Latest / Rusty's Garage / Craig Denyer | Part 2 - Brute Utes, TA2 & plans to break a record

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Craig Denyer | Part 2 - Brute Utes, TA2 & plans to break a record · Rusty's Garage

0:02
A listener production.
0:19
G'day, it's Rusty here, all set for part two of my feature episode with Craig Denyer.
0:23
If you've somehow found yourself landing, arriving here before giving part one a run, you are missing out on some fantastic chat.
0:31
Growing up in the country and the lasting impact that racing at the Hume Weir had on him and the legends that he saw racing there back in the day.
0:40
How his personality was tailor-made for some commentary moonlighting as a teenager.
0:45
Yeah.
0:45
his first race car for Speedway, where the inspiration for its colours came from, jumping into the media and why it seemed like a perfect fit, plus the connection it created with a famous rally on the New South Wales Central Coast and the A-listers that he would help to draft into the starting line-up.
1:04
And playing PR and commercial manager,
1:07
for a Bathurst-winning campaign in the 80s, which was almost derailed by a bomb scare.
1:13
We begin this second part with a focus on category admin and the classes that would perfectly fill some voids in the Aussie offering.
1:21
MUSIC
1:23
When did the whole idea of category management for you really shift into gear?
1:29
And you talked about Billy West there a moment ago.
1:32
Around the turn of the century, I think it's 2001, there's this idea that comes to fruition around iconic V8 Aussie utes, Holden v Ford, and we're going to put them on a racetrack battling each other with some drivers with fun nicknames and so on.
1:50
Look, it was, again, it came out of a very, very simple conversation.
1:55
And I was looking for a category for Grant to race in.
1:58
He'd raced in the GDB3R in the Mazda 626 with Tom Watkinson.
2:03
And I was looking for a category to race in, but we couldn't afford anything.
2:07
There was nothing affordable.
2:09
This was before Aussie racing cars, Turing Car Masters, even the Supercar Development Series, even before Carrera Cup.
2:17
So there wasn't a lot of choices.
2:21
And I was looking for kind of something that I thought we could afford for him to compete in.
2:25
That's kind of what stimulated the conversation.
2:27
Ian McAllister was a Ford dealer and a good mate.
2:31
And Paul Ryan, who now works in the US doing media PR for motorsport,
2:35
was doing PR then for Ross Palmer.
2:39
And we were just kicking around having a beer one day and we were talking about these fantastic new sports utes, the new Holden SS Commodore and the Falcon AU XR8 that had just came out.
2:49
And we thought, what a great idea for a low-cost series.
2:53
And so...
2:55
I put the idea to Ross Parmer.
2:57
I said, what do you think about this?
3:00
Ian McAllister said, I can get help from Ford.
3:03
And we thought, well, we've only got to approach Holden.
3:05
We should be able to get some support from there because V8 utes were very much part of their marketing budget at the time.
3:10
And my idea was to basically have a stock standard ute with no real modifications.
3:15
And so I went and saw Wayne Park, who was looking after the Ferrari that John Bauer had been racing, along with...
3:25
with a few other people, and we decided that Wayne should build a prototype, which basically I funded.
3:31
So I painted and built the very, very first V8-yield prototype.
3:36
And that was kind of how the series started.
3:37
Of course, it came out of the blocks so quickly.
3:40
It was at the right time.
3:42
Ford and Holden's ute marketing spend was huge.
3:45
Everybody loved them.
3:46
Whether you were Ford or a Holden man, you either love the blue or the red.
3:48
And it just took off.
3:50
We launched with nine cars at the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide in 2001.
3:55
And that was where Grant had his biggest crash.
3:59
And we wrote off the very, very first ute that was ever built.
4:03
But that started what was a fantastic series that we thought we might get
4:06
Two or three years out of, but in essence, it lasted 17 years.
4:10
And I think was probably some of the most enjoyable motor racing entertainment as opposed from pure motorsport because we positioned it as the World Championship Wrestling and Motorsport.
4:22
And that was how it was basically sold.
4:24
And that's how our guys got sponsors.
4:27
They were very, very popular, extremely popular.
4:29
One of the most popular support categories on the supercar program.
4:32
All the drivers had nicknames, so we had to create...
4:35
our own personalities, because we didn't really have any name drivers.
4:38
So we had Grant Mad Dog Denya, Damien Ice White, Charlie Handlebars Kovacs, that had a big Handlebars moustache, and created these personalities in their own right.
4:48
And then turned on some fantastic racing for the next 17 years.
4:52
I love the parallel there with World Championship Wrestling and standing out from the motorsport offering at the time in a different fashion.
5:00
Plus, they moved around a lot.
5:03
The cars were spectacular to watch in that sense, weren't they?
5:07
They were.
5:07
I mean, they were pretty much stock standard.
5:09
They had a MoTeC, so we could seal the ECUs.
5:12
They had a suspension package, but they did race on –
5:16
on basically aspect tyres.
5:18
And we, after Grant's big accident at the Clipsal 500, we upgraded the great package.
