Latest / Rusty's Garage / Coral Taylor (Part 2)

Transcript

Coral Taylor (Part 2) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:20
  G'day, it's Rusty here, all set for part two of my podcast with Australian Motorsport Hall of Famer Coral Taylor.
• 0:26
  If you've opened your book of pace notes at this second part and you haven't given part one a listen just yet, head back to the garage library and give it a spin.
• 0:34
  There's some nice rally recollections on her dad and the early days.
• 0:38
  being well accustomed to driving before she even had a license, travelling to Europe with little or no money and watching the World Rally Championship during a very memorable chapter for the sport, a special moment of constituent recognition that is etched like film in her mind, and Coral's eternal optimism even when an engine shits itself.
• 1:00
  We begin part two with recollections of the late Possum Bourne, a rival and rally legend who was as much a friend as competitive foe, Neil and Coral in the Toyota camp, and Possum in the distinct, iconic Subaru Blue Corner.
• 1:17
  It was Possum who said to me, because I think you find in rallying that you have some very strong friendships, the camaraderie is very strong, even between opposing teams.
• 1:26
  And Possum actually used to say that he believed...
• 1:29
  That was because unlike motor racing on a circuit, that we are not responsible for anybody else's outcome.
• 1:37
  Something that we do won't affect the other person.
• 1:40
  It's just two people in a car against a stopwatch.
• 1:43
  So the friendships have always been very strong and the sort of...
• 1:49
  our friendship as a team with Possum's team was very strong.
• 1:52
  And, you know, Neil and I took the Selika to New Zealand to do the WRC round there in 1997 and making that possible was Possum.
• 2:02
  And Possum said, well, look, if you guys come over, I've got a recce service crew we can share and they can help and, you know, I've got a motor home so we can have food and...
• 2:10
  we'll look after you.
• 2:11
  That's wild because you're in opposite camps in manufacturer terms, but that's what the sport is about, isn't it?
• 2:17
  There's some fabulous photos of us sitting in that motorhome having meals, the two blue guys with the Pirelli caps and the two red Toyota people with the Dunlop caps on.
• 2:26
  And the Dunlop thing, back in the day, this is the loyalty thing again.
• 2:33
  Neil had been a Dunlop.
• 2:36
  driver for years and years and years and years and years.
• 2:39
  And it would be fair to say during that era in the late 90s, you know, a Pirelli or a Michelin for rallying would be a better tyre than the Dunlop.
• 2:49
  But Neil was so loyal, he would never think of dropping a long-term sponsor, even if maybe there was a better tyre.
• 2:58
  And we went to New Zealand, you know, as I say, partly organised by Possum.
• 3:03
  And we were standing at a regroup at some point and we were actually talking to Juhar Kankinen and who was driving for Toyota Team Europe at the time in the same, you know, Salika 205s.
• 3:15
  And he was, you know, arms folded, just leaning on the car and he was chatting to Neil and he said, so Neil, Neil, you have active diff.
• 3:25
  And Neil said, oh, no, no, no, we don't have the active div.
• 3:29
  Oh, but you have the hock, which is the hang on clutch.
• 3:32
  And Neil said, oh, no, no, we don't have a hock.
• 3:35
  And he went, hmm.
• 3:36
  And then he bent down and he looked and he said, oh, dear, and you have done locked tyres.
• 3:44
  But it was to get six outright in the WRC in the car that we had, you know, we didn't have.
• 3:53
  all of the same things that the factory cars had, you know.
• 3:58
  And we were on a tyre that, you know, the grip level was pretty dodgy a lot of the time.
• 4:05
  You know, we would just get halfway through a stage and there would just be nothing left.
• 4:11
  So I think, you know, that was an incredible event for us and a fantastic result given what we had.
• 4:19
  And we loved it.
• 4:20
  Like those roads in New Zealand are just to die for.
• 4:23
  You know, every rally person will agree that...
• 4:26
  you've got these most amazing roads in the world to go rallying on.
• 4:30
  What was it that clicked with you and Neil?
• 4:33
  Why as a driver, co-driver partnership did Neil Bates and Coral Taylor work so well?
• 4:39
  And you obviously brought different strengths to the table.
• 4:41
  He's spoken to me in the lead-up to the podcast to talk about, you know, your organisational skills, your level of focus to the job is...
• 4:55
  next level in many ways.
• 4:57
  What was it, in your opinion, that works so well or why does it work so well?
• 5:01
  I think some people would call it, you know, as a co-driver being anal, you know, just, you know, I probably was very, you know, I took that side of things very seriously.
• 5:15
  So the preparation for a co-driver and the things you do, or even, you know, in a team management role with the logistics and, you know, organising travel for people and hotels and schedules and timings and everything.
• 5:26
  all those sorts of things.
• 5:27
  I was very, very focused on that.
• 5:32
  The part in the car is the fun part.
• 5:34
  You're doing all this other admin and logistics around the ridges, but what you really want to do is sit in the car.
• 5:42
  And I don't know why, but from the very first rally, it just clicked for Neil and I.
• 5:48
  The first recce that we did together was hilarious because
• 5:52
  He did some really funny things with his pace notes at the time that I couldn't understand, you know, why he did them that way.
• 6:00
  And partway through that recce, I had actually changed a couple of words that he used to something else.
• 6:08
  That I thought worked better.
• 6:09
  And we got to the end of one recce stage and I said, how was that?
• 6:12
  And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, the notes were good.
• 6:14
  And I said, did you notice anything?
• 6:15
  He said, no.
• 6:16
  And I said, oh, you know, I changed your ands to thens and I changed this to that.
• 6:21
  And he said, oh, no, oh, that worked okay.
• 6:23
  But he would have like one word with two meanings.
• 6:27
  So he used, you know, you've got in pace notes you've got, we use a one to six system where each number is describing the severity of a corner.
• 6:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:36
  expand on that.
• 6:37
  So one is flat, six is tight or the other way around?
• 6:39
  No, the other way around.
• 6:40
  So for us, a one would be a tight hairpin, you know, a three's a 90 degree and a six is not dead straight, but a slight corner that's very fast.
• 6:49
  It's something that you can hold it flat for.
• 6:53
  But Neil used to use the word two, like T-O, you know, one call, you know, a right three, two, a right six.
• 7:02
  And you were worried about the confusion around the number too.
• 7:04
  How can you use a word that, you know, a linking word that's the same as one of your numbers?
• 7:08
  You know, some really funny things like that.
• 7:09
  So we had a few moments in that very first recce where we sort of tried to change a few, you know, just little things.
• 7:16
  And the other big thing that was odd to me is if you're doing a route-charted blind rally, you will be calling a distance, usually in 100 metres.
• 7:25
  So when you're coming up to a call, you're saying 300 metres turn right, 200 turn right, 100 turn right.
• 7:32
  and you're on the corner.
• 7:33
  In pace notes, because you're describing every corner in the road, not just the junctions where you've got to leave one road and turn onto another.
• 7:43
  And it's all happening very fast.
• 7:45
  So in pace notes, you tend to give the distance after the call.
• 7:48
  So you might say, you know, into right four 100.
• 7:52
  So that the driver knows that as he's going into that right four, there's another 100 metres before you need to think about the next thing.
• 8:00
  But Neil, I hadn't realised, Neil didn't do it that way.
• 8:04
  So when we got to the end of the first stage of that first recce in Melbourne...
• 8:09
  Neil questioned why was I asked, you know, calling the distances after the call because he'd always done it the other way, like a blind rally, which, you know, didn't quite work.
• 8:19
  So we swapped it around.
• 8:21
  And I think, look, in hindsight, I think Neil had a very simple system of notes as opposed to Possum, whose notes were much more complicated.
• 8:31
  And so now, you know, my daughter Molly and Neil's son Harry,
• 8:36
  you know, both out there competing at the top end of the Australian Championship, they look at our notes and think they're ridiculous.
• 8:43
  You know, they give us so much jip about them.
• 8:45
  And, you know, they just, they add a lot more in and they do it in a, it's similar but slightly different.
• 8:55
  So I think...
• 8:57
  But our system worked for us.
• 8:58
  You know, I always say to people, there's no right way to write a set of paste notes or to call them those.
