Latest / Rusty's Garage / Stephen Grove | Part 2 - Supercars team ownership & hitting the headlines.

Transcript

Stephen Grove | Part 2 - Supercars team ownership & hitting the headlines. · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  Listener.
• 0:04
  G'day, it's Rusty here.
• 0:04
  All set for part two of my feature episode with Stephen Grove.
• 0:08
  As we always say, if you've arrived here without giving part one a listen, make sure you jump back to the garage library and hit the gas on that first.
• 0:15
  In many ways, it sets us up for the motor racing component of the discussion.
• 0:20
  There's a strong focus there on business, the start and the advent of what we now know as Grove Group, Grove Hire, and why it is such an incredible success story that has largely flown
• 0:32
  He is very much a family guy that prefers to let the results do the talking, but motor racing is a different place.
• 0:40
  It's played out in the public eye.
• 0:42
  So you'll learn about how he met his idol when he was younger.
• 0:47
  The incredible moment.
• 0:48
  relentless pursuit of success that he has how he caught the motor racing bug and a whole lot more this second part has a strong focus obviously on team ownership in supercars some of the current headlines and a whole lot more hope you enjoy it let's get into the combo now
• 1:07
  Before we come to team ownership, can I touch on the fact that you've rattled off Jules Gunon there, or Bamba, there are more, right?
• 1:16
  The involvement with internationals, if you go to a spa or a Le Mans or whatever, I can totally understand why you might want to rope in someone like that who's perhaps got a bit more experience.
• 1:25
  But you've not been afraid to bring them out here and run them with different things out here.
• 1:29
  You quite...
• 1:31
  I could be wrong, but I reckon there might have even been someone turn up at a test that I was at at Winton last December and things like that too.
• 1:37
  So you're not afraid to keep involving them in supercars.
• 1:41
  And I love that.
• 1:41
  I think that's a good thing.
• 1:44
  Yeah, definitely.
• 1:44
  I mean, that's the biggest thing I noticed when we started doing it.
• 1:46
  And we raced with some of the best GT teams in the world and some of the best GT drivers in the world.
• 1:51
  And it gets you another perspective on how good they are as well.
• 1:54
  I mean, supercars is exceptional.
• 1:55
  It's very good.
• 1:56
  The talent is huge.
• 1:57
  But they do things differently.
• 1:58
  I mean, to run a car for 24 hours, the pit stops you need to do, the tire changes.
• 2:04
  And I remember them, which I probably couldn't do now, but we had to do driver change in 14 seconds.
• 2:10
  driver out, driver in, and you've got to go, and you've got to go, and you've got to go.
• 2:14
  So we learn a lot from that, and we learn a lot from the drivers over there and their ability and how they race and how they prepare, and you're racing without sleep, and how they handle all those things.
• 2:25
  So I think it'd be crazy not to look overseas, and I think more teams will, because it just brings other dimensions to your race team.
• 2:33
  Yeah, and that's permeated through the race team in other ways, too, not just in a driving sense, which we can...
• 2:39
  We can perhaps come to.
• 2:40
  So when does the idea you've had a successful business, you've done some sponsorship of, you know, Tasman and even helped Scotty McLaughlin and involved Anton Di Pasquale, things like that.
• 2:52
  You've got your own racing program.
• 2:53
  When does the idea creep in about maybe getting a supercars team?
• 2:59
  How did that, where did that come about?
• 3:01
  Did you map out a plan?
• 3:03
  How did that all kind of start?
• 3:04
  Yeah.
• 3:05
  That's, that's something that I said to Brian, I went into Brenton's office.
• 3:08
  I'll never forget this.
• 3:10
  I went in and said to him.
• 3:11
  What year are we talking here?
• 3:12
  2020, I think 2021, 20, I think 2020.
• 3:18
  And I went in and said to him, we need to challenge ourselves.
• 3:21
  Not that we don't have enough challenges.
• 3:23
  Can we make a supercar team successful?
• 3:25
  That was a challenge for me.
• 3:27
  It was more for me.
• 3:28
  It wasn't to challenge or beat anybody else.
• 3:30
  It was just, you know, I like the challenges.
• 3:33
  Can we do that?
• 3:33
  And I said, we need to see if we can buy some licenses.
• 3:38
  And then he went away, thought about it, come back.
• 3:39
  He said, nah, I don't think we should buy licenses.
• 3:42
  I think we should buy a team.
• 3:44
  And then just through some discussions and then we knew Todd and Rick wanted to sell their team.
• 3:50
  So we started some discussions with them and then that developed and we brought the team.
• 3:55
  We ran it 50-50 for one year.
• 3:57
  The plan always was for them to exit and for us to take on.
• 4:01
  And I just wanted to challenge myself to see if we could make it happen.
• 4:04
  How big a difference is that business to other businesses that you've run?
• 4:08
  Is it diametrically opposed?
• 4:09
  Are there principles that still apply?
• 4:11
  How different is the racing business in that sense?
• 4:14
  Well, it's two opposites.
• 4:15
  The first one is it's exactly the same in business.
• 4:17
  It's about people.