5:23
Because I didn't want good brakes.
5:24
I wanted lots of passing.
5:26
I want brakes fading, drivers to take advantage of that.
5:29
Not thinking for one minute my son would be the R&D dummy that put the whole category through it.
5:34
So what happened was it was a night race at the Clipsal 500.
5:37
I think that was the second or third race of the weekend for the V8 Brutes.
5:41
And I was watching on a television monitor
5:45
And I was watching Grant and I saw, as he came around, it might have been turned 13 or 14, I saw the left-hand front brake pad fall out of the car.
5:55
I physically saw it on television.
5:57
And I knew before he knew that he had no brakes.
6:00
And so he's arrived at the last corner before they turn onto the main straight at the Adelaide 500.
6:06
Absolutely no brakes, warp speed, flat out in fourth gear.
6:10
And to slow the car down, he's actually lined up Rod Wilson's Commodore and gone straight into the back of it, and they both spun off.
6:18
And anyhow, the car was totally destroyed, and what had happened is that Wayne Park had not disconnected the airbag.
6:27
So the airbag had gone off.
6:29
So Grant had thought he'd gone to heaven because all of a sudden the vehicle had stopped and there's just this white cloud all around him.
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And he had no idea where he was, if I died or what's happened.
6:40
Rod Wilson, to his credit, had stopped his car, jumped out, raced back to Grant's car, pulled down the net to make sure the kid was okay.
6:49
He's peeled the airbag off Grant's helmet and face, and there's Rod Wilson staring at him in the window.
6:56
And Grant said, well, I knew I hadn't gone to heaven because I didn't figure Rod Wilson was God.
7:01
Was God.
7:06
You talked about Billy West there before.
7:08
When does he arrive on the scene?
7:10
And the pair of you in this category administrative capacity were kind of great.
7:17
Yin and yang, weren't you, mate?
7:18
It works so well together.
7:21
It did.
7:21
I mean, Westy had been working for, he was involved in the original Gold Coast Indy Syndicate with a guy called Terry Robertson on the Gold Coast.
7:31
And Westy had come back from New Guinea and was working full time for Terry.
7:36
And in the end, I think Terry realised that as an entity, they needed government support.
7:41
So they basically moved the entity into Queensland Events Corps, a government funded thing.
7:48
So Westy and I met when he was running Indian lunches and stuff to get money to keep seeding and funding the development of the event.
7:55
And so he went then to work for Ross Palmer full time.
8:00
And so when I basically had left CFM and had nothing to do, he said, oh, why don't you come and do some work for me, do some commentary and help me find some sponsors, which basically started our, you know, long friendship right through to this very, very day.
8:13
And so that was Pro Car then.
8:15
I think Westy left Pro Car at the end of 2000 and he moved to Adelaide for the race of a thousand years.
8:23
And he was the marketing director for that event over there.
8:26
Yeah.
8:28
along with Liam Kirkpatrick's father.
8:31
And so I continue to run ProCar.
8:36
Nations Cup came along, 4B3 was part of it, V8 Brutes became part of it, and then of course the two 24-hour races as well.
8:43
And then when Procar withdrew from motorsport and the V8 Ute Series was hanging with nowhere to race, I went and saw Wayne Caddack and tried to patch up the relationship that Ross had kind of fractured along the way with Tony Cochran and Supercars.
8:58
And I said, we've got this great category, you know.
9:00
Can we come and race with you guys?
9:02
And to their credit, they welcomed us with open arms and we signed a three-year deal for V8 Brutes to support superguards.
9:10
And Tony Cochran said, you can come with us.
9:13
But just remember, you've got to stay down the shallow end of the pool.
9:17
So meaning that you do what you're told, you stay out of trouble, you don't create any waves, and we'll all get on happily ever after.
9:26
And that's exactly what happened.
9:27
And so at that stage, then there was no running V8 Brutes, but I had invested in it.
9:33
Alan Grice had bought a ute, there was a heap of other guys, and we decided to put together a syndicate to start the V8 Brute company, if you like, as shareholders, the 32 guys that owned the utes.
9:47
and a few other guys, Kimmy Jane, of course.
9:51
And then I brought Westy in.
9:54
We started a company called Spherix to basically manage the V8 Ute Series on the shareholders' behalf.
10:01
And it was at that point I said to Grant, you know, you can't really continue to race in the series while we're running it because of...
10:08
perceived conflict of interest.
10:10
And so at that stage, I knew Dick Johnson.
10:13
I gave Dick a call and said, if there's any chance you'll give him a supercar test, which they did.
10:21
But we did run one year as a two-car team with Alan Grice, which was great fun with Les Moore preparing both Grant and Grice's utes.
10:28
And they debuted at Orrin Park with a team one too.
10:31
And that was pretty special as well.
10:33
Absolutely.
10:34
I won't have the duration right here.
10:37
What did the category live for?
10:39
It was like 17 years or something, wasn't it?
10:41
How long did it go for?
10:42
Yeah, 17 years it was.
