Latest / Rusty's Garage / Emma Gilmour - Part 1

Transcript

Emma Gilmour - Part 1 · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:17
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust, and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:23
  I'm Rusty's Garage.
• 0:28
  For this episode, I'm chatting with a colleague who I worked on TV with last summer on New Zealand's premier circuit racing series coverage.
• 0:35
  Her own story is bigger than broadcasting, though, and extends beyond the Tasman region.
• 0:41
  It's a mix of automotive, rallying, Extreme E and more.
• 0:45
  Emma Gilmore is a leading light for women in motorsport in this part of the world.
• 0:50
  But as you'll hear...
• 0:51
  She just wanted to be a competitor like everyone else.
• 0:54
  It was born out of a mix of family working in this sector, being around cars and things with engines and wheels a lot, and an almost natural magnetism to the adrenaline-charged fix that only comes with this kind of sport.
• 1:10
  When Emma discovered it, she was off and running.
• 1:12
  It has taken her to lots of places around the world too, from Rallycross overseas to the beautiful roads of the North and South Island, the iconic WRC rounds that have taken place in NZ, and to locations you wouldn't expect where she proudly represented the legendary McLaren team and got to wear the team's famed papaya colours.
• 1:35
  This is a story of highs, lows, rebounding and nothingness.
• 1:39
  Never being afraid to have a go.
• 1:41
  There are parallels too between where Emma has ended up in business and the commercial learnings that motorsport teaches you as you climb.
• 1:50
  What I didn't realise in the lead up to this is that Emma, until now, hasn't really spoken about a massive crash in Extreme E last year.
• 1:58
  It had...
• 1:59
  Quite a recovery period and a bit of a reset before her return.
• 2:03
  I'm grateful Emma felt comfortable to share, but it's even better to see her driving again.
• 2:09
  And I was able to actually see that in person recently at the Southern Lights Rally, an event that had some true night stages and kind of transported you back to the golden days of the sport.
• 2:21
  That's coming up, but we kick off with...
• 2:23
  where it all started for Emma.
• 2:25
  Oh, and she tells a story about riding on the back of a motorcycle with her dad.
• 2:30
  Just keep that in perspective too.
• 2:31
  That was back in the day.
• 2:33
  The world's a different place now and it's not Emma Gilmore or me endorsing speed on the roads.
• 2:39
  The safe and controlled confines of a properly run and controlled motorsport event is the place we both believe you should be doing that.
• 2:48
  Enjoy the chat.
• 2:52
  Hello, Emma Gilmore.
• 2:53
  Where do we find you?
• 2:54
  Dunedin?
• 2:55
  South Island?
• 2:56
  Proud New Zealander?
• 2:58
  Absolutely.
• 2:59
  All of those.
• 3:00
  Tick all of those boxes.
• 3:01
  So, yeah, at home in Dunedin.
• 3:03
  Proud Dunedinite.
• 3:05
  Yeah, born and bred here.
• 3:06
  Now, it has popped up in the podcast once or twice before, but there is a horsepower connection for you, but it is not, to begin with, the car kind.
• 3:18
  Is that right?
• 3:18
  Tell us a little bit about eventing and what you were doing when you were younger and how that first started.
• 3:25
  Yeah, I grew up around cars.
• 3:26
  My dad's a mechanic and my granddad on my mum's side also a mechanic.
• 3:31
  So it was always around cars.
• 3:33
  Wherever we went as children, we went very fast.
• 3:36
  So I sort of grew up with experiencing G-forces, be it in the backseat of mum and dad's car or I'd go pillion on dad's motorbike.
• 3:44
  So always loved speed, but grew up in the 80s when Mark Todd and Charisma were
• 3:51
  won double Olympic gold and I loved horses.
• 3:55
  So yeah, grew up a pony club kid, did all the horse riding, eventing, represented Otago and Southland in that and had ambitions of going to the Olympics.
• 4:05
  That was what I wanted to do.
• 4:08
  And got a fair way along the pathway of that.
• 4:12
  Did development squads and stuff.
• 4:14
  And then sort of, I suppose, as I maybe got a bit more sensible, I'm not sure what it was, but came to a head one day, I had this young horse that I was training and
• 4:24
  he took exception to what I'd asked him to do and didn't want to do that.
• 4:28
  So he started rearing up and I got off because I was scared.
• 4:32
  And as I thought about how I was going to win this argument, you know, and how, you know, to go forward, I was like, God, I really just don't want to get back on him.
• 4:39
  Like I was scared, I guess.
• 4:41
  Yeah, I sort of had that acknowledgement that maybe this wasn't going to be the path for me after all.
• 4:45
  So I gave up horse riding and then that sort of opened up the...
• 4:53
  I guess the time to have a go at other sports and my sister, my older sister Monica and my cousin Gwyn had discovered rally driving.
• 5:01
  Um, and my sister had done the Targa rally with, with my dad as well.
• 5:06
  So we were sort of as a family discovering rallying sort of in the late nineties and started as a navigator.
