off, the damage comes on the car, the engine overheats.
• 8:57
  It's just, it's very, very realistic.
• 8:59
  Yeah, so there's a lot that goes into it.
• 9:01
  And so if you just jump on one hour a month, you know, you're not going to cut it.
• 9:05
  You mentioned the word lineage before, and your dad's had a, you know, wonderful lineage in motor racing from establishing...
• 9:11
  He's in the Tasmanian Motorsport Hall of Fame.
• 9:13
  I know, I know.
• 9:14
  And, you know, establishing Van Diemen with Ralph Fuhrman, you know, Europe in those early 70s there.
• 9:21
  What are your earliest memories of being around racing people, racing places, racing cars?
• 9:26
  What were the things that really hit you?
• 9:28
  There was none of it.
• 9:29
  Okay.
• 9:30
  You're kidding.
• 9:30
  No, and I think my dad's story is similar to probably mine.
• 9:34
  The apple never falls far from the tree.
• 9:36
  But he got out of racing in Europe and he just...
• 9:39
  changed course and he came back down to Tasmania and got himself in business and away he went and my only recollection of what he did was just he had an old fluoro orange helmet must have been cutting edge back in the day and he had boxes and boxes and boxes of auto sport magazines
• 9:58
  I love autosport still to this day.
• 10:00
  I think it's one of the best motorsport publications, best magazines going, because it just got so deep into what motorsport really is and the characters and everything behind it.
• 10:08
  So I would go through and actually just look at all the photos and read a lot of...
• 10:13
  Probably not read as much as look at the photos, just look at all the photos of all the cars over the years.
• 10:17
  And then I'd cut them out and stick them on my school books.
• 10:21
  So racing was in my blood early, because I like cars and I like racing cars.
• 10:24
  And, you know, I'd run around wearing his helmet on my BMX bike.
• 10:28
  Blah, blah, blah.
• 10:28
  So that's my recollection.
• 10:30
  I knew nothing of really Dad's exploits in racing until, you know, I started racing go-karts.
• 10:37
  And that was, you know, I started racing go-karts around 10, 11, thereabouts.
• 10:41
  Did you pester him?
• 10:42
  How did that happen?
• 10:43
  No, looking for something to do.
• 10:44
  So, you know, Tasmania can be a small place and pretty insular.
• 10:48
  So to actually, you know, toughen me up a little bit, you know, we had a DS80 little motorbike around the yard.
• 10:53
  That was fine.
• 10:54
  You know, I wasn't really into much.
• 10:56
  And so, you know, a friend of ours down the road had go-karts.
• 10:59
  And so we looked at it and we went to the track one time and he said, what do you think?
• 11:02
  I said, oh, yes, it looks good, you know, and went and bought one and had a go.
• 11:06
  And he bought one for himself and bought one for me.
• 11:10
  He did his back.
• 11:11
  And I took off.
• 11:13
  And so he never raced.
• 11:15
  America and Australia, mate, and bigger, overpowered, under-tired cars would become a real hallmark of your career.
• 11:23
  But there was a stint in Europe and success in European Formula Ford and you raced in Formula 3 as well.
• 11:30
  What I'm interested in in that period is how you made ends meet.
• 11:34
  Were you a race-driving instructor?
• 11:35
  And what was the... Everyone's got a crappy car story from that period.
• 11:38
  What did you drive around in?
• 11:40
  Well, you know, I was always, my father was obviously a backbone of whatever I did.
• 11:46
  And so you can't race cars without someone supporting you like that.
• 11:50
  And so, you know, Dad has always been that backbone.
• 11:54
  But I've always felt the pressure of that.
• 11:56
  I didn't like it.
• 11:57
  I didn't want to be owned by your dad.
• 11:59
  I didn't want to feel like I owed him anything.
• 12:02
  But, you know, to get where you've got to go, you've got to do that.
• 12:05
  But I was always hunting for the subsidised ride.
• 12:08
  I was always hunting for, you know, the sponsor to come in to offset it.
• 12:12
  I was always looking for the cheaper deal.
• 12:14
  And so the first year in British Formula Ford, we lumped it.
• 12:18
  The second year, I got a heavily subsidised deal, but about half price.
• 12:22
  And then that then got me, and I shouldn't have done that because it compromises results.
• 12:26
  I mean, you know, if you accept your mistakes along the way,
• 12:32
  I spent the money, give myself the best chance, but I didn't.
• 12:36
  I did the opposite.
• 12:37
  I actually tried to not spend the money and then compromised my rides to some degree and tried to work with what I had to be the best.
• 12:47
  It toughened me up for sure and it gave me other opportunities because people saw that I wasn't taking the straight line or the easy line.
• 12:58
  And then in the French Formula 3, it was a substantially subsidised ride, maybe up to 80, 90% of the ride was subsidised.
• 13:06
  And again, it was a start-up team, a new thing, it was a foreign country, engineers that didn't know.
• 13:12
  And so, you know, I never gave myself the best chance at it, if you know what I mean.
• 13:17
  That being said, I don't think I was ever going to cut it at that point because I was already nervous about, well...
• 13:24
  We can't spend all this money because there's not that big a resource compared to the guys I'm looking around.
• 13:29
  I'm looking around guys sponsored by, you know, at the time there was Marlborough money still kicking around the junior categories a little bit.
• 13:35
  And some names too.
• 13:36
  And some big names.
• 13:36
  There was Kimi Raikkonen was coming through with some big money.
• 13:40
  Jenson Button was in my ear, Dan Weldon.
• 13:42
  You know, I saw what was happening.
• 13:45
  They had countries and multinational companies behind them.
• 13:47
  And they had a plan.
• 13:48
  You could just see the plan.
• 13:49
  And I had no plan.
• 13:51
  And so I tried to just sort of lower down the cost as much as I could on the racing side.
• 13:57
  And on the personal side, I was just working at race schools and working where I could just to sort of take the pressure off.
• 14:05
  But, yeah, it was a tough time because, you know, you...
• 14:08
  Sonia was with me then too, so she's over in the States, in the UK with me and France with me.
• 14:13
  And it's great to live like that and experience foreign countries, but, you know, there's a time to get married and settle down and be independent and, you know, provide for your family if you like.
• 14:25
  And it's not happening at 24 years of age, you know, you haven't really earned a dollar.
• 14:29
  You spend a lot.
• 14:30
  You haven't earned any money.
• 14:31
  And that pressure was heavy on me, and that's part of the reason why I left Europe.
• 14:37
  and came back to try and make a living out of motor racing.
• 14:39
  I spoke to Mark Larkin for the podcast recently.
• 14:42
  He tells me he had conversations with you.
• 14:45
  I think maybe Larry Perkins too.
• 14:47
  Was there a chance that you could have even ended up a Holden man at some point?
• 14:50
  Yeah, so there was in the mix Mark Larkin.
• 14:56
  Glenn Seaton's team as well.
• 14:58
  And then there was Larry Perkins, Ross Stone, Jeff Gretch from Holden.
• 15:04
  And the reason for all that was that I was emailing them and talking to them well in advance because I knew that my time in the UK...
• 15:15
  in European racing, you know, it wasn't guaranteed or forever or all.
• 15:19
  And so I was, you know, working those channels.
• 15:21
  And to this day, I really appreciate Mark Larkin and Glenn Seaton and Larry Perkins, those guys, you know, talking to me and potentially giving me those opportunities.
• 15:35
  Now, it just so happened that I did that Young Guns Challenge and did well, and it was a really important race for me.
• 15:42
  That was actually, you know...
• 15:44
  Out of all the racing I've done and all the laps you've done and all the corners you've done, there's only two or three moments in my career that's made the difference.
• 15:51
  The rest is just background noise.
• 15:53
  And that weekend was a very important weekend for me to come home, sort of stamp my authority, if you like, on what I've learned and who I am and what I'm all about.
• 16:01
  And Ross Stone saw that very quickly.
• 16:02
  He was the keenest and eagerest of the team owners at that time.
• 16:06
  He was young and hungry.
• 16:07
  He had a business that was just getting going.
• 16:10
  He'd had some senior drivers in there with AJ and Tony, and he wanted some fresh blood.
• 16:16
  And he was looking for what I was at the time, right?
• 16:20
  And so very quickly, you know, I wanted to drive for Ross Stone because I liked what I saw too with the Stone brothers.
• 16:26
  I liked what I saw.
• 16:28
  Those guys were young and hungry and keen.
• 16:30
  And so we quickly got a deal going there and we met on the Monday after the Indy weekend at 6 o'clock in the morning before the staff got there.
• 16:42
  And they got me out the door by 6.45.
• 16:43
  Deal done.
• 16:45
  Yeah, and that following week, I was meant to be, well, I did go to Melbourne to do a test for Glen Seaton.
• 16:53
  Well, I got to Melbourne, did the seat fitting, stayed in the hotel.
• 16:57
  Glen must have heard that I'd already pretty much sealed the deal with Ross Dunder.
• 17:03
  I hadn't signed a contract.
• 17:05
  And so I thought, oh, I'll keep going in case it falls over with Ross, you see.
• 17:08
  And we didn't do the test.
• 17:10
  So, you know, that was a very dynamic time.
• 17:13
  You're talking 2001, probably the peak of activity in the driver market and the quest for winning drivers at that time.
• 17:24
  It was a very competitive, very exciting time.
• 17:26
  But, you know, Larry, he threw me a bone and threw me a contract, which I didn't sign.
• 17:31
  because it's a typical Larry contract, which you can't blame Larry for that.
• 17:35
  And Larco was going to give him a shot, but I was really nervous about Larco because his team hadn't delivered, right?
• 17:41
  And he had that special car that he had, which I just wish it had to work for him.
• 17:47
  some groundbreaking things on it.
• 17:48
  Some groundbreaking things on it, Tom, just never quite gelled it together, you know, and so I was really worried about Larco's team just because I didn't want to be stuck, you know, with unproven stuff.
• 17:57
  Yeah, so, but, you know, and I was asking for their advice.
• 18:00
  I mean, that's what it was.
• 18:01
  It wasn't that, hey, here I am, you know, look at me, I want to drive for you.
• 18:05
  I was asking their advice.
• 18:08
  What should I be doing?
• 18:10
  What is it, you know?
• 18:12
  And so I learnt, you know, what I needed to be by listening to their advice, and...
• 18:17
  I think it just stars aligned at that stage.
• 18:20
  And I've seen it in the States now, like when I've seen other drivers come through from very humble beginnings.
• 18:25
  Not that my beginnings were humble, but they just had that driving determination.
• 18:30
  Carly was a classic example.
• 18:31
  Tony Stewart's another one.
• 18:32
  Kevin Harvick, Greg Biffle.
• 18:34
  I mean, a lot of these guys were building their own race cars or running off the back of a flatbed trailer, doing their own thing just with passion and determination and drive and got picked up.
• 18:44
  And that's kind of my story.
• 18:45
  I reckon, to go back to your point about the Honda Young Guns, you're all in Integras at 2000 at the IndyCar race.
• 18:51
  I reckon that's what Ross Stone saw, that determination.
• 18:53
  You were very hands-on with the car.
• 18:55
  And you did a couple of trick things, mate, didn't you?
• 18:57
  You hustled for a gearbox and you mucked around with tyre pressures, is that right?
• 19:01
  Yeah, well, I was probably going too hard at it too early.
• 19:03
  Now, Greg Crick was on the Honda program then, you know, and I would come back from wringing the neck out of underpowered race cars in Europe because Europeans run underpowered race cars.
• 19:14
  Now, the Integra is a beautiful car, road car, but it's not a race car.
• 19:17
  It was a road car with half a cage in it.
• 19:20
  And so I got going, and Queensland Raceway, I quickly realised that, you know, third gear wasn't going to make it because I'd already crunched it within about ten minutes.
• 19:29
  And so I thought, shit, I'm going to have to get a gearbox here before anyone else starts complaining about it.
• 19:33
  So I made sure I got my gearbox, because there was only two spare gearboxes, you see, for ten cars that were running there, and everyone else was sort of just enjoying the day and whatnot.
• 19:43
  And so, you know, I was already prepping.
• 19:45
  And, you know, my first experience ever with a front-wheel drive race car, you know, that son of a bitch would not turn.
• 19:50
  You know, it just would not turn.
• 19:52
  So I'm like, what am I going to do to make this thing turn?
• 19:54
  So I put about 60 pounds of rear tyre pressure in it.
• 19:58
  And it worked a treat.
• 19:59
  So no one picked up on that and, you know, it got me through.
• 20:03
  Christian Jones was raced really well that weekend.
• 20:07
  And I'm surprised he never kicked on and made something of his racing career because he was very competitive in those cars.