• 4:19
  Business is the same.
• 4:20
  You can't do any, you know, you can't grow a business by yourself.
• 4:24
  You need people around you and you employ people and you grow it.
• 4:26
  So that's, you need people, you need good people.
• 4:29
  Um, so that's very, very same as supercars.
• 4:32
  It's a very, at the opposite side is it's very insular.
• 4:36
  Like, you know, people move from team to team all the time.
• 4:39
  There's only 11 teams.
• 4:40
  There's sponsor movement from team to team.
• 4:42
  Yeah.
• 4:43
  And I haven't sort of, I, I,
• 4:46
  That really surprised me.
• 4:47
  It surprised me because it is so insular.
• 4:49
  There's just so few people that do it.
• 4:52
  And that's why we wanted to look overseas.
• 4:53
  And that's why we wanted to try and do things a bit differently.
• 4:57
  Okay.
• 4:57
  So do you start some conversations with Ford?
• 5:01
  Do they come to you ultimately?
• 5:03
  And did you maybe look at other, you know, overtures from other manufacturers?
• 5:07
  What transpires there?
• 5:08
  Yeah.
• 5:08
  No, it was pretty well always Ford because that's the way that Todd and Rick were going.
• 5:12
  They were going down the Ford road.
• 5:13
  So it was a natural progression for us to continue with that.
• 5:17
  We had some discussions about that, but it was a natural sort of progression just to stay with Ford and run with Ford.
• 5:23
  I like the – I mean, Ford is a public listed company.
• 5:26
  But for me, they're still a fairly family-orientated company.
• 5:30
  Nice.
• 5:30
  A bit like Penright.
• 5:31
  Yes.
• 5:31
  You know, family-orientated and fighting the battles, you know, against the big boys.
• 5:37
  And that's like we have.
• 5:38
  Most of our competitors in business are publicly listed companies.
• 5:41
  So we like to fight as well.
• 5:43
  I mean, that's probably what drives me the most is the fight.
• 5:45
  Fight, yeah.
• 5:47
  So, yeah, we stayed with Ford and away we went.
• 5:49
  Does that loose plan that you or that concept that you had with Brenton and what you wanted it ultimately to be, how close is the alignment to what you have today?
• 6:01
  Do you have today what you dreamt or what you wanted in 2020 or are you still not quite there?
• 6:08
  Well, from a performance perspective, we're definitely not there.
• 6:13
  From a team perspective and the infrastructure we have, we're definitely there.
• 6:17
  I mean, we built a good infrastructure.
• 6:18
  We brought the factory from or the location from the Kelly family and we developed that to what we wanted, which I thought came up really good, you know, getting everyone together.
• 6:29
  And, yeah, I think that part of it has, but the ability, you know, we just haven't, I mean, yes, we won Bathurst, but we really haven't won anything yet.
• 6:38
  Okay.
• 6:39
  That's a big call, mate.
• 6:40
  Like, you have won some things.
• 6:42
  You've got some amazing stuff happening with Kai.
• 6:44
  You've won the Bathurst 1000.
• 6:45
  I know that's not enough for you to rest your laurels on.
• 6:48
  You're doing enormously well in the championship, but you are...
• 6:51
  downplaying that.
• 6:52
  Is that permeated through the whole race team?
• 6:54
  Like, let's just keep a lid on that, be realistic, and that's the way you'll help the thing to succeed?
• 6:59
  Is that a thing?
• 7:01
  Well, that's a hard one because you've got to make sure that the team, you know, really celebrate what they achieved.
• 7:06
  Totally.
• 7:07
  And they do that, and they're very good like that, and then they get back to it.
• 7:10
  Just for me, I mean, when you lead an organisation, you need to be looking, you know, two, three, four, five years ahead, and you need to be driving that continuous improvement.
• 7:19
  Right.
• 7:20
  And that's what I try and do.
• 7:21
  And for me, it's just, I don't know, enough's probably never been enough in relation to what results for me.
• 7:28
  And there's good things and bad things with that.
• 7:31
  But if you build a certain way, you build a certain way.
• 7:34
  And that's what's helped me build a business.
• 7:35
  So, yeah, it's just the way it is.
• 7:38
  You identified people before as a key thing.
• 7:41
  And there are many more here.
• 7:43
  We're rattling off a couple of them.
• 7:44
  But there's the sum of many parts.
• 7:45
  I appreciate that, right?
• 7:47
  But you brought in, you got, you...
• 7:49
  You roped in or garnered some good people in.
• 7:52
  I mean, I think of Grant McPherson, for example, among others.
• 7:56
  In the same way that you've ultimately, I think, targeted drivers or built in that regard too, was it the same in the background?
• 8:02
  You were like, we're going to need some of these people, that person over there and so on.
• 8:05
  Did you target them?
• 8:06
  Yeah.
• 8:07
  The only one we really targeted early was probably David Couchy.
• 8:12
  So we looked around and it was only through discussions.
• 8:15
  It wasn't, you know.
• 8:16
  Poaching kind of.
• 8:17
  It was never poaching in the sense it was, here's an opportunity for you to grow in a different role.