• 9:03
  Exactly.
• 9:04
  It's whatever works for you.
• 9:05
  Call it whatever you want.
• 9:07
  Link it together however you want.
• 9:08
  If it works for you, it works for you.
• 9:12
  Neil and I just had the way that we did notes, which was quite simple, but it worked for us.
• 9:17
  You know, Harry will often say, how the hell would you have judged that 300 metres, you know, down there?
• 9:22
  Because we didn't accurately measure our metres.
• 9:26
  We could do it visually.
• 9:27
  We'd look at something and say, call it a 300.
• 9:30
  If you actually measured it, it was actually a lot more than 300, but we knew what our 300 meant.
• 9:37
  You know, whereas...
• 9:38
  Molly, Harry, Lewis, all these guys, they're hitting the trip meter and getting accurate distances between calls.
• 9:44
  We didn't do that.
• 9:46
  So they think our notes are totally ridiculous.
• 10:02
  super intuitive for the pair of you in the way that you understand each other obviously is that that's I guess the reason that works too the untrained that doesn't know about rallying in depth there's a great doco way back whenever it was in the 80s I can't remember the drive or there was maybe Ari Vatnan or Hanumikala the late Hanumikala now they kind of described it like like
• 10:24
  being a director in a film sense and describing the film that would appear for the driver before it happened.
• 10:33
  You're more or less painting that picture of what is to come and they have to absolutely trust what you're saying and commit to that.
• 10:43
  100%.
• 10:45
  You know, that driver-co-driver relationship is built on absolute total trust because whatever I say, Neil will commit to it, whether he can see it or not.
• 10:57
  And, you know, that's why I was saying to you before why I love Pace Notes so much.
• 11:01
  You are such an integral part of that whole process that's going on.
• 11:06
  And you are painting this picture because when you think about it, a racing driver, he's got, I don't know, 10 corners in a track and he knows every single corner intimately.
• 11:17
  You know, the rally driver's got hundreds, thousands of corners.
• 11:19
  They're all different.
• 11:20
  The surface changes.
• 11:24
  it's not possible to remember hundreds of kilometres of corners in a forest.
• 11:30
  So I always think, well, you know, that rally driver, he's got to drive the corner he's on at that moment.
• 11:38
  whilst listening to the instructions that are telling him exactly what the next corner is going to be like.
• 11:44
  So there's a huge skill in being able to do one thing while taking in the next thing.
• 11:50
  But, you know, just the proof of the commitment to that is a story I have from Rally Australia, actually in the WRC Corolla, and the truthful story behind that event was that Neil had sold the car
• 12:05
  Wow.
• 12:05
  Because they were about to not allow WRC cars to run in Australian rallying anymore.
• 12:10
  So this was the car's final event.
• 12:13
  Neil had sold it and the team were going to take it
• 12:16
  Once we finished the rally in Perth, they were going to load it into their container and it was going.
• 12:20
  So Neil was obviously, you know, quite nervous about doing an event in a car that sold and not wanting to damage it.
• 12:28
  And we'd sat around Daryl, Neil and I, and we'd had all these discussions about, look, maybe we'll just do a couple of stages and then have a mysterious electrical problem and the car will just stop.
• 12:39
  And I was the one arguing, no, no, no, no, no.
• 12:41
  You know, I can't remember who was there that year, but there were quite a few Corolla WRC cars.
• 12:47
  And, you know, the competitive streak was there.
• 12:49
  And I thought we could do really well against these other guys.
• 12:52
  So I really wanted to, you know, go and show what we could do.
• 12:56
  It's our biggest event of the year, our round of the world championship.
• 13:00
  So then the decision in the end was we would do day one.
• 13:03
  And then we would, you know, withdraw the car from the event.
• 13:08
  Anyway.
• 13:09
  I can't remember now exactly where we were, but we were doing really well in that rally at the end of day one.
• 13:14
  And there was no way I didn't want to do day two.
• 13:17
  So there was another sort of Neil Corral, Daryl discussion.
• 13:20
  And they were both saying, no, no, no, no, really, we should, you know, not run.
• 13:24
  No.
• 13:24
  And they decided, okay, we'll do day two.
• 13:26
  So we do day two and we have the world's biggest crash.
• 13:31
  And...
• 13:33
  What had happened was it was a right three and Neil had gone in too fast and we'd, I don't even know what happened because we rolled and it all went in all directions.
• 13:44
  Neither of us know exactly what happened in that moment, but we went into a paddock where they'd just logged, recently logged a pine forest.
• 13:52
  So it was all short pine stumps.
• 13:54
  And when we got out and looked at the car, like the car just looked dreadful, like the car was a complete mess.
• 14:02
  And Neil looked at me and he said, you said that corner was a five.
• 14:08
  And I said, no, I didn't.
• 14:09
  It was a three.
• 14:10
  He said, no, you said it was a five.
• 14:13
  I said, no, it wasn't.
• 14:13
  It was a three.
• 14:14
  So now we're sitting and the rain starts to fall.
• 14:16
  So you're sitting with this car that's just been crashed through a whole lot of tree stumps in a wet, muddy paddock.
• 14:24
  And your driver is telling you that it's your fault because you called a five when it was a three.
• 14:32
  And I felt, you know, after a while you have that discussion long enough and you start to question yourself, you know.
• 14:37
  And, you know, at first I was very definite.
• 14:39
  No, I didn't.
• 14:40
  And by the end of, you know, the first hour of sitting out in the middle of that paddock I'm starting to think, did I?
• 14:46
  Did I?
• 14:47
  Oh, my gosh, if I did that I'm going to retire.
• 14:49
  That's it.
• 14:49
  I was very...
• 14:51
  I was perturbed about it all.
• 14:53
  And eventually at the end of the day, you know, we eventually get rescued and the car gets picked up and we go back into Perth.
• 14:59
  And in those days, I think it was the Channel 10 guys used to have the cameras in the car and we used to have the units, the record, you know, bolted behind the back of the seat.
• 15:09
  And so they're taking that out.
• 15:11
  And I've said to them,
• 15:14
  is it possible that we can just have a look at the in-car before you take it away?
• 15:19
  Because, you know, TV crews love a crash video.
• 15:22
  You know, as soon as we've come back, they're running down to get the vision.
• 15:25
  And so they sat this little recorder up on the roof, but the crowd had grown.
• 15:29
  You know, it was like 10 deep around the car, everyone crowding.
• 15:31
  You've got an audience.
• 15:32
  I've got an audience, yeah.
• 15:34
  And I'm thinking my world's about to fall apart and I've made a mistake and...
• 15:38
  you know, it's my fault we've crashed this sold car.
• 15:42
  And they set the little video up on the roof and we were watching it and it was the clearest three you've ever seen.
• 15:49
  I have never been so relieved and excited in all my life.
• 15:53
  And Neil actually said sorry.
• 15:54
  Did he?
• 15:55
  Yeah.
• 15:55
  But, you know, in hindsight, Neil had some hearing issues.
• 15:59
  Just after that event, he'd gone to the doctors and they cleaned out his ears.
• 16:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:03
  And he realised his ears had been so blocked, he was partially deaf.
• 16:08
  So for the next rally, every time we were sitting around talking, he'd be saying, can everybody please not yell?
• 16:17
  So he just hadn't realised that.
• 16:19
  So it was just, you know, his hearing issue and he'd misheard a call.
• 16:23
  But that comes back to the story of the commitment.
• 16:27
  You couldn't see around that corner.
• 16:28
  I told Neil it was a three.
• 16:31
  He thought it was a five.
• 16:32
  So even though he couldn't see it, he committed to that corner that you would take as a five, which is a very, very fast corner.
• 16:40
  A three is a 90 degree.
• 16:41
  So, you know, that's the commitment.
• 16:44
  If I've said something, that's what he's going to commit to.
• 16:47
  At WRC Corolla, in 2000, you, Neil, the team, invited myself, Mark Osler and a couple of others to come down to pre-event testing in Melbourne before the Australian Rally Championship round there.
• 17:03
  and to experience what that was like to go on a run beside Neil.
• 17:08
  So when people talk to me about it now, I describe it as the most in control and yet out of control thing I've ever felt because for a moment you think you are hurtling towards a tree, you're gone for all money.