• 20:14
  And then, you know, some guys were just enjoying it.
• 20:16
  You know, it's a bit of, you know, that hungry determination on the local scene just...
• 20:22
  They just didn't see it the same as what I saw that weekend.
• 20:26
  The AU fans have asked about that.
• 20:28
  I mean, you poll on debut at the Grand Prix, poll at Bathurst in your rookie year.
• 20:33
  I mean, it was phenomenal.
• 20:34
  What did you and the Stone Brothers kind of collectively unlock in that machine?
• 20:38
  Because it had its letdowns, didn't it?
• 20:41
  Oh, look...
• 20:42
  Ross and Jim Stone, by that stage, had a great team.
• 20:45
  They had great people around them.
• 20:46
  They had great gear.
• 20:48
  Jimmy was one of those guys, and he still is, and now his son's got the same thing.
• 20:54
  They've just got this drive to run race teams and to not just...
• 21:02
  plug and play, you know, they think about it.
• 21:04
  They think about how they can make it better, and they make it better, and then they make a drawing of it.
• 21:08
  And so the car was already fantastic.
• 21:11
  Their motor program was already fantastic.
• 21:14
  They were just waiting to get it unlocked, you know, and I came in with absolutely no idea what I was doing.
• 21:18
  I'd never driven a car with a roof on it, really, like a serious race car with a roof.
• 21:23
  And so I had no idea what I was doing.
• 21:24
  I just went out there and drove.
• 21:26
  And, um...
• 21:27
  You know, I remember that qualifying at the Grand Prix.
• 21:31
  I think we had two sets of tyres, maybe, I think.
• 21:33
  We had two sets.
• 21:34
  First set, you know, I didn't know what I was doing, ran off the track area, didn't do a lap.
• 21:38
  Last on the time sheets.
• 21:39
  I was pretty much way down there.
• 21:41
  I was in the 20s, I reckon.
• 21:42
  And came in, put the next set of tyres on.
• 21:44
  At first I did the same thing, went off the track.
• 21:47
  Thought, shit, you know, there's about four minutes to go and I crossed the line to start my last flying lap and nailed it, right?
• 21:54
  And I was as surprised as anyone how fast it was, because I'd actually never done a complete lap until that qualifying lap.
• 22:00
  Really, I'd been, you know, just sending it off the track, left, right and centre, just trying to find my limits, right?
• 22:06
  And I came in, and I didn't even know I had pole.
• 22:09
  And before I even parked the car up, you know, Mark Scaife was in my window, basically, like, yeah, which corner did you cut?
• 22:14
  Which corner did you cut?
• 22:15
  You know, he had to cut a corner.
• 22:16
  Which corner did you cut?
• 22:18
  I know what you're talking about, mate.
• 22:19
  Like, you know.
• 22:20
  And then later on, I realised that I was on pole.
• 22:23
  You know, because at that stage, I hadn't even used, you know, two-way radio.
• 22:26
  So I didn't even bother asking the team where I was.
• 22:28
  I just come in the pits, you know.
• 22:30
  And so I was as surprised as anyone.
• 22:32
  And then the team was actually surprised as well, because that was their, you know, first big shot.
• 22:37
  And...
• 22:38
  And we had a bunch of new guys and there was a new truck driver.
• 22:42
  The truck drivers traditionally do the tyres, right?
• 22:45
  Well, he was told to set the tyre pressures and he set the tyre pressures way wrong.
• 22:50
  And so I went out to start the race and I had half the tyre pressure I should have had to start the race.
• 22:55
  I thought, man, these guys are fantastic on cold tyres.
• 22:57
  How are they doing this, you know?
• 22:59
  So I went from first to ninth or something in the first lap.
• 23:02
  And then the pressures built up and I picked my way through and maybe finished fifth or sixth or something.
• 23:07
  But that was my first intro into V8s.
• 23:09
  And even then I was a non-believer in myself.
• 23:12
  I just didn't necessarily think that it was going to be the career that it turned out to be.
• 23:17
  Why, mate?
• 23:19
  I mean, you look at it, the stats show a win ratio of 19%.
• 23:24
  In those five seasons before you headed to NASCAR, it was like one in five races you were winning.
• 23:29
  It was staggering.
• 23:30
  Yeah, I've got no answer for it, to be honest.
• 23:34
  I just don't have an answer for it.
• 23:35
  I don't know why.
• 23:36
  I put my pants on one leg at a time.
• 23:40
  That's what Ross Stone always said.
• 23:41
  These guys, they all put their pants on one leg at a time.
• 23:44
  And, you know, I have no idea.
• 23:46
  I don't have any...
• 23:49
  any idea why I did that at that stage and whilst I was able to carry that over into NASCAR as well.
• 23:57
  I think there is a...
• 23:58
  I'm not a religious man, but I think there is some level of just talent that things just happen.
• 24:05
  And for me, definitely when I got to Australia at that time in my life and that experience level and my skill set and my ability to do it, I could just do it.
• 24:13
  I just did it.
• 24:14
  And there was no...
• 24:16
  real self-belief.
• 24:18
  It just happened.
• 24:19
  It was an incredible time for that to happen for you too, mate, the meteoric rise of the sport.
• 24:27
  I can even recall Barry Sheen driving your car at one stage for a story, and he would go on to help Russell Ingle ultimately join the Stone Brothers and things.
• 24:37
  He was in your corner too, mate, wasn't he?
• 24:40
  I just miss Barry.
• 24:41
  I never really got to know Barry like I wish I could have,
• 24:45
  What a great human being he was.
• 24:46
  A fantastic competitor, clearly world champion.
• 24:51
  And just such a nice guy.
• 24:53
  He believed in me, you know.
• 24:54
  He saw something in me that I didn't even know was there.
• 24:58
  And, yeah, I just wish he was still here.
• 25:01
  He liked the way he went about it.
• 25:02
  I can remember...
• 25:03
  I got dispatched to do the story, and I can remember him telling me afterwards, oh, make sure you get a comment from Marcus about how I went and all that sort of stuff.
• 25:10
  I said, OK, Baz, yes, yes, I'll do that.
• 25:12
  Tragically, mate, he would pass away in 03, the year that you would win your first title, and you would go back-to-back 03 and 04.
• 25:18
  I mean, it was just mega.
• 25:20
  The BA was huge for Ford and for the Stone Brothers team.
• 25:26
  Did you have a soft spot for one of those cars?
• 25:28
  Did you keep one of those race cars?
• 25:29
  No.
• 25:31
  No, I haven't kept any cars, haven't kept any trophies really.
• 25:34
  I haven't got any memorabilia on my walls.
• 25:36
  Are you kidding me?
• 25:38
  No, no, I'm just not built that way.
• 25:43
  I haven't had a desire to have any of those cars.
• 25:45
  I know people do have a passion for that.
• 25:49
  I think Stones, you know, quite rightly so.
• 25:51
  It's their car and it's really their trophy.
• 25:54
  I mean, they've kept the trophies.
• 25:55
  It's their trophy.
• 25:55
  They should keep those trophies.
• 25:57
  I didn't win them.
• 25:59
  You drove the car.
• 26:00
  They gave me the chance to go out there and run the race.
• 26:04
  And so I think everything's in its right home.
• 26:07
  And whatever Ross and Jim have decided to do with that stuff, let them do whatever they're going to do, it's fine.
• 26:12
  But I don't feel like I don't have a car collection.
• 26:16
  I've crashed a lot of fantastic cars.
• 26:19
  I've raced a lot of fantastic cars.
• 26:21
  I've driven cars really fast all around the world.
• 26:23
  So, you know, I don't have that same...
• 26:25
  I don't need to collect those cars or want to drive them around the streets.
• 26:28
  I just don't.
• 26:29
  It's just not in me.
• 26:31
  At the height of it, mate, my colleague Lee Diffie bails you up in 2005.
• 26:35
  You've just won back-to-back titles.
• 26:37
  I mean, your career in Australia seems set.
• 26:40
  And he's the first person to publicly, on air, ask you about this potential move to NASCAR.
• 26:47
  Not everyone realised at the time you were really rolling the dice.
• 26:52
  There was no guarantees with this, mate.
• 26:54
  Despite what you had in what you'd put together here in Australia, that was nothing in terms of your American adventure.
• 27:01
  Look, Scott McLaughlin's in the same boat, I think, as what I was at.
• 27:06
  He's now going to do a lot of winning.
• 27:09
  He's at the age where, you know, it's not too late to make a move.
• 27:13
  What would you tell him?
• 27:14
  What advice would you...
• 27:15
  If he's going to make... Well, I mean, it's up to Scott to make his own decisions.
• 27:18
  He's got a great ride going here.
• 27:20
  Now, my personal perspective was that when I came back to Australia to drive V8s, I came back, I viewed myself as an international driver.
• 27:28
  I'd seen... By that stage, I'd seen Jenson Button, you know, race side by side with him in 1998, and...
• 27:36
  And by 2000, he was in F1.
• 27:40
  So 2001, whenever it was that he made the move in there, it might have been 2001 because I think I was, I might have been racing the V8s when he was doing the first.
• 27:49
  You'll find out.
• 27:50
  You'll work out the math.
• 27:51
  But, yeah, so I'd watched, you know, Dan Weldon, you know, switched to IndyCar.
• 27:55
  I'd seen, you know, Kimi Raikin and Jenson Button, you know, start making their roads and start making the F1.
• 28:02
  And so I'd come down to V8 Supercar and was doing my thing down here.
• 28:05
  So if you viewed yourself as an international driver, which I thought I was...
• 28:12
  If I was going to make the move, it was going to be then, you know, that I'd done all I was going to do in Australia, and I could have stayed going.
• 28:19
  I could have been, you know, with Craig Lowndes and done all those races and whatnot, but I just wanted more.
• 28:24
  I just didn't want to be cocooned, I guess, in saying that's going to be it for my life, my racing.
• 28:30
  So I thought I'd have a go, and the fallback always was...
• 28:34
  well, someone's going to pick me up if I come home.
• 28:37
  If it's not stones, then so be it.
• 28:40
  But someone will pick me up.
• 28:41
  I might have to wait a year to get a ride, but, you know.
• 28:43
  So for me, the risk didn't feel like there was a lot of risk in it.
• 28:49
  Obviously, when you look back now, there was massive risk.
• 28:53
  But that's how, you know, some people run with blinkers on and they can do incredible things, right?
• 28:59
  I mean, who would want to run for a US president?
• 29:01
  Yeah.
• 29:02
  You know, there's so much risk attached to all that, but people do and they don't see the risks, they see the benefits.
• 29:07
  And I just saw the benefits.
• 29:08
  I just thought, well, now's the time to go.
• 29:10
  I thought, it's not too late for me.
• 29:12
  I want to go where, you know, the big racing is.
• 29:15
  The big racing for me in my mind was NASCAR.
• 29:18
  So I just packed up and tried to make opportunities.
• 29:22
  And so my only regret with that, and I do have regrets, you know, when you think about it, is that... Why, though?
• 29:27
  Because you achieved so much.
• 29:28
  Well, it's just the damage you create in your wake.
• 29:31
  And, you know, I wasn't really fair on the stones.
• 29:34
  You know, I wish I had a contract to fulfil and that they were kind enough to let me go.
• 29:40
  But, you know, that... And same with Ford and...
• 29:44
  You know, there were some great people in Ford that had given me amazing opportunities and they helped me go to the States.
• 29:49
  But, you know, I just, I feel like I just, I dropped them.
• 29:52
  You know, that's all.
• 29:54
  Yeah.
• 29:55
  At the same time though, mate, I mean, with their support, you go and venture off and chase this dream.
• 30:03
  I want to get to that in a second, but can we look back at 05 for a second?
• 30:09
  I mean, from Balaclava Gate to you and Scafie Banging Wheels to ultimately what went down at Bathurst, that was a tough year for you, mate, and clearly you wanted to just fly the coop by the end of it, didn't you?
• 30:22
  Well, I was definitely championship worthy.
• 30:26
  I had speed.
• 30:27
  I'd won a lot of races.
• 30:28
  We had some... You were in a mix on more than one a cup.
• 30:30
  Well, we should have won the championship in 2005 if it wasn't for things that went against us.
• 30:35
  Now, I'm not saying... Russell won the championship that year, so it stayed in the team, which was fantastic.
• 30:41
  Russell's a good friend of both of ours, and he totally deserved that championship.
• 30:45
  He had so much mongrel in him, and...
• 30:48
  and fortitude to be that champion that year.
• 30:52
  No one can take that away from him.
• 30:53
  He totally deserved it.
• 30:55
  Now, I had things go against me, and it was part arrogance on my end.