• 8:24
  You know, if you can't see that where you are, is an opportunity to come and do that with us?
• 8:28
  And the answer to that was yes.
• 8:29
  And he came over.
• 8:29
  Yeah.
• 8:31
  Everybody else has sort of either contacted us or we've known that there's a process where they want to move on or they want to look at other opportunities.
• 8:41
  And that's the sort of the way we've built it.
• 8:42
  And outside of that, we've tried to get our own people.
• 8:45
  And I'm still really big on getting our own people, you know, our own drivers, our own mechanics, our own engineers.
• 8:52
  So we've worked really hard to try and build our own people.
• 8:54
  uh, bread of people.
• 8:56
  But the problem with that is then everybody wants to come and take them.
• 9:00
  Okay.
• 9:00
  So you, you like the, the system in the same way you've got a junior team, it's the same you're saying from an engineering perspective, bring people through, whether they've come from university or whatever and give them an opportunity to grow within the, the race team.
• 9:12
  Yeah.
• 9:12
  Well, Jack Bell, he came out of university, really smart kid, good go-kartter too.
• 9:16
  Very, very good go-kartter in his day.
• 9:18
  So he came and worked for me on the Career of Cup.
• 9:20
  So he spent one year with me just doing all my data and all my engineering and that and started to learn how we think and what we do.
• 9:29
  And he just developed from there and then he progressed.
• 9:32
  Matt Payne's no different.
• 9:34
  Brenton spoke to me about Matt.
• 9:35
  I remember I came back and did a Career of Cup round a fair few years ago.
• 9:42
  And Matt Payne was in the other car.
• 9:44
  And I remember looking at his data, comparing it to mine, and there was no comparison.
• 9:49
  And I'd said to Brendan, yeah, I mean, this kid is exceptional.
• 9:52
  We can see it from his data.
• 9:54
  So that sort of developed from there.
• 9:56
  Kai is someone that we sort of kept an eye on because –
• 9:59
  He just was young and he just really had that killer instinct.
• 10:02
  And that was a great opportunity for us to grab him.
• 10:05
  Nice.
• 10:05
  We'll expand on both of those guys a little bit more.
• 10:07
  I love Kai's personality too.
• 10:11
  He's got a great personality with some of the stuff that he's doing.
• 10:12
  You mentioned David Couchy there before, and I think he might have spoken a little bit to Will and Brodie on the Lucky Dogs pod about this.
• 10:18
  Do you have a thought about, you know –
• 10:21
  Uh, he was with you in a significant growth phase.
• 10:23
  He's no longer there.
• 10:24
  What, what, how do you feel about that now?
• 10:27
  Listen, we were extremely disappointed when, you know, he told us he wanted to go back, but the reasons were right.
• 10:32
  I think at the time for him, he wanted to go back for, for, for personal reasons.
• 10:35
  Yeah.
• 10:36
  And I think it was definitely right for him to do that.
• 10:38
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:39
  Um, because he, he, he'd sort of developed and he was down here and he just would work all the time.
• 10:43
  You know, he had no, you know, uh, not much time to do socializing and get out.
• 10:47
  So him going, but it's the same as business.
• 10:50
  You can't rely on.
• 10:52
  on any one person in any business.
• 10:55
  And we've always in our businesses built depth and we do the same that, you know, it gives people opportunities to grow.
• 11:01
  I mean, look where Al's grown now and I look where Jack's grown.
• 11:04
  And I think that creates opportunities.
• 11:07
  Nice.
• 11:08
  You know, they then get to enjoy a win at the Great Race, the Bathurst 1000.
• 11:14
  The planets align a little bit.
• 11:15
  Triple M are attached to us here at Listener.
• 11:18
  So I was with them for the
• 11:21
  Penright supported that, you know, 100th anniversary for the company and so on, and you guys win the damn race.
• 11:28
  How are you, you know, mid to late afternoon when you're thinking maybe this might happen kind of thing?
• 11:35
  Did you allow yourself to think that or was it wait until it crosses the line?
• 11:40
  Oh, it's definitely a way to cross the line because you can come short a lot.
• 11:43
  And I've always, from the day one we owned a race team, I've always tried to say, you know, if I see something going wrong, I won't get involved.
• 11:51
  You know, we'll make some notes and we'll debrief on the Monday.
• 11:53
  I'd never get involved.
• 11:54
  You know, we should pit, we shouldn't pit.
• 11:56
  Okay.
• 11:57
  Um, yeah.
• 11:58
  But I was screaming at everybody, absolutely anybody that would listen, is make sure Matt doesn't try and pass him.
• 12:06
  Like, we're here.
• 12:07
  We're home here.
• 12:07
  I can't remember.
• 12:08
  A couple laps to go.
• 12:09
  He's five-second penalty at front.
• 12:11
  We're home.
• 12:11
  As long as the car lasts.
• 12:13
  I mean, once he sort of batted off Dave Reynolds, I thought, yeah, okay, we're going to look good here.
• 12:19
  But-
• 12:20
  I didn't want him bombing it down there and then hitting cars and going.