10:43
And look, it was only killed in the end because basically Australia...
10:52
I guess Motorsport Australia at that stage wanted to have a more of an eco-friendly position.
11:00
V8 Utes has stopped being manufactured in Australia, of course, with the seizing of Ford and Holden manufacturing.
11:07
Supercars under John Casey at the time, who was their marketing manager, wanted to get into the SUV type world, diesel SUVs.
11:16
Westy and I didn't believe that that was a commercial success or business case at all.
11:20
And so at that stage, we said, well, if there's no position for V8 Utes, then there's nothing for us to really do anything with.
11:28
So we basically handed the Ute franchise to supercars and they ran it as it was for a year with Kim Jane winning the championship.
11:35
And then they converted to diesel Utes.
11:38
And we all know how spectacularly successful that became.
11:41
And of course, now they're back to V8 Utes with reasonable fields and good racing.
11:47
So what's the zenith moment for you?
11:49
I mean, that's an incredible chapter, really.
11:50
Anything longer than sort of 15 years like that.
11:53
What's the sort of highlight, do you reckon, in that Utes, Brutes chapter?
11:59
Gee, there's so many of them.
12:01
So many of them, Rusty.
12:02
When you think that, like, Alan Jones raced a V8 Ute, you know, Sandman with us.
12:08
You know, Brad Jones raced a V8 Ute.
12:10
Peter Brock.
12:11
raced a V8 Ute.
12:12
He's some James Brock raced a V8 Ute.
12:15
Alan Grice raced a V8 Ute and thoroughly enjoyed it.
12:18
Backed by Akubra, who was his longstanding sponsor.
12:21
We took V8 Utes to New Zealand and we did a wonderful event over at Manfield, which was a two driver event.
12:30
We had Graham Crosby, who was a world superbike champion or driver at that stage.
12:35
racer and all these other wonderful names from New Zealand that became part of it, which led to the launch of the New Zealand V8 Ute Series as well.
12:43
We did a street race at Hamilton, which Chris Pither won.
12:47
It led to so many more moments, I guess.
12:49
And when you look at the talent that came through Utes, I mean, Damien White was a quick driver.
12:55
Chris Pither won a New Zealand Championship and an Australian Championship.
13:00
There was so much talent that came through Dean Cando, Warren Luff won two V8 Ute championships.
13:06
I mean, we didn't need a driving standards advisor until Warren Luff joined the field.
13:10
But Warren found out that the quickest way to the front was the bump and run and he used it on everybody.
13:17
And so that changed the driving dynamics quite radically on how we had to handle that moving forward.
13:26
Fantastic.
13:26
Before we come to sort of TA2, can I ask you just around Grant's own career?
13:32
You mentioned about, you know, having that conversation with him so that there was no perceived, you know, conflict of interest to move into supercars and contacting Dick Johnson and so on.
13:43
He went on, Craig, to, you know, from top 10 finishers at Bathurst to Mike Cable, Young Gun Awards and more.
13:52
Yeah, look, Grant was always interested in the sport and probably because I dragged him around to when I was doing commentary, the Sandown 500 commentary and other events like that, Gold Coast Indian event.
14:01
He was always there as part of it.
14:03
So I guess he got the hook because of being exposed to it through what I was doing at the time.
14:10
He was living in Melbourne with his mother.
14:13
And I said to him, I said, look, if you he was struggling a bit with his grades at school.
14:18
And I said, if you pick up your grades, I'll buy you a go-kart and we'll go go-kart racing.
14:24
And to his credit, he did.
14:26
And so I bought him a kart off Drew Price.
14:29
We ran the Australian National Series.
14:31
He raced against Wynn Cup, Will Davison, all at Oakley in Melbourne, as though we're growing up as young kids as well.
14:40
And then I took him to the Dubbo Nationals and he raced in the National Series at Dubbo.
14:45
And then he ended up winning in the New South Wales, what was called the New South Wales Country Series.
14:50
So that was kind of his entree into the sport.
14:52
And then he kind of wanted to develop that and move forward.
14:56
So he was lucky enough that he was in a business at the time.
15:00
His television career was going very, very well.
15:04
And he had to balance the two.
15:07
He had, as most people know, it probably got to the crossroads where he had to make a decision in TV or racing.
15:15
And I think he probably knew he was not the next...
15:19
the next Rick Kelly or the next Brock Feeney, but he was a good steerer.
15:22
But what did happen, he broke his back in a monster truck crash and that put him out of motor racing for 12 months because he was racing development series at the time.
15:33
And then it took a while for him to come back from that physically.
15:38
But when he came back, he again won races in the DVS series.
15:41
And I think in his last year, he finished fourth outright.
15:44
So that was probably the moment where he had to make a decision about
15:47
what career was going to pay the bills and what career, you know, he had to let go.
15:51
So the kind of idea of a full-time motor racing career at that stage fell away.
15:56
But he continued to race where he could.
15:58
And he finished second in the Bathurst 12-hour to Damien White when it was a production car event.