• 17:24
  He's cool, calm at the wheel and already pointing it in the direction of the, you know, the next part of the track up the road.
• 17:31
  I mean...
• 17:33
  In your role, you don't always get time to sit and soak that up.
• 17:38
  But has there been an event or a stage or something where you just thought, man, that just gelled unbelievably well and it was a joy to drive that piece of road?
• 17:52
  Absolutely.
• 17:53
  And there are some occasions.
• 17:55
  So really the thrill for us is to get to the end of the stage and know that
• 18:01
  You've called the notes when the timing's been exactly perfect, when the driver has committed totally to every call, and you sort of go into a real zone.
• 18:12
  And there are times when that would happen and you'd get to the end, and it was the most amazing feeling that you could never explain to anyone else because, you know, you can watch in-car vision.
• 18:23
  And to me, when you watch in-car vision, it looks amazing because
• 18:27
  but it doesn't portray what it really feels like to be in that car.
• 18:30
  It doesn't portray the environment, the noise, the movement, you know.
• 18:37
  To me it dulls, the video vision in car dulls down the real feeling of what it's like in the car.
• 18:44
  And Neil and I had often spoken about the fact that that moment when you've just done the perfect stage and it's such a great feeling,
• 18:52
  that there's no way to explain that to someone.
• 18:55
  You have to feel it.
• 18:56
  If you haven't sat in the car and done it, you can't understand.
• 18:59
  I can possibly offer the flip side and that you may recall teaching me for one day of Target Tasmania to learn about Pace Notes.
• 19:07
  I was bloody hopeless.
• 19:08
  And I ran with Simon Evans just for a day.
• 19:11
  And I reckon there's only one moment in that entire day where it felt like it had a little bit of flow.
• 19:18
  And it just unfolded exactly as the notes said.
• 19:21
  But the rest of the time I was either behind or too far in front.
• 19:25
  I couldn't judge or feel it.
• 19:27
  So when it does come together like that, it is a –
• 19:34
  I think Molly once described it as being a bit like a, it's like a rollercoaster ride but a ballet dance at the same time, isn't it?
• 19:39
  You sort of, it's, yeah.
• 19:42
  Yeah, and, yeah, and, you know, you've experienced that for that moment.
• 19:46
  Like it's a total joy when it's all just working.
• 19:50
  You know, it's, like I've navigated for Molly in some events and I find her notes really difficult.
• 19:57
  And so I've really got to think about it when I'm doing it.
• 20:00
  And so it's really hard to find that.
• 20:04
  You can still do the job and you can still do it correctly, but it doesn't have the same feeling.
• 20:11
  And I think, you know, funny as it sounds, the smallest thing with Molly's that's the most up-putting for me is that she puts the number before the direction.
• 20:22
  So Neil and I will say a right three, she will say a three right.
• 20:27
  And so the biggest off-putting moment for me is just to look at that set of notes because it just looks wrong.
• 20:33
  It looks wrong as I'm trying to read it because it just looks weird.
• 20:37
  Yeah.
• 20:38
  You know, the way I write a set of notes just, you know, it all feels like home and that's exactly how I like things.
• 20:44
  So I've really got to not just relax and go with it.
• 20:48
  You've got to be thinking all the time.
• 20:49
  And Molly would laugh.
• 20:50
  We'd get to the end of stages and she'd say, you know, sometimes in there you said the right before the number or something.
• 20:56
  And so then it obviously, even though I've read three right, out of the mouth has come right three out of pure habit.
• 21:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:04
  She says she feels a little bit guilty now that she looks back on it in one of those drives that you set beside her for...
• 21:14
  something happened.
• 21:15
  I think you got a puncture.
• 21:17
  And she's quite a competitive human being.
• 21:19
  And she was at you to get out and help change the tyre.
• 21:24
  Now, what unfolded?
• 21:25
  I think you ended up with a couple of little burns, didn't you?
• 21:28
  I did.
• 21:29
  Oh, my gosh.
• 21:31
  This was Portugal, WRC.
• 21:33
  And it had been a really difficult event.
• 21:36
  They had a big rainstorm,
• 21:38
  during recce and a river had flooded at the block to stage.
• 21:42
  And because we were running further down the field, some people had got through and finished the recce before the flood came up, but we hadn't.
• 21:49
  So on the final day of recce, we had to do what was allocated to that day, plus go back and do this stage that we hadn't got through.
• 21:57
  And you're running out of time.
• 21:58
  It's a WRC event, you know, they don't give you much movement around the schedule.
• 22:05
  And so it was a really intense, hard,
• 22:07
  work recce and then we were running late and all these things had happened.
• 22:11
  You know, you're with an Italian team, so there's language issues.
• 22:16
  There were some issues with the car that, you know, wasn't prepped correctly.
• 22:20
  And there was just lots of drama going on and lots of issues.
• 22:24
  And then we finally, we're in the event and we're competing.
• 22:28
  And then we got this puncture in the stage.
• 22:31
  And so my normal routine at that point is to grab a pair of gloves that are down in the side pocket to put on because a wheel in the middle of a rally stage to change is very, very hot.
• 22:44
  Anyway, as we're pulling up, I'm reaching to grab the gloves.
• 22:48
  I can't remember what she thought I was doing, but she yelled.
• 22:53
  No, no, basically she yelled, just hurry up.
• 22:56
  Forget whatever you're doing there.
• 22:57
  I can't remember what she thought I was doing, but it was sort of a yell to say, quick, quick, get out.
• 23:01
  Because, you know, co-drivers and drivers will practise a tyre change mid-stage, you know, because it's so crucial to just get out as quickly and get it done.
• 23:11
  And we got out.
• 23:12
  We did it.
• 23:13
  We changed this.
• 23:15
  and we've put it back in the car.
• 23:17
  And in the process, I've actually burnt my fingers because everything is so hot.
• 23:21
  And it wasn't until after the stage, when we had a discussion about it, that I said I was just reaching for the gloves.
• 23:29
  Yeah.
• 23:31
  She must have thought I was getting something out to do something else, but she was, in her mind, it was, well, don't waste time doing something else.
• 23:37
  Just, you know, get out and change the tyre.
• 23:39
  Yeah.
• 23:40
  She thinks about it like... She's a hard taskmaster.
• 23:42
  She is.
• 23:42
  She is.
• 23:43
  But the natural reaction, sometimes people do this around family, around parents or siblings, you sort of snap because you know them well enough.
• 23:53
  Like, you know, you wouldn't perhaps say that to another code.
• 23:55
  Exactly.
• 23:56
  It was definitely a daughter-mother snap, that one.
• 24:01
  She liked horses when she was younger and before rallying kind of came along.
• 24:06
  That was the pursuit for Molly.
• 24:10
  She says you would go along to the events.
• 24:14
  I think you might have driven the car and towed the horse float or whatever it may have been.
• 24:18
  True or false, you used to talk to the horse.
• 24:23
  Yeah, I think I did.
• 24:24
  I think it was a mother thing, like, you know, telling the horse just to look after the child, you know, be kind.
• 24:30
  It's exactly like rallying, Rusty.
• 24:33
  You have a tow vehicle and you have the competition vehicle on the back.
• 24:36
  It's just that it's a horse, not a car.
• 24:38
  You set up in the, and I'm always in trouble because I go to a horse event and call it the service park and it isn't.
• 24:46
  You know, you compete for two days, you load it all up and you come home again and then you clean everything.
• 24:49
  You know, it's no different.
• 24:51
  It's just that it's a horse, not a car.
• 24:55
  Did you worry more about her rallying or horse riding?
• 24:59
  And how did you go with the conversation when she sort of came to you and said, hey, I think I want to go down the motorsport path?
• 25:10
  I definitely felt safer when she was in a rally car than on a horse.
• 25:13
  Yeah.
• 25:14
  As a mother I would go to her events and I'd be with my camera out on a cross-country course and, you know,
• 25:23
  They're at a full gallop going into, it's not like show jumping where the horse might touch the rail and it falls down.
• 25:29
  You know, you've got solid brick walls and ditches and logs and I find it really scary.
• 25:34
  My heart rate would raise as soon as she was on course.