• 12:22
  So I was screaming.
• 12:24
  No one was listening, but I certainly was screaming it.
• 12:27
  Tell him, you know, not to let him pass.
• 12:29
  The drivers.
• 12:30
  Kai Allen, what attracted you to him?
• 12:33
  When did you first sort of, did he first come on your radar?
• 12:36
  And I mean, you mentioned a little bit about him there a moment ago.
• 12:39
  What makes him so good in your mind?
• 12:41
  Yeah.
• 12:41
  Well, sort of from the Ecclestons, you know, we'd seen their people come through.
• 12:44
  Brenton raced with them.
• 12:46
  He did Super 2, and we see them a lot.
• 12:49
  We're quite close from a racing perspective.
• 12:52
  Yeah.
• 12:52
  So we sort of kept an eye on the drivers they'd had, and I've had some great drivers come through there.
• 12:57
  And I think it was a race in Perth where Kai, he didn't qualify that well, and he was sort of towards the back, and he came all the way through and drove through.
• 13:07
  And I sort of said to Brenton, you know, we should probably have a discussion with this guy, and we did.
• 13:13
  And so I did, I think, within a week, and the deal was done, and we just could see the talent in him.
• 13:19
  I did a short cast with him at one stage and he was in the workshop
• 13:24
  late afternoon and all the lights went out.
• 13:25
  So he's one of the last there.
• 13:26
  So he applies himself beyond the race car too.
• 13:29
  Is that right?
• 13:29
  Oh, most definitely.
• 13:30
  I mean, he spends a lot of time developing a simulator.
• 13:34
  They wanted to build a new simulator.
• 13:37
  So I said to them, on one condition, you build two.
• 13:40
  So they built one for the workshop and I got one at home.
• 13:42
  And he does all the software for that and the way he sets up the tracks for me.
• 13:47
  And he sends me some, you know, a lot of different stuff to work on.
• 13:50
  And now he's building an even more advanced simulator.
• 13:53
  simulator, um, which really helps.
• 13:55
  He spends a lot of time on it.
• 13:56
  Nice.
• 13:56
  And I think that's really helped him, you know, when it comes to fuel saving and tire, you know, looking after the tires, just the simulation he does, I think is really helping him to develop in that area.
• 14:06
  Okay.
• 14:07
  Can I come to Garth Tander?
• 14:08
  Firstly, were you kind of surprised to, to get him and what were the early convos like with GT?
• 14:14
  Again, that was something driven by Brenton to get him over as a co-driver.
• 14:19
  He'd done some work for me again in Cupcar.
• 14:21
  He spent a little bit of time doing some engineering for me, some data engineering, been my engineer once he left racing full-time.
• 14:29
  And yeah, Brenton just said, yeah, I think we should do this deal.
• 14:32
  I mean, he's the right guy.
• 14:33
  So we sat down and-
• 14:34
  And we managed to put a deal together and he was great to get for us.
• 14:37
  Was he?
• 14:37
  And just good to bounce ideas off.
• 14:39
  And I still speak to him now.
• 14:40
  I'll ring him.
• 14:41
  I mean, I'm not as involved on the real day-to-day issues, but I'll ring him if something pops up and get his point of view.
• 14:47
  And he's pretty well nearly always spot on.
• 14:49
  I think he always sort of had that, it didn't pan out, I know, but he had that dream to do something perhaps very similar.
• 14:55
  Maybe it's an extension of that, that you guys have with him when he was, you know, looking at that with GRM toward the end of his full-time career and so on.
• 15:03
  So you've given him that, I think, what he was looking for to begin with.
• 15:09
  How does he help now and what ways is he perhaps helping the juniors and things like that?
• 15:15
  What things does he do there?
• 15:16
  Yeah.
• 15:17
  I suppose mostly it's race craft.
• 15:19
  You know, if the guys make a mistake or, you know, they hit someone and send someone off or they do something, he can actually sit down because he comes with a lot of credentials.
• 15:28
  Yep.
• 15:29
  I mean, he was a hard, hard racer in his day.
• 15:31
  So it's really helping mentoring the guys in how to race, really.
• 15:36
  Yeah.
• 15:37
  His young bloke turns up from time to time, Sebastian, too.
• 15:39
  I think I saw him at that test I was talking about before at Winton in December.
• 15:43
  He gives him a bit of a job to do each time when he fronts up, too, doesn't he?
• 15:46
  Yeah.
• 15:46
  Well, that's the thing, and it's always good.
• 15:48
  I mean, he's still a part of our junior program, and it's good to see that because you've got to really work hard at anything.
• 15:55
  I mean, especially when you get to supercar level, all the guys are talented, all of them.
• 15:59
  So it's the ones that work harder and the ones that adapt are the ones that will be successful.
• 16:03
  You must have recognized early on, did you?
• 16:05
  Like you talked about that five-, ten-year plan and so on, that you need to look beyond the supercar support paddock for that next generation, did you?
• 16:13
  When did that –
• 16:14
  side of the, or component of the race team business become a thing for you too?
• 16:19
  Again, it was pretty early.