• 5:12
  Um, and that was sort of where I got that taste for, wow, this is a pretty cool feeling going fast on a gravel road.
• 5:18
  But yeah, it wasn't until I had a drive, had a go myself and I was like, oh my God, I'm hooked.
• 5:23
  Best feeling in the world.
• 5:24
  So yeah, never ever would have pictured where I've ended up if you'd asked me when I was a horse mad teenager.
• 5:31
  But it's been a pretty cool, pretty cool journey.
• 5:35
  Love it.
• 5:35
  You've done some guest speaking over time and you've already started accelerating the conversation, which I love, but it's piqued my interest in a couple of things.
• 5:41
  So firstly, what was dad's motorbike or what was in the garage when you were growing up?
• 5:48
  What were the kind of early – because, I mean, you've ended up –
• 5:52
  uh working not just in a motorsport sense but in the automotive game which will which we'll get to what were the early sort of motor vehicle influences yeah i have early memories of my dad he raced a um a cortina i think it was a cortina and i remember um like being at like um
• 6:10
  levels raceway and when it was getting towed out to the road we'd get to sit in the driver's seat or back in the day when we were kids you know it wasn't such a social no-no for you to sit on your parents lap as you drove down to the shops you know to give experience of driving but my dad actually built a Lister Jaguar replica
• 6:29
  in the garage as we were growing up.
• 6:30
  And that was super cool.
• 6:33
  I mean, again, as a kid, I was just interested in ponies.
• 6:35
  It was sort of, I thought it was pretty cool what dad was doing, but didn't really appreciate the work.
• 6:41
  It's not as you get older and understand the time and effort and dedication that he had in creating that vehicle.
• 6:47
  But my most memorable motorbike ride that I did for my dad, he had traded a Kawasaki ZZR 1100 road bike
• 6:58
  on a vehicle up in Auckland.
• 6:59
  So I got to do a road trip with Dad on the back of the bike from Dunedin to Auckland.
• 7:05
  And I can remember he wound up the bike in one of these straights just north of Kaikoura.
• 7:10
  I shouldn't be admitting this, but, you know, back in the day.
• 7:13
  And I can honestly say I was going to get blown off the bat because the thing just sucked down into its aerodynamics and I don't know what we were doing.
• 7:21
  And I was just holding on for dear life thinking, yeah, this is very, very fast.
• 7:25
  So, yeah.
• 7:26
  Yeah, I enjoyed speed from a young age, enjoyed the leaning into the corners with the motorbikes.
• 7:32
  And it's funny now because I ride bikes myself, not so much road bikes, but dirt bikes and stuff.
• 7:38
  And whenever I hear dad accelerating away, I can hear the gear changes and it's exactly what I would be doing.
• 7:44
  So I think it's that thing you grow up and you're surrounded by it.
• 7:49
  Love it.
• 7:49
  Don't try that at home, kids.
• 7:50
  That was back in the day.
• 7:51
  That's a story from the memory bank.
• 7:54
  We're not sitting here endorsing that.
• 7:56
  No, no, no, no.
• 8:00
  The horse riding stuff, I mean, it got to quite a reasonable level for you.
• 8:06
  And I know there were Olympic aspirations there, as you detailed before.
• 8:09
  What do you reckon you learnt from...
• 8:11
  from that world that perhaps correlates maybe in a competitive sense, in a commitment sense or dedication sense that perhaps applies to rallying and the motorsport world?
• 8:25
  I think the skills that really helped when I crossed over into motorsport was that feeling that, you know, if you're on a horse galloping across the country and you're coming up to these solid obstacles and you come in and you think, oh, God, the striding's all wrong.
• 8:41
  Like, this is going to be ugly.
• 8:42
  You know, you know that it's not going to be good.
• 8:44
  But...
• 8:45
  There's no abort button.
• 8:47
  All you've got to do is just go for it and hope that it comes off.
• 8:51
  And it's a little bit like that in motorsport or in rally driving.
• 8:54
  Like you come into a corner and you've, you know, brake too late or...
• 8:58
  got the line wrong or something, but you can't get out of it.
• 9:02
  You're committed to it, so you've got to try and find a way through.
• 9:05
  And I think it's that mentality of always looking forward, always looking for your solution or that sort of attack mentality.
• 9:13
  I think that really crossed over, and I think...
• 9:16
  With horses, your touch points are your seat and your hands and feet, which is very much the same in a race car.
• 9:25
  You're feeling what the car's doing underneath you, how it moves and how it shifts.
• 9:30
  Yeah, very, very similar to the horses.
• 9:32
  What about the first rallying experiences?
• 9:35
  Because, in fact, you were, as you said before, on the other side of the car.
• 9:39
  On the co-driving side, how was that?
• 9:42
  Did you enjoy that?
• 9:43
  What were the early learnings?
• 9:45
  I think for anyone who's had the pleasure of going for a ride in a rally car, well, it should be a pleasure.
• 9:50
  Hopefully you've enjoyed it.
