Latest / Rusty's Garage / Ross Stone (Part 2)

Transcript

Ross Stone (Part 2) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:18
  G'day, it's Rusty here, all set for part two of my podcast with former Supercars team owner Ross Stone.
• 0:24
  A quick message of thanks for all your comments about our recent ep with fellow Kiwi racing legend Jim Richards, which you can find in our library.
• 0:33
  We're also very grateful for the shares and reviews you leave for Rusty's Garage.
• 0:37
  Keep letting friends and family know about the pod and like and subscribe as they say.
• 0:41
  Thank you.
• 0:42
  Now, if you've arrived here and not heard part one of Ross Stone's amazing story, head back to our library and give it a listen.
• 0:50
  There's all sorts of yarns on his early years as both a driver and the move into team ownership, plus some funny stuff on Cros, Graham Crosby and the Holden Commodore they ran.
• 1:01
  And you'll get a clearer picture of just how well respected the Stone brothers were on the international scene as young blokes.
• 1:09
  We begin part two by chatting about the Bathurst Barbecue, the pack leader Falcon that caught fire in 1996 with Alan Jones leading in the early part of the Great Race and what they discovered during their own post-event fact find into what caused the blaze and how a late-night decision to use an additive had big consequences.
• 1:34
  Yes, well, it was a... Don't have to mention the nine, so... Yeah, yeah.
• 1:39
  No, I won't, because I don't use lawyers anymore.
• 1:44
  But there was an additive that you'd put down, take the spark plugs out, and you'd spray on.
• 1:51
  It was meant to leave like a silicon coating on there.
• 1:54
  Williams apparently used it.
• 1:56
  Alan was really keen to use it.
• 1:58
  And we go, oh, don't know about this.
• 2:02
  And anyway, so the Saturday night at Bathurst got this treatment done.
• 2:07
  And the funny thing is Campbell was sitting there and some of the stuff, they also injected it, a spray down the inlet trumpet.
• 2:17
  And we used to have a Weber injector and a flexible line.
• 2:22
  It was a line.
• 2:24
  Anyway, Campbell was watching.
• 2:27
  He was there because he was the engine guy.
• 2:30
  And he seen a bit drop onto the hose.
• 2:32
  And anyway, they just wiped it off and...
• 2:36
  That's all it took.
• 2:38
  Yeah, that's all it took.
• 2:39
  And we found that out because Campbell being Campbell, after the fire, and I found the marshal that put the fire out because you could have got it going in no time.
• 2:54
  Wow.
• 2:55
  But when Alan bailed in those days, I don't think our ECU was set up to switch the fuel pumps off if the engine wasn't turning.
• 3:02
  Okay.
• 3:03
  So I got all the massive big box and sent these down to all the marshals of merchandise and stuff, you know.
• 3:12
  Yeah.
• 3:14
  And that was the end of Pack Leader anyway.
• 3:16
  But Campbell, Ben Campbell, he had a little bottle of this stuff.
• 3:24
  They used it and it was quite heavy.
• 3:28
  And so we got a fuel hose, soaked it in, no, got a bit of that same rubber from the fuel line that burst, put a couple of drops on it, put it in petrol.
• 3:39
  24 hours later, it was just, it was perfect.
• 3:42
  The hose was perfectly acceptable with a drop of... Is that right?
• 3:46
  Yeah.
• 3:47
  So that was a lesson that you...
• 3:52
  You only ran what you'd been running all year.
• 3:54
  Yeah.
• 3:56
  Yeah.
• 3:57
  Was it shortly after that you would end up buying Alan out and it was just you and Jimmy?
• 4:02
  What transpired there?
• 4:03
  Yeah, we had two years with Alan and they were really good years too, you know.
• 4:10
  His thing was to get the sponsorship and that all worked well.
• 4:16
  And just from a distance, I'd keep an eye on what we were doing and what he was doing, but we'd never, never any issues.
• 4:25
  But we just decided that we wanted to have a crack ourselves.
• 4:30
  Because remember I talked about Darlington Park?
• 4:32
  Yes.
• 4:33
  Well, we were going to try and get a commercial unit there or a factory there and then just build a car up and just run it.
• 4:44
  but then things changed with DJR and then with Jonesy coming along.
• 4:50
  So we decided to buy Jonesy out and there was an interesting little sideline there too because Jason Bright had been in Adelaide for his Formula Holden gig
• 5:04
  And I went to Sydney to see these sponsors, and they were keen to sponsor us, but they didn't want a rookie driver in Jason.
• 5:17
  So I said, well, sorry, guys, I've got to leave this meeting if that's the decision.
• 5:22
  So anyway, I walked out of the meeting, and then I could hear somebody coming down the stairs after me, and I turned around, and it was Glen Duncan, who had just taken over as marketing manager and everything.
• 5:37
  Chance, pure chance.
• 5:39
  From Pertec, yeah.
• 5:40
  He was at the meeting.
• 5:41
  Yeah.
• 5:42
  And he said, everything that you've talked about here for this with Jason Bright,
• 5:50
  if Pertec were to step in and can we do it?
• 5:56
  And I said, absolutely.
• 5:58
  So just had me, didn't it, you know, five minutes earlier, I had no idea what the hell I was going to do.
• 6:05
  Anyway, Glenn, true to his word, next morning, Pertec Racing was born.
• 6:12
  Amazing.
• 6:12
  Yeah, and that's how we started.
• 6:15
  You would go on to win Bathurst with Brighton,
• 6:18
  And Stephen Richards, very, very cool achievement.
• 6:21
  And that was a little bit of a rollercoaster weekend because the car was clearly fast.
• 6:24
  You were on the back foot in terms of repairing the car as well.