16:03
You know, he won the Australian Manufacturers Championship with McLaren with a final round at Highlands Park.
16:10
He's had a 22-year association with Tony Quinn.
16:14
And they still race together now, like they raced together in the Bathurst six hour last year in the game over Camaro.
16:21
He's racing again in the Bathurst 12 hour with Tony Dalberto in the Adrian Dietz Lamborghini again in two or three weeks time.
16:30
So he's had some great opportunities out of everything he's done.
16:34
He went and raced mini challenge in, in, in,
16:37
Europe against Alex Zanardi and he was leading the mini challenge series in Australia from Paul Stokel when he had the monster truck crash so for a guy that's one would say only races as a weekend warrior I think he's very very competitive and very very good and you know to jump in a Lamborghini once a year which is about how often he races and do a 206 around Bathurst is is not a bad effort
17:00
He's been to Suzuka in more recent time.
17:02
He went with the Quinns to Nürburgring.
17:04
He's taken some bucket list stuff along the way.
17:07
Yes.
17:08
What about, though, when he wins a thing called a gold Logie and he's fronting primetime game shows and things like that?
17:17
Is there kind of a little surreal moment for you as a dad and all that?
17:20
I mean, he's done it off his own bat, through his own personality and hard work and so on.
17:25
What does that mean?
17:26
Yeah, yeah, look, that's always a special moment when you're recognised.
17:31
But it all comes down to hard work.
17:34
And what Grant did, and still does, he works very, very hard.
17:38
Yes, he's got some natural ability.
17:41
He's got nice teeth, which I paid for.
17:47
he's got the hair that I didn't have and he looks good on television.
17:53
But he's made the best of it, Rusty.
17:54
And what you see with Grant is what you get.
17:56
I mean, you've worked with him, you know him as well.
17:59
But I think it's a special kind of person that can jump off television at one moment and then jump into a 280km an hour, run down Conrod Strait in another car and be on the pace and competitive and safe and do it not every weekend like everybody around him.
18:15
does it but does it as a once or twice a year um you know it's quite an exceptional ability importantly he loves it and he the the you know that infectious um love of the game rubs off on everybody because he's always having such a good time when he does this stuff um now he's a proud dad with kids are you pop are you granddad what are you in all of that i'm yoda and
18:40
You what are you?
18:41
I'm Yoda.
18:44
That's, in fact, you'll probably find as a, yeah, there we are.
18:51
I never wanted to be called grandfather or granddad because I was far too young.
18:55
So Grant said, well, what do you want to be called?
18:57
And I said, why don't the kids just call me Yoda?
19:01
And so Yoda has stuck.
19:02
So to everybody around here, kids and grandkids, yeah, I'm Yoda.
19:07
Yeah.
19:08
Great stuff.
19:08
Let's talk TA2 now and how that all came together.
19:15
That class on both sides of the ditch is doing some fabulous things at the moment, Craig.
19:21
And you were there as it properly kind of shifted into gear, weren't you?
19:26
Yeah, it...
19:29
It had exploded and it will continue to grow, I think.
19:34
And it started by, there was a guy called Peter Robinson, who is a New Zealander that moved to Australia with his wife and won $10,000 in lotto.
19:44
And they had no money.
19:47
And so Peter said, well, we'll either go on a holiday or start a business.
19:51
And he did the smart thing and he started a hydraulics business in Queensland that ultimately ended up servicing...
19:58
uh, major pumps and oil rigs and major hydraulic facilities, you know, all around Australia, quite a unique business.
20:05
Anyhow, Peter decided at 50 plus years of age that, you know, he always was interested in Speedway when he was in New Zealand and had a lot of mates in that, that he'd go racing.
20:14
So he bought an Oz truck.
20:16
And he raced around with Freddie Willis and a few other blokes, Steve Coulter, that had Oz trucks at the time.
20:21
And then he decided that he wanted to replace his Oz truck with something else, but he had no idea what category he wanted to race in.
20:28
So he went to America to a motorsport show over there called the PRI Show, and he ran into Chas Howe.
20:35
And Chas Howe, through Howe Motorsports, big Speedway family in the US, had built a lot of cars for over 55 years.
20:43
And at this show, there was this magnificent...
20:45
essentially TA2 car.
20:47
And Chas had built it for the American Trans Am owners to have a look at this as an option for a one-make style Trans Am type series.
20:58
And Peter thought, what a beautiful looking car.
21:01
Anyhow, the deal with Chas and Trans Am didn't move the way Chas wanted it to go.
21:06
So the car was for sale.
21:07
So Peter bought it, brought it back.
21:09
And, you know, for...
21:11
damn near under $100,000 landed, this 550-horsepower V8 four-speed gearbox, old-school 15-inch rag tyre car arrived in Queensland.
21:23
And then, of course, two or three of his mates thought, oh, I'll have one of those.
21:25
So Craig Harris bought one, Ian McAllister bought one, Freddie Willis bought one, and they had five or six cars within a short period of time just basically doing local events in Queensland.
21:38
And that's how TA2 started.