• 16:21
  I spent a lot of time with Brent.
• 16:22
  We watch a fair bit of racing and we just sort of see who's progressing and, you know, who's not, I suppose.
• 16:28
  What do you look for in them?
• 16:29
  What's the thing that stands out for you?
• 16:31
  Not just results.
• 16:31
  You're looking for more than that though, clearly.
• 16:33
  Yeah.
• 16:33
  When Matt did Super 2, I mean, I didn't want Matt to put it on pole every round and win every race.
• 16:39
  It was just not what I wanted.
• 16:41
  So for me, if he qualified, he had a bad qualified, didn't get a right or made a mistake and he qualified 10th, I was really happy.
• 16:48
  Because now he's got to fight.
• 16:50
  Has he got the fight?
• 16:51
  Can he come back and can he come through?
• 16:53
  So when he comes back and gets a third, that's an outstanding effort rather than, you know, for me putting it on pole.
• 16:59
  As a young person, it's – and how he works with adversity.
• 17:04
  Can he come back or is it, you know, car shit, it's not my – it's not me and I'm not going to push –
• 17:10
  You know, someone that, that digs deep and comes back.
• 17:12
  So in all those races, even in super two, and I watch now, yeah, I mean, I like to see you put it on pole cause they're fast and it's hard to do.
• 17:19
  And I like to see who wins, but I like to see who, who qualifies, you know, a bit at normal six or seventh, and then they push and they fight.
• 17:26
  For me, it's about the fight.
• 17:27
  Okay.
• 17:28
  It doesn't always work out with youngsters.
• 17:29
  Sometimes you spot someone and you think, oh, you know, they've got potential or they might work out, right?
• 17:33
  And then you've sometimes got to say, well, you know, we've helped a bit in a program to this point, but it's not necessarily going to equate to a full-time drive at, you know, Penride Racing or whatever.
• 17:44
  What's that stuff like when you're helping someone, you know, change course in their dream?
• 17:49
  That's probably the hardest part.
• 17:51
  Of being a team owner, I would think, is you nurture people and you bring people through, but it's sometimes the realization that potentially they're not going to make it.
• 18:02
  And trying to tell somebody that and trying to destroy someone's dream and they're looking at you as their only hope because you're helping to fund, you're helping to get them somewhere.
• 18:13
  That's really tough.
• 18:14
  In mentioning Garth there before, one thing I forgot to say to you is that he gave me a little quote for this too, like Scotty McLaughlin.
• 18:21
  He says, something that stands out about Steve is his relentless pursuit of success.
• 18:26
  Never stop, never settle, always wanting more.
• 18:30
  Impressive, given what he's already achieved, but you still want to climb.
• 18:35
  Is that a learned thing or a nature thing for you that you want to continue to do that?
• 18:40
  Probably a nature thing.
• 18:41
  Is it?
• 18:42
  You know, just, yeah, it's definitely a nature thing.
• 18:45
  You know, never get ahead of yourself.
• 18:47
  You know, never underestimate anybody.
• 18:49
  And you just got to keep working hard.
• 18:51
  And, you know, I've always said if more so in business, you know, if my competitors were getting up at four o'clock in the morning, I'll get up at three.
• 18:58
  If I want to get up at three, I'll get up at two.
• 19:00
  Just keep going.
• 19:00
  I'll do whatever I got to do to work hard to achieve those goals.
• 19:05
  Yeah.
• 19:05
  That's probably just an inbred thing.
• 19:08
  Cool.
• 19:08
  Can I come to Matt Payne?
• 19:09
  You and I spoke about this a little in Darwin.
• 19:12
  Firstly, I sense from that conversation with you, your direct relationship with him.
• 19:17
  There's been a couple of speedhumps, but that's not been impacted by the sounds of things.
• 19:20
  Is that right?
• 19:21
  Yeah.
• 19:21
  Yeah, listen, for us there's been very little impact with him.
• 19:25
  He's got a manager and his job's to do what he needs to do to do it.
• 19:30
  And they're able to divorce that quite well from the racing.
• 19:33
  Okay.
• 19:33
  And Matt, you know, Matt's just a great kid, super talented.
• 19:37
  And for me it was just always just making sure we get the – we got the same goals.
• 19:41
  Hmm.
• 19:42
  He wants to win the championship.
• 19:43
  I want to win the championship.
• 19:44
  You know, he wants to win Bathurst.
• 19:45
  I want to win Bathurst.
• 19:46
  So that sort of helps the process along the way.
• 19:49
  But the media thing, I would imagine, had some impact on him.
• 19:55
  And it did on us a bit just because we didn't want to be talking about it all the time per se.
• 20:01
  But it's a part of the game.
• 20:03
  It's what you sign up for.
• 20:05
  So our relationship's super strong.
• 20:07
  Good.
• 20:08
  The NASCAR thing, it's awkward because you guys are Ford.
• 20:11
  That was a different manufacturer.
• 20:12
  Did it sort of get hit on the, you know, stop pretty quickly the notion of doing something like that?
• 20:20
  That was really hard because from a personal perspective, I mean, what a great opportunity.