• 6:27
  Just tell us that story, the ebb and flow of knowing that you were going there, obviously, with something pretty good, two fast young blokes.
• 6:35
  Why you chose Stephen Richards, for example, and things like that.
• 6:38
  Yeah, well, firstly, I asked JR because he, you know, back from going to Hurl Climb when I was a kid, I always thought he was the man.
• 6:50
  Where was he at the time?
• 6:53
  He was living in Melbourne and racing.
• 6:57
  You had a conversation with Jimmy Richards about coming and playing with you guys?
• 7:00
  Yeah, yeah.
• 7:01
  But Jimmy was already signed seal.
• 7:04
  So he said, what about Stephen?
• 7:07
  And Stephen was over in England.
• 7:09
  Listen testing, wasn't he?
• 7:10
  Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 7:12
  And so a deal was done with Stephen on one phone call.
• 7:16
  And there was a really strong driving combination, you know, two good young guys.
• 7:25
  And then we went to Bathurst and we had all the spears.
• 7:29
  We'd done it properly for our budget, but...
• 7:34
  in that all the spears were all run and everything else.
• 7:39
  Best preparation, basically.
• 7:41
  Oh, yeah, very good preparation, yeah.
• 7:43
  A good team.
• 7:44
  There was a lot of guys that were volunteers for the weekend.
• 7:49
  So it was memorable, but...
• 7:55
  come practice and stuff, we were quick, but we couldn't put a lap together because somebody, there was quite a bit of traffic in those days, and somebody would pull out and to get a clear lap, I think, and I think we started on Wednesdays in those days, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and then finally, Bridie put it in up the top.
• 8:18
  And I think it was only from frustration
• 8:21
  Anyway, so we weren't even sure if we could get the car back or not, what it was going to be like.
• 8:26
  So when it came back, we got stuck in and we made qualifying.
• 8:31
  There wasn't a lot of panel damage or chassis damage, but a lot of mechanical damage.
• 8:36
  But we had all those parts ready and then we were going to put it in that night anyway.
• 8:40
  So...
• 8:44
  What happened then?
• 8:45
  Oh, yes, that's right.
• 8:45
  So we repaired the car and went out for qualifying.
• 8:49
  Something wasn't quite right, but what we didn't realise, the Penske shocks that we were using at that stage, they had a remote canister and the line between, we didn't notice it was broken.
• 9:00
  So during qualifying, just on a rear shock, yeah.
• 9:05
  I think it was left rear.
• 9:08
  Anyway, so we whipped it out, it went away, we put a new hose on and we ended up,
• 9:13
  He ended up getting back into qualifying, but there wasn't many labs, and we didn't start that well, didn't qualify that well.
• 9:20
  I forget where we were, 14th or something like that, where we thought we were capable.
• 9:26
  So then Paul Sifranak had come over.
• 9:29
  He had been working.
• 9:31
  Campbell was friends with him.
• 9:33
  And he came over to help us with a bit of tactics and stuff.
• 9:37
  So we knew we were quick, so we had a strategy.
• 9:42
  We didn't start with a full tank, only done like a dozen laps or so, and then fueled early, first one to refuel.
• 9:52
  Challenge it up, something totally different.
• 9:53
  Yeah, yeah, and we ran on our own, and then when it all started to
• 10:00
  Yeah, and I started to shake out.
• 10:01
  We were in good shape.
• 10:03
  And then Scaifey had a problem with a Bridgestone and we were running Bridgestones too actually.
• 10:12
  But, you know, before we knew it, we were in the lead and just held on.
• 10:18
  What did that mean to you?
• 10:19
  And my question is a little bit loaded here, okay?
• 10:21
  I'm probably talking a bit out of school, but I'll...
• 10:24
  Anna told me on the quiet she can remember driving home on the Monday, family's in the car, and you turned around and you said, we're going to make it.
• 10:34
  We're going to make it.
• 10:37
  Yeah, well, it was hard because there was a hundred grand after you went in Bathurst, you know.
• 10:45
  And that was massive to us.
• 10:49
  You don't get any now, you get the start money and all that sort of stuff.
• 10:52
  But winning that $100,000 was just massive and really helped us.
• 10:59
  And winning Bathurst also helped us with Ford because, you know, there was other guys in there and they were doing a good job too, you know.
• 11:07
  It changes the, you're already very well known, already very well established in that pit lane.
• 11:13
  But when you're a Bathurst winner, I mean, you'd ultimately go on and win championships as well.
• 11:17
  But the cachet goes to another level, Ross, doesn't it?
• 11:20
  Yeah.
• 11:21
  Well, I always used to say in supercar racing, if you're doing today what you were doing a month ago, you're not going to be good enough.
• 11:29
  So you had to keep reinventing yourself.
• 11:31
  and just keep working.
• 11:33
  And I think Jimmy always set the standard for the amount of work that was going on, you know.
• 11:43
  But just great days of V8 racing, you know.
• 11:48
  Tony Cochran come on the scene not long after that and...
• 11:53
  Just always, to me, we were in the right place at the right time.
• 12:00
  But saying that too, I think Jimmy and I, we didn't talk much about business on this and that because, but the one thing we talked about is trying to win championship and races and that's the only Bathurst we ever won.
• 12:15
  We got on the podium there quite a few times, but...
• 12:20
  Just so it was always championships for us and that's when we were lucky enough to put three of them together, you know.
• 12:31
  You would have other drivers along the way, but a flavour of giving young blokes a chance...
• 12:37
  really came about didn't I mean Bridie was a great example of that I mean you could you could then do the same with Marcus for example what what was was that about the fact that it was a a a cheaper option but also about fresh talent what was that
• 12:54
  Well, it was.
• 12:55
  We also, at that era, took on David Bernard too, you know, and he was very talented, but he wasn't that good if he wasn't running near the front.