• 9:51
  But I think everyone remembers their very first time and you go into that first corner and you're like, man, we're going way too fast for a gravel road because you have your own experience of driving on a gravel road and the kind of grip levels that are there.
• 10:03
  And the car, you know, fires into this corner sideways and hooks in like it's on rails.
• 10:09
  And you're like, wow, that's that's amazing.
• 10:12
  And so I remember my very first ride and then the co-driving.
• 10:16
  And then what happened was I had the opportunity to purchase my cousin's Evo 3 rally car.
• 10:23
  And I purchased it with the idea of doing the Targa Rally, which was a tarmac event.
• 10:28
  And we set off to – we did a one-day event up in Tauranui, which was the one-day Targa Rally.
• 10:37
  And I just –
• 10:39
  Poor old dad got roped in as the co-driver for me.
• 10:42
  And he likened it to when he was younger.
• 10:48
  And you were coming home from the pub and you jumped in with a mate.
• 10:51
  And you were like...
• 10:53
  as they took off, it was like, how much have they had to drink?
• 10:56
  You weren't really quite sure of their ability behind the wheel.
• 10:59
  And so dad wasn't quite sure if I had it under control, but did have it under control.
• 11:04
  And we finished six out of a hundred cars on our first outing and, um, and we won our class.
• 11:09
  So from that, I was like, Oh, I should have a go at the gravel stuff just to see what's involved.
• 11:14
  And, um, my friend at the time who later become my partner,
• 11:19
  he offered to come over and co-drive for me and doing the Xero car at the local Otago rally.
• 11:28
  So we set off to do that, and I said to him on the way out to do recce as practice, I said, like, what's the tips for driving on gravel?
• 11:37
  And he thought I was just making a joke.
• 11:40
  He didn't realise I'd never driven on gravel.
• 11:42
  So no kana crosses, no nothing like that?
• 11:44
  I'd done some grass kanas, so that was a starting point, but...
• 11:48
  Yeah, first time on Grebel Road.
• 11:50
  So, yeah, all credit to him for having the bravery to sit beside me.
• 11:55
  But, yeah, it was just so much fun.
• 11:57
  I loved it.
• 11:58
  Yeah, hooked from the start.
• 12:01
  Heck of a place to debut, though, on the dirt.
• 12:05
  Yeah, no pressure.
• 12:07
  No, exactly.
• 12:09
  Exactly.
• 12:10
  I mean, it's an iconic event, crazy good roads.
• 12:13
  So what was, because motorsport is such a visceral thing, right?
• 12:18
  So when you get to do that from the driver's seat for the first time, what was the feeling?
• 12:25
  What was the reaction?
• 12:25
  Yeah.
• 12:27
  I mean, I think I just, the thing I love about rallying is that you just have the road to yourself.
• 12:33
  Like it is a dream come true, you know, because we have amazing roads in New Zealand.
• 12:38
  They're all beautifully built and cambered and, you know, they're just, and they're so smooth as well.
• 12:43
  So it's super enjoyable to be driving them and knowing that there's no,
• 12:48
  you know, no one coming the other direction.
• 12:50
  There's no police officers.
• 12:52
  It's just you and your co-driver driving as fast as you can.
• 12:55
  It's a very addictive, addictive feeling.
• 12:58
  And for me, I just loved, I guess I'd done a bit of trail bike riding.
• 13:02
  So riding motorbikes on gravel roads.
• 13:04
  So I understood the grip levels a bit, but yeah, I just, I just fell in love with it.
• 13:09
  The feeling of that car sliding and, you know, having the power and, you know, having the power and,
• 13:12
  Yeah, it's still the feeling that keeps me hooked when you have all the challenges that you do through a career.
• 13:18
  It's still the best feeling in the world.
• 13:20
  You're bringing together so many elements here.
• 13:22
  So firstly, the little bit of time in the co-driver seat, did that help you as a driver?
• 13:28
  Were you trying to find that limit between tentative and overstepping the mark?
• 13:36
  And how did you find your feet in all of that?
• 13:40
  Yeah, I do think the co-driving helped for sure because I understood the pace notes.
• 13:44
  So that helped, I suppose, accelerate the understanding when to brake and when to accelerate.
• 13:52
  Having Glenn as my co-driver, I think, helped a lot because back then it wasn't so much about the in-car videos that you probably have nowadays.
• 14:01
  There wasn't so much access to that.
• 14:03
  So I had someone who had sat beside very talented drivers and had a huge wealth of experience.
• 14:09
  And he could tell me, you know, help with those skills and what to do and what not to do.
• 14:14
  So I suppose I started with some good tips.
• 14:18
  I played Colin McRae rally game, you know, so, you know, I'd learnt about when it goes bad.
• 14:26
  So, and I can remember very early on, I had an incident where I, the car stepped out over the finish line in this tarmac hill climb and we shot through a fence and we then just sort of,
• 14:37
  idling down the the grass paddock and my co-driver who was a my cousin he said to me are you gonna break like as in well while in high speed but it was that whole feeling of like oh shit this is what happens when it does go bad because go bad and the colin mcrae rally is just reset on the console not so easy in the in the rally car
• 14:58
  in the real world.