• 25:39
  Just, and to me, you've then gone into a rally situation.
• 25:43
  You've got, you know, great seats and harnesses and roll cages and helmets and, you know, to me it is a very safe environment.
• 25:52
  She says she can recall some moments where school would phone you to say, oh, Molly's taking another Friday off for motorsport and we're a bit concerned about that.
• 26:04
  And meantime, you were putting on the mum fight.
• 26:06
  Yes, yes, yes.
• 26:07
  But technically you're in Service Park with all the same people anyway.
• 26:11
  I think it was Mrs Taylor.
• 26:12
  We don't think you're taking your daughter's HSC year seriously enough.
• 26:16
  She's having far too much time off.
• 26:20
  She was, you know, as she is now, such a determined human being.
• 26:26
  Was she always like that when she was younger?
• 26:29
  Totally.
• 26:30
  Total bullet a gate.
• 26:31
  Really?
• 26:32
  Full on into everything.
• 26:33
  Oh, yes.
• 26:33
  Absolutely.
• 26:35
  It's just her make-up.
• 26:38
  Quite driven with everything that she does.
• 26:41
  She can recall when she was in England, you talked about one of the WRC events there before and so on, you know, there'd be moments where she'd call you at 3am in the morning for help and advice and whatever it might be.
• 26:53
  But, you know, living in a barn and all the hard yards that she did there, there was, it never sort of seemed to deter her bid, her want, did it?
• 27:06
  No.
• 27:07
  And, I mean, I think that determination was so strong that,
• 27:12
  That was what got her through because there was a lot of hard times and lonely times and times where, you know, trying to work odd jobs to make things happen and so forth.
• 27:22
  You know, if she hadn't been as determined as she is, she would have just thrown the towel in so many times and just come home.
• 27:29
  Did you ever have nerves for her?
• 27:31
  I think you were in the red camp with Toyota naturally, but did you wear a little kind of blue bracelet for her?
• 27:38
  I did.
• 27:39
  I always wore a little blue Subaru bracelet under my driving suit.
• 27:44
  Did you?
• 27:45
  Yeah.
• 27:45
  Because it's really hard.
• 27:47
  You know, I've been a Toyota person for nearly 30 years now and I've worked with Neil Bates Motorsport for that time and I never imagined that Neil's son and my daughter would suddenly both be rallying and both be fighting for the Australian Championships.
• 28:05
  in, you know, a Subaru and a Toyota camp.
• 28:08
  So what does the Toyota girl do when her daughter is in the opposition team?
• 28:14
  So it's just really, really hard because obviously my heart's with Molly.
• 28:18
  She's my daughter.
• 28:19
  But I'm still working, you know, on the other side of the fence.
• 28:22
  The trickiest of trickiest situations really is.
• 28:25
  It's tough.
• 28:26
  In your own career of the titles that you've won, is there one that has a, you know, a little soft spot in your heart?
• 28:34
  Maybe it was one that was hard fought or it was satisfying for a certain reason?
• 28:40
  Winning the Otago Rally was a highlight.
• 28:44
  And that was because so many people had said to Neil before we went, oh, mate, you know, nobody can go to Otago and win on the first attempt.
• 28:54
  And the more people said things like that, the more determined we were.
• 29:00
  And so I think to go over there and do that, that was certainly a huge highlight.
• 29:06
  And we did it twice.
• 29:08
  Great event.
• 29:09
  I love going to New Zealand.
• 29:10
  New Zealand is so laid back, super friendly.
• 29:15
  And when you compete overseas, you know, as a privateer, as we went over at that time,
• 29:21
  you've got a container with your car and a few parts.
• 29:24
  You know, you haven't got anything else.
• 29:26
  And people came out of the woodwork, oh, would you like to set up at our workshop?
• 29:29
  You know, we can do this and we can help that.
• 29:32
  And everybody's just really enjoying their motorsport.
• 29:35
  Like it was fabulous, absolutely loved it.
• 29:38
  Sport is a great community, but there's a, you know, per capita, they love their rallying and their motorsport over there definitely.
• 29:46
  Neil says also that your heart rate is, you know, as is the calm nature that you have.
• 29:55
  It's quite low.
• 29:56
  And he's of the belief that even when you're competing, it's at a rate that is perhaps even lower than the normal daily life.
• 30:04
  Is that right?
• 30:05
  Have you ever measured that?
• 30:06
  He used to say that.
• 30:07
  He used to say, you're calmer in the car than you are out.
• 30:10
  But, you know, at the peak of our Toyota times, when we were running a multiple car team, running a three car team, there was a very heavy involvement with Toyota.
• 30:21
  I would be on the phone to Mike Green and other Toyota people multiple times a day.
• 30:26
  And it wouldn't just be organising our events.
• 30:29
  It might be organising, you know, the group of
• 30:31
  fleet customers, you know, their VIP guests that we were bringing to rallies and just doing the logistics around that.
• 30:38
  So there was just constant phone calls and constant things going on.
• 30:42
  And, you know, there would be dramas with building cars.
• 30:45
  You know, I've done all-nighters at the workshop, you know, particularly in winter in Canberra.
• 30:48
  I tell you, that's, you've got to be dedicated to still be standing there with them at three o'clock in the morning, you know.
• 30:54
  trying to keep them all, you know, enthusiastic to keep working through the night because we've got to get to the next rally.
• 31:00
  But there was just always so much stuff going on, whether it was workshop stuff, Toyota stuff, other stuff, that sometimes you think, oh, why am I doing this?
• 31:10
  You know, this is driving me nuts.
• 31:11
  It'll be seven days a week and go on into the evenings.
• 31:14
  But then you get to the rally and you sit in the car and you go, that's why I do it.
• 31:19
  That's why I do it.
• 31:20
  And that just becomes, you know, to me that's my happy place and that's, it's like, I don't know, it's sort of like going home.
• 31:28
  You sit in there and that's where you enjoy being and no one else can phone you.
• 31:34
  Mind you, I have had phone calls while standing at a start control booking in, you know, from someone who said,
• 31:39
  Oh, can you just let me know, did you put the wine in that, you know, villa up there, which, you know, XYZ VIP guest is going to and did someone light the fire and is, yep, yep, yep, it's all done, you know, as you're hanging up your phone and trying to finish the booking procedure to hop in the car.
• 31:56
  Which is an exacting process, isn't it?
• 31:58
  It's not, you know, you've got to do that right.
• 31:59
  Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 32:00
  But once I got in the car, that's, yeah, it just happened.
• 32:04
  And people say, well, how can you do that at speed and be calm about it?
• 32:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:09
  But also what I say to them is it wasn't that I suddenly jumped in at the front end of the sport at that speed and tried to call notes.
• 32:17
  You know, there's a lot of years of experience.
• 32:20
  You know, you mentioned before that you said it was difficult and you found that flow for a moment.
• 32:26
  But it only comes from experience.
• 32:27
  If you'd kept doing events, you know, you can explain to someone how to do it.
• 32:33
  But that doesn't mean they can hop straight in and do it first time because you've got to, it all comes from experience, you know.
• 32:41
  And so my rallying had gone on for a lot of years.
• 32:45
  You know, there'd been some mapping rallies and then some blind rallies and then gradually the cars got faster and then you started pace notes and, you know, we were all pretty much self-taught in this country of how to do pace notes.
• 32:58
  Um, and, and so you just grow with it, you know, and as that all happened, you know, it seems odd to be sitting in such a crazy environment as the inside of a, of a noisy, hot rally car whizzing around between the trees and feeling calm.
• 33:15
  But yeah.
• 33:16
  Yeah.
• 33:16
  That's where I like to be calm and just, you know, I just focus on my job.
• 33:21
  We would get to the end of the stage and Neil would say, oh, my God, did you see so-and-so?
• 33:26
  So someone's crashed or broken down and we've gone past someone.
• 33:30
  And I'll go, oh, didn't even see them because I'm just totally focused on my notes in the road.
• 33:35
  I'm just looking from the road to my notes and that's my sole job.
• 33:40
  If Neil said anything during a stage which was rare,
• 33:44
  I'd know there was a voice there, but I had no idea what he'd said.
• 33:48
  You were so focused.
• 33:50
  I was just the road and my notes.