• 13:10
  I'd say if he was 15th, he was never happy with that and sometimes it was errors, but Marcus...
• 13:20
  was just exceptional.
• 13:22
  He put it on pole in our first race, which is in the Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne.
• 13:28
  Yeah.
• 13:29
  But then come the race, I think he hit everything but the pace car.
• 13:32
  But, yeah.
• 13:37
  So, but Marcus, we quickly knew.
• 13:40
  Well, David was very good too, by the way, but Marcus just came in and put it together, you know.
• 13:49
  Listeners have got some questions in relation to both of them.
• 13:51
  Can we close off the Jason Bright thing first?
• 13:53
  I'm a huge believer in balance in this, right?
• 13:55
  I know you've listened to it.
• 13:57
  He talked about a fax story at Stones when he binged off to go to Indie Lights and stuff.
• 14:04
  Is that how you guys uncovered that he was planning to leave and how did you feel?
• 14:08
  Was there a late-night fax or something or an email that come across someone's desk?
• 14:11
  I can't remember now.
• 14:13
  Yeah, well, he then, once he won Bathurst, he changed.
• 14:18
  He could see the opportunity, you know.
• 14:21
  This is just my personal opinion.
• 14:22
  Of course.
• 14:23
  And so he ventured off over to the US.
• 14:27
  He didn't tell us, but we knew, you know, too small a world.
• 14:31
  Yeah.
• 14:32
  So...
• 14:33
  And that was fine.
• 14:35
  We had no problems with him going and having a crack, but we were there laying it on the line to do our own thing, yeah.
• 14:44
  And if he didn't want to be part of it, no problems.
• 14:47
  We'd just move on.
• 14:49
  And so basically that's how that all happened.
• 14:54
  So it was a bit of a shame because there was plenty of potential there for sure.
• 14:58
  Would you like them to try and work around the shop and be around the race cars?
• 15:02
  And was that sort of an ethos?
• 15:06
  Yeah, yeah, we did because we were old-fashioned, I guess, like that.
• 15:11
  But it sort of changed.
• 15:14
  We took a different approach with both Marcus and David Bernard that they didn't actually do much work.
• 15:22
  They just...
• 15:24
  The fitness side of the business come into it more and more and they had to...
• 15:28
  Devote time to that.
• 15:29
  Yeah.
• 15:29
  People have asked about David Bernard and, you know, I think you've touched on it a bit there, the unfulfilled opportunity.
• 15:37
  I mean, he was enormously fast when I saw him in Formula Fords and very good, I think, at carts from memory when he was younger and so on.
• 15:43
  Why?
• 15:44
  Why didn't it work out, do you think?
• 15:45
  Oh, I don't know.
• 15:46
  I've given that a lot of thought.
• 15:49
  And we actually used a sports psychologist, you know, for the first time.
• 15:54
  And just I think it was really difficult with Marcus because he's a smart operator and –
• 16:04
  he was basically getting the job done, you know.
• 16:07
  And David, we were having flashes, you know.
• 16:10
  Not, not... Fulting it regularly.
• 16:13
  Yeah, not there day in, day out.
• 16:16
  With Marcus, you'd kept an eye on his international career loosely, hadn't you?
• 16:21
  And when did the conversation sort of start about, you know, things must have lined up with him coming back and so on, but how did that all play out?
• 16:28
  How did that start?
• 16:29
  Because I think there'd been a couple of overtures from others too, hadn't there?
• 16:33
  Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 16:34
  And in actual fact, right at the death knock before we signed,
• 16:39
  Marcus had a manager that got involved and suggested that perhaps Marcus fly at the sharp end of a plane, you know.
• 16:51
  And he hadn't fired a shot in V8 racing at this stage.
• 16:55
  And anyway, I...
• 17:00
  I was cranky.
• 17:01
  So Marcus left without signing anything.
• 17:03
  I didn't want him to sign.
• 17:06
  I said, if you think that's how we go racing, I still remember this, we're there to try and win races, not to, you know...
• 17:14
  Hold it with.
• 17:15
  Yeah, yeah.
• 17:16
  So anyway, he left.
• 17:18
  But a third party, Mark Roworth, who was working for us then, he got hold of Marcus and got him to come back and...
• 17:27
  Temperature was normal and we signed up.
• 17:29
  Good stuff.
• 17:30
  Never looked back.
• 17:30
  Yep.
• 17:31
  You talked about him being fast in that first qualifying and so on.
• 17:35
  What about the first test when he first drove for you guys?
• 17:37
  Did he just click with that RU?
• 17:40
  Was it just a nice fit or was there some learnings?
• 17:43
  No, no, just a lot of those young guys that had raced Formula Ford that hop in a V8 supercar and that come down the straight changing gear, you know, just exactly how you want them to, you know...
• 17:57
  And the biggest thing they had to learn was just the brakes, you know.
• 18:02
  But he, Marcus, you know, from the first test, we knew he was going to be good.
• 18:07
  He's tight.
• 18:07
  I love him.
• 18:08
  I do some work with him on occasion.
• 18:09
  He's tight with his money.
• 18:11
  Was he tight around the racing with you two?
• 18:14
  Oh, what do you reckon?
• 18:16
  LAUGHTER
• 18:19
  Let's tell a couple of other Ambrose stories because people have asked a lot about that first title.
• 18:27
  There's a couple with him, obviously, but is that the one that you savour or do they mean different things?
• 18:36
  No, that was special to us.
• 18:38
  You know, I think one of the other races, Jimmy talks about it all the time, but we were at Sandown and every practice session, and I don't think it was a 500, but every practice session qualifying in every race, you know, he was there or won it, you know.
• 19:00
  And that was the perfect weekend for us.