• 14:59
  The Glenn you were speaking about before there, of course, is Glenn McNeil, who went on to co-drive for, or spent some time, rather, co-driving for Chris Atkinson in Subaru in the World Rally Championship.
• 15:08
  These days, alongside Scott Petter and so on in the Australian Rally Championship.
• 15:11
  That combination, when you're a driver, that, you know, and you've had different co-drivers over time, that is so vital, that synergy, that connection, that almost innate understanding of each other, because you are essentially...
• 15:27
  relying on them to unravel the movie for you of the road ahead, and you have to commit to that, don't you?
• 15:35
  Oh, it's an amazing relationship, and I think the co-drivers don't get enough credit for the job that they do because it's such a high-pressure situation, and I honestly don't know how they do it.
• 15:48
  You know, not getting car sick for one, but then...
• 15:51
  to have the calmness and the authority and to know exactly what's going on, you know, where they are in their pace notes, what's coming up on the road, plus all the other stuff like knowing the fuel calculations, communicating with the team about what's happening when we're coming into service.
• 16:05
  It's a huge, huge amount of work and it's often thankless as well because they don't necessarily like the spotlight.
• 16:12
  They're happy to be there and be that supporting staff for the drivers.
• 16:17
  Tell people a little bit about the family business at this stage, which you've gone on to actively own and run and so on.
• 16:26
  The family were in the automotive game.
• 16:28
  And had you gone off and studied something at university that would ultimately complement this?
• 16:33
  Were you working in the family business at this stage?
• 16:35
  Yeah, I did start a university degree when I left school.
• 16:40
  So I just sort of followed the papers that I was interested in and did design studies.
• 16:45
  I was really into my arts and stuff when I was at school.
• 16:48
  So I did design studies and then that kind of just evolved into a degree as a Bachelor of Arts.
• 16:53
  So I did some extra papers as I found them interesting.
• 16:57
  But in that time, as I was finishing my university degree, I started working in the family dealership in the service department.
• 17:04
  So yeah.
• 17:05
  sort of learnt different areas of the business.
• 17:08
  But it was never really on my radar for the business.
• 17:13
  Dad, mum and dad built the business up to be, it was a big dealership in the 90s.
• 17:18
  They employed over 20 people and they had their own compliancing department
• 17:22
  Dad would travel up to Japan very often importing cars and stuff when it was big back in the day.
• 17:29
  So it was, and it definitely helped it or helped when I did get into the motorsport because I had people there that could help with running the car and Dad would help working on the car.
• 17:40
  My brother-in-law, Nathan, would also help with repairing the cars.
• 17:44
  So it was very much family when I did get into the motorsport side of it.
• 17:49
  But I think because I always had a big ambition when I started in the motorsport, it was always going to need more sponsorship than just a family business.
• 18:00
  So I've been very fortunate that for most of my career, I've had Vantage Windows and Doors as my major sponsor.
• 18:07
  So that's really helped me be able to do my career for as long as I have.
• 18:22
  Enjoying this episode with Emma?
• 18:24
  You're like former RPM reporter Alison Drower's walk down memory lane too, including the time she co-drove for Neil Compton at Targa and stirred him big time before they set off.
• 18:35
  And Crompton's getting all technical about tyre wear and blah, blah, blah.
• 18:40
  And I was just sort of said, well, Crompton, he goes, yes, Ali.
• 18:43
  He goes, I bet you never thought you'd be sitting here looking at my map, Tassie.
• 18:47
  And he just went...
• 18:51
  Seems like yesterday Ali made her RPM debut.
• 18:55
  Now her son is racing the supercars development series.
• 18:58
  They talk about that and more in this fantastic two-parter.
• 19:02
  Now back to Emma.
• 19:05
  Were there correlations from the business learnings that you had that apply in motor racing around dealing with sponsorship and all of those sort of things?
• 19:13
  Yeah, so coming back to the dealership, sorry, we went away from Dunedin in 2007, Glenn and I moved up to Hamilton and...
• 19:28
  because the business, the car dealership was kind of restructuring, I guess, at that time.
• 19:32
  So Glenn and I went away at Hamilton, and I did quite a lot of driver training work and worked with the AA doing corporate driver training and working with Downforce, who do motorsport events on the racetrack.
• 19:42
  So, yeah, so that was super cool, doing all that stuff around automotive stuff.
• 19:47
  And then in 2010, we contacted or we had the relationship with Suzuki.
• 19:54
  So Suzuki were amazing when I was...
• 19:57
  like only a couple of years into my career, I contacted them and said, hey, do you want to support me in building a car and we'll go do the Targa rally?
• 20:05
  And they were like, shh.
• 20:07
  Oh yeah, okay.
• 20:08
  And gave us a wee Suzuki Swift Sport, which was like a wee butter box, the wee square ones, sort of pre the popular Swift shape and gave us some money to do the event.
