Latest / Rusty's Garage / Paul Weel | Part 1 - the win that got away at Baja

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Paul Weel | Part 1 - the win that got away at Baja · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:14
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:25
  For this episode, I'm in the studio and my guest is beaming in from home before jetting out to the United States to kind of indulge in two forms of horsepower.
• 0:33
  One involves real horses with his daughter showing the kind of talent that could take her all the way to the Olympic Games.
• 0:40
  More on that a bit later.
• 0:41
  The other horsepower is from a stunning latest generation off-road trophy truck that he'll compete in in 2026.
• 0:49
  Paul Weill and Dakar legend Toby Price were actually on course to win the legendary Baja 1000 in Mexico just a couple of weeks ago.
• 0:57
  But it had the kind of retirement that's hard to put into words.
• 1:00
  I was there taking in the bucket list event with the team from BFGoodrich.
• 1:04
  It went from the buzz of a couple of Aussies who kind of crept up on it, challenging some big-name competitors in this sport who'd been entrenched in it for decades.
• 1:14
  It looked like Team Australia were going to win, only to see it slip from their grasp.
• 1:20
  cruelly.
• 1:21
  The pair have won shorter iterations of the Baha event, but they've also endured the other end of the spectrum, watching their million-dollar trophy truck burn to the ground when it caught fire miles from any help to extinguish it.
• 1:34
  As you'll have heard from the chats that I've had with Toby Price in our library, Toby's not a quitter, neither is Paul.
• 1:41
  This is the first time that we've had Paul on, though, to tell his story, and it's a good one.
• 1:46
  From two wheels to off-road and safari...
• 1:49
  as well as racing supercars as a privateer, co-driving for one of the gun teams during that golden era for the sport, establishing their own two-car Holden team with some star drivers of the day, including Jason Bright and Greg Murphy, and the frightening crash...
• 2:05
  that ended that chapter.
• 2:07
  He is lucky to be here to tell that story.
• 2:09
  You'll also learn a bit more about the incredible success story of PWR Performance too, making world-class cooling solutions for the very highest levels of motorsport in all sorts of different forms and from a facility on the Gold Coast, not Europe.
• 2:25
  how it all started, some of the big outfits that they have paired with and going all the way to a public listing on the Australian Stock Exchange.
• 2:33
  And keep an ear out too for a Dakar plan that isn't widely known.
• 2:38
  Hope you enjoy getting to know Paul Wheel a little bit better.
• 2:41
  Hello, Paul Wheel.
• 2:42
  How are you?
• 2:43
  Oh, good.
• 2:43
  Thanks, mate.
• 2:44
  Good to see you again.
• 2:45
  Nice to see you again too.
• 2:47
  I think last time we caught up, we were having tacos in Ensenada on what was, for me at least, a bucket list trip of a lifetime to see the Baja 1000, one of the kind of all-time great motorsport events.
• 3:00
  But it was a heartbreaker for you, mate, wasn't it?
• 3:03
  Tell us in the aftermath of all of that, how you've debriefed it and dealt with it and so on.
• 3:09
  Yeah, it was a bit of a tough one.
• 3:11
  It started off very good.
• 3:13
  I saw a couple of Aussies going into a tunnel, but I told them that I was going to wave to them.
• 3:18
  But I didn't realize that the pre-running speed and the race car speed was a little bit different.
• 3:25
  So I didn't really – and the tunnel was very narrow.
• 3:28
  So I couldn't take my hand off the wheels to wave because I was too frightened I was going to hit the tunnel.
• 3:35
  Sorry if we distracted you, mate.
• 3:36
  No, no, it was quite funny.
• 3:39
  So, yeah, no, it started off very, very well.
• 3:42
  You know, our plan worked very well.
• 3:44
  You know, Toby qualified for car, so he had to start the car in the race.
• 3:49
  And...
• 3:50
  We done our driver change about mile 80, which we planned to.
• 3:54
  And we kept with the top two.
• 3:57
  You know, we caught back up.
• 3:58
  I think at one point we were, you know, eight seconds off the lead after doing the driver change.
• 4:03
  So, you know, which is great.
• 4:06
  You know, it's such a long race.
• 4:10
  And then we gave the car back to Toby.
• 4:14
  And Toby just does what Toby does, you know, big right foot.
• 4:17
  And he's remarkable of how he can drive an off-road car so precisely.
• 4:25
  And I think that comes back from the motorcycle background and especially with the Dakar and Fink and, you know, his motocross background.
• 4:35
  And...
• 4:37
  Yeah, unfortunately, we ran out of fuel 20 miles or 25 miles to go.
• 4:41
  Crazy.
• 4:42
  And Rusty, it was just a human error.