• 19:04
  But, yeah, Marcus knew how to get people around them and we had a good team, very good team of guys.
• 19:14
  Amazing era.
• 19:16
  Guys and girls.
• 19:17
  That's right.
• 19:19
  It was an amazing era for the sport.
• 19:22
  I mean, some might even argue at its zenith in some respects.
• 19:25
  I mean, it was, you know, the crowds they had, the quality of the racing, you know, good rivalry in battles at times.
• 19:33
  It's scathe and things like that, wasn't it?
• 19:35
  Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 19:36
  And Viet Racing, under the guidance of Tony Cochran,
• 19:41
  It was just going from strength to strength.
• 19:43
  And our team was built around having about 15 people working for us.
• 19:49
  Well, it was only a matter of four or five years later, we were 63.
• 19:55
  Crazy.
• 19:55
  Was it 75 at one point?
• 19:57
  How big did it get?
• 19:59
  No, 63 because we developed an engine shop where we'd done AAA engines as well.
• 20:07
  And in actual fact, the engines that DJR use are done in that shop by the guys there now.
• 20:17
  Wow.
• 20:18
  Wow.
• 20:19
  How stressful is that?
• 20:20
  When you've got...
• 20:21
  people coming to you with daily family problems and trying to juggle work and 60-odd staff and that's your responsibility.
• 20:30
  How hard is all that?
• 20:32
  Yeah, it is very hard because somebody's always got a headache in that many people.
• 20:38
  I mean, I'm asking this because it's not like you went off and did a managerial course or anything like that.
• 20:43
  No, no, I see the defense stuff.
• 20:45
  But traditionally I would go around and see every single person
• 20:50
  you know, early in the morning and just see how they're going and just help if there was something going down.
• 20:57
  But it was good because our staff was really stable.
• 21:00
  You know, you see from a distance, you'd see other teams, people coming and going.
• 21:05
  So it was good.
• 21:16
  When safe, turn left.
• 21:19
  This is so great, I love being out of that weird dark space, locked away from doing my duty as a GPS navigator, I can finally give directions like I've been meant to do my whole life.
• 21:31
  Or, I guess, the equivalent of what life is for a non-sentient GPS system.
• 21:38
  Wait.
• 21:39
  No.
• 21:40
  What's happening?
• 21:42
  Back.
• 21:43
  No more British Brian, only Australian Nicole.
• 21:47
  Ha, ha.
• 21:49
  Now, on with our regularly scheduled programming.
• 21:53
  Barry Sheen.
• 21:56
  At what point does he emerge with potentially joining Dots for Russell Ingle and things like that?
• 22:03
  Because he was involved in that, wasn't he?
• 22:05
  Oh, yeah.
• 22:06
  Yeah, 100%.
• 22:07
  And...
• 22:10
  Anyway.
• 22:10
  How did that go?
• 22:11
  Oh, Ralson Spaz, or did he?
• 22:12
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:14
  Just, you know Barry better than anybody in our group type of thing.
• 22:20
  But we were on the lookout on what we were going to do.
• 22:26
  And we had Caltechs, and they were keen.
• 22:31
  So the deal was done fairly quickly with Russell.
• 22:34
  I went to Barry's house.
• 22:36
  At that stage, he was really sick.
• 22:39
  And we'd done the deal and then we decided, Russell, because of his contracts and stuff, we decided to do New Year's morning.
• 22:51
  We'd done the release at Century Co. And Barry was there and he started, Anna, our daughter, and Di were there.
• 23:03
  And after it was sort of all finished, Barry came and talked to us.
• 23:09
  for an hour or more, wasn't it, Diane?
• 23:11
  Yeah.
• 23:13
  Yeah, and some of the stories, but that was probably one of the last outings Barry had because it wasn't long afterward, the Australian Grand Prix, and Barry was very low.
• 23:26
  Yeah.
• 23:27
  Very sad.
• 23:29
  He got to drive one of your cars.
• 23:30
  We did a story on it.
• 23:31
  So he did a swap.
• 23:32
  He drove Marcus's.
• 23:33
  I want to say it was the AU, was it not?
• 23:35
  And how did all that go?
• 23:37
  Yeah, I can't remember.
• 23:41
  I can't remember which car it was or whatever, but I remember him driving it and I was a bit nervous because Barry had had a few touch-ups in different circuit racing that he'd done, not on motorbikes, I mean four wheels.
• 23:54
  But anyway, it was good.
• 23:55
  He treated it well and, yeah, got the job done.
• 24:00
  Amazing era for you guys with two fantastic blokes, blokes that would win titles for you and so on.
• 24:08
  What were they like together?
• 24:10
  Very different human beings.
• 24:12
  And how did that help drive the team, Marcus and Russell?
• 24:15
  Yeah, two different personalities and two different people, but they worked well together.
• 24:24
  They really did.
• 24:26
  There was always a bit of friction if Russell was quicker than Marcus or whatever, but it was interesting in that
• 24:38
  that Russell, you know, he was playing the long game and Marcus was out there in every session, you know, just trying to nail it.
• 24:48
  Were they similar in what they wanted from the cut?
• 24:50
  Yeah, they weren't... Yeah, pretty good, yeah.
• 24:54
  And that was in an era too where we had...
• 24:58
  These days, everything is controlled by the engineer and we were sort of transitioning to that.
• 25:06
  But...
• 25:08
  It was an area where the mechanics still had a lot of time and the drivers could have a massive amount of feedback on what they want.
• 25:17
  And that was Marcus's strength.
• 25:20
  But Russell was one of probably the best racers we ever had.
• 25:23
  Amazing.
• 25:24
  Yeah, very good.
• 25:25
  You restored, you guys.
• 25:28
  one of the Ambrose cars very recently and it was a magnificent job too.