21:40
And I got involved when Ian McAllister rang me and said, you should meet this guy.
21:45
He's got this series that I think has got some legs.
21:48
You might be interested in helping him with it.
21:49
So I went and had a meeting with Pete and Mo at Main Beach.
21:52
We had a coffee.
21:53
And for a guy that had not been heavily involved in motorsport, he was so onto it and he had picked such a gap in the market that no one in the business had even thought about or seen.
22:06
And he made it happen.
22:07
And that's basically how TA2 grew from that one original car that he brought into over 130 in the country now and now moving to New Zealand this year to its own standalone series as well.
22:19
It's got some grunt over here, Craig.
22:23
You can tell what has transpired in Australia with all of you there is very quickly rubbing off here and they're starved of a premier V8 class and it will fill that void.
22:35
I genuinely believe that.
22:36
Yeah, we did two rounds in New Zealand a couple of years ago, as you know, and I believe then that the time was right for this series to become the premier V8 touring car series.
22:45
And even look at when you see what's happened in Australia now with guys like Brodie Kostecki that have had a drive in TA2.
22:54
Van Gisbergen's had a drive in TA2 even though it was a test you've got Todd Hazelwood in there James Moffat, Tim Slade a heap of guns that are now at the tram dam level that have made the series a super competitive series but less than half the price of doing a Super 2 development series drive and then you've got
23:16
TA2, which is, I guess, the more gentlemanly specced of the category.
23:19
So you've got Trans Am, which has morphed out of TA2, and TA2 offering two distinct positionings in the business.
23:25
But you can cross over at any time in racing either because the specs of both cars are the same as they are in New Zealand.
23:31
So, yeah, I mean, full credit to Pete, to Cam Sendall, who was his technical manager, to his daughter, Dana, that put all the nuts and bolts together.
23:39
And they brought me on board to help take it on to a national level.
23:43
And, you know...
23:44
Eight years down the road, we're extremely happy with where the series now sits.
23:48
Both series are back under the one ownership of HCC, which is Mark Crutcher, Graeme Cheney and Paul Hadley, three very, very dedicated competitors.
23:57
And they've got some fantastic vision to take it even bigger and better.
24:09
Craig's love of Gold Coast Indy and working at that event is echoed by some international stars in our garage library too, including Max Pappas, who fondly recalls those cars when they were at the peak of his special chapter.
24:23
Chemcar was a dream car.
24:25
Fastest car, driver could make a big difference, manual gearbox, no power steering, 1000 horsepower,
24:34
Check out Max's feature EP if you haven't already.
24:37
His passion for the sport is infectious.
24:39
Craig might be scaling back but he still loves it too.
24:42
Keep an ear out for a special project he's working on as we get back to the convo.
24:48
I love the fact that you've embraced my good friend in Matt Nolte, who's doing a superb job around commentary for you guys.
24:55
Because as you've come to do so well in your career, you realise that old line about the sizzle in the cell, don't you?
25:04
So having someone like him who, A, goes and he's a great custodian of all your statistics around the racing itself.
25:12
But then he's got this zing in the way that he commentates it as well.
25:15
So it adds to the showcase, doesn't it?
25:19
It's all part of the growth factor at Rusty.
25:21
I mean, when we started TA2, we started with a little guy called Dewey Jones, who was basically at a high school, an 18-year-old kid.
25:29
And he loved motor racing, and his father raced historic Trans Am.
25:33
And so he started to shoot stuff of a weekend on a Handycam, basically, or an iPhone, and showing my age there, Handycam.
25:40
So he started shooting it on an iPhone.
25:43
And so we would put together after each race meeting, a little video package.
25:48
Now what would happen over the weekend,
25:50
Dewey would move from corner to corner to corner and shoot the vision and then basically edit all together.
25:55
I would do the voiceover and we'd end up with a five-minute package that basically covered every corner of the track, lots of interviews in between, and a storyline.
26:03
Now, that was how TA2 started to get some commercial legs and also exposure amongst drivers and stuff like that.
26:12
But to think now the series has eight hours...
26:16
Every round, live free-to-air on SBS, simulcast on Fox Sports and KO is fantastic.
26:24
It's one of the best domestic motorsport TV packages around.
26:28
And, of course, Trans Am as well now this year.
26:31
is doing five rounds on the supercar platform as well.
26:34
So they've got their own media platform as part of the supercar world.
26:37
So you've gone from basically a guy with an iPhone and an old worn-out radio bloke doing the voiceover, stitching it all together with lots of nice graphics and interviews to this national television coverage now, which has allowed both series to expand quite dramatically.
26:51
Also goes to air on MAV TV in the US as well, Sky Sports in New Zealand.
26:55
So it's a great package.
26:57
It's a fantastic media package.
26:59
As you say, Matt Nolte leads that and he's lifted it, just his intensity, his knowledge, his professionalism has lifted it immensely in the past year that he's done it, which is fantastic.
27:14
And all of those things collectively are great for the health and shape of it all, but I know there's still immense potential in it, but it's doing terrific things.