• 20:23
  I wanted to, you know, so as a lover of motorsport and someone that's, you know, brought Matt through and we've invested heavily in Matt over the journey, that was hard.
• 20:35
  But on the other side, you know, we've got commercial relationships and I get where we need to be and what we need to afford.
• 20:41
  And GM are quite serious competitors.
• 20:44
  So it just wasn't appropriate to do it.
• 20:47
  Has he been able to parkour that?
• 20:49
  He's got such a relaxed, easygoing nature.
• 20:51
  You've reflected there before about some of his talent.
• 20:54
  I think I can maybe even recall having a conversation with Ronan Murphy about data and things, and he was equally blown away by some of the stuff that Matt is capable of.
• 21:03
  And I feel like we're just, you know, Bathurst is not the beginning, that's not the right word for it, but we're just starting to really get a sense of what Matt Payne is capable of, aren't we?
• 21:12
  Yeah, I mean, his real strength is, and it's really any motor racing, you know, someone that's a very high level, is feel.
• 21:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:21
  So he can go out first lap, first session on a new track, on any conditions, and he can feel the grip.
• 21:28
  He knows that's a little bit over the limit, that's a little bit under the limit, and he can go to that limit.
• 21:33
  So that's a real art to have race car drivers that can have feel.
• 21:38
  I mean, I know on some circuits I've said to him, you know, where are you breaking into turn one?
• 21:42
  You know, I want to try that in the cup car.
• 21:43
  And he goes, no.
• 21:45
  I don't really have a marker.
• 21:46
  I go, well, you've got to give me a marker.
• 21:48
  And he goes, I just do it on feel.
• 21:51
  I go, I don't.
• 21:52
  Tell me the marker.
• 21:52
  That's where I'm breaking.
• 21:54
  So, yeah, he has an exceptional feel.
• 22:01
  There's a quote recently, and tell me if this is not accurate or whatever.
• 22:04
  You want to dominate.
• 22:06
  Now, the beauty of a long-form conversation like a podcast like this is that you can put context around that, you know,
• 22:12
  expand on what was a headline, I guess, that maybe reflects the competitive side that you've talked about in the pod here.
• 22:18
  Maybe just peel that back.
• 22:20
  What does that mean, basically?
• 22:25
  I mean, that was a quote in context.
• 22:28
  The one thing it didn't pick up is I said, that's what I want.
• 22:31
  But I'm a realist and understand the level of competition.
• 22:35
  So, you know, I didn't want to put anybody down and say, I think I'm going to dominate because that's far from me.
• 22:41
  Yeah, we've arrived, I'm the man kind of thing.
• 22:42
  Yeah, that's craziness.
• 22:44
  It's not me.
• 22:45
  But the question I was asked at the time is like a championship game.
• 22:50
  All you want now is maybe one more Bathurst.
• 22:53
  And my answer was, no, I want to dominate.
• 22:55
  Of course, I want to win every race.
• 22:57
  And every time we roll out, unless we're 23rd and 24th, I really believe we've got a chance to win.
• 23:02
  Now, that doesn't happen that much.
• 23:03
  I mean, we won seven races this year.
• 23:05
  However many races there's been, we've won seven.
• 23:07
  So that obviously didn't work out too well for me.
• 23:10
  But…
• 23:11
  That's all I want.
• 23:11
  In every session, I want to be the fastest.
• 23:13
  In quality, I want to be on pole.
• 23:15
  And it's just driven.
• 23:16
  It's what I want to achieve.
• 23:18
  It's not saying the team has to do that or they're doing a poor job.
• 23:22
  Nowhere near it.
• 23:24
  We work very, very hard on our pit stops to get the pit stop timing down so we could be better at that.
• 23:29
  So surely, yes, the answer is I do want to dominate.
• 23:32
  Yeah.
• 23:33
  Can that be achieved?
• 23:34
  Time will tell.
• 23:35
  But you've got to aim really high to try and achieve your goals.
• 23:39
  Because if it was like one more Bathurst or one championship, if you won the championship and you said, well, I'm done now, well, I think you're in the wrong sport.
• 23:47
  Yeah, what's the point of being there?
• 23:48
  I'm really pleased that you put some context around that.
• 23:50
  Thank you for doing that.
• 23:52
  We are recording this just days out from the Court of Appeal hearing on, you know, Perth tyre pressure gate.
• 23:58
  I'm surprised someone hasn't rolled out a headline like that.
• 24:00
  But I'm very conscious not to jeopardise that there are those proceedings.
• 24:04
  Can I just give you an open forum here, your chance to share maybe your view, your position and how confident you perhaps feel?
• 24:12
  Yeah, I mean, from a technical side and the technical side, they'll work through that as we go through that.
• 24:16
  I mean, for us, we're not appealing.
• 24:20
  It's supercars.
• 24:21
  Supercars, yes.
• 24:21
  The decision was made and we moved on from that.
• 24:24
  So, listen, moving forward, I was quite shocked that supercars would do that because they've never done that in their history of running the sport.
• 24:35
  But that's their right to do it and that's the way it says and whatever happens, happens.