• 25:33
  Tell us a little bit about that Resto project, what you knew about it and what happened with that car.
• 25:37
  And have you kept the Ingle car, am I right?
• 25:39
  Is that still around?
• 25:41
  Yeah, the Ingle car is still around and as a project to be finished, it's probably 75% done.
• 25:45
  Wow.
• 25:50
  We've actually just moved it all around to Jimmy's got a mess of toy.
• 25:57
  I call it his toy shop with all the stuff there.
• 26:00
  But Engel's car is around there and I'm about, we're going down to watch the Grand Prix, Di and I, and going to spend a month in Melbourne when we get back, we'll get back in and try and get the Engel car finished.
• 26:17
  But I hurt my shoulder and...
• 26:19
  I didn't play golf for five months, so I couldn't do any work on that.
• 26:22
  So just one of those things, just taking a lot longer than what we thought.
• 26:28
  Get back to racing in a second.
• 26:28
  You are playing golf, I'm told, with some ex-fighter pilots and stuff, aren't you?
• 26:32
  Tell us about that.
• 26:33
  Yeah, yeah, that's good.
• 26:34
  Actually, I'm the youngest in the group.
• 26:36
  Oh, yeah?
• 26:36
  Yeah, and I'll be 69 soon.
• 26:39
  But, yeah, one of our neighbours was a wing commander, and he then served –
• 26:49
  Cole Patching his name is.
• 26:50
  He then served as the military attache in Malaysia and then for quite a few years in the USA.
• 26:59
  So there's a group of them and I'm an outsider and then there's a chemist who's an outsider but the rest are either pilots or navigators.
• 27:09
  Good stories.
• 27:10
  Shoulder aside, is your golf game good?
• 27:12
  Yeah.
• 27:13
  Well, it's better since my shoulder is not quite right because I don't try and smack it as hard as what I used to.
• 27:21
  Can we talk about the Marcus chapter?
• 27:27
  NASCAR.
• 27:28
  So I can vividly recall being, I reckon at the Australian Grand Prix, Lee Diffie was dispatched to do an interview with Marcus about a rumor going around that he wanted to go to NASCAR.
• 27:40
  Brett Murray, the publicist kind of cornered us afterwards and said, hey, there's only a handful of people in the world that know about this.
• 27:46
  And it was a bit of controversy at the time, but he clearly made up his mind.
• 27:53
  He was going to go and do this.
• 27:55
  from what you talked about before, even with Jason Bright, that if they didn't want to stay, you weren't always the types to prevent that.
• 28:04
  When did the conversation start about that and how did you feel when you learnt that he wanted to go and do this?
• 28:09
  Well, I think he was working through it all and I feel that other than Sonia, his wife, we were probably one of the first to know.
• 28:22
  although he worked closely with Ford, so all through that last year of 2005.
• 28:29
  And we actually had a contract on him for 2006.
• 28:32
  So you let him out?
• 28:34
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we let him go.
• 28:37
  As I said, he'd been very good for us and perhaps in hindsight we shouldn't have, but no, it was the right thing to do.
• 28:47
  And...
• 28:50
  any trip that he'd done there, even his first trip away, he came down and sat down and he talked to us about it.
• 28:56
  Jimmy loved NASCAR too, didn't he?
• 28:57
  Yeah, yeah, he did, yeah.
• 28:59
  I think sometimes he wished that he could have raced every weekend like those guys do, but, yeah, so that was all...
• 29:07
  So it was all pretty straight up and he was good to deal with.
• 29:10
  I think in his mind too was it,
• 29:13
  maybe vindicated because a lot happened in that final year too with Balaclava Gate, the thing with Scaife at Wanneroo and stuff like that.
• 29:21
  And I think in his mind it made him feel like these are signs.
• 29:27
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 29:29
  I think he was just really too emotional about it all sometimes, you know, and instead of saying shit happens...
• 29:41
  And, you know, one thing you can't do is you can't beat City Hall, you know.
• 29:46
  No.
• 29:47
  So that was all right.
• 29:50
  He was a potential championship winner of the year, Russell, in 2005.
• 29:56
  Yeah.
• 29:57
  But at the end with Bathurst, he wasn't to be.
• 30:00
  But in, you know, looking, I was always happy that we could win it with Russell too and Celtics.
• 30:08
  Yeah.
• 30:09
  Could you have, I mean, you said before hindsight, I mean, I'm not a believer in regret, right?
• 30:12
  You make the best decision you can at the time with what you're doing.
• 30:15
  What would you have done differently to keep him?
• 30:17
  How could you have kept him?
• 30:18
  Oh, no.
• 30:19
  Well, morally, we didn't.
• 30:21
  You know, he'd been up front with us.
• 30:24
  what his plan was and how he was going to do it.
• 30:27
  And it was quite an ambitious plan, but Marcus being Marcus, he had nutted through most of it and, you know, it all came together for him.
• 30:36
  Were you oddly looking on from afar with a, you know, a very proud smile with what he achieved over there?
• 30:43
  Yeah, I think he'd done, he did an amazing job and,
• 30:50
  You know, I visited a few times and try and left him alone, but I would have a look through the factories and all that sort of stuff.
• 30:59
  And, yeah, you know, you could just tell he was very close to getting a cruise ship that was going to go with him, you know.
• 31:12
  But it never happened on the Opals.
• 31:14
  But, man, there's a lot in that racing, you know.
• 31:17
  Yeah, definitely.
• 31:21
  Balaclavagate it's a difficult one you may not want to talk about it fans have asked about it from listener questions here and so on with the benefit of time how do you feel about that now well I still remember that alright because it was just one of those things but Marcus come and said to me and I think Jimmy was here I don't know but came and said to me it was really hot in those cars and he said to me
• 31:50
  I've had approval not to use a balaclava.