• 31:01
  It was part innocence on my end too, just not understanding the repercussions of...
• 31:07
  calling it quits and going to the States, and the ripple effect that would create inside the sport, if you like.
• 31:12
  And I'd done too much winning, and I was getting ganged up on, and I felt that pressure.
• 31:16
  And so we were definitely the fastest car a lot of the year.
• 31:19
  Won a lot of races and stumbled, you know.
• 31:22
  And the stumble was probably Perth with Mark Scaife, and I got a race there where they pennil, I went off the track with Mark in Turn 1.
• 31:31
  and then dropped to last because I went through the gravel trap, worked my way back through, got a penalty in the race.
• 31:35
  They gave me a stop-go penalty for the incident.
• 31:38
  got going again.
• 31:39
  Luckily with a couple of safety cars, I got back up to third or fourth or something.
• 31:43
  And after the race, they gave me a second penalty for the same offense.
• 31:46
  You know, and so I realized then, shit, you know, what's going on here?
• 31:51
  Like, why don't they want me to do well?
• 31:54
  And then of course the balaclava thing, and it was, you know, we weren't wearing balaclavas.
• 31:58
  But at that point I'd never worn balaclavas.
• 32:01
  Now I thought that was really unfair.
• 32:03
  But it's a rule.
• 32:04
  So, you know, you better learn to play within the sandbox that you've been given.
• 32:07
  And clearly, you know, I was arrogant enough to feel like I'd been hard done by that day, but really I'd actually done it to myself, where I'd allowed people...
• 32:17
  the ability to do that.
• 32:19
  Do you have a theory to this day on who tipped them off?
• 32:22
  Oh, no, it doesn't matter.
• 32:23
  To be honest, I haven't even thought about it.
• 32:25
  I don't care.
• 32:27
  I guess when I look back at that day, you know, I just look back at my shortcomings.
• 32:31
  My shortcomings was that I wasn't wearing the balaclava.
• 32:34
  That's my fault.
• 32:35
  No one else's fault.
• 32:36
  No one else to blame, you know, but me.
• 32:40
  You would be fighting for fourth after a restart with Murph, and there was that famous incident, mate, going up the mountain.
• 32:46
  Crompton, in commentary, is saying, the track is jammed, the track is jammed, and our buddy Lee Diffie is saying, you know, you and Greg Murph, you two are heated competitors, you could sense the tension.
• 32:59
  No microphones were able to get fully close enough to hear that conversation.
• 33:03
  on the day.
• 33:03
  People have tried to lip read it and all that sort of stuff.
• 33:06
  Can you remember the exchange and what was said?
• 33:09
  Greg, come on now.
• 33:11
  There was just a lot of F-bombs.
• 33:13
  I think that's all there was, you know.
• 33:17
  I was actually pretty shell shocked because in that crash, my seatbelts popped open.
• 33:23
  So, you know, that was sort of, I was rattled.
• 33:26
  I mean, not often you get rattled, but I was generally rattled, you know, because, you know, I had a...
• 33:34
  a near catastrophe moment, right?
• 33:37
  And then the incident unfolded very, very quickly.
• 33:42
  You know, I was coming back through the field from those incidents and there was a chance for me to still win the race and I was driving aggressively.
• 33:50
  But Greg missed the shift coming out of turn two.
• 33:53
  I didn't want to be where I was.
• 33:55
  It was just, it just happened, you know.
• 33:56
  Those things in racing just happened where, you know, he missed the shift, lost momentum, you know.
• 34:01
  I was there in the hole.
• 34:03
  I didn't want to be there.
• 34:04
  I was nervous on the turn in, you know, that something was going to happen, and it did, and I thought I was as tight to the wall as I could be.
• 34:11
  And you're always guarded there on that corner because if you clip that wall on the left, you're going to break your tie rod and you're going to lose your steering.
• 34:17
  So, you know, I was as close to the inside wall as I could get.
• 34:21
  The corner was pinched.
• 34:22
  There was the contact, whatever.
• 34:25
  And at that time, you know, Greg was the, you know,
• 34:28
  He was a bulldog for Holden.
• 34:30
  I mean, he was the guy that was doing the most yapping in front of the media.
• 34:33
  He was the guy that was, you know, peppering, you know, peppering the four teams and myself included, you know, on the track and off the track, just sort of, you know, dropping the baits.
• 34:44
  And it was working, you know.
• 34:46
  And so when that went down, you just go, well, you know, there's the Holden bulldog, you know.
• 34:53
  I felt like he caused the crash.
• 34:56
  He's mad at me.
• 34:57
  Why are you mad at me?
• 34:58
  I should be mad at you.
• 34:59
  I've just had this near catastrophe with a seatbelt issue.
• 35:02
  I'm kind of rattled, and so, you know, we just did a few F-bombs, and the best part of that moment is that there was actually not much wrong with Greg's car.
• 35:09
  He should have just driven away, but he was so keen on getting at me that he gave his race away.
• 35:15
  We were both probably pretty headless at that stage and weren't thinking straight.
• 35:19
  But look, it's just a moment, you know, and I know it keeps coming up all the time in the media and the stories and so forth.
• 35:26
  A bit like the Mark Scaife thing and Russell Ingle at Eastern Creek where they do the big swerve thing.
• 35:32
  Yeah, you know, I mean, have a look at the latest weekend of NASCAR.
• 35:38
  There are 10 other incidents that are 10 times worse than what we did there at Bathurst, but for some reason it just keeps coming back.
• 35:45
  But I don't want to be remembered for that moment.
• 35:48
  Hopefully over time that'll just disappear and it'll be other things that people remember me more by.
• 35:53
  But, you know, it's just one of those moments in life.
• 35:57
  you know, I just tried to move on from those days.
• 35:59
  And if I look back at that moment, I wouldn't have done anything different in that particular moment.
• 36:04
  It was just one of those racing deals.
• 36:07
  And it was almost the height of the drama for me in 2005.
• 36:12
  Everything was building up to that moment.
• 36:14
  And after we got wiped out there at Bathurst, the championship was pretty much done to win it.
• 36:19
  And then I just tried to win races till the end of the season, which we did a lot of winning after that anyway.
• 36:25
  It was a boil over moment and I know fans talk about it a lot because sport is built on rivalry, right?
• 36:32
  Quick fun story before we go to an incredible NASCAR chapter for you, mate.
• 36:37
  I don't know if you remember you, me, Darryl Beattie, Craig Baird going off on a dirt bike riding adventure.
• 36:43
  And we left the Gold Coast very early in the morning.
• 36:46
  Oh, is this the island?
• 36:48
  We're at the island.
• 36:49
  Now, I don't know whose fault it was.
• 36:51
  We had dirt bikes on the back of the trailer.
• 36:54
  It's about four in the morning.
• 36:56
  What happened next?
• 36:57
  Okay, you better tell me.
• 37:00
  I think one of the straps broke loose and the next thing you're in the back of the truck singing out, Daryl, stop, stop, and your motorcycle, thankfully there was no one else on the road, your motorcycle's flailing around on the road, sparks going everywhere.
• 37:14
  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I get a bit of that going on in my world.
• 37:18
  I probably didn't do the tie-down straps on the bike properly.
• 37:20
  I think you had to do the dirt bike ride with a half-busted handlebars.
• 37:23
  Maybe I did, but, you know, that was a disaster anyway.
• 37:27
  I mean, we should not have done that.
• 37:29
  The whole trip was a disaster.
• 37:32
  It was.
• 37:33
  It was.
• 37:34
  Your first... People often ask about your first ever drive in a NASCAR, you know, in the truck.
• 37:41
  What was that like?
• 37:42
  What were your first impressions?
• 37:43
  It was 180 of everything else that you'd driven.
• 37:46
  Well, we drove a little... Was it Kentucky?
• 37:48
  No, no, so...
• 37:51
  I'd managed to get a three-track test in three days with JTG Daldi.
• 37:57
  So they said, yeah, yeah, we'll give you a test, see how you go, cross three different types of track.
• 38:02
  If you're any good, we'll give you a shot.
• 38:03
  Now, Ford were behind the scenes sort of helping this JTG Daldi racing.
• 38:07
  Yeah.
• 38:09
  And it's funny how things work out.
• 38:10
  So the first track, you know, rock up.
• 38:13
  It's a tiny little bullring in North Carolina somewhere.
• 38:15
  I can't remember the name of it now.
• 38:17
  And I got around and I looked out as we got the ride at the track.
• 38:21
  And I just thought, oh, this is going to be easy, you know.
• 38:23
  Look at the track.
• 38:24
  Oh, my gosh.
• 38:25
  I mean, this is not even safe to be a pit lane.
• 38:28
  It's that small.
• 38:30
  I mean, the truck was half the length of the front straight.
• 38:32
  Like, literally, it was just this tiny little truck.
• 38:35
  I thought, I'm not even going to get the top gear.
• 38:37
  And, you know, that's what Americans race on.
• 38:39
  I mean, the truck was just holes in it everywhere.
• 38:42
  It had cracks all through it.
• 38:45
  The wall was sticking out in places.
• 38:47
  There was no pit lane.
• 38:48
  It was just like an apron.
• 38:49
  It was just crazy.
• 38:50
  And I thought, man, I'm getting around.
• 38:52
  It was a 15-second lap, okay, 15 seconds.
• 38:57
  And I'm like, what is going on around here?
• 38:59
  And there was a guy, I think it was Ted Musgrave might have been there, and he was testing his track.
• 39:04
  He was a pro driver.
• 39:06
  I couldn't get within half a second of him.
• 39:07
  I mean, that's about 18% lap time difference between the two of us.
• 39:11
  And I thought, shit, I'm in trouble here.
• 39:13
  And I got going eventually, sort of got my head around it.
• 39:16
  And I thought, shit, this is actually not what I thought it was going to be.
• 39:19
  And then the next day we drive across to Kentucky, so it's two states away, and we do the drive across and we stay in the hotel and the truck's there and gets set up.
• 39:28
  And Robert Presley, who's a great, great man, he was an ex-NASCAR Sprint Cup Series guy, and he was there to help me at this track to get going.
• 39:37
  And I'd never been on a high-speed oval like that.
• 39:40
  I'd been, Barry Graham had let me get on Charlotte Motor Speedway and the High Bank Devils in school cars, which...
• 39:46
  They're great cars, but they're not a NASCAR, like a thoroughbred NASCAR.
• 39:51
  So I thought I knew what I was in for, but I had no idea.
• 39:53
  And I went around the track first few laps.
• 39:55
  Once Robert had jumped out of the car, he'd set five or six laps.
• 39:59
  Then I jumped in and I couldn't get within two seconds of it.
• 40:02
  I thought, shit, what's going on here?
• 40:04
  So I pretended that I was actually just getting my seat comfortable and whatnot.
• 40:07
  And I actually just used that sort of 10 minutes just to sort of, righto, son, this is looking pretty bad here.
• 40:13
  You're looking pretty stupid.
• 40:14
  You better sort this out.
• 40:16
  And so I just tightened up my harness device, tightened up the belts, got myself sort of semi-cumple of the seat and just wailed it around.
• 40:23
  And I realised I went to another zone of grip.
• 40:26
  Once you get past that first barrier, that nervousness of entry, and you drive through all that nasty stuff and the car's sliding at 300 kilometres an hour, once you fall into the banking and get the compression, you find a way to get around the corner.
• 40:40
  And so, you know, I quickly realised, shit, I've got a lot to learn here, and this is way outside my comfort zone.
• 40:46
  Snuck through that day, got away with that one, and then we went to Rockingham the last day.
• 40:50
  Now, Rockingham is high bank, three-quarter mile, super bumpy, wears tyres out.
• 40:55
  The second lap on the tyres is two-tenths slower than the first lap.
• 40:59
  The third lap's two-tenths slower than the first.
• 41:00
  I literally lose two-tenths of a second a lap on a 30-second lap.
• 41:05
  So by ten laps...
• 41:06
  I mean, you're way off the pace.
• 41:09
  I mean, you've lost heaps of time, two seconds or so.
• 41:14
  So I knew that by that stage I'd done a lot of research and studying and I had a good foundation, I guess, of things I shouldn't do or should do by watching and learning and doing it at racetracks and seeing how drivers did their deal.
• 41:29
  And by that stage I'd realised, hey, if you're going to do a lap time, you're going to do it on the first lap here.
• 41:34
  So you better go out there and put your big boy pants on and lay a lap down because it's not going to get any better than that.
• 41:40
  So I went out first lap and the fog just lifted.
• 41:43
  It was a bit Days of Thunder-ish, you know.
• 41:44
  It was actually the track that they did the Days of Thunder with the smoke, you know, the fog clearing, was Rockingham.