27:23
Matty McKeldon's moved in there now in a managerial role.
27:27
What does that mean for you?
27:28
Because I gather you're still very much in a mentoring capacity for the business, are you?
27:34
Well, Matty and I go back a long way because he was around in the V8 Ute days as promotions manager for Freddie Willis when he was running the Grove Fruit Ute racing team.
27:46
And then we always, Matt and I always got on well together.
27:49
We sparred a lot.
27:49
We liked each other.
27:50
And then we...
27:52
When Bill West and I had Spherix, we brought Matt in as a commercial manager, if you like, and he developed partnerships with Armor All and with Mini Challenge Pizza Capers and a number of high-profile clients as part of the V8 Ute and the Spherix days.
28:09
We ran GT Series for Tony Quinn for a year as well as Mini Challenge.
28:14
And then Matt moved as General Manager of Speed Cafe.
28:18
And then when we got involved with Trans Am and TA2, he'd moved on to real estate and had the white shoes in the gold chain and was doing very, very well in the Gold Coast real estate market.
28:31
That'll get back.
28:34
And then he said to me one day, you know, when are you going to retire?
28:37
And I said, oh, look, you know, when I don't want to do it anymore, when I've had enough, or when I think there's someone that can do the job a bit better than I can.
28:43
And so we started the conversation, and I had said to Peter Robinson and his delightful daughter, Dana, that there was coming a time that I probably wanted to wind back.
28:54
And so Matt came in and...
28:58
Basically, what happened at that time was TA2 was run by Peter and Dana Robinson.
29:03
And, of course, Trans Am, through their association with Motorsport Australia, was run by Gary Rogers through ARG.
29:10
And while it could have been quite acrimonious when the two series divided originally, the...
29:19
All heads kept calm and cool, and we all worked together to build both Trans Am and TA2 without necessarily crossing paths or running on two separate programs, AAASA sanctioned for TA2 and Motorsport Australia for Trans Am.
29:36
So that was going very, very well.
29:38
And then I think Gary and Barry Rogers found that running five cars in Trans Am and being the series owner was creating some perceived issues of conflict and favouritism, which they weren't comfortable with.
29:50
And at that stage, Peter Robertson, who started this as a hobby for three or four of his mates just to go racing, had decided this thing is bigger than what I can do.
30:01
I ever believed it would be, perhaps it's time to hand it over to someone that can take it to the next level, because I want Dana and the family to focus on our real estate, our property development arm.
30:12
And so Crutcher, Cheney and Hadley bought the series and then very quickly did a deal with Gary and Barry to buy Trans Am and bring it back all under the one roof, which is now fantastic because anybody can cross enter and pollate.
30:25
for either series, which has always been the case anyhow, but both series now can grow in their own right and serve two very, very different pools.
30:33
At that stage, it was good to bring in Matt, and Matt came in and we spent the last 12 months together.
30:39
He very much put his own stamp on the series, which is great, and he's even impressed me with the way he's gone and done a far better job than I ever hoped he would.
30:49
So both series are in extremely good shape.
30:52
I think it's time for me to take a step back and let some of the young guns have a go.
30:57
And I think probably the time is right for Matt to have his head.
31:01
And I'll always be there to help them if they need it.
31:04
But they're big boys now, quite capable of doing it on their own.
31:08
Love it.
31:09
55 incredible years around motor racing.
31:12
Can we kind of wrap this up with...
31:16
A couple of things.
31:16
Firstly, it can be a brutal and a very tough business, be it politics, be it how expensive it is, whatever.
31:25
Before I come to a moment you're most proud of, what do you reckon is the toughest one that you've had to deal with along the way?
31:34
Uh, there's a couple, a couple of deaths.
31:36
Stewie McColl at, uh, Phillip Island.
31:38
Uh, it was a tough one because I was running GTP at that time.
31:42
And I wasn't actually at that event because I'd come down with a nasty virus.
31:45
So, uh, Mark Beretta, uh, was, uh, was down there and, and, and covered a lot of the legwork for that.
31:52
That was, that was a tough time.
31:54
Um, I think, um...
31:56
Anything that involves the driver's health or potential fatality hits its mark.
32:03
And there's been a few of those along the way.
32:07
In terms of difficulties, I mean, motorsport is tough.
32:10
You've always got changing rules.
32:12
You've always got strong personalities to deal with.
32:15
I think Ross Palmer...
32:16
should be given an enormous amount of credit for what he did for the sport.
32:20
And in the end, Ross couldn't sustain it.
32:22
And then shutting Procard down and us then having to pick up the pieces and keep moving it forward.
32:28
That was a tough time, but we survived that.
32:32
I think if you talk about highlights...
32:34
The two 24-hour races were certainly a highlight.
32:38
And that simply happened because, I mentioned before, Ross had fallen out with Wayne Catech and Tony Cochran and wanted to do his own thing.
32:46
And he said, oh, I want to do my own Bathurst event as well.
32:48
And I said, really?