• 4:46
  You know, on the back of the trucks is that you have, you know, an in and an out.
• 4:53
  So you have a fuel in and a breather out.
• 4:56
  And the guy –
• 4:59
  who was stabbing the truck with the fuel, actually stabbed it upside down.
• 5:04
  So with these fuel systems, it's not like a supercar fuel system where it's gravity fed and it takes a certain amount of seconds where you've got to fill a tank in 40 seconds or whatever it may be.
• 5:17
  We try to fill these tanks as quickly as we can, so they're pressurised.
• 5:22
  And the fuel...
• 5:24
  blew out of the top hose.
• 5:25
  So the guy thought that he had filled the tank, but what it was was the pressure, the air in the system, blew the fuel up and out and bubbled out.
• 5:36
  So we only got half a tank full.
• 5:39
  And then it was just a comedy of errors, really.
• 5:43
  Our crew chief didn't get the right numbers from the guy who was filling and then missed the text and, you know,
• 5:53
  At the end of the day, we ran out of fuel with 30 miles to go leading the race.
• 5:58
  You know, Bryce Menzies had an issue.
• 6:02
  We were already past them.
• 6:04
  They had two bolts holding the front diff in.
• 6:08
  So we were already past them.
• 6:09
  They were in an issue.
• 6:11
  And we had another fuel stop up our sleeve if we needed to there, but we didn't think we needed to.
• 6:23
  30 go on shore and, yeah, heartbreak happened.
• 6:28
  Watching it, mate, watching the vision that I've seen pop up where Toby's, you know, out the window to fans on the side of the track there, you know, Gasolina, Gasolina, you know, like any kind of help that they could get.
• 6:39
  Yeah.
• 6:39
  And...
• 6:42
  You'd crept up on it, the pair of you.
• 6:43
  Team Australia was in a great place to win the long iteration, the famous long iteration, the Baja 1000, mate, and to go so close and to miss it like that must have been gut-wrenching.
• 6:56
  Yeah, it was pretty gut-wrenching, really.
• 6:58
  It's...
• 7:00
  Yeah, and now we can sort of see the funny side of it.
• 7:03
  Obviously, there's been all the stuff on social media with us touring a drum of VP race shield behind the car.
• 7:14
  So you can see the funny side of it now.
• 7:19
  Obviously, the first couple of weeks, we didn't see any funny side of it.
• 7:23
  It was one of those things.
• 7:24
  And at the end of the day, it was a human error.
• 7:27
  We all make mistakes in life.
• 7:30
  And in motorsport, it happens a lot, as we know and as we've seen.
• 7:35
  You've been around commentating motorsport for a long time, and you see stuff that –
• 7:41
  that people would do and you just go, you know, I can't believe someone done that.
• 7:46
  And it was just a human error.
• 7:48
  And, you know, I've been around motorsport my whole life.
• 7:51
  And, you know, we've burnt race cars down to the ground.
• 7:57
  We've come close to winning Bathurst, you know, 1000.
• 8:02
  And our great mate, Greg Murphy and Marcus Ambrose, the very famous athletes.
• 8:10
  you know, stoush on the mountain there and all that sort of stuff.
• 8:15
  So, you know, we've been, you know, I've been through all this sort of stuff before and, yeah, the biggest disappointment is is that, you know, we were so close and it was human error and the plan just worked.
• 8:31
  Like our plan worked, we had everything done
• 8:37
  And I think the biggest thing for us is that because we put so much into it because we're such a small team, for the thousand we have 13 people compared to Bryce Mendes or the McMillans where they have 100-odd people
• 9:00
  Um, yeah, so I compared to that where for what we're doing, um, coming from this side of the world, um, we hop in the truck, we do 25 miles each at a shakedown.
• 9:15
  Um, Toby goes out and usually qualifies, you know, in the top three, if not first.
• 9:21
  And then...
• 9:23
  We go and race these guys who are racing in their backyard who have been doing it for generations.
• 9:31
  You look at Luke McMillian and there's a book that McMillians have actually written about
• 9:38
  about their generation of racing, the history of their racing, which is, you know, about that thick of a book.
• 9:47
  So, you know, you're racing against people that have been racing Baja for, you know, 20, 30 years and it's, you know, a generational thing where, you know, the kids have been down there and now, you know, they're racing and they're winning the races and all that sort of stuff.
• 10:06
  So...
• 10:07
  I think the disappointment is still always going to be there because it's one that got away.
• 10:15
  Basically our third year in, if we had to cross the finishing line, it would have been amazing because –
• 10:24
  You go back to guys like Bryce Menzies, it took him 13 or 14 years to win the Baja 1000.
• 10:31
  I look at it, Paul, exactly as you've just described.