• 20:19
  And we went away and built this car up and we did really well in it.
• 20:25
  We got a Greek Henderson, an Olympic cyclist, to come in.
• 20:28
  I've got a cat visiting me.
• 20:30
  To come as my co-driver.
• 20:33
  And...
• 20:34
  And we finished 30th out of 200 cars.
• 20:37
  And it was a huge amount of fun because this little thing, like it was 1,500 cc, but it handled really, really well.
• 20:46
  So we had people coming up at the service parks and saying, you know, is this thing turboed or what's under the bonnet kind of thing?
• 20:52
  Yeah.
• 20:54
  we'd lift the bonnet to show them that it was stock standard and I'd just kind of walk off and discuss because I'd been whizzing past them in the stages so um we we had a huge amount of fun but I guess from that we we had a good relationship with Suzuki and in 2010 we're able to
• 21:11
  get the franchise for Dunedin.
• 21:13
  So that meant Glenn and I travelled home from being in Waikato and Hamilton, and we set up the business alongside my parents' existing car dealership.
• 21:24
  And it was a really good way to start in business because you kind of had the trainer wheels on, I guess, and that the business was already existing and we were just a different part to it.
• 21:34
  And then a year into that, we brought my parents out of the business because –
• 21:39
  They were struggling a bit, but unfortunately we discovered why they were struggling a bit.
• 21:44
  They had a thieving employee that had been ripping them off for the last five or so years.
• 21:49
  So, yeah, so it was a bit of a rocky start in business because, yeah, it was hard on seeing mum and dad.
• 21:55
  You know, everything they'd built up over 20-odd years nearly sunk.
• 22:00
  And it was fortunate that, you know, with the Suzuki Opportunity,
• 22:03
  we were able to come back and keep the business going.
• 22:07
  And then a few years after that, Glenn and I broke up.
• 22:10
  So I had the pleasure of buying him out of the business as well.
• 22:12
  So yeah, it was a bit of a rocky start, but I've been running the business on my own now for 10 years.
• 22:19
  Does that underscore your kind of determination?
• 22:22
  You know, like you're very supportive of your parents through that.
• 22:26
  You wanted to bring some kind of fresh approaches to things, given the difficulties around what had unfolded, obviously.
• 22:33
  Great opportunity to continue that partnership with Suzuki.
• 22:35
  And you're not a quitter, are you?
• 22:37
  Yeah.
• 22:39
  No, not a quitter.
• 22:40
  And I think I've been really fortunate to have good people around me, which, you know, they might have believed in me more so that I've believed in myself at times in terms of, you know, when you get thrown in the deep end with something and you don't really know if you can do it.
• 22:53
  But, yeah, you've got that determination and that sort of stubbornness, I guess.
• 22:57
  And
• 22:59
  And a lot of those people that I've met has been through motorsport, you know, other business owners.
• 23:03
  There have been a lot of really like Craig Vincent from Vantage has been an amazing mentor, A, with my motorsport, but also with being a business owner.
• 23:13
  And...
• 23:15
  And to your question earlier, there are a lot of crossovers in terms of how you run your motorsport to how you run a business.
• 23:21
  And relationships are key, doing what you say you're going to do, all those kind of things.
• 23:26
  Having the resilience to deal with the disappointments and the setbacks.
• 23:31
  There's lots and lots of crossovers.
• 23:32
  We'll get to some of the resilience, if you like, in a minute.
• 23:36
  You've tipped the audience off to something.
• 23:37
  Who's the cat?
• 23:38
  What's the cat?
• 23:39
  Tell us about them.
• 23:41
  I thought this was the challenge of do I do it at home and potentially get bothered by the cats.
• 23:47
  She's moving on now, so Millie has graced us and going to go sit on the sunshine.
• 23:54
  What kind of cat?
• 23:55
  She's a Burmese.
• 23:56
  I've got two Burmese cats.
• 23:58
  I lost one earlier in the year, which I was heartbroken over, but I've got a kitten as well now.
• 24:03
  So she's 12 and the wee kitten, he's coming up one year old.
• 24:06
  So, yeah.
• 24:09
  Easy children.
• 24:10
  Easy children.
• 24:11
  Easy children.
• 24:12
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:13
  Now, you mentioned about the Evo before.
• 24:16
  What were the kind of – firstly, tell us about it.
• 24:20
  How modified was it?
• 24:21
  What was that car like, that very first rally car?
• 24:24
  It was a Mitsubishi Evo 3, and it had one targa, one of the early targas, I want to say with Jeff Ray.
• 24:32
  I think he's from Rotorua.
• 24:34
  And so it was built by Allport Motorsport, so it was a great wee car.
• 24:38
  Neil Allport?
• 24:40
  Yes, Neil Allport Motorsport.
• 24:41
  And, yeah, so a really cool wee car.
• 24:45
  My cousin campaigned it for...