32:49
And he said, yeah, yeah, we'll go to our own Bathurst event.
32:51
I said, okay, fair enough.
32:52
He said, we've got all these categories.
32:54
We can run a great Bathurst event.
32:56
And I said, well, there's no point doing what they're doing.
32:59
We should do something different.
33:01
He said, well, what do you have in mind?
33:02
I said, well, you've just come back from the Bergering, the 24-hour race.
33:05
You do 24-hour races over there.
33:07
I said, why don't we do a Bathurst 24-hour race?
33:09
He said, great idea.
33:11
Go and make it happen.
33:12
And so...
33:15
Without a word of a lie.
33:16
And there was a pilot strike.
33:18
For whatever reason, there was no planes flying.
33:20
And so I had to charter a plane to fly Ross and I from Brisbane to Bathurst to meet with Ian McIntosh, who was the mayor.
33:28
And I think David Shirley at that stage might've been the assistant mayor or something.
33:31
And so we pitched this idea of a 24 hour race.
33:34
And I thought, this will take three years to happen.
33:37
This will take red tape, OH&S, this won't happen.
33:42
And now three months later, they came back and said, yeah, it's on.
33:46
We're happy to do that.
33:48
It's on.
33:49
And so that started it.
33:50
And of course, then we had to make it happen.
33:53
And we rightly or wrongly, Ross decided to hold a press conference at the Adelaide 500 and announce it.
34:01
And of course, that's Tony Cochran's pet event.
34:04
And I remember Cocker standing down the back of the press conference with tears streaming down his face because Ross had the audacity to launch this 24-hour Bathurst race at a supercar event.
34:18
And yeah.
34:20
It all moved on and moved forward.
34:23
And the two events happened.
34:24
They were great races in their own right.
34:26
The two Monaro 427s were born.
34:29
Unfortunately, it needed one more year of consolidation and then it would have flown.
34:34
But I think Ross realised he couldn't fund it for another year.
34:38
But we had live television coverage on Seven.
34:41
And I remember doing the deal with Kerry Stokes.
34:43
He was the owner of Seven at the time.
34:45
We brought John Cowley on to help run the event.
34:48
John had been a former chairman of the Gold Coast Indy event, was Ken Cowley's brother, had a great association with Kerry Stokes.
34:54
I said, we need live TV.
34:55
So he said, I'll set up a meeting with Kerry Stokes.
34:57
So Ross Palmer, John Cowley and myself met with Kerry, pitched the idea of a 24-hour race to him because at that stage, seven had no motorsport.
35:06
They'd let it all go and 10 had all the motorsport.
35:10
And within a week,
35:12
Kerry had come back and said, yep, we'll do it.
35:14
We'll contribute some money to the production costs.
35:17
But there's a young bloke called Mark Beretta.
35:20
We think he's got a bit of potential.
35:22
We'd like him to host it and be part of it.
35:24
Can that happen?
35:26
And that's how it did happen.
35:28
And so those two 24-hour races were really quite special in their own right.
35:31
And as I said, one more year.
35:34
and that would have continued on and been one of the great races of the world.
35:37
Thankfully, the 12-hour race came back, which Westy and I brought back with James O'Brien when we were with Spherix back in 2009 or whatever it was, and that's grown to become a world-class international event in its own right now.
35:51
So there's been plenty of lows, but there's been lots of highs along the way, Rusty, and it's been a great ride.
35:58
It really, really has.
36:00
And it's been a massive...
36:01
I guess it's been one of the key things about it.
36:03
I talk about, you know, it's time to move on and let the young guard have a go.
36:06
And I think some of the things that make me happy along the way are some of the people that I've met and been able to help.
36:13
You know, like Mark Scaife is a 14-year-old kid.
36:15
He and I raced in the same karting team.
36:17
And then, you know, Tugio sponsored his first ever Tarana XU1 drive at Amaru Park when he got his licence.
36:23
Neil Crompton.
36:24
I said earlier, we sponsored his Mitsubishi Cordia.
36:29
Chris Pivar lived with me here in this very house for 18 months when he first came across from New Zealand as an 18-year-old.
36:35
And I rang Gary Rogers and said, I've got this kid here.
36:38
You should have a look at him.
36:39
And of course, he got some drives with GRM out of that.
36:43
I remember, you know, Wade Oranger, you know, auditioning for the first V8 Ute call at AVE, where obviously you started your commentary career as well.
36:52
Wade and I are still great mates.
36:53
He's still one of the world's greatest motorsport commentators.
36:56
Young Craig Nader, who runs Porsche Carrera Cup these days.
36:59
He lived with me in this house when he first came across from Adelaide.
37:03
And then, of course, he went on to run Toyota 86 with Neil Crompton and now is head of Carrera Cup in the Mitchell Sport Challenge.
37:11
Matt McKeldin.
37:12
I remember introducing Richard Crowell to Murray Lamax saying, he's this commentator, I think he's got a bit of potential, have a listen.
37:18
That's been as probably as much of a bonus of seeing these young kids get a break and move through the sport as it has been part of it myself.