• 10:34
  It's a relatively recent introduction for you guys compared to some of the names that you just rattled off in the incredible history of Baja.
• 10:42
  of the event.
• 10:43
  And the countryside is incredible.
• 10:45
  The logistical effort to get all the way around the different parts of the Baja Peninsula to service you guys as you go there, there's kind of nothing quite like it.
• 10:53
  On the one hand, you've had success
• 10:57
  and a win in a shorter iteration of that event.
• 11:00
  And then you've had this, very sadly, this human error incidents now around refueling.
• 11:05
  And the other tough one, mate, is the trophy truck burning to the ground.
• 11:10
  I'm a huge believer, Paul, that people come back stronger from this stuff.
• 11:14
  You can't go through all these sorts of things.
• 11:16
  It's great that you've tasted a little bit of
• 11:21
  In that small window, you've already, as Team Australia, made the right impression on some seasoned people for both the highs and lows.
• 11:28
  Does that make sense?
• 11:29
  Yeah, exactly.
• 11:30
  I think, you know, if you touch on the car burning down, that was our first year.
• 11:36
  That was our second race that we raced there.
• 11:39
  And I think a lot of them thought that, you know, these Aussies are going to piss off and go back home.
• 11:45
  And, you know, you look at it as in, you know, the Australian way of, you know, the grit and everything like that.
• 11:53
  Well, you know, two days later, we're at a workshop and we went and bought another car.
• 12:01
  Toby tells me you bought it midair, mate.
• 12:03
  Is that right?
• 12:05
  Pretty much mid-air.
• 12:07
  I had to get the permission off Emma, my wife, which there wasn't much permission.
• 12:15
  I got home and I was in tears and she goes, oh, you must be so upset because you could have burnt to death because my race suit was burnt and all that sort of stuff and
• 12:29
  And everything like that.
• 12:30
  And I said, oh, no, I'm upset because I haven't got a race car.
• 12:34
  And she goes, well, go and buy it.
• 12:37
  And so I rang Andy McMillan straight back up and, you know, paid for it the next day.
• 12:45
  And, you know, that was the thing was where they thought they were just going to piss off and go back home.
• 12:52
  And...
• 12:53
  You know, that's not us.
• 12:55
  You know, we don't give up on things very easily.
• 12:59
  You know, you always get these challenges in life.
• 13:03
  And, you know, the big thing for me is I have...
• 13:09
  I have great support, obviously, from Emma, my wife, and also my dad, Keyes.
• 13:16
  So, you know, it's great support from both people, but also from Toby and the group around us.
• 13:23
  And, you know, as you would have seen there, Rusty, it's funny, you know, all of our guys that are there, we're sort of –
• 13:32
  Well, I like people from Melbourne who moved to Queensland.
• 13:35
  They call them Mexicans.
• 13:36
  And, you know, you look at the make-up of our team.
• 13:40
  We've got, you know, we've probably got six or seven Australians who come to every race.
• 13:45
  You know, we've got a couple of Americans, and then we've got three or four Mexicans.
• 13:49
  So, you know, we're like bits of dog, really.
• 13:53
  And we're fighting against these teams that are spending, you know, three, four,
• 13:59
  You know, I hear numbers of $7 million US a year to do four races.
• 14:05
  And, you know, we're punching way above, you know, where we should be.
• 14:13
  And, you know, and I believe everyone is, you know, always worried about us, you know, where we are and what we're doing and at every race we're a great threat.
• 14:25
  Yep, that's great that you're in their psyche like that, mate.
• 14:27
  I want to come to the fact that you have –
• 14:30
  So fundamentally, I guess, in a family love kind of come full circle in off-road, it's a generational love of the sport.
• 14:37
  Firstly, you brought up your dad, and I know you've talked a little bit about this in a social post recently.
• 14:41
  Fantastic that he was with you at Baja.
• 14:44
  How is he going?
• 14:45
  He's had a bit of a health challenge in the last year or two, hasn't he, mate?
• 14:49
  Yeah, he has.
• 14:51
  It always makes me a little bit choked up.
• 14:54
  I'm sorry.
• 14:55
  Talk a bit about him, but that's okay.
• 14:58
  Yeah, he had a stroke five months ago and –
• 15:05
  You know, for a guy who you think that's unstoppable and who, you know, basically works, you know, 24 hours a day really and, you know, to see someone go through that is, you know, pretty hard and especially someone you, you know, you actually really, really love and...
• 15:29
  And, you know, he's quite a remarkable man, really, because, you know, five months ago, he was in a hospital bed, couldn't even move.
• 15:43
  And, yeah, he was in Baja after doing...