• 24:47
  two or three seasons i think my cousin gwyn and then um that was the car that i purchased so uh yeah it was great it was um a really good all-round car because it was good for the tarmac and good for gravel um so yeah it was cool just it was a it was a production car so still grouping grouping a group a yeah
• 25:07
  Yeah, cool.
• 25:08
  I mean, lots of learnings in that period for you.
• 25:12
  You mentioned the term resilience before, right?
• 25:14
  So what about the low points?
• 25:15
  How'd you bounce back from some of those moments and convince yourself that, you know, hey, this is right for me.
• 25:22
  I want to give this a proper go because it's taken you all around the world.
• 25:26
  Yeah, I'm so thankful to my younger self that I stuck at it.
• 25:30
  Because, you know, there were times where you think, God, I could be doing other things on my Saturday rather than crying in a paddock about another, you know, DNF.
• 25:40
  So, yeah, I think that...
• 25:42
  I don't know if the horse riding also set you up for that kind of resilience.
• 25:45
  Like, with the horse riding, it was always, you know, you fell off, you got back on, and you just sort of sucked it up and, you know, dug deep.
• 25:53
  And I think...
• 25:54
  Gosh, motorsport has to be one of the toughest sports.
• 25:57
  There's just so many things that can potentially trip you up.
• 26:02
  You know, there is obviously all the driver mistakes that you could make or, you know, when you're working with a co-driver that you've both got to, you know, not make too many serious mistakes in the car.
• 26:12
  But then you're dealing with a mechanical object that has...
• 26:15
  so many moving parts that could potentially trip you up or have a mechanical failure.
• 26:21
  And then with rallying, there's all the variables of the terrain that you haven't seen.
• 26:25
  You might have seen things blind.
• 26:28
  It's a really challenging sport.
• 26:31
  I think I was very naive early on thinking that, you know, I think with anything, you set out thinking something's going to be pretty, I don't want to say easy, but naivety gets you a lot further than as you become battle-hardened, you're like, man, this is a lot harder than I imagined it was going to be.
• 26:48
  And I think I sort of probably relatively early in my career, I suppose maybe...
• 26:57
  I want to say maybe 10 years ago, I recognized that, you know, I might not get to the world championship level, which was, you know, what the goal was obviously when I started in rallying, but actually just the journey of what you're doing is the cool bit and, and the meeting the people and the traveling to the cool locations and having all these amazing experiences is, is the bit that's, that's really cool.
• 27:20
  So I think I sort of had that change of mindset because I,
• 27:25
  Man, I cried a lot in my first few years of motorsport.
• 27:28
  I was really, really tired.
• 27:32
  And poor old Glenn.
• 27:34
  Go.
• 27:35
  Sorry, poor old Glenn.
• 27:36
  I mean, gosh, his frustration with me was that I had this natural ability to be able to drive, but I would get so nervous that I would drive really, really badly and just about crash, you know, in the first couple of stages.
• 27:50
  And then –
• 27:51
  I think his frustration would get the better of him and he'd get annoyed at me.
• 27:55
  And then I'd get upset and get angry and then I'd drive well.
• 27:59
  And then it was kind of like this vicious cycle because I'd have to go through all this tears of frustration and upset to then get a bit of fire in the belly.
• 28:09
  And I was away.
• 28:10
  And I can remember we did this event up in Japan and –
• 28:14
  Terrible, terrible start in the morning.
• 28:16
  It was raining, it was tricky, and it was sliding all over the place.
• 28:19
  And I was told that I wasn't good enough to be driving the catering truck.
• 28:25
  You know, like, pull your finger out kind of thing.
• 28:28
  So...
• 28:30
  So I'd stuck with me, stuck with me.
• 28:32
  But anyway, afternoon, put on some new tires and I go out and I'm doing stage times, you know, not far off Possum Bourne's time.
• 28:38
  So, you know, like it was all there.
• 28:41
  I just needed to, you know, find the right motivation.
• 28:45
  And it was strange for me coming into a sport that I already had sort of a natural ability in versus the horse riding that I'd worked and trained years and years and years and years to get to a certain level.
• 28:56
  And then...
• 28:57
  to just sort of come into something that I didn't really feel like I had ownership of.
• 29:00
  It was, yeah, it was an interesting transition.
• 29:04
  I've seen you in Service Park.
• 29:06
  Do you now all these years on still go through a little bit of that kind of transformation, firing yourself up, or are you a bit more at ease with it all now?
• 29:16
  Yeah.
• 29:17
  I definitely still have, I now have like a routine when I'm on the start line of the stage where it's always sort of a switch into rally mode.
• 29:27
  So we're, you know, unlike on a start line of a racetrack where you're not sure when the lights are going to go out, you sort of have a set routine.
• 29:36
  But with the rally clock, you know, it's always counting down from two minutes to one minute to 30 seconds to 15 seconds.
• 29:43
  So I sort of have that routine of what I do
• 29:45
  go through in my mindset to get into that right headspace.
• 29:51
  But definitely have learned over the years how to be able to sort of switch on more than what I had when I was younger.