37:25
I think you realise at a point, and I'm 73 years of age now, and as I said, I've had a long climb from the bottom to the middle, but I think you get to the point where you know it's time and it's best to go out gracefully, knowing that you've achieved as much of your...
37:40
you possibly could still connected through the sport through, you know, your own son still racing and, and still being involved in great mates with Matt McKeldon and Mark Crutch and all those people that you've met along the way, Dick Johnson and Alan Grice and all those kinds of guys.
37:54
So it's, it was never, never a path rusty that I,
37:58
I firmly set myself on, but motorsport was a passion.
38:02
And I'm lucky that I've been able to blend that into more or less a career, which is at least paid for a house and brought up some kids and can still put three meals and some dog biscuits on the floor for the dog.
38:14
I love that you went after it, mate, and that you are still as passionate about it all these years on.
38:18
Can I finish?
38:20
Grant, I know, has had a Mustang in the garage.
38:23
He loves a bit of two-wheel stuff.
38:24
Have you got a guilty pleasure car of some kind, a resto project, or is there something now that you'd like to get your teeth into if you don't?
38:32
Well, funnily you should say that because about five years ago I decided –
38:38
probably just before TA2 came along, might've been a bit more, that I needed a retirement project and I'd always wanted a T-model Ford.
38:45
So I decided that I would build, buy, make a T-model Ford.
38:50
And so I didn't know much about them.
38:53
So I knew a guy called Doug Huntington or his son, Bruce, who raced NASCAR in Australia.
38:58
And I knew he was associated with T-model Fords.
39:01
So I rang Bruce, he said, you need to talk to my dad, Doug, he's at Allara.
39:05
Now, Doug has Australia's oldest racing car.
39:08
It's a 1922 Wickner, raced at the first ever Maribra Speedway race meeting.
39:12
He still has it today.
39:14
And it is logbooked as Australia's oldest racing car with a T-model for engine, transmission and diff.
39:21
In fact, I've got a picture of it right there.
39:26
He says, spinning around.
39:27
Amazing.
39:28
Anyhow, I went and met with Doug up at Allara and we...
39:33
We formed a bond very, very quickly because he'd been involved with Dick Johnson Racing, doing all the Shell merchandise for years.
39:38
His son, Bruce, raced Formula Ford and NASCAR.
39:41
We formed a bond and I told him what I wanted.
39:43
I said, I want to build a Ford Speedster that'll do 100 mile an hour.
39:47
And he said, I love you.
39:49
He said, you're my man.
39:52
And.
39:53
And so anyhow, I knew nothing about T-model Fords, but anyhow, we ended up buying a rolling chassis of Bob Trevan at Lismore, who was a Ford dealer down there.
40:01
And Doug said, you've got to have, if you want to go fast, you've got to have what's called a Frontenac head.
40:07
And I said, well, what's a Frontenac head?
40:09
And he said, it was a head made in 1919 by the Chevrolet brothers for T-model Fords to race in the Indianapolis 500.
40:16
You've got to have one.
40:17
Cross-flow overhead valve head.
40:20
So for 12 months, I searched the world for one on Model T forums, eBay, everywhere.
40:25
I finally found one on Gumtree in Victoria.
40:30
Bought it.
40:31
brought it up here, put it on the T-Model.
40:33
And so now we've got the basis of a 100-mile-an-hour T-Model Ford.
40:37
The fastest ever recorded, official recorded time for a T-Model is 91-mile-an-hour set by Henry Ford himself in 1909.
40:45
But that was not a production T-Model.
40:47
It was a race special.
40:48
So my plan is to take our T-Model, which is a 1915 car, to the late Gardner Speed Week in South Australia on the Salt Flats and try and do 100-mile-an-hour in it.
41:00
and become the world's fastest idiot.
41:03
I love that.
41:04
You're not the world's fastest idiot.
41:05
That is a great story, and I know there'll be a bit of traction around that in our industry.
41:11
Thank you for sharing it, mate.
41:12
This 90 minutes has flown by, Craig.
41:15
It's been a joy for me along the way, just little moments along the way to have called some stuff and worked with you to...
41:21
see what you've done in category management, to see Grant's career flourish.
41:28
Congratulations, 55 amazing years.
41:30
I'm thrilled to have had this chat with you and to try and tell a little bit of your story and some of the fun stuff along the way.
41:36
Thank you for coming on The Garage today.
41:38
Good on, Rossi, and well done to you too, mate.
41:40
I mean, we started together calling Super Touring all those years ago.
41:44
We worked together at AVE, and it's great to see that your career has taken you where you are and now happily living the life in New Zealand, which is fantastic, but still very much a part of Australian motorsport.
41:54
You deserve it, mate.
41:54
Well done.
42:03
Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
42:07
Series editor and producer is Joel Harrison.
42:10
Audio production by Link Kelly.
42:14
If you've got a guest suggestion, get in touch with me on social media.
42:18
The Garage, it's where a journey begins with a tank full of passion-fueled stories.