• 15:51
  basically a round-the-world trip with PWR.
• 15:53
  So, you know, he went to England, to Holland, to Indianapolis, to see my show, and then flew to Baja for the week.
• 16:03
  So he's quite a remarkable guy, quite inspirational of,
• 16:10
  how he goes about things and he's probably one of the biggest driving forces behind what we've done in life.
• 16:22
  So, mate, come back to, I think, you know, early life for you is around Warrnambool.
• 16:27
  As I reflected on there, he sort of had a deep-rooted love, your dad, of off-road racing, basically, hasn't he?
• 16:33
  I mean, I can recall seeing him at places like Fink.
• 16:36
  It may have even been the Australian Safari, if memory serves me well, and so on.
• 16:40
  Yeah, exactly.
• 16:40
  Australian Safari.
• 16:41
  He won the Australian Safari a couple of times.
• 16:45
  Yeah, grew up in Warrnambool.
• 16:46
  We had a wrecking yard in Warrnambool and that's where the radiator business sort of basically started was from the wrecking yard.
• 16:54
  But, yeah, like his racing side of things was, yeah, it was off-road racing.
• 17:00
  He tried Speedway at one stage, like sports sedans or something like that.
• 17:05
  He wasn't a very good speedway racer, apparently.
• 17:10
  So I think he had more fights and broke more bones in the speedway car than he ever did in anything else.
• 17:19
  But, yeah, won the Australian Safari.
• 17:22
  And he was actually supposed to go many years ago now and go and race Dakar in one of the support trucks for Sven Kwon, who ran the VW team.
• 17:38
  He runs a factory mini team at the moment.
• 17:41
  They're in the BMWs and so the big support trucks that you see, you know, bouncing around with three or four people in them, he was supposed to go and do that.
• 17:52
  But he got sick prior to Dakar so he couldn't go and do it.
• 17:56
  But, yeah, hopefully one day he'll be able to, you know, get over there to Dakar.
• 18:02
  I was lucky enough to go this year.
• 18:06
  and go and watch Toby, even though it wasn't the best finish to the race that he had.
• 18:15
  But, you know, it's one of those events that is, I suppose, on everyone's bucket list of trying to do and that, and we come very close to putting a deal together this year for the race,
• 18:37
  So, yeah, it's definitely... For you and Toby to go and do it?
• 18:42
  Well, for Toby, well, obviously, Toby's doing the thing with Toyota.
• 18:47
  With Toyota.
• 18:48
  Yeah, over there.
• 18:49
  And then...
• 18:50
  We're very close with Amesport.
• 18:52
  We're putting a deal together for the Ford Raptor.
• 18:56
  Okay.
• 18:58
  So anyway, we'll have another crack, you know, not in 26, but probably in 27 on trying to put a deal together.
• 19:06
  Well done.
• 19:07
  And hopefully we'll be able to do it.
• 19:09
  Right on.
• 19:09
  Watch this space.
• 19:10
  They tell me your nickname when you were a kid was, was it Skeeter?
• 19:14
  Is that right?
• 19:15
  Yeah.
• 19:15
  And you were a bit of a tear away on a peewee that your dad bought you at about age four.
• 19:19
  Is this true?
• 19:20
  It actually started two wheels for you, didn't it?
• 19:22
  Yes, it did.
• 19:23
  It was, we were going back to the Reconyard days and I think I was about three or four.
• 19:30
  And anyway, so I used to race down, up and down the service road next to the highway there in Warrnambool.
• 19:37
  And the local policemen would get on, you know, come by and get on the microphone and
• 19:45
  telling me to get off the road and all that sort of stuff.
• 19:47
  So it was quite a, yeah, me and him had a, I don't know the local policeman's name, but me and him had quite a little game.
• 19:56
  Interesting relationship, did you?
• 19:58
  Yeah, a little bit of a game going on there.
• 20:00
  So anyway, that was interesting.
• 20:02
  But that's basically where the love of motorsport started with motorcycle racing.
• 20:07
  Yeah.
• 20:08
  So, you know, we went from there and then when we ended up moving to Queensland, I had a friend at school who used to race flat track.
• 20:16
  So that's how I got into racing bikes.
• 20:20
  Amazing.
• 20:21
  So, I mean, there's a bit of a memory here around Reedy Creek on the Gold Coast and all sorts.
• 20:26
  It was a two-wheel foray, like it may have been whatever for you, I'm assuming, at this phase of your life, whether you were pursuing the flat track, motocross, something along those lines, that was clearly what you're obsessed by, was it?
• 20:41
  Yeah, exactly.