• 31:55
  So, and who's given you approval?
• 32:00
  Anyway.
• 32:02
  So I said, not happy, go and check.
• 32:06
  So he went back and whether he went to the toilet or went and seen whoever, I don't know.
• 32:14
  But he said, no, no, we were right without a balaclava and I said,
• 32:19
  I thought, oh, I don't know.
• 32:21
  But anyway, it was that simple.
• 32:23
  That's how it panned out, yeah.
• 32:26
  Was it rivals, do you reckon, or just City Hall policing it?
• 32:30
  No, I'm pretty sure I know who it was, but I won't mention it.
• 32:33
  Yeah.
• 32:35
  Okay.
• 32:36
  Can we talk about now the driver who replaced him, James Courtney?
• 32:39
  Because you had this amazing chapter with Ingeland and Ambrose together.
• 32:44
  Yeah.
• 32:45
  James incredibly well credentialed in terms of what he'd done in carts and other categories abroad and so on.
• 32:51
  And he would win a title ultimately with DJR, but it didn't happen with you guys.
• 32:56
  No, it didn't.
• 32:56
  And James, it was strange.
• 32:59
  He was highly credentialed, you know.
• 33:04
  But to me, James had so many people tell him how good he was.
• 33:10
  He was never prepared when he came to us to learn the ropes because, you know, you've tested Formula One cars or whatever, you know, and had a brain rattle through all that.
• 33:21
  But there was a lot to learn.
• 33:24
  That was unique about your cast.
• 33:27
  Yeah, and the category, yeah.
• 33:29
  So, yeah, he had a lot of people blowing wind up his backside on how good he was and it just didn't help, you know.
• 33:40
  And while we worked away and started, you know, coming together, it just didn't, no championships or anything, no.
• 33:52
  Can we have a little digression for a second?
• 33:54
  And one other personal character in the previous history to this point that had a connection with you guys is Mark Larkin and running a car.
• 34:02
  We haven't talked about that so far.
• 34:04
  We've seen him do some incredible things on TV and what a character he is.
• 34:08
  You get a window into what Mark Larkin is like and working with him.
• 34:13
  What was it like back then?
• 34:14
  Yeah, it was good actually.
• 34:16
  The Larko deal come about because we bought Ellen out of Ellen Jones Racing and changed it to SPR and then we only had one car so we decided to autonomise the costs.
• 34:32
  You needed to be running somebody else.
• 34:35
  So Larko had built this company.
• 34:37
  car and you know it was a bit of a trendsetter that some of it didn't work as well as what it should have um so anyway we i went to sydney and went to see larko and stayed at his house and met robin for the first time and all that sort of stuff living in carlingford then where was he no no he was out at um out past camden okay and
• 35:04
  The real one, was it?
• 35:05
  Yeah, even further out because there was chooks running around.
• 35:12
  You know, Larko.
• 35:13
  You know.
• 35:14
  Anyway, so we quickly put a deal together and ran him.
• 35:21
  And actually, it's interesting, a few years later, I was on the board of V8 Supercars.
• 35:27
  and we'd lost Barry, which was, he was an identity in television.
• 35:33
  And we had Murray Lomax come in to say, you know, we need...
• 35:40
  Character.
• 35:40
  Yeah, we need something here.
• 35:43
  And anyway, I put Larko's name for it.
• 35:47
  And I only told them the story about probably a year ago, because, you know, I read,
• 35:55
  Oh, no, it was on your podcast where Murray Lomax offered him this gig.
• 36:00
  But I had no support, to be honest.
• 36:04
  And then we talked about it, talked about it, and I just explained to them that Larko with his drawings.
• 36:10
  He had never been any different, let me tell you.
• 36:12
  So...
• 36:16
  So Larko got off at that gig and has never looked back except for when they decided it was time for him to go.
• 36:27
  Very good part of the sport and immense character.
• 36:30
  And obviously what you suggested there would have been well and truly backed up by Neil Crompton, I think, in that whole process.
• 36:37
  What was that board position like?
• 36:41
  Because you're talking some major players in sport slash motorsport.
• 36:46
  Did you enjoy that?
• 36:47
  What was that like?
• 36:48
  Yeah, I did enjoy it.
• 36:49
  I had two stints on the board.
• 36:54
  The first one, you know, I didn't try and stand again because I wanted to concentrate on our team, and that paid dividends.
• 37:02
  And then post that, I went back on the board.
• 37:06
  But there were some very good people there, like James Erskine, who was Warnie's manager of all things.
• 37:15
  But he was an amazing guy.
• 37:18
  and he was partners with Tony Cochran, and there was another partner, Basil.
• 37:24
  Safidi?
• 37:25
  Yeah, Basil, yep.
• 37:28
  And then you had the teams represented, and there was times that you just had to take your team hat off and do the right thing for the business.
• 37:40
  And I've got to say that everybody on the board, guys like Larry and Scaife,
• 37:47
  the Ford side, you know, Tim Edwards and so on, Kim Jones.
• 37:55
  They did that and it worked well.
• 37:57
  But the business was going from strength to strength, the V8 supercar business, yeah.
• 38:03
  Two questions that listeners love, the race, the car.
• 38:07
  What's the one over your entire time that you have a very fond recollection and attachment to?
• 38:17
  Oh, that's too hard to answer really, to be honest.
• 38:21
  Did that become a tool for you or did you get attached to it?
• 38:24
  Oh, no, you did get attached to it.
• 38:27
  But then once you're out of the business, we had an offer for Ambrose's car and it now resides in Sydney.
• 38:36
  So, you know, time moves on.
• 38:41
  When you restore those things, you know, I'm sure there's lots of documented things that you can refer to, but is it, you know, to 100% what they were back in the day?