• 41:51
  Wow.
• 41:52
  And so we did the same.
• 41:53
  We waited for the fog to lift.
• 41:54
  A sudden hadn't gone on the track yet to start heating the track.
• 41:57
  I had a new set of tyres.
• 41:59
  I was like, this is the time to go.
• 42:00
  So I went out and laid down, like, the four biggest laps of my career at that point.
• 42:05
  And just cows bouncing around, sliding around, just sort of nailed it.
• 42:09
  And the boys by that stage, because, like, they fitted this three-day test in their own race program.
• 42:14
  Well, they're racing 30 times a year.
• 42:17
  They wanted to go home.
• 42:18
  I didn't want to go out there again because I'd done enough in those first four or five laps.
• 42:22
  So we did 20-odd laps, 30 laps on that set of tyres.
• 42:25
  You guys right?
• 42:26
  Yeah, I'm right.
• 42:26
  You guys had enough?
• 42:27
  Yeah, I've had enough.
• 42:28
  Let's go.
• 42:29
  So by 10.30, we're heading home.
• 42:32
  And that's because I just, any longer and something would have happened, maybe I crashed the truck or, you know, would have got slower, lost confidence, whatever it was.
• 42:40
  And so that got me the ride.
• 42:42
  And that was a big three days.
• 42:44
  My dad was with me at that time.
• 42:46
  And, you know, it was a big three days for sure.
• 42:50
  You said to me later on too that they do this thing with you where it's like, we'll let you wreck just enough or have just enough incidents to see if you can't do it.
• 43:00
  Just explain that thing.
• 43:01
  Well, it's Robbie Loomis.
• 43:04
  He was Jeff Gordon's crew chief for a while.
• 43:05
  He was helping Richard Petty Motorsports when I was there.
• 43:09
  A really good guy.
• 43:11
  He's a career racer, if you like, and crew chief.
• 43:13
  Been at the very top of the sport and worked his way through.
• 43:16
  And he said to me, and it was really wise words, and Americans are like this, you know, like if you actually stop and listen to what they say, some of the stuff's really quite...
• 43:28
  prophetic, you know, if that's the right word, and inspiring.
• 43:32
  And he said, in NASCAR, he said, the best way to go about it, he said, these teams, the good teams and whatnot, he said, I've been in the good teams.
• 43:40
  He said, we give people enough chances to prove they can't do it, not that they can.
• 43:47
  And that was, to me, you know, it's not...
• 43:50
  show me your results.
• 43:51
  It's like show me you can't deliver the results.
• 43:53
  Like they give you enough time basically to fail, to prove that you can't do it.
• 43:59
  And a very different mindset to what I've ever experienced before.
• 44:03
  And that was really, you know, solid stuff to hear because you know, that stage two, I was battling with that team to sort of get in the groove and get going and gives you a bit of,
• 44:12
  a feeling that you've got a bit of time to work on your stuff.
• 44:16
  Because NASCAR, it's not about put the best engineer in here and buy the best tyre.
• 44:23
  Here's enough money to buy your tyres and engines and here's the track.
• 44:26
  You can't just plug it in.
• 44:27
  There's actually this dynamic you've got to get right.
• 44:30
  It's like a...
• 44:31
  It's a relationship with your team, it's your understanding of the track and car and confidence, you know, an opportunity and bad luck, because bad luck comes in the way in NASCAR a lot, because shit happens over there that you can't control a lot of the time, you know, because there's so many cars on the track and the track's designed to cause a lot of crashes and...
• 44:50
  The pit stops are designed for the pit crew to make mistakes.
• 44:53
  And so there's just a lot of bad luck in NASCAR.
• 44:55
  And so that's what it is.
• 44:57
  It gives you the opportunity to, you know, to fall enough times to know that you're never going to make it.
• 45:03
  Just a different mindset.
• 45:04
  People probably don't realise how full on the schedule is for you.
• 45:07
  And there's a great example that Owen Kelly reminded me of.
• 45:11
  I think you got him to qualify the car in Montreal.
• 45:13
  You were racing somewhere else.
• 45:15
  And you and Carl Edwards had to do this...
• 45:18
  Matt, it was like a military exercise.
• 45:20
  There was helicopters, planes, boats, the whole lot to get you there from practice for cup to nationwide in Montreal.
• 45:26
  Just explain that.
• 45:27
  Yeah, look, there was three of us.
• 45:28
  Trevor Bain, who had recently won the Daytona 500, great young guy, good friend of mine.
• 45:34
  Carl Edwards, another good friend of mine, and he'd made it through, and he had a jet.
• 45:38
  He bought his own jet, and he flew it himself.
• 45:40
  Did he fly in the race suit?
• 45:41
  Is that right?
• 45:41
  Yeah, yeah, we all flew in our race suits.
• 45:43
  And he still had the little booties on, you know, like the heat booties.
• 45:47
  So the plan was hatched pretty early on to do the practice and qualifying on Friday at Michigan in the Cup car.
• 45:57
  Do the Saturday morning practice at Michigan in the Cup car, because Cup car is what pays.
• 46:03
  I mean, these other races are great, but they don't pay and they don't keep the teams afloat like the Cup Series does.
• 46:09
  It's got massive ratings, massive prize pools.
• 46:12
  And so, yeah, Cup always takes priority, but you want to do these other races if you can.
• 46:16
  And the sponsors want to do these other races because it's fun for them to do and they get...
• 46:19
  this unique sort of exposure.
• 46:21
  So Stanley DeWalt wanted to do this Montreal race, which is great.
• 46:26
  And Carl had the same program, and so too Trevor Bayne.
• 46:29
  Trevor was running for the Nationwide Series Championship with Roush, but he had selected cup races with Wood Brothers.
• 46:38
  So the three of us were on this program to try and make it to the race at Montreal.
• 46:42
  And so I rang Owen, a good friend of mine, Owen, great guy, did a great job for us that weekend.
• 46:48
  And he's a guy who, he can race NASCAR, he can race road, he can do about supercar, he can do sports cars.
• 46:54
  He's a really versatile driver.
• 46:55
  And we grew up...
• 46:57
  racing each other in Tasmania since the age of 10.
• 47:00
  So, you know, Owen jumped in the car.
• 47:01
  He did the practice and qualifying for me, and he did really well.
• 47:04
  I think he qualified third or second or third or fourth, somewhere in that, right at the front it was.
• 47:09
  And so that was job done, and he didn't know if I was going to make it to the track because we didn't know if we were going to make it to the track because the schedule was so tight.
• 47:16
  We're flying four states across a different country, got to go through customs.
• 47:21
  Yeah.
• 47:21
  And so we finished practice around 11 o'clock, I think it was, at Michigan, two-mile speedway.
• 47:27
  We had the golf carts waiting for us.
• 47:29
  So we'd jump out of the car with our helmets, boots, sweat the whole lot.
• 47:33
  The airport was behind the Michigan racetrack.
• 47:36
  So, you know, we got golf carted over to the plane.
• 47:38
  Carl jumped in, got one engine running, you know, did his pre-flight check, which was...
• 47:45
  about two seconds worth.
• 47:46
  We all jump in, sit in there, and we're taxiing down the runway, and he didn't get the second motor start on his jet until we got onto the runway, and off we went.
• 47:54
  So we're up in the air, everything's cruising.
• 47:56
  We're all happy.
• 47:57
  Is Larry all good?
• 47:58
  Yeah, this is going good, you know, and Carl's got his little booties on, and they're getting caught in the rudder pedals, and everything's fine.
• 48:04
  We're cruising away, and I'm talking to... You know, there's sweat still on our faces.
• 48:08
  It's about 25 minutes into the flight, and Carl looks across from the front seat.
• 48:12
  He's like, oh...
• 48:14
  I don't think we're going to make it.
• 48:15
  I'm like, what do you mean?
• 48:17
  He said, well, they've just closed the airspace around the track.
• 48:20
  Can't land, because they were doing the flyovers for the race.
• 48:25
  That's how tight we were.
• 48:27
  So we managed to get around that.
• 48:29
  They changed that just a little bit for us at the tower.
• 48:32
  And so we got to land.
• 48:33
  We got the customs done.
• 48:34
  And then the helicopter was waiting for us when we got so that the jet lands.
• 48:39
  Helicopter's waiting, we jump in the helicopter, we fly across, make it to the track, and the time's ticking, like, big time.
• 48:47
  And then the Montreal track is actually around, it's on an island in the middle of the river of...
• 48:54
  of Montreal and it's the old Olympic Stadium.
• 48:56
  So there's, you know, the rowing course is in the middle of the island.
• 49:00
  So the island is actually a ring and in the middle is this big, big, big lake they used to do the rowing on and it's only about six, eight foot deep.
• 49:09
  Well, the helipad to, you know, we're running serious on time.
• 49:11
  The helipad to land is at the other end of the track, at the other end of the rowing course.
• 49:16
  So they had a boat waiting for us to get us to the grid.
• 49:18
  We still have a race suit.
• 49:19
  So we jump out of the helicopter into the boat,
• 49:22
  ripped down like one and a half kilometre course for the rollers, ripped down the course and the cars are on the grid and they're doing the anthem.
• 49:30
  That's how tight it was.
• 49:31
  And Owen was in his race suit because he didn't know if we were going to make it.
• 49:34
  So there's the poor bastard.
• 49:35
  He's wishing we wouldn't make it so he could do the race.
• 49:38
  And we get there and I shook his hand, said, good day, thanks for qualifying the car.
• 49:43
  You know, appreciate it.
• 49:45
  Jump in the car and away we went.
• 49:48
  And so did, mate.
• 49:49
  Yeah, now that day, Trevor Bain, actually, he got damaged and damaged the underside of his car, and he gassed himself.
• 49:59
  So he was throwing up in the medical centre after the race, so we couldn't leave, and I think I won that day.
• 50:04
  Did I win up there?
• 50:05
  Did I win that?
• 50:05
  Yeah, so I won the race, so I'm holding the trophy, still in the race suit.
• 50:09
  Carl's there, come on, you know, I want to fly home, and Trevor's throwing up in the medical tent, you know.
• 50:14
  trying to get some medical attention.
• 50:16
  So the whole thing, we went and then went and got back to Michigan around 11 o'clock at night at the track and went to bed, woke up, 10 o'clock, you know, do the next day.
• 50:26
  And, yeah, that was a bit extreme that particular weekend, but there was quite a lot of that that was going on.
• 50:33
  Not uncommon to race three or four times a week over there, just jumping on planes to get to racetracks here or there or whatever goes on.
• 50:40
  proudest moment for you.
• 50:41
  You had this wonderful affinity with Watkins Glen there, mate.
• 50:43
  I mean, that's a legendary track.
• 50:45
  To win there six times, I think, between, you know, Cup and Nationwide, that was huge.
• 50:49
  Well, you know, again, maybe missed opportunities because, you know, I didn't win on the ovals like I wanted to at the top levels.
• 50:54
  I'd won races, you know, in smaller stuff on ovals, but not on the premier categories.
• 51:01
  He's just, you know, there's a lot of opportunities, but it's bloody hard to win.
• 51:04
  So for me, you know, if I had done all road races over there, I would have done a lot more winning, I assume.
• 51:09
  But yeah, so for when I look at those results at Watkins Glen, it's not the fact that I won those races, it's the fact that I didn't win more when I was over there is what I think of that.
• 51:32
  the Indianapolis Motor Speedway nicknamed the Brickyard.
• 51:36
  Constructed in 1909, it has a permanent seating capacity of 257,000, the highest capacity sports venue in the world.
• 51:46
  It is also home of the Indy 500 race, with the race sometimes lasting up to five hours.
• 51:53
  Drivers have been known to go to the bathroom in their fire suits.
• 51:58
  Let's talk teammates because, you know, they always say you've got to beat your teammate.
• 52:06
  And yet you had this great, as you said earlier, you had this great relationship with Russell Ingle.
• 52:10
  You two were different human beings and yet you had a lot of very similar qualities, I thought.
• 52:16
  And he tried to ply you with the beers when you first started at a PR gig, didn't he?
• 52:22
  Tell us that, Yarn.
• 52:24
  Yeah, look, I don't think we're that different, myself and Russell.
• 52:27
  Yeah, Russell's come from the school of hard knocks.
• 52:30
  I mean, he's done it tough.
• 52:32
  He went to Europe and he did it tough and he came home and he grounded out and, you know, forged a career and you can see that hard nose everywhere.
• 52:41
  even today with, with how he conducts himself and, you know, he's, he's a real fighter.
• 52:47
  I mean, Russell's a real fighter and I felt the same, really.
• 52:50
  I've come from Tasmania and I've always been on an uphill struggle, you know, to, to sort of make it.