• 20:42
  And, yeah, Reddy Creek and we go back to, you know, you go back to Reddy Creek days and one of our, well, one of your good friends and one of my friends, Lee Diffie, who now is, you know, the voice of NASCAR and whatever else he's a voice of over in America for NBC and who's done very, very well.
• 21:03
  It was funny because my first time,
• 21:06
  Motocross race at Reedy Creek was the first time that he was doing an announcing.
• 21:12
  At Reedy Creek.
• 21:13
  At Reedy Creek.
• 21:13
  At Reedy Creek.
• 21:14
  At Reedy Creek.
• 21:15
  So anyway, that's my claim to fame of knowingly different.
• 21:20
  And that's how our relationship there started.
• 21:23
  Nice.
• 21:24
  Can I come just back to your little moment with the police?
• 21:27
  As you grow up a bit here, I'm told Keys may have bought you, was it an ex-police car or something or other, one of your first sets of wheels?
• 21:35
  Just fill that story in for us.
• 21:36
  I don't know if I've got that quite right.
• 21:40
  Yeah, you actually do.
• 21:42
  I was, I think I was about 17 or 18 and just got my license.
• 21:47
  Anyway, I kept on going to him, oh, yep, I want a Chevy Ute, Dad.
• 21:52
  I want a Chevy Ute, you know.
• 21:54
  Anyway, it was when we had K&J Radiators at work, Rumbin, and anyway, so he goes to me, hey, come me up in front.
• 22:04
  I've got you a present.
• 22:06
  And I'm like, okay, you know, he goes, I've got that Chevy Ute for you.
• 22:10
  And I'm like, oh, yeah, run out the front.
• 22:13
  And anyway, it was a 1927 Chevy Ute, which was the first police car in something like in Concurry or somewhere like that.
• 22:25
  And basically I just shook my head and walked back inside and I said, mate, you're a dickhead.
• 22:30
  I said, I'm thinking like a current model Chevy U.
• 22:35
  Anyway, we've still got it.
• 22:36
  He's still got it.
• 22:37
  He's still got it in his car collection.
• 22:39
  So, yes, he thought it was very funny, that one.
• 22:42
  Okay.
• 22:43
  So, moving forward in your life here with some two-wheel stuff that you've touched on and now we're starting to get into radiator territory here and what would ultimately become a world-leading cooling company,
• 22:58
  Can I start with K&J?
• 22:59
  Because I reckon I came to Corumban there early in my time in supercars to do a yarn.
• 23:05
  Yeah.
• 23:05
  And I was, even at that stage, just with K&J, was blown away by what you guys were doing.
• 23:10
  For whatever reason, Paul, I walked into the story thinking this would be a little corner radiator place kind of thing.
• 23:17
  And even at that stage, you know, your dad was clearly sort of thinking big around this stuff, mate, wasn't he?
• 23:22
  Yeah, pretty much so.
• 23:23
  It was, you know, as you said, you know, K&J Radiators was, you know, an OE replacement, you know, for the corner store of, you know, radiator shops where, you know, you had a radiator that went bad or whatever, you'd take it to the radiator shop and they'd fix it and they'd fix it and, you know,
• 23:46
  you know, way they go.
• 23:49
  So, you know, at the time K&J was doing copper and brass radiators for, you know, majority of the cars in Australia had copper and brass radiators.
• 24:00
  And then back into the mid to late 90s, a lot of the manufacturers started to bring out, you know, I think it was like 98% of car manufacturers
• 24:15
  we're bringing out aluminium radiators with plastic tanks.
• 24:19
  And so to keep up with the technology because we were the only, one of the only, well, there's two companies in Australia that were aftermarket, you know, companies, not OE companies.
• 24:31
  And so we were one of the first ones that we, myself and Keys, went to America and, you know,
• 24:39
  went and bought aluminium furnace to be able to actually bake aluminium radiators and bought all the equipment and everything like that to be able to make them.
• 24:49
  So we were one of the first aftermarket companies in Australia
• 24:55
  to be able to do that, especially for the radiator shops and all that sort of stuff where, you know, everything had to either be bought by, you know, from the OE manufacturer from Ford or Holden or Toyota or whoever it may be.
• 25:12
  So we're one of the first to actually put an aluminium furnace in.
• 25:18
  So, you know, that then led into the...
• 25:23
  PWR sort of being born out of that, which was an interesting time.
• 25:42
  I can hear it in your voice there just around your knowledge, your connection with it and so on.
• 25:48
  Were you sort of hands-on, maybe you were still in high school, learning about this stuff with your dad and maybe some of the staff around the workings of radiators and so on?
• 25:57
  Did it start like that?
• 25:59
  So I used to, you know, my father was a bit of a hard taskmaster, really.
• 26:06
  Like, you know, he left school when he was 14, went and done an apprenticeship as a...