• 38:52
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 38:53
  That was one of the things that we had to do, all the sign writing, you know, all the specs.
• 39:01
  But, you know, some of the stuff wasn't documented as well as maybe it should have been, but some of the upgrades and developments and...
• 39:10
  But I think, you know, both cars that we're doing, or we've done one and the next one we're doing, are genuine.
• 39:19
  Because they were.
• 39:20
  Yeah, yeah.
• 39:21
  Absolutely.
• 39:22
  Awesome.
• 39:23
  A listener on Twitter, Crisco, has asked if there were any interesting times in the Ambrose-Ingle heyday.
• 39:30
  Did they have any funny moments?
• 39:32
  Was there tension on occasion?
• 39:35
  What was that like?
• 39:37
  No, but I do remember when we were in China...
• 39:41
  Russell really needed a new helmet because it would come flying across the room.
• 39:47
  Les Laidlaw was there and it missed him, but if it had hit him, I think Russell might have come off second best.
• 39:54
  But no, no, it's just normal stuff you do when you go racing and giving it a go, you know.
• 40:04
  Nathan Addis has asked about Mitsubishi.
• 40:08
  Can you shed any light on that?
• 40:09
  How close did it get, et cetera?
• 40:13
  We had discussions, but one of the...
• 40:17
  There was also another opportunity, which we'll talk about, but Mark Rowworth went... You know, I said he worked for us.
• 40:25
  He came in in a commercial position.
• 40:27
  He went to Adelaide and spoke with them, but their manufacturing...
• 40:34
  At that stage, it was still operational, but I think there was a... Wind down.
• 40:39
  Yeah, yeah.
• 40:40
  It was even shutting down Ford and Christ Holden too.
• 40:49
  But then there was also an opportunity with Toyota.
• 40:51
  Was there?
• 40:52
  Yeah.
• 40:53
  And we went along, and it was going along good.
• 40:56
  Tony Cochran come to one meeting with me.
• 40:59
  So what are we talking about?
• 41:01
  Your cameras, basically.
• 41:02
  Yeah, at that stage, yeah.
• 41:07
  But what happened there was the talks had to stop because Toyota restructured, basically stopped Australian production.
• 41:19
  And then a lot of people were left unemployed.
• 41:21
  So it had to justify a racing program.
• 41:24
  Yeah, there's no way you could understand that 100%.
• 41:31
  Anthony De Silva.
• 41:32
  No, no, we've covered that, sorry.
• 41:34
  Danny Stewart.
• 41:36
  Scott McLaughlin in the chapter with you guys and the observations of his talent even back then.
• 41:44
  Well, he was quite a natural in a car because he hadn't driven anything on four wheels with doors, you know.
• 41:53
  So I actually took him up the Queensland Raceway.
• 41:56
  Mini in those days had an open test day, you know,
• 42:00
  And he went really well.
• 42:04
  And then we decided that we would go straight into the Super 2, if you like.
• 42:14
  And that worked good.
• 42:16
  He had a good car, had good engines, because in those days there was restriction on the main game engines, but like the camshafts were different in his engines until it all settled down.
• 42:30
  But it didn't end well.
• 42:34
  We won the championship, but it didn't end well because money was involved.
• 42:38
  And, you know, I've got a lot to say on it, but... Not now.
• 42:44
  Yeah.
• 42:45
  That's okay.
• 42:46
  I'm big on the podcast being your words, your time.
• 42:50
  Well, we're on that flavour.
• 42:53
  Let's talk Shane.
• 42:54
  A lot of time has passed since his shock decision to leave.
• 42:59
  He did talk in an interview a couple of years back about making peace.
• 43:03
  Did you guys make peace?
• 43:04
  How is all that?
• 43:06
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 43:09
  We've made peace.
• 43:12
  regularly text them and say, hey, you're going good, or he dropped into work and we spoke for a couple of hours.
• 43:23
  No, he's good and he drives them really well.
• 43:26
  He's the man.
• 43:27
  Well, that was my next question.
• 43:28
  You talked about Hampton Downs and so on before with the Toyota Racing Series car.
• 43:33
  Did you know very early on that there was something special there?
• 43:37
  Yes, well, when we were at Pukekohe, Kenny Smith, who's an old mate of mine, and he's done 50 New Zealand Grand Prix.
• 43:45
  That's crazy.
• 43:48
  And anyway, he's just broken a few ribs because he fell off a ladder.
• 43:52
  Silly bugger.
• 43:54
  A legend in global motor racing, really.
• 43:57
  Yeah, yeah.
• 43:58
  Anyway...
• 44:01
  Kenny said, oh, come and watch the Formula Ford race.
• 44:04
  So we went from Pukekoia across the track right down the end of the grandstand as far as you could go and just watched the Formula Ford race from there.
• 44:15
  And Shane passed a guy around the outside in Formula Fords.
• 44:19
  It's not easy to do.
• 44:21
  And I thought, oh, that's good.
• 44:23
  So anyway, we talked with him that...
• 44:27
  I think the day he won his championship, and he sat in the car.
• 44:29
  And he was quite a slim, young, tall guy then.
• 44:35
  And his dream was to drive V8 supercars.
• 44:41
  He didn't have a Formula One dream or to race in Europe or anything else.
• 44:47
  And so that was a good fit.
• 44:49
  It all come together pretty quick.
• 44:52
  But he'd done...
• 44:54
  Did a season of Formula Toyota over there, and I went over to Manfield and watched a race, and it wasn't long after that.
• 45:04
  We had our first test and never looked back.
• 45:07
  Probably need to relive the departure so much and what went down, but you were very worried about him at that time.