• 24:39
  And...
• 24:40
  I think we're arguing about 105 points, which is a lot of points, but we'll just work hard if we're not fortunate to go in the right direction and get those points.
• 24:49
  But yeah, I just think, especially as a race car driver, I've been on the back of a few Stuarts, poor results, what I would say would be poor results or good results.
• 24:59
  And you just got to accept what you got to accept.
• 25:01
  So I was a bit disappointed they didn't accept that, but it is what it is and we'll move on.
• 25:05
  Is the irony here, you know, some rivals are fired up, you know, the sport, the fans are all talking about it and so on.
• 25:13
  Does that sort of in some ways show just how far as a team that you have come?
• 25:19
  You know, I mean, I'm not asking you if there's satisfaction in that.
• 25:22
  That's the wrong word.
• 25:24
  But it does illustrate...
• 25:25
  you know, with everyone talking about this, don't you think?
• 25:29
  Most definitely.
• 25:30
  And there's been some other examples.
• 25:32
  I mean, the scrutineering we've had this year has been unbelievable.
• 25:36
  You know, we want to check your fuel loads.
• 25:38
  We want to check, I mean, that's their job and that's what they need to do.
• 25:41
  There's a radio issue at the moment where we had 14 radios, you're only supposed to have 12 and that's because the other radio system doesn't work and I'm not sure whether supercars got that 100% right.
• 25:51
  There's only six radios allowed per team.
• 25:54
  Um, and I had one of those radios and that's to listen and, and, and have some very minor input to it, but you can only have six and that's the way it is.
• 26:02
  So, you know, they came down, they took photos of all of us.
• 26:06
  They took us to the Stuarts about it.
• 26:07
  We're funny enough, we're the only team that happened to go to the Stuarts.
• 26:11
  So I think that comes with the territory and I think there'll be a lot more of it.
• 26:15
  Um, and, and Brent and I have spoke about this, you know, this is going to be a lot more, but that's the fight.
• 26:20
  I mean, that's the fight we fight every day.
• 26:23
  The difference is we do it for a living.
• 26:25
  Yes.
• 26:25
  You know, in business, you're always fighting.
• 26:27
  I mean, it's just, it's the essence of what you're trying to achieve.
• 26:31
  So it's not new to us.
• 26:33
  So we're up for the fighting.
• 26:35
  I would imagine with you, like you, it sounds like you welcome the intensity, no problem there at all.
• 26:40
  The nature of the business that you run, um,
• 26:43
  probably has some of it, but by and large, you try and keep it without BS and politics.
• 26:49
  Does the BS and politics that the game has sometimes, does that drive you mad or how do you feel about that?
• 26:53
  It definitely drives me mad.
• 26:55
  I mean, supercars had said to us that we had five teams going crazy that you should have had a penalty.
• 27:01
  And to me, that's political.
• 27:04
  There's politics involved in that.
• 27:07
  But that's the way it is.
• 27:08
  I mean, I don't try and change anything.
• 27:10
  I accept what it is, but...
• 27:12
  as long as they know, you know, we're up for the fight too.
• 27:15
  I mean, you know, that's probably what gets us out of bed in the morning is not just the fight but the ability to...
• 27:22
  Try and work out solutions, trying to work out ways of, you know, doing things better.
• 27:28
  And it drives you.
• 27:29
  You're at a point in the pit lane now where you can have a view on things.
• 27:33
  What is the game doing well?
• 27:35
  What could the game more broadly do better?
• 27:37
  And that could expand to anything.
• 27:39
  It could be events, you name it.
• 27:41
  What could it do better?
• 27:43
  Well, the one thing that really drove home to me was Townsville.
• 27:47
  And I remember walking from Pitt Garages down to Carrera Cup.
• 27:51
  I wanted to, well, Challenge.
• 27:53
  I wanted to go down and see a couple of the guys down there.
• 27:56
  And I could nearly not see because they were doing burnouts and the smoke was just intense.
• 28:01
  And I really said, you know, I think we've got to move on from that now.
• 28:05
  I'm not saying you don't do burnouts, but what I'm saying is the way we used to conduct the way we run events, I think has changed dramatically.
• 28:12
  And I think we just need to do things better.
• 28:14
  Okay.
• 28:15
  So actually stop and consider what modern fans might want.
• 28:20
  Is that what you mean?
• 28:21
  Yeah, most definitely.
• 28:21
  I mean,
• 28:23
  I mean, I know there's been a lot said about Live Golf, but when you go and look what they've done to golf, it's extraordinary.
• 28:29
  That Adelaide event is massive.
• 28:32
  They've just changed the way it's done.
• 28:35
  I mean, cricket back in the day when we went from watching a five-day game down to a one-day, I'm not advocating that they adopt those things, but I think they need to modernize the way and the product that they supply.
• 28:48
  And I think you could still do that respectfully at some events with history, tradition, and so on.
• 28:53
  But by embracing some of the stuff that Liv did for the fans and taking away some of the things that we accepted with golfers, that's always the way that it was done and changing it up.
• 29:05
  There's nothing wrong with that.
• 29:06
  No.