• 52:55
  And I also went to Europe and I, I had a run over there and did it tough and,
• 53:00
  And so I think we're slightly different eras, I think.
• 53:03
  You know, like he's 10 years in front of his career than me, you know.
• 53:07
  And so I think there was a difference in that respect.
• 53:10
  Maybe I was a little more refined by the time I came through than Russell.
• 53:14
  But I've got just a lot of respect for the man as a racer and as a person.
• 53:18
  He's got a wonderful family and we're good friends.
• 53:21
  I mean, we make no...
• 53:24
  No qualms about it.
• 53:25
  We are good friends, even though we don't talk to each other very often.
• 53:29
  We get on well.
• 53:30
  It's a heart of a good friendship.
• 53:31
  You pick up where you left off.
• 53:32
  That's exactly right.
• 53:33
  Now, we got together and he signed up with Stone Brothers and he tried to feed me three or four quick beers if I don't know what I was getting paid.
• 53:41
  your secrets and you yeah yeah you know and I had nothing to hide and you know I thought oh this guy's you know he's funny he could have just asked me I would have told him anyway so you know but we had a few beers on that and it's fine and that's how Russell works you know he's a street fighter right and yeah
• 54:00
  You know, knowledge is power and he wanted to know what was going on on my world, you know, and that's good.
• 54:06
  I respect that.
• 54:07
  I don't hold a grudge on anything like that.
• 54:10
  I think that's actually the right way to go about it.
• 54:13
  You know, you want to do what you can.
• 54:16
  You've got to do what you can, no doubt.
• 54:19
  You, I reckon, very early on, it seemed to me in the Stone Brothers era, and I reckon you carried this into NASCAR,
• 54:27
  You have a good understanding of business.
• 54:30
  That is your way.
• 54:31
  And you did stuff, correct me if I'm wrong here, like you understood the power of the onboard cameras in supercars and the real estate on your helmet.
• 54:41
  And wasn't there a good push by you from the JTG side when you were in NASCAR to help them take that next step?
• 54:49
  You could see the pieces of the puzzle, what needed to be done to take that next step.
• 54:55
  You understood the business, didn't you, mate?
• 54:56
  Absolutely.
• 54:58
  Yes, yes and no.
• 54:59
  I mean, I look back now and, you know, some of the decisions I've made and things I've done are cringeworthy sometimes, naive.
• 55:09
  You know, just they are because now I've got a different view.
• 55:12
  Now I'm on the other side.
• 55:13
  I'm turning 43 this year, so I'm not over the hill, but I'm certainly climbing towards the top.
• 55:19
  And so I look back at some of my thoughts and attitudes and things that I did and I go, oh, yeah.
• 55:26
  Yeah, I would say somewhat cringe-worthy, somewhat naive.
• 55:29
  At the same time, on the other side of that, I did some things that were bang on and were in front.
• 55:37
  I knew the power of in-car cameras.
• 55:41
  Stegbar were with me early on.
• 55:44
  I was desperate to get them an in-car camera.
• 55:47
  I wanted the in-car camera.
• 55:49
  At that stage in television production, in-car cameras were worth real money.
• 55:54
  And not everybody had them.
• 55:56
  And I was saying to Ross Stone, Ross, you know, I mean, we're winning races, we're the best story out there.
• 56:00
  Why haven't we got an in-car camera?
• 56:02
  We should have one because it's going to be good for me because I want my helmet to be exposed and it's good for the sport.
• 56:07
  Why wouldn't the sport put a camera in my car?
• 56:10
  Well, I didn't understand that, you know, TV land was going to dictate and wanted money for that.
• 56:17
  And so when we worked that out, I ended up, you know, handing –
• 56:21
  handing Stegbar to Ross Stone to try and put a deal together to get an in-car camera.
• 56:26
  And that's when we come up with a little bar along the front of our in-car camera that had Stegbar and Pertek on that in-car camera, you know.
• 56:35
  So I was a part of it.
• 56:37
  I didn't understand why things weren't happening.
• 56:39
  I didn't understand the full story.
• 56:41
  I just, I guess, had enough street presence to, you know, at that stage I was grinding out a career.
• 56:46
  I was trying to get paid to make a living.
• 56:48
  And your first year or two at Stone Brothers, you know, I mean, they paid me well, but, you know, not enough compared to the guys I was beating.
• 56:57
  So I was looking for a way to make it work.
• 57:00
  And I think that that attitude of not actually just self-focus, which is what that was,
• 57:09
  you know, carried me through even to the States.
• 57:12
  You had, I know we talked before about the success you had at Watkins Glen and things like that.
• 57:17
  Probably not enough highlight has been made of some of the results that you did at times that...
• 57:25
  were, I mean, you had some results at JTG which it would be unkind to say were, you know, like almost getting a podium in a Minardi.
• 57:35
  I'm not saying that, but it perhaps felt a little bit like that.
• 57:39
  And then there were other things where you had, correct me if I'm wrong here, mate, was it pole at Michigan and the lap at Michigan was a record that stood for ages.
• 57:48
  I mean, things like that were mighty in NASCAR, I think.
• 57:51
  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of racing that goes on, so there's always a record to be had somewhere.
• 57:57
  And there were some moments there that were pretty cool.
• 57:59
  That lap at Michigan that you're talking about, Michigan had just been repaved and it was a treacherous track, super fast.
• 58:07
  It was a two-mile.
• 58:08
  300km an hour, turn one.
• 58:09
  What was it?
• 58:10
  Yeah, it's a big two-mile speedway and it was banking that was –
• 58:17
  really well built.
• 58:18
  Whoever built the track, I think Roger Penske had owned it for a while, but whoever built that track, I mean, knew their stuff.
• 58:24
  The banking floating into Turn 1 was perfect.
• 58:28
  The floating into Turn 3 was perfect.
• 58:30
  And that track at Michigan, you know, notorious for very cold winters, very hot summers, a lot of expansion and contraction with the track.
• 58:39
  And the early years at Michigan when I was there,
• 58:43
  The track was lethal, had these massive cracks all the way through it.
• 58:46
  They'd filled it with tar, super slick conditions like when the track was hot because it deteriorated and it got so much damage with these heat cycles.
• 58:54
  I remember one race with Sam Hornish Jr. and I had him behind me and I was getting really upset and I was having a rough, not a rough day.
• 59:01
  We were around 18th or 20th, still on the lead lap, you know, fighting tooth and nail.
• 59:06
  I'd had a couple of pit stops and they hadn't made the car better.
• 59:09
  And I'm trying to keep Sam Hornish behind me.
• 59:11
  I'm in the middle groove and I'm trying to stay off these tar lines where the seams, because when they lay the bitumen down on the racetrack, they can't lay the whole track at once.
• 59:21
  They've got to do it in grooves, right?
• 59:23
  So they do the bottom groove, middle groove.
• 59:25
  Well, Michigan's about five grooves wide.
• 59:27
  And as that heat and contraction, heat and cooling goes on with the track, it opens up at the seams and they get these one or two-inch cracks and they fill them full of tar
• 59:38
  And you go race on it.
• 59:39
  Well, that tar is really slippery when it gets hot because it starts to melt.
• 59:43
  So this particular race was a hot day.
• 59:45
  And if you get your right rear tire on that line and the cars were crabbing at that stage, so the rear was offset to the front.
• 59:53
  So the right rear was further out than the right front.
• 59:57
  And so they were crabbing and they had these rear ends that were twisted and they were very awkward cars to drive.
• 1:00:03
  And you couldn't really feel where your right rear tire was.
• 1:00:06
  Normally you're trying to be in the groove, but your right rear tire, even though the right front tire was in the line, in the lane, if you like, the right rear tire was sitting on this tar.
• 1:00:17
  And I started to complain about 20 laps into the run.
• 1:00:21
  I'm on fire.
• 1:00:22
  I've got smoke in the cabin.
• 1:00:23
  I'm on fire.
• 1:00:24
  What's going on?
• 1:00:25
  You know, and the crew chief, you know, he's looking at the car and he can't see any smoke.
• 1:00:28
  He said, well, I can't see any smoke, mate.
• 1:00:30
  You've got to keep going.
• 1:00:31
  And the spotter's on the tower.
• 1:00:32
  I can't see any smoke.
• 1:00:33
  You've got to keep going.
• 1:00:34
  I'm telling you guys, I'm on fire.
• 1:00:35
  There's smoke in the cabin.
• 1:00:37
  I'm on fire.
• 1:00:38
  So four or five laps.
• 1:00:39
  I've got Sam Hornish behind me.
• 1:00:40
  He'd just won, you know, the Daytona 500, the Indy 500 a couple of years before.
• 1:00:44
  A great wheel man.
• 1:00:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:00:47
  I lost my goo, you know, and he got past me.
• 1:00:50
  And as he went past, his right rear tyre was smoking because he was sideways sliding through these tar lines and the slick racetrack.
• 1:01:01
  And it dawned on me that I was actually just burning, I was spinning the right rear tyre at 300 kilometres an hour and I didn't know.
• 1:01:08
  Because the track's that loose, the car's moving around, and I was on those seams spinning the right rear tyre up.
• 1:01:14
  And so when they repaved Michigan after, that was a year after that happened, they repaved it.
• 1:01:20
  And I was driving then for Richard Petty, a fantastic man.
• 1:01:25
  And the track was lethal.
• 1:01:27
  It tore up a lot of cars, led into the race.
• 1:01:30
  And what had actually happened, when they repave a track, they like it to cure.
• 1:01:34
  They like a lot of heat on it and they like to give it time just to base out.
• 1:01:39
  Well, they repaved it and they sent us up there too quickly and the track, all the oil seeps out of it and it becomes...
• 1:01:46
  really treacherous.
• 1:01:48
  So it's super smooth, super fast, and they've got to bring a really hard tire because people delaminate and blow tires out when the track's got that much grip.
• 1:01:57
  So we do the practice and everyone's tearing their cars up and the track's treacherous.
• 1:02:02
  And all of a sudden the groove didn't go to where it would normally go down the bottom of the racetrack in the corners.
• 1:02:08
  It was on the very fence all the way around.
• 1:02:12
  because you couldn't turn.
• 1:02:14
  You couldn't turn because you had no feel on the wheel.
• 1:02:17
  And so everyone started to run the fence, and that's where the groove went.
• 1:02:21
  So the lap I did was a 203-mile-an-hour average, I think it was, or whatever.
• 1:02:25
  I forget the number.
• 1:02:26
  Same.
• 1:02:27
  But it was a record, you know, at the time for the fastest ever qualifying lap for NASCAR.
• 1:02:34
  And it stuck for a couple of years because the track cured that winter.
• 1:02:38
  And then the next summer they came back and they couldn't beat the lap.
• 1:02:40
  And then the next season went past, they couldn't beat it.
• 1:02:43
  So for a couple of years, I had the fastest ever qualifying lap for NASCAR.
• 1:02:48
  Amazing.
• 1:02:49
  You took my buddy Lee Diffie on a tour, a factory tour at one stage.
• 1:02:54
  The enormity of the whole thing really hits you from the amount of cars that are required for the different tracks to the staff to the marketing budgets to everything else.
• 1:03:05
  Try and give us a little snapshot of that.
• 1:03:09
  And, I mean, it's just next level on what we do here in Australia in supercar terms, isn't it?
• 1:03:15
  It is.
• 1:03:16
  Not that what we do in Australia is bad.
• 1:03:19
  No, no.
• 1:03:20
  It's just relative to our population and our country's wealth.
• 1:03:23
  Yep.
• 1:03:24
  America is the world's most powerful and wealthy country.
• 1:03:28
  Yeah.
• 1:03:29
  And their sports reflect that.
• 1:03:31
  Yes.
• 1:03:31
  NFL, NBA.
• 1:03:32
  You've got guys in the NBA getting $200 million contracts.
• 1:03:36
  I mean, for crying out loud.
• 1:03:37
  You know, you've got guys who throw a bat at a ball in baseball and get paid $50 million a year for it.
• 1:03:44
  That's what's so great about America.
• 1:03:46
  I love America for that.
• 1:03:47
  They, you know, they allow the best –
• 1:03:51
  to thrive, right?
• 1:03:52
  And NASCAR is no different.
• 1:03:55
  So the scale was different.
• 1:03:56
  And that's what you have to adjust to.
• 1:03:59
  I'm a man who...
• 1:04:01
  you know, puts his pants on one leg at a time, the Ross Stone quote, right?
• 1:04:05
  I keep referring back to that because it gave me that one line that he said to me when I first started riding for Stones, it's carried with me for a long time because it gives you the confidence to say, well, you know, Darla Earnhardt Jr., you know, he's doing the same as me.