• 33:52
  That was my world.
• 33:54
  And I could just focus into that and it would just feel really calm and you were just in the flow and the zone and you'd just go.
• 34:02
  Great description.
• 34:03
  In addition to logistics and the admin side, to the love of co-driving that you've just described,
• 34:09
  mid-90s, you get a full truck licence.
• 34:13
  You can drive the semi-trailer and you've regularly driven it across the Nullarbor, you know, up and down the east coast of Australia, haven't you?
• 34:20
  To every rally and race meeting that we've done pretty much for those years.
• 34:36
  Have you ever tried to read your phone while being a passenger in a car?
• 34:40
  You feel sick right?
• 34:41
  Now have some empathy for a rally co-driver, doing the same thing at 150 overjumps.
• 34:48
  We get lots of truck drivers that listen to the podcast on some of those long road trips.
• 34:52
  So what level of licence is it?
• 34:55
  And I mean, you're still doing it, I think, even now, aren't you?
• 34:58
  Yeah.
• 34:58
  So it's a heavy combination licence.
• 35:00
  But I can tell you the funniest story about when I did drive the first time because we had, you know, just a rigid truck initially.
• 35:07
  Well, actually, if you look back, it's quite interesting.
• 35:09
  I've got photos of going to Perth the first year with Neil Bates Motorsport and,
• 35:14
  And it was a Land Cruiser with a rally car on a trailer and a high-ice van and a box trailer with all the wheels and tyres and stuff in it.
• 35:23
  We then moved up and we had a coaster bus where we stripped out all the seats in the back and turned that into the service vehicle.
• 35:30
  So we thought that was pretty flash for a few years.
• 35:34
  And then we ended up with a semi-trailer and a rigid.
• 35:37
  So we sort of basically I had those two photos once side by side, the Land Cruiser and the High Ace, and then the next photo in the exact same spot sitting there somewhere on the Great Australian Bike that showed the semi-trailer and the rigid truck, you know, all beautifully livered up to look great.
• 35:53
  But the first trip that we did in the semi was...
• 35:58
  coming back from Perth, Neil said, I've got my learners because you had to have your rigid and then I'd had my learners.
• 36:03
  He said, okay, so you need to learn this track.
• 36:11
  So he did this explanation of, you know, the gearbox and how it all works and, you know, oh, and it's really important, Corrie, you've got to match the revs or you won't get a gear and blah, blah, blah.
• 36:21
  And you don't want to do that going up a hill because if you miss a gear, you're going to come to a stop.
• 36:24
  And, oh, okay.
• 36:27
  And this was leaving Perth heading towards Southern Cross this first time.
• 36:32
  So he sat on the bunk here.
• 36:34
  You know, it was just a cab over truck at the time.
• 36:36
  So he was sort of sitting on the bunk over my left shoulder just watching and, you know, and trust me, it's difficult to learn those gearboxes.
• 36:45
  Have you ever driven one?
• 36:45
  No, never, never.
• 36:48
  So it is difficult to learn.
• 36:50
  So you're sort of mucking around with that and you're sort of learning how to do that.
• 36:55
  But Neil sat there for like about ten minutes and he said, oh, no, you're all right, and then he laid down and went to sleep.
• 37:01
  Yeah.
• 37:02
  And I have never concentrated so hard in my life because that road going towards Southern Cross used to be quite narrow and it had quite a horrible edge on it.
• 37:12
  And the thing that Neil had said before he went to sleep was he'd sat up again.
• 37:16
  He said, oh, by the way, he said, don't drop the trailer wheels off the edge or you'll jackknife the truck.
• 37:24
  No pressure then.
• 37:25
  So he's gone to sleep and I am driving just into the sort of evening sunset
• 37:32
  And I'm concentrating so hard.
• 37:34
  I'm just staring at the road and I'm checking the mirrors.
• 37:36
  And, you know, there's just room for this truck without dropping a wheel off the edge.
• 37:42
  And, you know, a couple of hours later, we've got to Southern Cross and I've pulled in to get some fuel.
• 37:46
  And when I got down from the truck...
• 37:48
  I realised I was so stiff.
• 37:51
  The concentration, I had tensed all my muscles in my back and in my neck and I was almost stuck in that driving position of, you know, fierce determination of and panic.
• 38:03
  It was sort of a panic that, oh, my gosh, I don't want to jackknife this truck.
• 38:07
  Yeah.
• 38:08
  And I've told Neil since, you know, I said that was a really mean thing to say, you know, right at the start.
• 38:13
  But the beautiful thing about driving back from Perth, you get lots of straight roads.
• 38:18
  And so when Neil would fall asleep, I would practice going up and down the gearbox because I'm on my own and a dead straight road.
• 38:24
  There's no traffic.
• 38:25
  And I go up, bog down, bog down.
• 38:27
  Yeah, I'm getting the hang of this.
• 38:29
  And then we stopped at one of those Nullarbor Roadhouses for lunch and a big dirt car park, you know, with big potholes that you drive through.
• 38:39
  As we were approaching it, there's a few trucks already parked and there's a few truck drivers standing around and I'm suddenly thinking, oh, my gosh, I don't want to muck up going down the gears, you know, with an audience.
• 38:51
  So...
• 38:53
  I've gone down through the gearbox and I've parked it and I'm feeling so proud of myself that I have just perfectly gone down this gearbox, parked the car up, the truck up, and we're going to go in and have some lunch.
• 39:04
  We do that.
• 39:05
  We come back and then still a bit more of an audience, you know, a few other trucks sitting around.
• 39:11
  And so, you know, I'm just, you know, super chuffed with myself and off we go, you know, one gear, next gear, and then...
• 39:20
  and I miss a gear on an up change.
• 39:23
  And so I've had to bring the whole truck to a halt and start again.
• 39:27
  So you do that, you get out and you pull on the road.
• 39:30
  Meanwhile, Neil's laughing.
• 39:32
  By the time we've pulled onto the bitumen, he's got tears rolling down his eyes and he says, I knew you were going to miss that gear.
• 39:42
  And I just looked at him and I said, how did you know that?
• 39:45
  And he said, well, you were going through one of those big potholes.
• 39:48
  He said, of course, with that weight transfer at that moment, you're never going to get the gig.
• 39:53
  And I said, so why didn't you tell me that?
• 39:56
  And he said, oh, because you were being such a smartass about the way you went down the gearbox going in.
• 40:01
  And he said, you just need to be pulled down a pig.
• 40:07
  On the flip side, he does get the Hollywood driving shifts, doesn't he?
• 40:11
  He typically does the nice daytime run.
• 40:13
  Oh, yeah, on the graveyard shift all the time.
• 40:17
  Yeah, yeah.
• 40:18
  You know, he'll think he's doing really well when he goes a couple of hours into the dark and then sort of says, oh, I think it's time that I sort of threw in for the night.
• 40:28
  I'm going to climb in the bunk.
• 40:30
  But...
• 40:31
  I actually love the overnight drive, so it is true.
• 40:34
  He tends to sleep more at night and I tend to drive.
• 40:37
  And for many years we had that big Peterbilt.
• 40:40
  I don't know if you remember our beautiful big... We had a beautiful big Peterbilt with this big sleeper.
• 40:44
  So it was almost like a motel room at the back.
• 40:47
  So Neil's down the back sleeping, which means, you know, I could just put some music on and sing and...
• 40:54
  Traveled into the night and I just loved it.
• 40:57
  And the Perth trip is still my favourite trip.
• 41:00
  Is it?
• 41:00
  Is it the faves kind of stretch of road?
• 41:01
  Yeah, totally.
• 41:02
  You know, I find the worst, the trip I dislike the most is going from Aldridge to Melbourne.
• 41:07
  I don't know what it is on that Hume Highway going down there, but it's as boring as.
• 41:12
  And people might think driving to Perth is boring, but...
• 41:16
  And I don't know why, but I just love it.
• 41:19
  And that, you know, a couple of times I've just come, I don't know if you're familiar with the road, but you come down at Euclid there and you sort of drop down the hill and sort of then start heading across the flat plains.
• 41:34
  But...
• 41:35
  You're cruising along, you've been driving all night, the sun's just coming up and there's this beautiful sunset and you come over the top at Eucla and the whole of Australia is in front of you.