• 29:57
  There are some highs.
• 29:58
  Let's talk about a couple of them.
• 29:59
  And there's, I mean, you're quite in this part of the world a leading light for women in motorsport.
• 30:03
  So firstly, what about becoming, if I've got it right here, the first female to win a round of the New Zealand Rally Championship?
• 30:11
  How good?
• 30:11
  How good?
• 30:11
  Yeah, super cool.
• 30:13
  Super cool.
• 30:13
  It felt like a long time coming because it was sort of, it was always what I wanted to achieve.
• 30:19
  And I really wanted to have achieved it a lot earlier than I did.
• 30:22
  But...
• 30:23
  Yeah, super cool to do it.
• 30:24
  I've been, I guess, blessed and challenged in that, in my era of rallying, I've had super talented male competitors to compete against.
• 30:34
  You know, when I was in my Subaru with the group end days, you had Richard Mason, who was, you know, super dominant, super talented driver, and that was always the guy to try and, you know, beat, and I finished runner-up in the championship to him a couple of times, and then, yeah,
• 30:50
  You have this young guy called Hayden Padden coming on the scene and another super talented driver.
• 30:55
  What's he done?
• 30:56
  What's he done, huh?
• 30:58
  Yeah.
• 31:00
  That goes on to win World Championship.
• 31:02
  So we've had some super talented guys, which is great because it keeps the level of competition high.
• 31:09
  But to finally get that win in Canterbury was a real awesome feeling.
• 31:15
  But, God, I'm so hanging out for another freaking podium because it's been a long time since.
• 31:20
  So, you know, I've had lots of mechanical issues and stuff with the car that I was running.
• 31:26
  And then I've been away the last few seasons racing overseas.
• 31:30
  So, yeah, I just need to get back into the rally spec and get a bit more up to speed.
• 31:35
  We'll come to that because I've spent a little bit of time with you at some New Zealand events.
• 31:39
  The NZ competition is good, isn't it?
• 31:42
  I mean, there's runner-up finishes in the championship on your CV there.
• 31:45
  And, I mean, you talked about the calibre of some of the drivers there a moment ago, not to mention the really cool roads.
• 31:51
  That's quite an achievement in itself.
• 31:53
  Oh, it is.
• 31:54
  But when you're competitive, you always want more, I guess.
• 31:57
  So absolutely, I'm very proud of what I've achieved.
• 32:00
  But it's also, yeah, you always want more, I guess.
• 32:04
  And that's what keeps you motivated to keep coming back.
• 32:07
  Tell me about the car you're currently in, Citroen, and how you've found things in 2024.
• 32:14
  Yeah, it's been cool.
• 32:15
  So about this time last year, in September last year, I had a humongous crash in the Extreme E-Series.
• 32:22
  So that kind of laid me low for quite a bit of time.
• 32:25
  I didn't do any more racing.
• 32:26
  I basically had six weeks, six months, sorry, off racing.
• 32:30
  So I was still sort of a little bit touch and go of whether I was going to be fully fit for the start of the championship this year.
• 32:38
  But thankfully I was able to get back in the car and to start the New Zealand Series in April with the Otago Rally.
• 32:47
  The Citroen I haven't done a lot of rallying with yet.
• 32:51
  I bought it at the end of...
• 32:53
  22 when the WRC was here in New Zealand the car came out for with a team and and it was available for sale afterwards so it sort of opened the window for a car that was a bit more affordable a bit more in my budget because the shipping had already been taken care of and then I
• 33:13
  We did a Targo rally last year and then planned on doing the second part of the season last year, but then I had the crash.
• 33:20
  So, yeah, so this year has sort of been the first time I've done, you know, three consecutive events in it, and it's a super cool car.
• 33:27
  I'm running it with Patton Rally Sport out of Cromwell, and they're just – the cars themselves, I mean –
• 33:34
  really they're as good as what world rally cars were probably, you know, 10, 15 years ago, because the technology in them is just so good.
• 33:41
  You know, they just go around corners so fast and it's a real step up in your head to realize how fast they can corner.
• 33:49
  So you need to have the pace notes, a hundred, 10% right.
• 33:52
  And you have to have that confidence that everything's working as it should.
• 33:56
  Can we come back to the crash, but I want to, I want to peel back some layers here.
• 34:00
  Firstly,
• 34:02
  You get an opportunity to join the legendary McLaren.
• 34:06
  I mean, anyone in New Zealand that has even a remote connection to motor racing, you know,
• 34:14
  thinks of Bruce in a very special fashion.
• 34:17
  That brand and what it's gone on to become is a huge thing.
• 34:20
  And here's this girl from Dunedin who gets to be the first female driver ever for McLaren with deep Kiwi roots.
• 34:28
  I mean, that was a really cool story.
• 34:30
  How did that opportunity come about?
• 34:31
  And there is a little footnote to my long question here, and that is when you got the ultimate email from Zach, you thought it was a scam.
• 34:38
  Is that right?
• 34:40
  I did.