• 29:06
  No.
• 29:07
  I mean, someone my age likes car racing.
• 29:11
  We've been there.
• 29:11
  We've done it.
• 29:12
  They like it.
• 29:12
  They like all the stuff.
• 29:13
  But you're trying to bring a different demographic now.
• 29:15
  I think, yeah.
• 29:16
  You want kids at five and six and seven and eight.
• 29:18
  Or grandkids, mate, to be into it.
• 29:20
  To watch it.
• 29:21
  You want more females to obviously get involved in it as well.
• 29:25
  So you need to offer something different.
• 29:28
  Can I finish this today?
• 29:29
  Very sadly, on a personal note for me today, my father-in-law passed away in the early hours of this morning.
• 29:35
  Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
• 29:36
  No, no, no.
• 29:36
  Thank you.
• 29:38
  Where I'm going is he was in his 80s.
• 29:41
  He ran a surveying business in the place that I now live.
• 29:45
  He ran that for nearly 60 years.
• 29:48
  He did some great things in the community, and he had a bit of the quiet kind of
• 29:54
  competitive stuff that you have.
• 29:56
  He once cycled to celebrate his 70th year of life from the northern tip of New Zealand to Bluff in the south, did the whole, both islands, right?
• 30:05
  I love that stuff.
• 30:06
  And when he ultimately sold the business to a couple of young go-getters or younger go-getters, at that stage of his business, what mattered to him most was the
• 30:16
  the people in the business having a place and a purpose.
• 30:18
  That was one of his things.
• 30:20
  So it's got me thinking about legacy today, right?
• 30:21
  And you haven't necessarily stopped to do that.
• 30:24
  But when you are that guy on the porch in decades time, it'll be some way away.
• 30:29
  What will you be satisfied with in a supercar sense and in a Grove group sense?
• 30:34
  What would you like to look back on and say, yep, did that?
• 30:38
  A couple of things.
• 30:38
  The first thing was that we always did the right thing.
• 30:41
  We always had, you know, integrity for me is massive.
• 30:43
  That we always had integrity and we always came and we gave our best foot forward and we raced.
• 30:48
  And just to see Brenton still involved in it and maybe one of the other grandkids coming through and having some involvement in it.
• 30:55
  Nice.
• 30:55
  Yeah.
• 30:56
  I mean, all the business we have, we've kept them all long-term.
• 30:59
  You know, we're long – you know, I like the attitude you try and keep as much of businesses as long as you can.
• 31:06
  The American model where families run them for 200 years and 300 years is my goal.
• 31:11
  Whether that happens is, you know, we've got other generations coming through that probably want to do other things.
• 31:15
  But from a racing perspective, yeah, the scoreboard will be good.
• 31:21
  But more important to that is to look at the people we've developed to look at.
• 31:25
  I mean, we talk about Matty Payne.
• 31:28
  If he goes over to NASCAR, whatever he does down the track or GT or hypercar, and he dominates, that's exciting for me.
• 31:36
  When Scotty McLachlan went over to America, we have no businesses in America, but we still sponsored him for a couple of years on his helmet just to help him progress over there.
• 31:45
  So...
• 31:47
  That's what I'll hold the most, to look back and watch the careers, not just race car drivers, but engineers, and see how people have progressed and bettered their lives is what will be most important to me.
• 31:57
  Love that.
• 31:57
  Finally, if the grandkids say they wouldn't mind going racing, are you cool with that?
• 32:02
  Would you go racing with them maybe one day if you still got the helmet?
• 32:07
  It's a quick funny story.
• 32:08
  So my six-year-old, I bought him a go-kart and it was an electric go-kart, but gee, they're fast.
• 32:12
  Yeah.
• 32:13
  Right, so he drives that around and he said to me on the weekend, he always wants to come and drive the go-kart up at home.
• 32:18
  And he said to me on the weekend, he said, Pa, would you be upset with me if I wasn't a race car driver?
• 32:23
  And I said, of course not, mate.
• 32:24
  You know, you do whatever you want to do.
• 32:26
  Why?
• 32:26
  And he goes, because I want to work in the business.
• 32:28
  Is that right?
• 32:29
  Yeah, so that's a good start.
• 32:31
  He wants to work rather than drive.
• 32:32
  But yeah, I'll support them in whatever they want to do.
• 32:34
  I don't expect any of them to do anything.
• 32:36
  It's the same as I didn't expect my kids when I grew my business to come into the business.
• 32:40
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:41
  That's their choice.
• 32:42
  It was really just me trying to achieve what I could achieve.
• 32:45
  This has been fabulous, mate.
• 32:46
  I love the notion of shining a bit more of a light on someone's story.
• 32:51
  And that's something today that we've done a bit in business, but also on the motor racing side.
• 32:56
  Well done on the achievements so far.
• 32:58
  And I look forward to learning about the beer you have on the porch in your 70s, where you look back on some of that stuff that you would love to achieve.
• 33:04
  Mate, I sincerely hope you get the chance to do that.
• 33:06
  Thank you.
• 33:07
  Appreciate it.
• 33:07
  Thank you.