• 26:12
  as a mechanic.
• 26:14
  And as soon as he finished that, he went and fibbed a little bit on his application.
• 26:20
  He went to Vougainville to the gold mine and told them that he was a diesel mechanic when he was just a normal car mechanic.
• 26:27
  And so it's sort of, it was funny.
• 26:29
  I left school early.
• 26:30
  Yeah, I was never into school whatsoever.
• 26:32
  I left school at the end of year nine.
• 26:35
  And, um, and my kids now, my girls now always, um,
• 26:39
  hanging on me that I left school at the end of year nine.
• 26:42
  And so they say, why can't I leave school at the end of year nine?
• 26:47
  I said, well, because you need a better education than your father got.
• 26:50
  But I was always, you know, after school, you know, typical, you know, after school sort of thing.
• 26:57
  You'd be there at the factory.
• 27:00
  You'd, you know, be sweeping floors, all that sort of stuff.
• 27:04
  And you'd learn...
• 27:07
  you know, the biggest thing was always learn from a bottom up, you know, and so you'd learn how to make the radiatters and, you know,
• 27:15
  make everything, and that was one of the biggest, you know, probably biggest benefits of with us for what we did in the future with PWR was that we actually knew exactly every part of, you know, how from start to finish of how to make a radiator and how to do it.
• 27:37
  And it was probably one of the biggest benefits
• 27:40
  Benefits that we had, especially leading into the future, you know, further down the track when we got into, you know, more of the technical stuff of, you know, Formula One and that type of thing.
• 27:52
  So, you know, knowing how to...
• 27:57
  you know, do everything from the start of it.
• 28:00
  And when we first put in the furnace, the aluminium furnace, and, you know, knowing how to operate everything, you know, we knew basically every part of that business we knew how to operate.
• 28:14
  Didn't make a difference if it was, you know, what sort of machine it was or, you know, whatever it was.
• 28:21
  You know, you could teach someone how to operate it, you know,
• 28:26
  basically I've done my apprenticeship of, I call it apprenticeship of life there from an early age.
• 28:36
  And I think that's probably one of the reasons why we were so successful in what we did.
• 28:41
  It served you well, mate, right the way through and you clearly have a third.
• 28:44
  first a love for it.
• 28:45
  Before we move into the advent of PWR and a bit of a focus on the four wheel chapter of your career, can we wrap up the two wheel stuff?
• 28:53
  Because it was some moments that stand out that were tough as well.
• 28:56
  I think for memory, you showed me or spoke to me one time about a neck injury with the chain and something like that from the motocross days.
• 29:03
  Is that right?
• 29:04
  No, the chain was actually from 98.
• 29:08
  I crashed at the Melbourne Grand Prix and I had a chain on and the seatbelts were over the chain.
• 29:16
  When I hit the wall, obviously it went forward and the chain went back and cut into my neck and I've actually still got scars around.
• 29:26
  around here.
• 29:27
  But, yeah, the motocross days, well, I broke both my wrists at the same time.
• 29:33
  So when you're 15, having two broken wrists as a young man is probably the wrong time of having two broken wrists.
• 29:44
  Anyway, we won't go there.
• 29:46
  But, yeah, we had a lot of fun racing bikes, and I was fortunate enough to go and race in America as well.
• 29:56
  We used to spend three months a year racing there.
• 29:58
  I was fortunate enough to – one day I was actually in Marietta, which is Southern California, and we found this supercross track out in the middle of nowhere.
• 30:11
  Yeah.
• 30:12
  And so we were riding around the Supercross track and next minute, this guy comes down on a Honda with a number one blue plate on the front with a yellow number one on there, you know, with the Camel Supercross, you know, on the top of the plate.
• 30:33
  And this guy thinks he's Jeremy McGrath.
• 30:37
  And anyway...
• 30:40
  takes his helmet off, and it's Jeremy McGrath.
• 30:43
  And he goes, oh, I need to slip down the road.
• 30:45
  I never knew this supercross track was here.
• 30:46
  I could hear the bikes.
• 30:47
  I thought I'd come down and have a look and got talking to him.
• 30:52
  Oh, yeah, we're from Australia, you know, blah, blah, talking away and got to go on a ride session with one of the most successful supercross riders of all time when I was like 14.
• 31:04
  Yeah.
• 31:05
  So it's just remarkable some of the things that you get to see and you get to experience.
• 31:10
  Yeah.
• 31:12
  Yeah, he's remarkable.
• 31:13
  And, you know, that was from, you know, the motocross days.
• 31:17
  And we had good times.
• 31:19
  We had, you know, bad times.
• 31:20
  We had sad times, especially over there in America.