• 1:04:18
  He's putting his pants on one leg at a time.
• 1:04:21
  So I can be Darla Earnhardt Jr.
• 1:04:22
  Surely, you know, if I've got the courage and the might and the skills, you know, I could be just like him.
• 1:04:27
  So that's what carried me through those feelings of I can do, the little engine that could, I guess, of Thomas the Tank Engine.
• 1:04:37
  And that's where I really like to play.
• 1:04:39
  And when you get in that big theatre, which is America and NASCAR, when I went there in NASCAR, it was really at the very peak –
• 1:04:48
  of its powers.
• 1:04:51
  Darlon Hart Jr. had died only five years earlier.
• 1:04:55
  And so with his death, there was a massive amount of attention to the sport.
• 1:05:01
  And with that came popularity.
• 1:05:04
  And with that came sponsorships and TV ratings.
• 1:05:07
  So when I got there in 2007, there were 55 cars trying to qualify, fully sponsored, trying to qualify for a 43 car grid.
• 1:05:17
  And so I rode that wave of popularity, I guess, into the 2010 and 12.
• 1:05:22
  And then NASCAR has gone through a bit of a dip afterwards, but massive money.
• 1:05:30
  you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to finish last, the Daytona 500.
• 1:05:34
  The prize pool for the Daytona 500, well over $20 million.
• 1:05:37
  I mean, to win the race, you know, you win a million bucks.
• 1:05:40
  I mean, these are big numbers, a lot of pressure.
• 1:05:43
  Sponsors that are paying $300,000, $400,000 a race to participate and be on your car.
• 1:05:48
  You don't want to be the guy that crashes in turn one.
• 1:05:51
  You don't want to be the guy who does something stupid on the racetrack and causes a 30-car crash.
• 1:05:56
  I mean, there's pressures that come with that scale, and that took some adjusting too.
• 1:06:02
  But thankfully, you know, I had some time in the junior ranks to sort of
• 1:06:07
  work out and be confident with myself to know that when I got to the big stage that I was going to be able to handle myself and handle the moment.
• 1:06:15
  We'll expand a little bit on your answer there.
• 1:06:19
  You were really thankful when you went to America for the opportunity.
• 1:06:22
  There was a drive for diversity.
• 1:06:23
  Forward Australia, Forward America were very supportive.
• 1:06:26
  And you worked hard, mate, at garnering the...
• 1:06:32
  the respect or gaining the respect of the club, the big names.
• 1:06:36
  You've got to do that, don't you?
• 1:06:38
  Well, A, you have to respect the position you're in.
• 1:06:42
  And my position was one of an outsider.
• 1:06:45
  I came to experience America and NASCAR for what it is.
• 1:06:49
  And so I wanted to blend into that.
• 1:06:52
  I can't ask...
• 1:06:54
  To be respected, I had to prove my worth to be there, right?
• 1:06:59
  So, yes, I garnered respect when I made it.
• 1:07:04
  That's obvious that when you get the opportunities, you know, they say, yes, you are worthy to be there.
• 1:07:10
  And then when you get there, you've got to prove that you're worthy to be there and those things.
• 1:07:13
  But that respect, I'm very respectful of.
• 1:07:17
  especially in hindsight, you can look back and say, yes, those people in that industry, I was lucky to be part of it.
• 1:07:26
  And so to be respectful and humble for my entry in there and trying to blend in as much as I could.
• 1:07:32
  I mean, it went down to carrying their lingo, carrying their sentence structure, picking up on their hobbies and fitting in and not being a disruption.
• 1:07:45
  Kenny Wallace, you know, he's a really good racer.
• 1:07:49
  And he told me one day that you actually, he was hanging around the sport.
• 1:07:54
  He was in the middle of the sport because he didn't create waves.
• 1:07:57
  Okay, if you create waves in your team, on the racetrack, you won't last long.
• 1:08:03
  So as long as you don't create too many waves, you just do your job, do the best you can with what you're doing and let it fall where it falls.
• 1:08:12
  Who were the guys you could go and knock on the door of their motorhomes and have a good chat with?
• 1:08:17
  Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Who were the guys that you would happily converse with in that regard?
• 1:08:22
  Yeah, all of them.
• 1:08:23
  I mean, all of them.
• 1:08:24
  Maybe not Kevin Harvick.
• 1:08:27
  That being said, though, I think...
• 1:08:29
  There are moments on the racetrack that some guys you've come across that you did some things to them that you probably shouldn't have done or you weren't quite thinking straight when you were racing them or whatever.
• 1:08:41
  So there's some baggage there to some drivers, but I don't think there's anyone in NASCAR that I couldn't go back to and say hello to.
• 1:08:47
  There's no one that wouldn't shake my hand.
• 1:08:50
  I've never been to court.
• 1:08:53
  I've never been to jail.
• 1:08:55
  I try to stay somewhat clean, if you like.
• 1:08:58
  And one of my strategies over there was to always make sure that you can wake up on a Monday after the race weekend and not regret what you did over the weekend.
• 1:09:07
  And I think some sportsmen in Australia might –
• 1:09:12
  listen to those words and think about what they're doing and learn from it because, you know, there's some really dumb things that have been going on.
• 1:09:20
  You know, you've got to remember that you're driving for – NASCAR is a private family business.
• 1:09:24
  So, you know, they've got a product they've got to look after.
• 1:09:27
  Your team is a product they've got to look after that.
• 1:09:29
  And you fit into that.
• 1:09:30
  And if you don't fit in, you'll be out of there in a hurry.
• 1:09:34
  I reckon you said to me in a TV interview – correct me if I've got this wrong – that you –
• 1:09:39
  you weren't proud of the stash you had with Casey Mears.
• 1:09:42
  It remains to this day one of, I think you said to me, NASCAR can at times be a bit WWE now with what goes on.
• 1:09:51
  But there are days where you've got to stand your ground, mate.
• 1:09:54
  In that instance with Murph, the vision, it almost looks like there's a lump in your throat and you don't quite know what to say and there was no swinging, obviously.
• 1:10:04
  But in the Mears case, did you have to stand your ground?
• 1:10:08
  What happened that day?
• 1:10:09
  Well, what happened with Casey, and I really respect Casey as a person and as a driver and as a family.
• 1:10:16
  The Mears family have been synonymous with racing.
• 1:10:18
  Yes.
• 1:10:19
  Based out of California, Rick has won Indy 500s, drove for Roger Penske, a lot of Mears in the mix there, and just like the Pettys and the Earnharts, these families are dynasties in the racing game.
• 1:10:31
  And Casey's part of the Mears dynasty, if you like.
• 1:10:35
  And we'd had some – we were in similar teams where we were taking the fight to the big guns but we weren't – we didn't really have the ammo.
• 1:10:43
  So we had occasional glimpses of speed and performance and that particular night we'd had a tough run of it.
• 1:10:50
  And the difference between that night and what happened, you know, with the Casey Mears incident was that he lost control, um –
• 1:10:58
  I wasn't even mad at him, he was mad at me.
• 1:11:00
  I was looking for someone else down pit lane that I was mad at.
• 1:11:04
  So, and I just happened to walk past when he was, you know, saying some pretty bad things about me.
• 1:11:09
  So it was just a random event.
• 1:11:13
  He was talking bad about me.
• 1:11:14
  I was behind him, I heard it.
• 1:11:17
  It started, right?
• 1:11:19
  And,
• 1:11:21
  And when it all went down, you know, his lip started to quiver, his eyes dilated, and he lost control.
• 1:11:27
  He was losing control.
• 1:11:28
  And I thought, I've got to just finish this right now because it was going to go the wrong way for me, you know.
• 1:11:34
  And so at that moment, I just, that's it.
• 1:11:38
  And I've only done that, you know, decided that once or twice in my life, not very often that you say, that's it.
• 1:11:45
  Yeah.
• 1:11:46
  you snap and it was a snap there's no doubt um and you know i'm not proud of it um i paid a lot of money um because of it i think the fine was well over 20 000 us that's probably you know 35 36 000 australian to race the next week so i definitely paid paid for it um but i'm not i'm not proud of it but also you know i would do it again probably in that situation where at some point you've just got to
• 1:12:12
  Man up.
• 1:12:13
  Man up.
• 1:12:14
  And that's what life is all about.
• 1:12:15
  A couple of questions ago, you said to me it was very important to get into kind of the American way of life, hobbies, whatever it may have been.
• 1:12:24
  Brett Crusher Murray, legendary PR guy here in Australia who's worked in America too, reminded me about going gold panning with you.
• 1:12:33
  He reckons he saw a rattlesnake and then some other snake and he...
• 1:12:38
  Jumped in the car as quick as he could.
• 1:12:41
  Tell me about this passion for gold panning and what is the biggest nugget you've ever found?
• 1:12:45
  How have you gone?
• 1:12:46
  I've got to say, I was the first one off the mark on this.
• 1:12:49
  I was gold panning before all these Discovery Channel shows came out with gold fever.
• 1:12:54
  Do you still do it now?
• 1:12:55
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:56
  I've got a real passion for it, although I haven't picked up the pan for a while.
• 1:12:59
  Just kids and family and a bad back, you know, kind of get in the way.
• 1:13:03
  Life has gotten in the way for me on that stuff.
• 1:13:05
  But I certainly follow it intently.
• 1:13:08
  I love history, okay, and the pioneers of Australia and America, you know, a lot of it was –
• 1:13:14
  was on the back of gold and the quest to try and make it rich.
• 1:13:18
  And so the story for me of gold is fascinating.
• 1:13:21
  The old maps, I'm a bit of a map guy.
• 1:13:23
  I love old maps.
• 1:13:24
  So that, you know, that sort of floats my boat, ticks the box there.
• 1:13:29
  And then trying to then replicate that by going out to the sites and seeing it with my own eyes today.
• 1:13:35
  Where others have been.
• 1:13:36
  Where others have been.
• 1:13:37
  And, you know, I...
• 1:13:39
  I would love to collect old mining equipment.
• 1:13:41
  I haven't done any yet because I've got nowhere to put it.
• 1:13:43
  But if I was going to start a collection, it would probably be on old gold mining equipment and gear.
• 1:13:49
  I love it.
• 1:13:49
  I love the shows that are on TV.
• 1:13:51
  I watch those shows and I wish I was them.
• 1:13:53
  I really do because, like, you know, just a sense of adventure and free spirit, they're all got...
• 1:13:58
  you know, no money.
• 1:14:00
  Clearly, you watch those shows, they're all struggling.
• 1:14:03
  They're all driving around in bombs and sucking dust and living in the outback.
• 1:14:07
  And I took Crusher out one day.
• 1:14:08
  I've taken a few people out and had a go at it, and it's certainly tough.
• 1:14:12
  It's not what it looks like on TV.
• 1:14:14
  It's a lot of hard work trying to find even just a small piece of gold.
• 1:14:18
  I don't really...
• 1:14:19
  I want to follow the story of gold.
• 1:14:21
  I want to follow, I want to find it.
• 1:14:22
  I want to read a book about it first.
• 1:14:24
  I want to find some maps about where it was.
• 1:14:26
  I want to go out there and just find a little piece of it to say, yes, I've seen the colour that's come out of that creek.
• 1:14:32
  And because each story of gold's,
• 1:14:34
  different you know each piece you get out of the creek's different each the color the composition the whether it's been crushed or whether it's rolled or whether it's fresh i mean all that stuff's really for me intriguing i love the story of it i just my my grandfather was was fascinated by it too i think so um you know it just must be somewhere in the in the gene pool
• 1:14:56
  You made an almost 10-year chapter of your life, your career in the United States.
• 1:15:03
  Mate, you said to me earlier that you would love, I don't think it should be a regret, but you would love to have had more success on ovals.
• 1:15:11
  I know that.
• 1:15:11
  I think there's still some huge things that you achieved.
• 1:15:14
  When that chapter came to an end, how difficult was that on you?
• 1:15:19
  And I sense, mate, that the massive schedule, everything that you were doing, it had really taken its toll, hadn't it?
• 1:15:27
  Yeah, look, it must have done it.
• 1:15:29
  Well, it clearly did.
• 1:15:32
  You know, my own position right now where I sit here today, you know, my exit was messy, okay?
• 1:15:40
  Like it wasn't...
• 1:15:42
  A fairytale ending, for sure.
• 1:15:44
  For me, I was really tired in the States.
• 1:15:47
  The Roger Penske thing came up out of the blue.
• 1:15:50
  I said yes, because I really wanted Roger to be in Australia.
• 1:15:53
  I thought Australian racing would be better because of it.
• 1:15:56
  So I was a real ambassador to try and help Roger come to Australia.