• 41:44
  That's what it feels like.
• 41:46
  And you go, oh, my gosh, this is the most amazing place and it's just... You're driving.
• 41:53
  And you're just driving along.
• 41:55
  Yeah.
• 41:56
  And I don't know.
• 41:57
  People think I'm mad.
• 41:58
  They say, why don't you just fly to Perth or any of the rallies?
• 42:01
  And I go, no, I don't want to.
• 42:02
  I enjoy the drive.
• 42:04
  I think maybe if you were a truck driver and you're doing it every day, it might get tiresome.
• 42:09
  But we were sort of doing it, you know, once a month.
• 42:12
  You had a long-haul trip.
• 42:13
  And that was so that really became my hobby.
• 42:16
  That was what I enjoyed doing.
• 42:17
  That's awesome.
• 42:18
  Awesome recount there.
• 42:20
  We've talked about co-driving for Neil and sort of coordination, administration stuff that you've done, the driving of the truck, but you can change the tyres too, can't you?
• 42:31
  So tell us about that.
• 42:33
  Well, that all happened.
• 42:34
  When we got the 205 Celica, the one thing we really wanted was an X-Track gearbox to put in this car.
• 42:42
  And they were, I can't remember now, it might have been like $50,000, $60,000.
• 42:45
  Gold, gold.
• 42:46
  You know, back in the day.
• 42:49
  Poor Mike Breen from Toyota because we were hounding him, you know, we really need you to spend this money and get this gearbox.
• 42:54
  He's listening.
• 42:55
  He's an amazing man, by the way.
• 42:56
  He is.
• 42:57
  He is.
• 42:58
  And we'd been actually at a Toyota function and in all those years, you know, nearly 30 years of working with Mike, I don't think I ever saw him have a drink but on this particular night he did have a couple of beers.
• 43:09
  Yes.
• 43:11
  And we were walking back from the dinner and we went into Mike's motel room and we were sitting on the bed and we were talking to him about this extract.
• 43:21
  Mike, we really need this extract.
• 43:23
  And somehow we convinced him to call TTE on his phone and order one.
• 43:29
  Team Toyota Europe.
• 43:30
  Team Toyota Europe.
• 43:32
  And so he rings Team Toyota Europe and this order gets placed for this gearbox and, you know, we were so excited about it.
• 43:39
  Mike swore that he would never drink around us again.
• 43:41
  Seeing as we convinced him to do it.
• 43:45
  They're costly, those beers, aren't they?
• 43:47
  Yeah.
• 43:48
  But then we had a...
• 43:49
  It arrived but we had a very short lead time to whatever the next event was.
• 43:52
  I can't remember what it was.
• 43:54
  And, you know, I would spend...
• 43:57
  Back in the day there, we had so many weekends working in the workshop, trying to get cars ready for rallies and sometimes well into the night, often an all-nighter.
• 44:05
  And Canberra's a pretty cold place in an unheated workshop in the middle of a winter's night building rally cars.
• 44:12
  So you sort of had to do your best to keep everyone's enthusiasm up and, you know, remind them that they did this job because they really loved it.
• 44:20
  But anyway, during that period I said, well, what can I do to help?
• 44:23
  Because I didn't really do much mechanical work there.
• 44:26
  So they decided they'd teach me how to use the tyre fitting machine.
• 44:31
  And it was a bit unconventional because, you know, that big lever, you know, those sidewalls on a rally tyre are pretty hard.
• 44:37
  And I would basically jump up and basically hang my whole body over the lever to get it going.
• 44:44
  And then I'd look around and they'd sort of have their heads under the bonnet fixing this gearbox and then they'd be watching me.
• 44:49
  But if they saw me look, they'd pretend they weren't.
• 44:53
  So it was pretty unconventional but it got the job done.
• 44:56
  And then they even made me at one point, they all stood there with stopwatches and I can't remember what the time was now but it was a reasonably good time to strip and fit one tyre.
• 45:07
  And I actually quite enjoyed it.
• 45:09
  So for quite a few years there that was my job.
• 45:12
  So I just fitted up all the rally tyres for a rally on, I might add, a really old cantankerous tyre fitting machine.
• 45:23
  Totally.
• 45:24
  In a more recent time, your incredible skill set that you've amassed over decades and decades of rallying has been channelled into some significant positions with different organisations.
• 45:39
  Firstly, to the NRMA.
• 45:41
  That was, you know, something in recent years.
• 45:43
  Just explain what you did there.
• 45:46
  I was on the board of the NRMA.
• 45:49
  Again, not something I'd planned.
• 45:51
  I'd never had a career path.
• 45:53
  you know, to be a company director.
• 45:54
  Did you seek this out or they sought you out?
• 45:57
  No, no, they sought me out.
• 45:58
  Alan Evans actually rang me and said, and at the time, I'm...
• 46:04
  What he thought that my criteria for joining the board was that, you know, they're a motoring club but he didn't feel they had anyone on the board who was a motoring enthusiast.
• 46:14
  So, you know, typically on a board you want a varied skill set and you want to have someone who's, you know, the accountant or the lawyer or the, you know, the digital specialist or whatever.
• 46:25
  Initially my specialty was just being a motoring enthusiast.
• 46:29
  So I did that.
• 46:31
  Yeah.
• 46:34
  And interestingly, you know, I had a vague understanding of what a board did, but I didn't really know much about it.
• 46:41
  So I went off and did the Australian Company Director's course.
• 46:45
  And the most hilarious part of that was that the case that they used to showcase how not to run a board was actually the NRMA.
• 46:56
  And that was from years before I had joined the board.
• 47:00
  You know, there was a very tumultuous time and it was quite famous for all the wrong reasons.
• 47:07
  But I've gone to do this course and I thought, oh, my gosh, I've just joined this board and now the very company I'm working with is the one that's being held up as the example of how not to do things.
• 47:18
  Yeah.
• 47:19
  Again, though, I must say the most amazing part of that is now I'm told that it's actually held up as the example of how to turn a board around.
• 47:29
  And that group that were there when I first joined, so I was there for 12 years, were the start.
• 47:34
  That was the next generation of directors who had taken a company and really started to turn it around.
• 47:40
  So they'd already started that process.
• 47:42
  You know, I don't claim any...
• 47:45
  any fame or part of that turnaround, they had got that process going.
• 47:51
  And so I just learned so much from all of them.
• 47:54
  It was quite incredible.
• 47:55
  And, you know, fast forward, it's now you're on the Motorsport Australia board as well.
• 48:02
  That's a recent addition, late 2020?
• 48:05
  Yeah, well, I've just been to one meeting, so I've just had my first meeting.
• 48:09
  So yeah, that will be interesting.
• 48:11
  And I think
• 48:13
  My motivation there is really, you know, a love of the sport.
• 48:17
  Certainly I'd like to bring rallying to more of a prominence at a board level.
• 48:23
  There's a lot of things that happen with racing, not so much with rallying, although there's a lot of great stuff going on at the moment and I think the ARC this year is really going to lift.
• 48:34
  It looks like we're going to have a great entry for the first round.
• 48:37
  But I think in general, my motivation there is just giving back to the sport.
• 48:42
  And I think motorsport in all facets, you know, has a lot of headwinds at the moment in the world.
• 48:47
  And it's, you know, the decisions that you have to make to ensure the success of motorsport going forward and having a small part in helping that.
• 48:57
  Good for you.
• 49:00
  In looking at the path forward in that regard for you, I want to talk about the competitive side as well.
• 49:07
  Will you still keep rallying?
• 49:08
  Will you still keep co-driving with Neela?
• 49:10
  Are you planning to do more of that stuff?
• 49:12
  Well, I hope so.
• 49:14
  I never planned to retire.
• 49:15
  So when Neil's son Harry started competing and then we were competing in the same event, so we often had ourselves and Molly and Harry both competing at the same time, then Neil's second son, Lewis, started rallying as well.
• 49:31
  Well, you know, for a father to have two children in that sport
• 49:37
  And, you know, there's a financial implication and there's also a time implication of doing that.
• 49:43
  And so in those early days of the boys running, we were still trying to do events as well in the RA40 Classic car.