• 34:41
  I was like...
• 34:43
  Because the Extreme E series had come out, I had signed with the team for the first season, but then the team never made the start line.
• 34:52
  So I was absolutely gutted to be sitting on the sidelines, not without a full-time drive for this new series that was all female, male, one of each in the team.
• 35:01
  And yeah, it was a really cool international series starting.
• 35:05
  And then I woke up to the news this morning that McLaren was joining the series in 2020
• 35:13
  Sorry, so 21, 22.
• 35:14
  And I thought, gosh, that's pretty cool.
• 35:17
  I'll have to, you know, touch base with them.
• 35:19
  That'll be, you know, who will I talk to about that?
• 35:21
  And then...
• 35:22
  I was like, oh, gosh, I had that email in my inbox that I thought was just junk because Zach spells his name with a K, not a C. And I just thought it was like, you know, come speak to me about that inheritance from your cousin in the Philippines or something.
• 35:36
  But no, it was come and chat to me about racing for us in the Extreme E-Series.
• 35:43
  all happened very quickly.
• 35:45
  I had a couple of phone interviews with them and Zoom calls and stuff.
• 35:49
  And yeah, it was surreal.
• 35:52
  You know, you go from watching Drive to Survive and there's Zach and McLaren and, you know, and like you touched on, we're all so proud of McLaren and the legacy that Bruce created.
• 36:04
  I just never imagined our paths crossing.
• 36:06
  It still feels surreal in many ways.
• 36:09
  Just touching on the timeline there for a second, this is back end of COVID, right?
• 36:13
  So were there some challenges around all of that for you?
• 36:15
  And how were you sort of navigating that?
• 36:19
  Yeah, it was the back end of COVID.
• 36:21
  So yeah, so it's 21.
• 36:22
  And I'd got a part time drive with a British team called Veloce in the first season, doing a couple of relieving stints.
• 36:31
  So
• 36:32
  I had to travel to the UK for this racing, but at the time, as we all remember, had to have the isolation hotels to come home to, and you couldn't come home unless you had one of those booked.
• 36:43
  So I ended up, I initially had one booked, but then got more opportunities for racing over there, and then with the McLaren announcement, all of that ended up staying or being stuck in the UK for about six months.
• 36:55
  So, yeah, it was challenging at that time with all the different things,
• 36:59
  Yeah, as we will remember, having those different requirements.
• 37:03
  We all adapted, didn't we?
• 37:05
  Yeah.
• 37:05
  A bit of water chasing for some people like yourself that were chasing the driving dream.
• 37:10
  Let's come to the first experience in those Extreme E-Cars because the essence of the series was to go to remote locations, to...
• 37:20
  highlight the importance of the environment and sustainability and so on.
• 37:25
  There is one male driver, one female driver, all EV or electric powered.
• 37:31
  And there were some unbelievable names running teams, Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton, ultimately McLaren where you ended up and so on.
• 37:40
  Yeah, the first event that I raced at was in Greenland, which is such an unusual place to think that you're going to be driving a race car.
• 37:47
  And we were racing in the glacier flat underneath the world's second biggest glacier.
• 37:53
  So totally surreal backdrop.
• 37:56
  It was amazing.
• 37:57
  And yeah, the first time I drove the car.
• 38:02
  I realized that it wasn't quite as easy as it's got to look on TV.
• 38:06
  They, uh, they definitely in the first generation of the cars, they were a real handful.
• 38:11
  The, the suspension, uh, wasn't enough for the weight of the car and, and then the, how heavy the battery is.
• 38:18
  They make some quite top, top heavy.
• 38:21
  And, um, I can remember, you know, racing, you know, cause they're not on proper race tracks.
• 38:25
  It's all like you touched on it.
• 38:27
  There are, there is just rough terrain and they create these tracks and, um,
• 38:32
  I remember going over the first series of bumps in it, and it was just like my head was on a pinball machine as it ricocheted off the sides of the racing.
• 38:41
  It was so rough.
• 38:42
  But that first weekend was amazing.
• 38:46
  And the last race that I did, I'm lighting up beside Carlos Sainz, who's one of my heroes from rallying to be racing beside him and rubbing our eyes with Sebastian Loeb and stuff.
• 38:59
  It was super, super cool.
• 39:02
  and just a really innovative series trying to show how racing could be done environmentally in a friendly way but also that male-female equal teammates in a team no other motorsport's done that and I think the lasting legacy of that series is what can be achieved with doing that.
• 39:33
  That's the end of part one of my podcast with Emma Gilmore, but we are only on the relatively early stages of this event, if I can use that analogy.
• 39:41
  Don't miss part two, whatever you do.
• 39:44
  It's loaded up and ready to go for you to enjoy in the Rusty's Garage library, so jump back there whenever you're ready.
• 39:50
  A good portion of it is dedicated to her extreme e-crash, the recovery and the comeback.
• 39:56
  It is awesome to see her back and doing what she loves.
• 40:00
  It's all ahead here on Rusty's Garage.