• 1:16:01
  And you were, correct me if I'm wrong here, you were true to your word too, mate.
• 1:16:04
  You'd had like a half a handshake on, if we do this,
• 1:16:07
  I'll be with you.
• 1:16:08
  That's right.
• 1:16:09
  I mean, it was a year in the making.
• 1:16:10
  It was a handshake, I think, in 13 that said, you know, if you were to go do something in Australia, yes, I'm going to go home at the end of 14, I think it was.
• 1:16:21
  It was going to be my last NASCAR year.
• 1:16:23
  And so, yeah, the discussion started in 13 for sure.
• 1:16:27
  And I said, if you ever want to do that, I'll be in it with you.
• 1:16:29
  You know, I'll be part of it with you because I thought that would just be great for Australian motorsport, which I think has proved to be the case.
• 1:16:34
  Absolutely.
• 1:16:35
  We're lucky to have him here.
• 1:16:37
  We're lucky to have Penske involved in V8 Supercar.
• 1:16:40
  And people can have their own opinion on that, but, you know, it's a world-class team.
• 1:16:45
  100%.
• 1:16:46
  Okay?
• 1:16:47
  We're not a backyard operation.
• 1:16:48
  It's a world-class team to come to Australia to bring his business to Australia.
• 1:16:53
  We're lucky to have him in business.
• 1:16:54
  I mean, the Penske company, the Penske brand, is just an incredible company.
• 1:16:59
  I'm just... Every time I meet...
• 1:17:03
  a VP from Penske, they just amaze me with their professionalism and their ability to make things happen.
• 1:17:08
  And they're so conscientious, it's just amazing.
• 1:17:11
  So we're lucky to have him.
• 1:17:12
  Yes, and then the 14 run comes and I've got two young kids.
• 1:17:16
  I'm living a life in America, trying to get them home.
• 1:17:19
  trying to finish the NASCAR season properly without, you know, falling apart.
• 1:17:24
  And then we start doing these races that Roger wanted to do at the end of the season to get me ready for the following year.
• 1:17:30
  And it just really, there was just a heap going on and my brain was literally probably melting down.
• 1:17:36
  And it came out in different ways.
• 1:17:38
  I came out and I literally was...
• 1:17:42
  What is it?
• 1:17:42
  Insomniac where you can't sleep.
• 1:17:44
  Sleep.
• 1:17:44
  Yeah, and it was coming out in weird ways, you know.
• 1:17:47
  And what you can handle when you're 20, you can't handle when you're 40.
• 1:17:52
  I mean, it's simple.
• 1:17:54
  Your brain's different and the way you can handle stress is different and your abilities are different and all those things are different.
• 1:18:00
  So for me, you know, it was just a messy transition.
• 1:18:04
  And, yes, the schedule in the States was incredibly difficult
• 1:18:07
  This all comes out in hindsight.
• 1:18:10
  When you come back and you think about how did all that go down, 2015 was a really bad year for me personally in my life.
• 1:18:17
  And how did I make those decisions to get in that place in the first place?
• 1:18:20
  Well, it was just a combination of a massive schedule.
• 1:18:24
  And the way I did NASCAR was different.
• 1:18:27
  I didn't have a team around me.
• 1:18:28
  I didn't have family around me.
• 1:18:30
  I was one man over there trying to do it.
• 1:18:33
  And Jimmy Johnson's got his own private jet and he's running around with his family in the private jet and they've got seven or eight, nine people and he's getting paid $15 to $20 million and life's good for him.
• 1:18:44
  On my end, I was in Struggle Street.
• 1:18:46
  I was getting paid well, but, you know, it's not going to last forever.
• 1:18:51
  And so I was getting, you know, bumping rides with people to get to the racetrack in the planes or I was flying with the team.
• 1:18:56
  And so, you know, and I'm not complaining because that's where I ended up in the sport.
• 1:19:01
  I was in that middle, right?
• 1:19:02
  I wasn't elite.
• 1:19:03
  I was in that middle.
• 1:19:05
  And there were guys behind me who were doing it even tougher.
• 1:19:08
  that were struggling to even get to the racetrack and get paid enough to survive and those kind of things.
• 1:19:13
  So I was in that ground where, you know, a lot of hours, very stressful, and, you know, I didn't have a lot of people around me to sort of take up the load, if you like.
• 1:19:26
  You know, I couldn't afford to take up the load on your own.
• 1:19:28
  And what people don't realise here necessarily is, you know, when I went over to America...
• 1:19:34
  You know, I was freelance.
• 1:19:36
  I mean, I picked up a ride.
• 1:19:38
  The team didn't want to employ you.
• 1:19:39
  They didn't want to look after all your expenses.
• 1:19:41
  You have to look after that.
• 1:19:42
  They're going to pay you X, and you're going to get X prize money, and you got to work out all your own stuff behind the scenes.
• 1:19:48
  That's just how it works.
• 1:19:49
  They don't want the liability.
• 1:19:50
  They don't want to cover the insurance.
• 1:19:53
  If you're not performing, they want to be able to get rid of you.
• 1:19:56
  So all that stacked up and it came down.
• 1:19:59
  And yes, 2015 turned out to be a really messy year, but I think one of the best things I did do was stop.
• 1:20:06
  I mean, it's always easier to keep going.
• 1:20:08
  It's always easier to say yes and no.
• 1:20:11
  I've never let anybody down in my life and I let down the person that I wanted to help the most, which was Roger Penske.
• 1:20:18
  So that I can never take back.
• 1:20:21
  But what I did try to do was try to mitigate that decision as much as I could.
• 1:20:26
  So I went to all the races.
• 1:20:28
  I tried to put Scott Pybeck in the car, which was the right decision that time to lead the team forward.
• 1:20:34
  I did the endurance races with them to try to smooth out the sponsorship issues and whatnot.
• 1:20:39
  And that's kind of how 2015 went down.
• 1:20:42
  You've kept, it would seem, on the outside, a good relationship with him.
• 1:20:47
  A lot of people faced with the same set of circumstances would run a mile, mate.
• 1:20:52
  You know, it's difficult.
• 1:20:54
  I've got it done.
• 1:20:55
  I just want to put it behind me.
• 1:20:57
  But outwardly it looks like, maybe that's a mark of Roger too, but it looks like you've kept a good relationship with him, mate.
• 1:21:03
  So in that sense, I think you've handled it bloody well.
• 1:21:08
  Well, it's all to do with Roger.
• 1:21:10
  I mean...
• 1:21:12
  You know, the phone call was not a good one.
• 1:21:14
  What did you say to him?
• 1:21:16
  I just said, I can't do it.
• 1:21:17
  How did he take that?
• 1:21:19
  He said, the only other person that's told me that was one of his other drivers.
• 1:21:25
  He's only heard it once before.
• 1:21:27
  And that he respects the decision.
• 1:21:32
  And that's how we left it, pretty much.
• 1:21:35
  So, you know, that's all you can say.
• 1:21:37
  Roger, I'm really sorry.
• 1:21:38
  I just can't do it, you know.
• 1:21:40
  I mean, and people in business will tell you the same thing.
• 1:21:43
  They get to a moment where they crack.
• 1:21:45
  And I guess I got to the point where I just knew I couldn't do it.
• 1:21:49
  Like I had to change my life because it was – I just couldn't fix it.
• 1:21:54
  And that's where the struggle comes from.
• 1:21:58
  to say I can't carry on.
• 1:22:00
  It's just too much because I've never let it – I've never quit on anything before in so to quit, you know, in that moment.
• 1:22:07
  But I just knew it wasn't right for me to do that, to keep going.
• 1:22:11
  It wasn't fair on the team.
• 1:22:12
  It wasn't fair on the sponsors.
• 1:22:13
  It wasn't fair on me and the family.
• 1:22:15
  You know, it was a pretty dark time.
• 1:22:17
  The hard –
• 1:22:18
  thing to kind of swallow in that regard is at Adelaide, you got in the top 10 shootout.
• 1:22:25
  People were in the pit lane going, far out.
• 1:22:28
  He is back.
• 1:22:29
  This is like 03 and 04, he is back.
• 1:22:32
  Yes, the cars have changed.
• 1:22:34
  And that you then said to me, when you got to the Grand Prix and it was a disaster for you,
• 1:22:42
  Is it right in saying that you actually felt disconnected from the car?
• 1:22:45
  You didn't feel like, you didn't quite understand how you got that top 10 shootout result?
• 1:22:49
  Oh, no.
• 1:22:50
  I mean, it was a lot of effort to get that top 10.
• 1:22:52
  And we were actually running top 10 for the race and there were six or something until the pit stops got messed up.
• 1:22:58
  I mean, the car was not right.
• 1:23:01
  I didn't know how to make the car better.
• 1:23:02
  I didn't have a good feel in the car.
• 1:23:05
  I'm still carrying today injuries from NASCAR that have numbed some of my sensations in my feet.
• 1:23:11
  Like what?
• 1:23:12
  In your feet?
• 1:23:12
  Yeah, yeah, just, you know, just, you know, just side-eck nerve troubles and bad backs and other bits and bobs.
• 1:23:17
  So, you know, I had trouble to really feel the brake pedal.
• 1:23:20
  I couldn't feel when the tyres were locking up.
• 1:23:21
  I just didn't have that control that I had, that I wanted to have.
• 1:23:26
  I think it would have come, maybe.
• 1:23:29
  I think if I had given myself enough time in the car, I definitely would have.
• 1:23:33
  normalised out.
• 1:23:35
  But it was this other stuff going on, the other struggle that had to be dealt with.
• 1:23:40
  It wasn't time.
• 1:23:41
  I could handle the year to get better, but I had this other stuff going on in the background which just had to be dealt with.
• 1:23:48
  Because it manifests in strange ways.
• 1:23:52
  And people in business, I'm no different to a guy who's struggling to make his business work or a
• 1:24:00
  or someone who's got a high stressful job, you know, a nurse or a doctor, you know, that eventually, you know, can catch up.
• 1:24:08
  What you're doing can catch up with you.
• 1:24:11
  Did you take a road trip at the height of all that?
• 1:24:14
  There was this rumour that, you know, the stress of everything that you're dealing with, you've got to tell Roger Penske, and how am I going to let down one of the, you know, the people in the automotive industry that you really respect, that everyone really respects,
• 1:24:28
  And there was this rumour that you either went sort of central Australia or you ultimately came home here to Tasmania just to sort of clear your mind.
• 1:24:35
  Did you take that road trip and how did you handle it?
• 1:24:37
  Oh, yeah, I was going to.
• 1:24:39
  So I made the decision.
• 1:24:42
  We had the conversation with Roger, had the conversation with the team, you know, and then I just tried to turn the phone off, right?
• 1:24:48
  I tried to disappear for a little while because I just wanted to get away because it's like every man his dog was going to pick up the phone.
• 1:24:53
  What's going on?
• 1:24:54
  What are you doing?
• 1:24:55
  You know?
• 1:24:55
  So I drove back to Tasmania.
• 1:24:57
  Okay.
• 1:24:58
  I was going to go through to Alice Springs and I got a friend over there, you see.
• 1:25:04
  But I came home because Sonny really needed me to come home, I think.
• 1:25:09
  So I came home and jumped on the boat and just tried to turn the – like when you're travelling on the Newell Highway or some back roads, the phone doesn't work.
• 1:25:18
  So that's perfect what it's all about.
• 1:25:20
  And yeah, you need time to clear your head.
• 1:25:21
  I mean, that's what the problem was.
• 1:25:23
  My head was very cloudy.
• 1:25:26
  You are like the energizer bunny.
• 1:25:27
  I've spent a bit of time with you over the past few days.
• 1:25:29
  You're always doing something.
• 1:25:32
  Now, do you have itchy feet?
• 1:25:35
  Are there, is there anything that, maybe it's a one-off race, a Bathurst 12 hour.
• 1:25:40
  I don't know.
• 1:25:41
  Is there little things in the back of your mind?
• 1:25:43
  I think, you know, wouldn't mind having to dabble at that.
• 1:25:47
  Two answers to your question.
• 1:25:49
  The first one is that I don't even watch a football game because I've lost a competitive urge.
• 1:25:57
  I don't have it in me anymore.
• 1:25:58
  I was one of the most hyper-competitive guys you'll ever meet.
• 1:26:02
  And now I don't like watching a football game because I don't like seeing the other team lose.
• 1:26:06
  I feel bad for them.
• 1:26:09
  I don't cheer for the winner, I feel sorry for the loser.
• 1:26:11
  So that competition streak's pretty much gone and I'm very happy about that.
• 1:26:15
  I'm okay with that, that's good.
• 1:26:17
  I've got no problems with that shift.