• 49:52
  But then you're putting more pressure on the team members as well because suddenly you're at a rally and they're trying to run
• 49:57
  multiple cars.
• 49:59
  And it just all got a bit hard.
• 50:02
  And so Neil decided that we would do, you know, not do ARC rounds, but go and do some other odd events here and there in between.
• 50:12
  But we wouldn't do the ARC.
• 50:13
  So when he first told me, look, he didn't think we'd keep doing the ARC in that car.
• 50:17
  I did say,
• 50:19
  does that mean we're retired?
• 50:21
  And he said, no, no, no, no, no, we'll go and do, you know, all these other events.
• 50:25
  But as often happens in life, I think we did a couple of events that first year, but you just get so busy and focused on, particularly with the ARC and what's going on there and trying to fit events in.
• 50:39
  And then I think the next year we only did one event,
• 50:43
  And then COVID hit, so there were no events.
• 50:46
  So for the last three years, we haven't done a lot.
• 50:49
  But that's not the intention.
• 50:51
  It's just how life has panned out.
• 50:53
  But we do plan at the moment to go and do that Rangers rally sprint later this year up in the Flinders Ranges.
• 50:59
  So that'll be fun.
• 51:00
  That is a great car, the RA42.
• 51:03
  I mean, it...
• 51:05
  You know, the throwback that it gives to a great era, 70s slash 80s of motorsport, the way it tips its hat to the Team Toyota Europe paint scheme and the build that the Bates motorsport team have done with it.
• 51:21
  It is beautifully engineered.
• 51:23
  It's sensational.
• 51:24
  And it's so much fun, like so much fun.
• 51:28
  When we first did an event in there, I think,
• 51:31
  I can't remember which one it was but it might not have been the first one but we were doing a rally in Queensland, Rally Queensland, when we were doing an ARC round in it and there were moments where we were laughing in the car.
• 51:41
  Wow.
• 51:42
  Oh, just through the fun of it, you know, just the sound, the noise, the way.
• 51:48
  Yeah, it's just iconic in that car.
• 51:53
  And I guess we were sort of, you know, yes, we were being competitive within the classic field, but we were probably back to our roots of just doing it more for fun, even though we never lost that strive to be competitive personally.
• 52:07
  But, you know, there was one corner there not far from the end of a stage where Neil actually came in far too hot and it was up in Coffs Harbour on one of these wide sort of shire roads where you turn off onto a narrow track.
• 52:23
  But he had just come in way too hot and straight ahead of us is the bunting that's blocking off the road because we're going to turn right.
• 52:31
  And I'm just looking at it thinking, oh, my God, we're going to go backwards through the bunting.
• 52:35
  But anyway, he pulled it off and it turned out to be the most perfect corner.
• 52:41
  And, you know, a few hundred metres later we pulled into the control and we crossed the line, you know, took the time and laughed from there to the control.
• 52:52
  Yeah.
• 52:52
  You know, just could not stop laughing.
• 52:53
  And I said, you know, and at that point, Daryl thought some of, he saw some of our boys standing at that point because it was a spectator point.
• 53:00
  And he said, oh, the boys were there.
• 53:02
  And I was thinking, oh, great.
• 53:03
  You know, they saw the big moment in the great corner.
• 53:05
  It turns out they weren't there, sadly.
• 53:08
  But, yeah, just totally...
• 53:11
  Totally enjoyable, everything you've ever dreamed of doing in a rally car.
• 53:15
  And a magic sounding thing as well.
• 53:18
  You said motoring enthusiasts before.
• 53:19
  That's great that you bring that up because Mark has a few projects, a few different cars that I love to go and have a bit of a squiz at in the shed.
• 53:28
  But you also...
• 53:30
  For a time you owned it with Molly, I think you and Mark now own it, I think Molly thinks that's the best deal ever.
• 53:34
  She's hustled out, got Dad to buy her share out and she still gets to drive it.
• 53:39
  But you own the Audi Quattro that was once in the hands of Kerry Packer, don't you?
• 53:44
  Yeah, we do.
• 53:46
  So that car...
• 53:48
  We used to own it years ago, Mark and I had a Quattro, which was my daily driver.
• 53:52
  Okay.
• 53:54
  We should never have sold it but we did anyway.
• 53:57
  But when we had that car, Kevin Bartlett used to service it because he was sort of the Australian specialist with Audi Quattros and he used to look after that car for Kerry Packer as well.
• 54:09
  Yeah, right.
• 54:10
  So we'd always known about that car and we heard stories about it and,
• 54:17
  Then it happened quite by accident.
• 54:19
  We actually weren't looking to buy one.
• 54:21
  I was actually ringing Kevin to get a history on another Quattro in Australia for someone overseas who wanted some information on a particular car.
• 54:30
  And I said, well, I do know someone who might know that car, which of course he did and gave me all the history.
• 54:36
  But just during that chat he said, oh, I've actually got the Packer car back if you want that one.
• 54:42
  Wow.
• 54:42
  Wow.
• 54:43
  So, yeah.
• 54:45
  And what transpired from there?
• 54:47
  How long did you think about that and what?
• 54:49
  Well, he put a price on it and like Mark, that's his life.
• 54:55
  He loves classic cars and restoring cars.
• 54:57
  So if that phone call had happened with Mark, he would have known what the value of that car was.
• 55:03
  I didn't really know.
• 55:04
  You know, Kevin told me a price and so then I hang up and ring Mark and I said, do we want to buy this car for X amount of money?
• 55:11
  And Mark said, yes.
• 55:13
  Right, okay.
• 55:15
  And then, of course, Molly jumped in the bandwagon because... And so in the end, the deal was that Molly and I would go halves with it.
• 55:22
  Yeah.
• 55:22
  So we both bought it.
• 55:23
  The story...
• 55:24
  But it comes back with...
• 55:25
  It's got all its... Because that was originally the motor show car that they bought into the country for the motor show.
• 55:32
  Isn't that the great story about it?
• 55:34
  No.
• 55:34
  That it was on display, Audi had brought it out, it was never intended to stay here.
• 55:38
  No.
• 55:38
  And I think Kerry said, I'll take that, son.
• 55:41
  No.
• 55:42
  And they said, no, no, no, you won't, Mr Packard, it's got to go back.
• 55:45
  And, of course, he won.
• 55:46
  He got to keep it here.
• 55:47
  Yeah, he did.
• 55:48
  And I don't know if we're allowed to tell publicly that there's a couple of stories with that car.
• 55:54
  One was that he, whatever his previous car was, with one of his country properties up near Scone, he had a dirt road leading in and he knew that a very long driveway, that he could turn into that car.
• 56:08
  drive as fast as possible, like hit the button for a gate apparently, an automatic gate, hit the button and then drive as fast as he could and the gate would be open by the time he got there.
• 56:20
  And then I think the story was he got the Quattro, he went home, he pressed the button at the same point, drove in, but got there so much faster the gate wasn't open.
• 56:32
  What state of repair is it in now?
• 56:34
  I think you've done a bit of work to it, haven't you?
• 56:36
  Yeah, it's body-wise, it's been all fixed.
• 56:41
  Mechanically, a lot of work has been done there.
• 56:44
  I think really at this point now, we need some suspension and then the interior.
• 56:48
  So the interior still looks a little bit shabby.
• 56:50
  Love it.
• 56:51
  We've talked about RA40.
• 56:52
  We've talked about Resto Project.
• 56:53
  Can we finish with a fun story?
• 56:56
  You're unbelievably organised, you're unflappable in what you do.
• 57:01
  You just don't make a mistake in that co-driver's seat.
• 57:04
  But they tell me, Molly,
• 57:07
  and Neil, that you're not to be trusted with hotel room keys and sometimes mobile phones.
• 57:12
  Is that true?
• 57:13
  So true.
• 57:15
  So true.
• 57:16
  The story that came to mind when Neil was very good with helping with some good information and a bit of dirt here, obviously, but he recounted to me about a week in Tasmania that you were down there for an event and...
• 57:31
  required a bit of a mission to get back to Victoria for some CAMS awards and then a late-night flight back again to Tasmania for rallying.
• 57:39
  And this poor country town, or may not have been country town, but this poor owner of the motel, I think you had to wake up on several occasions, didn't you?