• 31:24
  We lost a guy called Joel Elliott who rode for us, who passed away.
• 31:30
  Why?
• 31:30
  Over there racing.
• 31:32
  And so that wasn't a very good time.
• 31:34
  He was...
• 31:35
  a kid from Curry Curry, you know, Chad Reid area and he was probably at the time, you know, he was a guy before Chad who probably would have made it to where Chad made it, which was very disappointing, who we supported.
• 31:52
  So, you know, over the years, you know, being through a teenager, over the years we got to experience highs and lows and see all that sort of stuff and
• 32:04
  And I think nowadays, you know, you look at where these teenagers are, you know, either on the street causing trouble and stuff like that at night time.
• 32:16
  And I'm just, you know, thankful that we were able to be in a position where, you know, we had this sport that we loved and, you know, had parents that were very supportive of being able to do that sport so that we weren't in those sort of situations.
• 32:33
  Back in, you know, saying that we're old now, Rusty, you know, it's a fair bit different now.
• 32:41
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 32:42
  I mean, it's great, as you say, a very good distraction, that stuff.
• 32:47
  Great for family and things like that.
• 32:48
  Family unity, I think, motorsports.
• 32:50
  So, I mean, you raise a really good point there.
• 32:52
  Let's come back to the advent of PWR.
• 32:54
  You can join the dots here for me if I don't quite get this right.
• 32:57
  So, I think for memory, you and your dad, your dad might have been navigating, you might have been driving.
• 33:01
  Might have been the Australian Safari and something goes wrong, unfortunately, for the pair of you.
• 33:05
  And you have basically about eight hours on the sidelines.
• 33:09
  And during that period is kind of when you white papered the whole idea of what became PWR, didn't you?
• 33:17
  Yeah, I started a little bit before that.
• 33:21
  You are correct about we had eight hours on the side of the track on the safari.
• 33:25
  We decided that we weren't going to change a part the night before.
• 33:29
  We were going to change it the next day, which was a silly mistake.
• 33:33
  Anyway, that part broke.
• 33:35
  Before that, when we put the aluminium furnace in, I was doing an apprenticeship as a toolmaker there at K&J Radiators, and he said to me, he said, oh, well,
• 33:45
  why don't you go to TAFE and learn how to weld aluminium?
• 33:50
  And I said, why?
• 33:51
  He goes, well, you know, all these race car guys here in Australia, you know, they're getting radiators from America or Europe or wherever, and why don't you start a business where we can make the radiators here and we can fold up the tanks and if you know how to weld aluminium, you can weld the tanks on and start your own business.
• 34:12
  Yeah.
• 34:13
  So we basically started that way and then there was one, yes, one safari where, yeah, broke down on the side of the track and we were sitting there basically on top of the roof of the car and talking about, you know, hey, I think that, yeah, we already started, you know, obviously we started supplying radio just to, you know, with the V8 supercars and we supplied the whole field basically and, yeah,
• 34:41
  And everyone got that and he goes, I think we're good enough to take on the rest of the world.
• 34:48
  So that was, yeah, sort of 2008, 2009.
• 34:51
  And we sort of, yeah, we went, you know, he flew to North Carolina with a radiator in his arm.
• 35:00
  Lee Diffie.
• 35:01
  gave us an introduction to Jack Roush.
• 35:05
  And so basically that was, you know, our first, you know, introduction of exporting radios overseas to, you know, race teams.
• 35:16
  And so we've been, I think it was within like three or four months, we took half the NASCAR field off the current supplier, right?
• 35:27
  And then we thought, well, maybe we should have a crack at Formula One.
• 35:34
  we had a trade show in England and a guy called Andy Burton at the time who worked for us and, and he's only just left the company.
• 35:42
  So he worked for us for a fair while.
• 35:45
  He basically tackled Pat Simmons, who at the time was a Renault head designer.
• 35:52
  And Pat Simmons said, okay, well I'll give you opportunity.
• 35:55
  He said, I've had plenty of people tell me if they can make these radiators and all this sort of stuff.
• 36:00
  So he gave us the drawings and,
• 36:03
  And the thing is, you know, with a NASCAR radiator, it's quite simple.
• 36:07
  It's square.
• 36:07
  A Formula 1 radiator isn't square and it's shaped to, you know, obviously go around and it sits in the side pods.
• 36:17
  Back in 2009, 2010, around that era, they were, you know, quite simple compared to what they are now.
• 36:25
  The fins and the tube are inclined.
• 36:28
  They're twisted.
• 36:29
  They're, you know, a different shape all the way through.
• 36:32
  They're pieces of art, Paul, aren't they?
• 36:34
  They are like pieces of art.
• 36:36
  And so we looked at this radiator and we were like, how the hell are we going to make this?