• 1:26:21
  My friends growing up, they probably still can't
• 1:26:24
  believe that today, but, you know, I can go to the pool and, you know, the guy in the lane next to me, he can beat me to the wall.
• 1:26:31
  It's okay.
• 1:26:32
  I'm okay with it now.
• 1:26:33
  I was not okay with it before, right?
• 1:26:35
  So that sense, that competitive urge, that drive to be the best, it has gone.
• 1:26:44
  Yeah.
• 1:26:45
  As far as experiences go, I'm all about experiences.
• 1:26:48
  I'm all about doing things.
• 1:26:50
  I'm all about experiencing things.
• 1:26:52
  We have talked with some friends in circles to do some races here or there.
• 1:26:58
  When I stopped driving, my promise to Roger was that I wasn't going to turn up somewhere else.
• 1:27:05
  And that is absolutely 100%.
• 1:27:07
  I will not be back in that game, in that game.
• 1:27:12
  Sphere of competition and pressure.
• 1:27:14
  I don't need it.
• 1:27:16
  I've done it.
• 1:27:17
  I don't need to go back.
• 1:27:19
  That's it.
• 1:27:21
  Maybe some one-off things.
• 1:27:22
  I've got a passion for dirt.
• 1:27:25
  I love dirt ovals.
• 1:27:27
  I help some friends at the local track here.
• 1:27:30
  He's not a very good driver.
• 1:27:31
  So... What are you doing?
• 1:27:33
  Are you on the wheel?
• 1:27:33
  I'm on tools.
• 1:27:34
  I'm trying to set the car up for him, but I think we've both maxed out our own abilities.
• 1:27:39
  I think I'm as good as I'm going to get to help set the car up for him and he's as good as he's going to get behind the wheel.
• 1:27:44
  But really, you know, odd events, could be random events, might pop up here or there.
• 1:27:50
  You know, I've got some good friends that run the fink.
• 1:27:53
  I've got some good friends that do some off-road stuff.
• 1:27:56
  You just never know where it might go.
• 1:27:57
  But yeah, right now...
• 1:27:59
  I'm in Tasmania.
• 1:28:01
  I'm very happy with just, you know, stepping back from all that competition side of things.
• 1:28:06
  It takes a lot of effort to go and do something again.
• 1:28:09
  And if I, say if I went to do the Fink, which we've talked about doing the Fink before, and I'd love to go do that race, you know, it'd be a fun thing to do.
• 1:28:17
  it'd take a year to get ready for it.
• 1:28:19
  I mean, really, it would.
• 1:28:20
  From my position, you'd want to do it right, wouldn't you?
• 1:28:22
  So you'd want to team up with the right team.
• 1:28:24
  You'd have to go and find the right sponsors.
• 1:28:26
  You'd have to go and, you know, run the track a few times.
• 1:28:28
  You're going to have to race the buggy a few times, the truck a few times.
• 1:28:32
  So it'd be a four-year project, you know?
• 1:28:33
  I mean, I've got other things that I'm doing now.
• 1:28:36
  So, you know, yeah, so if I did do something, I'd do it right.
• 1:28:41
  But, you know, I'm quite content, to be fair.
• 1:28:45
  One car in your whole career that you had a soft spot for.
• 1:28:51
  It can be NASCAR, it can be Supercar, it can be Formula Ford, it can be whatever.
• 1:28:53
  It's the one car you look back and you go, gee, I really had a good affinity with that car.
• 1:28:59
  I liked it.
• 1:28:59
  It gives me good memories.
• 1:29:02
  Oh, the one car that I go to sleep on and dream about is a NASCAR.
• 1:29:07
  Is it?
• 1:29:07
  NASCAR cup car.
• 1:29:09
  Just, you know, the sensation of driving one of those machines is incredible.
• 1:29:14
  Describe it.
• 1:29:15
  Describe it.
• 1:29:16
  Well, it's just brutal.
• 1:29:18
  You've got...
• 1:29:19
  850 odd horsepower at the right foot.
• 1:29:21
  You've got tyres that are so hard.
• 1:29:25
  I mean, they could put holes in concrete, they're that hard.
• 1:29:28
  Because they have to be, they're putting so much load through on those high speed, high banked ovals.
• 1:29:33
  And so they handle terribly trying to get them up to speed.
• 1:29:36
  And then you get that sweet spot, you know, where it just cuts to turn in the corner and the back end's twitching around, but the side force comes in and stabilises it.
• 1:29:44
  And all of a sudden, you know, you're going 330 kilometres an hour.
• 1:29:48
  through the corner and think that, you know, that your grandmother could do it, you know.
• 1:29:53
  They're brutal machines and they command complete respect.
• 1:29:58
  They will kill you, those cars.
• 1:29:59
  They are that powerful and that fast.
• 1:30:03
  The untrained hand wouldn't last 10 seconds before doing themselves a lot of harm.
• 1:30:10
  And so you have to rely on all your skills and all your training and all your knowledge and all your bravery just to strap in and start and go in one of those cars.
• 1:30:21
  Like you've got to know what you're doing before you get in that situation.
• 1:30:25
  And so those cars are just amazing machines and the engines were just –
• 1:30:30
  so nice to drive.
• 1:30:31
  They just had power everywhere, all through the power range, all through the revs.
• 1:30:36
  At Martinsville, the low RPM was around 4,500 RPM, maybe 4,000 RPM off the turn, and they run out to 10,000.
• 1:30:44
  And the power was the same.
• 1:30:45
  It's the same gear.
• 1:30:46
  You're in fourth gear from 4,000 to 10,000, and the power delivery's identical from 4,000 RPM to 10.
• 1:30:52
  They just were just...
• 1:30:55
  sublime engines, just beautiful.
• 1:30:57
  And then the cars with the rules they had were archaic in comparison to the motor.
• 1:31:02
  You know, 1960s truck arm rear suspension, inboard springs unattached to the shock absorber.
• 1:31:09
  You just would never, you know, steel brakes that last...
• 1:31:14
  four stops and they're done.
• 1:31:15
  You've got to run 500 miles and on the fourth application of the brake pedal, they start to boil.
• 1:31:22
  It's unbelievable what they were and they were a really tough car to master and only a rare few people get to drive them
• 1:31:32
  in earnest on those those type of racetracks you know in in that competition so for me you know if i go to bed and dream about race cars it's those cars and those moments bristol and michigan and and and daytona and just um yeah awesome bristol great ball ring talladega mega fast daytona so much history what's the one that you love the most
• 1:31:55
  I think Bristol.
• 1:31:57
  Bristol Motor Speedway, followed by Dover.
• 1:32:00
  Dover's just an amazing track as well.
• 1:32:02
  The sensation of speed in those two places, superior to anything else.
• 1:32:07
  Tracks I dread, certainly the super speedways, they were not nice experiences to be part of.
• 1:32:14
  I think every driver going into those races goes into those with apprehension.
• 1:32:18
  There was the driver intros on those super speedways were always very subdued.
• 1:32:24
  Um, you know, me personally, I'd always fly my family to those races just so I could say goodbye when I got in the car.
• 1:32:32
  Holy hell mate, it was that daunting.
• 1:32:33
  Well, it is, it is very daunting because you just don't know what's going to happen.
• 1:32:36
  You're not in control of your own destiny in those races.
• 1:32:39
  And I think a lot of drivers felt the same way.
• 1:32:41
  You know, they were always very quiet leading into those races, um,
• 1:32:45
  You know, yeah, they're just random crashes that, you know, you could be minding your own business, you know, in the middle of the pack.
• 1:32:55
  You just know that, you know, 10 laps to go, there's cars flipping in front of you and you could be in the fence knocked out.
• 1:33:02
  before you blink.
• 1:33:03
  And so those days were always very difficult.
• 1:33:05
  And the more I did those super speedway races, the more difficult they got because it's a numbers game at the end of the day.
• 1:33:12
  But NASCAR have come a long way in making those cars safe.
• 1:33:16
  So I did...
• 1:33:18
  I did rest on, you know, that, you know, my seat is first class, my cage is first class, you know, I'm in this car.
• 1:33:27
  But, yeah, they were very daunting.
• 1:33:29
  And, you know, I saw accidents.
• 1:33:31
  I was part of accidents.
• 1:33:33
  I saw things go down and just I'm not a religious man but, you know, just by the grace of God everyone walks away.
• 1:33:40
  And, you know, those races are, you know, very tense, no doubt.
• 1:33:45
  Two championships, you know, most successful Aussie ever in NASCAR.
• 1:33:51
  I think there's an enormous amount to be proud of in what you did, mate.
• 1:33:55
  What's the thing you're proudest of in that whole journey?
• 1:33:58
  Amazing to think that this guy from Tasmania, from Launceston, you've come full circle, here you are back in now, has gone off and achieved all that stuff.
• 1:34:05
  Yeah.
• 1:34:06
  Yeah, look, I don't reflect, to be honest.
• 1:34:09
  No, no.
• 1:34:10
  It's the next thing.
• 1:34:11
  I mean, you look at my house, there's no memorabilia on the walls.
• 1:34:14
  There's no photos of race cars.
• 1:34:16
  Like, I don't reflect on it.
• 1:34:17
  And maybe I should, but I don't.
• 1:34:19
  I haven't.
• 1:34:21
  I'm just on to the next thing.
• 1:34:22
  So for me, you know, I'm on to the next thing.
• 1:34:25
  And...
• 1:34:27
  Yeah, I haven't reconnected to America.
• 1:34:29
  I haven't been back since I got out of the seat in 2014.
• 1:34:31
  Would you do that?
• 1:34:34
  One day, one day, but I haven't been back.
• 1:34:38
  And that's, I think it's on purpose.
• 1:34:41
  I think I'm shutting that door and moving on to the next one, whatever it is, and so for me now, I'm
• 1:34:49
  I'm just Marcus Ambrose, lives in Launceston.
• 1:34:53
  Occasionally when I pick up the phone and call some random plumber, he'd go, you're not the real Marcus Ambrose.
• 1:34:59
  And so, oh, maybe I am.
• 1:35:00
  So my moniker around Launceston here at the cafes and whatnot, because all these millennials are kicking around now, they've got no idea who I am, right, which is just the way I like it, just the way I like it.
• 1:35:11
  So my moniker is Bruce Smith.
• 1:35:14
  So if you come across Bruce anywhere, it could be me.
• 1:35:18
  But the reason I picked Bruce Smith was because there's about a million of them out there.
• 1:35:25
  And that's just how I like to roll.
• 1:35:27
  I think Sonia even said to me, your wife, that she's had knocks on the door from the postman saying...
• 1:35:32
  Does Bruce Smith really live here?
• 1:35:34
  How about the postman?
• 1:35:36
  He'd be getting very confused, wouldn't he?
• 1:35:39
  Mate, this has been an unbelievably good chat.
• 1:35:42
  Thank you very much.
• 1:35:44
  Take some time.
• 1:35:44
  Please pause and reflect.
• 1:35:46
  I know all the fans that have asked about you on social media are enormously proud of what you've done.
• 1:35:53
  There's a huge amount of successes there, and I hope...
• 1:35:57
  away from the racetrack, you get the chance to tick some other bucket list stuff that clearly you've now got a bit of time to do.
• 1:36:03
  Well, thank you.
• 1:36:04
  And yes, I am ticking off some items on the bucket list.
• 1:36:07
  At the same time, just in this little chat we're having, it's actually good to actually talk about things.
• 1:36:12
  So I don't talk about or think about what we've been chatting about very often.
• 1:36:17
  There are people out there that I kind of feel, because I've chosen to step back from motorsport and somewhat disappear, I guess.
• 1:36:25
  There are people out there that are, you know, named after me, got tattoos on their shoulder with my name on it.
• 1:36:32
  You know, some days I feel a bit guilty about that, that I'm not out there for them, right, that I'm not carrying the person that I was back then now but just let them know that I still think about them and feel privileged to have come across all the people I've met and been a part of the journey with me, whether they're fans, teammates, competitors,
• 1:36:57
  rivals, enemies, friends, whatever.
• 1:37:01
  Yeah, it's been a great ride and, you know, I will reflect and over time, you know, I'll look back at it.
• 1:37:08
  But again, I'm not that kind of person to, you know, to look back easily on that.
• 1:37:14
  I don't want to be regarded as...
• 1:37:17
  has been, if you like.
• 1:37:19
  I don't want to remember the days that, oh, once upon a time I was good.
• 1:37:23
  I don't like to think like that, you see.
• 1:37:25
  So I guess it's still a bit raw, probably.
• 1:37:31
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 1:37:35
  Series producer and editor is Alex Mitchell.
• 1:37:39
  Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
• 1:37:48
  Listener.