• 57:48
  Oh, my gosh.
• 57:52
  So the first one was it was the annual CAMS dinner in Melbourne.
• 57:56
  It was back in the days when we had the coefficient and we were doing one of the C10, coefficient 10 events in Tassie but it was going to be on the same weekend.
• 58:06
  So we thought we'd have to miss the CAMS dinner but Toyota weren't happy with that.
• 58:10
  So they arranged for a chartered flight and all this so that we could do the recce during the day, fly to Melbourne, do the dinner, fly back and still start the rally the next morning.
• 58:21
  Mission.
• 58:22
  Needless to say, it had been a long day and we even was feeling like being a big star or something because we left the dinner and they had a helicopter on the top of the building and we hopped into this helicopter that took us at night through the city of Melbourne.
• 58:38
  I think it was Lindsay Fox's.
• 58:39
  It may have been Lindsay Fox's chopper.
• 58:40
  Oh, maybe it was.
• 58:41
  Yeah, I think it was one of those Bell Jet Rangers, you know, quite a decent chopper and took us to Moorabbin Airport.
• 58:49
  And then there was the chartered plane there.
• 58:51
  But Neil had always had, from the day I first met him, an absolute fear of flying.
• 58:56
  Really?
• 58:57
  Yes.
• 58:58
  Oh, totally.
• 58:59
  And we've landed in this chopper at Moorabbin and next to this plane that's going to take us back to Tassie so we can start rallying in the morning and it's now midnight.
• 59:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:09
  This is surreal, by the way.
• 59:10
  This doesn't go on in motorsport all the time.
• 59:12
  This is a bit of a Hollywood moment for you.
• 59:13
  I know, I know.
• 59:13
  It was a Hollywood moment.
• 59:15
  It was a very Toyota moment.
• 59:17
  But this little plane's, you know, just a single engine little plane and so Neil's not so happy about going across Bass Strait in the middle of the night in this plane.
• 59:28
  But anyway, by the time we get back to Tessie, it's like 2 or 3 in the morning and it's freezing cold and...
• 59:34
  And we've got a rally to start in a few hours.
• 59:37
  And so we're staying in this apartment.
• 59:42
  We get there and so I've gone into my bag diving, looking for the key, can't find it, and then I've tipped my bag upside down and all the contents are laying over the footpath and I go, oh, my gosh, I haven't got the keys.
• 59:55
  Again, again.
• 59:57
  And so Neil goes, oh, my gosh.
• 1:00:01
  And all we want to do is sleep, you know, we've just got to sleep.
• 1:00:04
  So he'd gone.
• 1:00:06
  I don't know whether they owned it or were the caretakers, but they lived on site, this young couple.
• 1:00:10
  So Neil's had to knock on the door and apparently the guy has come out looking very sleepy, wearing nothing but his undies going, what the heck do you want?
• 1:00:18
  And he said, please, I need some keys.
• 1:00:21
  So that happened.
• 1:00:23
  We then do the rally.
• 1:00:25
  It's the first night of the rally.
• 1:00:27
  We go out for dinner.
• 1:00:30
  And that wasn't a key night.
• 1:00:34
  That was actually a friend of Neil's, lived in Tassie, decided to come and help on the rally, bought his son.
• 1:00:39
  We'd had dinner in town.
• 1:00:41
  And the next minute I've got the owner knocking on my door and,
• 1:00:48
  saying there's a child in the car park that's crying.
• 1:00:51
  So what had happened, the father had come back from dinner, realised he left his glasses at the restaurant, child's asleep, so he left the child and walked back into town quickly to get his glasses.
• 1:01:01
  Meanwhile, child's woken up in the car park crying, wakes up the caretaker stroke owners.
• 1:01:07
  They know he's sort of attached to me through the rally thing, knocks on the door.
• 1:01:12
  So that's fine.
• 1:01:13
  We sort that out.
• 1:01:14
  But I thought, oh, this poor guy, you know, this is two nights in a row.
• 1:01:17
  We've had him up really, really late for either keys or children.
• 1:01:21
  Anyway, go out, do the rally the next day, finish the rally.
• 1:01:25
  I think we won the rally.
• 1:01:26
  Can't remember.
• 1:01:26
  We go out to a presentation dinner.
• 1:01:28
  That ends.
• 1:01:29
  Someone knows where the next party is and the next party.
• 1:01:32
  And then it comes down to all the places we'd been to were closed and now the party's going to move to someone's motel.
• 1:01:38
  But the boys in our team have got an early flight, so at that point they just want to go to bed.
• 1:01:44
  So I say, no problem, I'll drop you back.
• 1:01:47
  When I drop back, I go into the apartment and go to the bathroom, leave, come back, go to the final party.
• 1:01:57
  Night wears on, we go home again.
• 1:02:02
  And when I had ducked back into the bathroom, I must have put the key down and I've closed it in the apartment.
• 1:02:08
  And it's probably the only time that Neil's actually really been angry with me.
• 1:02:16
  And so I've done the whole looking for the key thing again.
• 1:02:19
  And he's gone, you have got to be joking.
• 1:02:23
  And I said, no, sorry.
• 1:02:25
  I said, I think the key is inside the apartment.
• 1:02:29
  And he said, I am not.
• 1:02:31
  I refuse to go and knock on that guy's door again.
• 1:02:34
  He said, so what will happen is we'll sleep in the car until 6am when the boys wake up.
• 1:02:40
  Yep.
• 1:02:40
  And then when they wake up.
• 1:02:42
  Yep.
• 1:02:42
  And leave early, we'll go in.
• 1:02:44
  Yep.
• 1:02:44
  And it's freezing.
• 1:02:45
  This is Tasmania, Rusty.
• 1:02:46
  It's so cold.
• 1:02:47
  And we are just shivering in the car.
• 1:02:49
  And I'm using my really best sort of, oh, come on, buddy.
• 1:02:52
  You know, you're like my best friend.
• 1:02:53
  Surely you can go and knock on that guy's door and get some keys.
• 1:02:57
  And it must have been cold because he gave up in the end.
• 1:03:01
  He couldn't cope with the keys, the cold.
• 1:03:03
  So he's gone and he knocked on the door.
• 1:03:06
  And apparently when the same guy, dishevelled hair, undies, answered the door, Neil says to him,
• 1:03:15
  I have some good news and I have some bad news.
• 1:03:17
  He said, the good news is we're all leaving tomorrow and the bad news is, could I please have some keys?
• 1:03:25
  And I think he had one under his pillow because he was expecting it.
• 1:03:28
  He said, no, his wife told me that the next day.
• 1:03:31
  I went in, I bought them a box of chocolates and I apologised and she said, my husband went to bed last night and he said, I'm just going to go to bed with Neil Bates Motorsport keys under my pillow.
• 1:03:46
  I think he got in trouble with security one time too, trying to get through a window when it had happened.
• 1:03:49
  Oh, in the middle of that, he did, he did.
• 1:03:51
  On the cold night, he thought, no, maybe it was the first one, but on one of them, he decided he could break in.
• 1:03:56
  But he was climbing around up the back of a building and couldn't get in.
• 1:03:59
  Yeah, there was...
• 1:04:01
  There was another episode.
• 1:04:02
  I can't remember what the other thing was.
• 1:04:04
  There was multiple times at that one rally where people were locked out of their rooms.
• 1:04:08
  I love it.
• 1:04:09
  I love it.
• 1:04:10
  Some great memories there.
• 1:04:11
  Congratulations.
• 1:04:12
  Hall of Fame, Australian titles, an incredible ambassador, not just for women in motorsport, for, you know, what you can achieve, even if you have kind of humble beginnings in life in many respects.
• 1:04:24
  But importantly, you have this...
• 1:04:29
  universal acceptance that goes beyond rally officials often ask after you circuit racing people are always you know wanting to to see how coral taylor is and what she's what she's up to congratulations on on everything that you've achieved for you know someone that developed at a young age a passion for rally to make it your life and to have achieved what you've what you've done is just just tremendous thank you russian
• 1:04:58
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 1:05:02
  Series producer and editor is Alex Mitchell.
• 1:05:05
  Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
• 1:05:15
  Listener.