• 36:45
  and the Australian way of, yeah, not giving up.
• 36:48
  And we said, yep, we're going to have them.
• 36:50
  Yeah, we're going to make it.
• 36:52
  And we ended up making it.
• 36:53
  It took us back probably two or three weeks to be able to make about five guys coming up with ideas of how to make it.
• 37:01
  And, yeah.
• 37:03
  The funny thing was that at the time Renault supplied Red Bull Formula 1 and so Renault didn't actually test the radiator and so Red Bull actually tested the radiator and we get a phone call from Red Bull and they said, hey, we just tested the radiator.
• 37:22
  I can't remember what circuit it was and they said it gave us 0.2 of a second advantage over...
• 37:30
  what we currently use because, you know, obviously with the side pods and everything like that, you know, with the flow through the side pods and everything, they said, yeah, 0.2 of a second advantage and you're on the car for next year.
• 37:45
  That's big in Formula 1.
• 37:46
  Yeah.
• 37:47
  In Formula 1 is massive.
• 37:49
  And he said, oh, you're on the car for next year.
• 37:51
  And we said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on one second.
• 37:55
  Like this thing took us like three months to make or whatever it was.
• 37:58
  And we're like, yeah.
• 38:00
  one car next year, how many sets of radiators do you use?
• 38:04
  And they go, oh, pretty much a set every race plus the oil cooler.
• 38:09
  And we're like, yeah, no, we can't do that.
• 38:12
  And they go, well, you've really got no choice.
• 38:16
  We want you to be on the car.
• 38:18
  You've got to be on the car.
• 38:20
  And so we said, all right, well, let's do it.
• 38:23
  And we ended up doing it and making –
• 38:30
  all the long nights and a lot of tired people making radiators and oil callers for Red Bull.
• 38:37
  And that was the first year that they had this new young guy come up from Toro Rosso, which was Sebastian Vettel.
• 38:45
  And...
• 38:47
  Basically, that was the first year when he won the world championship.
• 38:53
  And we ended up doing a deal with Red Bull, which was they come to us in Melbourne and they said, hey, we don't want you to supply Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes.
• 39:07
  And we said, well, you can't really tell us who to supply and not to supply.
• 39:12
  And they said, well, we can if we give you a check.
• 39:17
  And so they paid us for three years not to supply those three teams, which was perfect.
• 39:25
  We thought that was fantastic.
• 39:27
  You know, they said you can supply everyone else, whoever else there is, you can supply, but just not those three teams.
• 39:33
  And so that was sort of our first foray into Formula 1.
• 39:38
  You know, the technology technology,
• 39:42
  that we have now compared to what we had, you know, back in 2008, 9, 10.
• 39:50
  And it is amazing how advanced it is.
• 39:55
  I still get blown away every time, you know, I'm not involved day-to-day into the business anymore.
• 40:01
  Still obviously very involved anyway, as Keyes was the CEO and now he's the chairman.
• 40:09
  And, you know,
• 40:10
  You know, we still keep in touch with a lot of great people there.
• 40:13
  We've had people who've worked for us for, you know, 23 and 28 years and stuff like that.
• 40:19
  Like the average, I think the average person at PWR has worked for us for over 10 years.
• 40:26
  So it shows how, you know, how much of a great company it is that it got built up to be.
• 40:31
  And, you know, now I think they're...
• 40:35
  almost up to about 450 people worldwide.
• 40:38
  So it's remarkable of something that you started that, you know, I never thought that, you know, who would buy radiators off us, you know, that was my thing to keys, you know, why, why would I, you know, go and learn how to weld at nighttime, who would buy radiators off us?
• 40:56
  That was, that was my biggest thing to him.
• 40:58
  And, um,
• 40:59
  He reminds me of that every now and then.
• 41:02
  And I said, yeah, you were right.
• 41:06
  I hate to admit it, like we always do.
• 41:09
  But, you know, very visionary fellow he was, well, he is, and still is.
• 41:23
  That's the end of part one of my podcast with off-roader, businessman and former supercars racer Paul Wheel.
• 41:28
  Despite just missing out on the win in the famous Baja 1000 in recent weeks, which would probably leave most of us not wanting to talk to anyone as you tried to process it, Wheelie is eyes forward and he's up for a chat today, as you can probably tell.
• 41:41
  we are only at the halfway mark of this convo.
• 41:44
  There is a part two all loaded up in our library whenever you are ready.
• 41:48
  From supercars to riding with Darrell Beattie in some iconic parts of Australia during the pandemic, the new machine that he and Toby have on the way for next year's off-road season in the US and Mexico, plus the next-generation wheel taking aim at the Olympic Games.