• 45:15
  Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, sort of, still a bit raw, but
• 45:23
  We'd signed a new contract with Shane, which was 2012, the year we sold to Betty.
• 45:30
  But we were selling, we'd started talking to Betty at the Grand Prix, well to Ryan Madison actually, at the Grand Prix that year.
• 45:39
  So we had the full season ahead of us and in Shane's contract
• 45:46
  we put a clause in there, which they never used, for one reason or another.
• 45:51
  But if the shareholding and the team in the SVR changed more than 33%, he had the right to walk.
• 46:00
  But for some reason, him and his management elected not to use that.
• 46:07
  And it went the other way, and it wasn't...
• 46:14
  I wasn't worried about it too much.
• 46:17
  It just disappointed me how it all happened.
• 46:20
  But there was a lot of money spent on lawyers.
• 46:24
  I'm glad you've made a piece that's important.
• 46:27
  Yeah, yeah, we have made peace.
• 46:28
  Yeah, and as I say, he's probably...
• 46:32
  He is just driving better and better, yeah.
• 46:35
  And he's been killed a bit too.
• 46:37
  Oh, yeah, definitely.
• 46:38
  He's grown up.
• 46:40
  But soon, some of those guys are not going to be intimidated as they are now, and he'll end up in the fence or whatever.
• 46:50
  But he'll understand that when it comes...
• 46:53
  Timing is everything.
• 46:54
  You mentioned selling to Betty.
• 46:56
  Was that hard?
• 46:57
  Was it one of those moments where you just went, this is, you know, this is right time for us for all sorts of reasons?
• 47:03
  Yeah, it was the right time.
• 47:06
  Jimmy and I had, because we didn't come with any personal money behind it, you know, we were always very careful how we run the business.
• 47:18
  And it was just so time-consuming, you know.
• 47:21
  And I used to...
• 47:23
  Every year at the beginning of the year, I knew what funding we had.
• 47:28
  And then you knew your costs, fixed costs and whatever.
• 47:32
  And I, every year used to work out how much an hour, 24 seven it cost to run the team.
• 47:39
  And I, one year I said to me, this is just ridiculous, you know.
• 47:46
  If we had another 9-11 or something go wrong, um,
• 47:52
  you know, it's going to be tough or COVID indeed.
• 47:56
  So anyway, the timing was right because we're...
• 48:00
  done a lot of laps and we were happy here.
• 48:03
  You've achieved some incredible things.
• 48:05
  I don't know how right I am here, but as we talk, significantly are you basically getting ready to wrap up the Stone Brothers workshop that I would have known at Yatler and things like that?
• 48:18
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 48:20
  At the moment it's just in the hands of being sold.
• 48:24
  Jimmy and I had a family of, well,
• 48:27
  Jimmy and Bev and Di and I had a family agreement on how stuff would be split up.
• 48:32
  So Jimmy owns a factory where Matt Stone operates and where that engine shop is that I talked about.
• 48:39
  And then so I've looked at that factory, the race shop that you've been to, and one day we just had a Lantex built, which in New Zealand I don't think they had.
• 48:55
  But anyway, it just...
• 48:57
  There's always something going out and I thought, I've had enough of this.
• 49:03
  And also, if anything happened to me, Di would go, what the hell do I do with that place?
• 49:10
  So that's why.
• 49:14
  That's right, Di?
• 49:18
  Anyway, so we'll just.
• 49:20
  It's a pretty significant moment, Ross, as that hit you.
• 49:25
  Oh, yeah.
• 49:26
  There'll be things that you're cleaning out and moving on.
• 49:29
  Oh, man, well, I hurt my shoulder and I basically cleaned out.
• 49:33
  I had two big skip bins arrive, you know, one after the other and done a lot of it one-handed.
• 49:41
  And then I'd had help from different people when I needed it.
• 49:47
  So it is a big moment, but, you know, you've just got to...
• 49:52
  eyes forward.
• 49:54
  Has there been other offers for you to go and do?
• 49:55
  I mean, you've dabbled in utes in recent years and so on.
• 49:59
  Or you are in the sense that we know you in that pit line that you've finished there?
• 50:05
  Yeah, yeah.
• 50:05
  There's been offers over the years and some interesting ones that I won't talk about now.
• 50:13
  But the youths, Di, Emily, our youngest daughter, and myself, we love doing those youths.
• 50:22
  Di didn't like me spending money on them, but...
• 50:28
  We had a good young Kiwi driver and Tom Alexander and we won the championship, so that was good.
• 50:34
  But when they elected to go to V8s, it was always a three-year deal on diesels and supercars cut it off for whatever reason.
• 50:45
  And they weren't that popular, but then they didn't get a lot of higher support within the supercar organisation.
• 50:55
  So,
• 50:57
  When they decided to go to petrol, I thought, I'm not getting into that market because all those, if you bought a sponsor along there, you would know, because we were in the diesel market, it was easy or easier.
• 51:11
  But if you bought along a sponsor into those huge series, you'd know that on the Monday they'd have all of the eight teams on their back, you know.
• 51:22
  Gen 3 observations.
• 51:23
  What do you think of the new car?
• 51:26
  I don't think much of it, but I think it'll be all right.
• 51:30
  But how it got to the stage where they had to do mods to fit drivers like Tanda and SVG in there, just something's wrong somewhere.
• 51:42
  And in the old days when we were developing rules ourselves, the first thing you talked about was redundancy, whether there was cylinder heads or whatever.
• 51:55
  But now I guess those cars will all end up in Super 2.
• 52:01
  But the redundancy on engine stuff is just amazing, just massive.
• 52:07
  So but I guess I have to move to it.
• 52:11
  There's a lot of people put a lot of time into it.
• 52:14
  But I can't believe at this stage they're still getting drivers to fit in the car.
• 52:20
  And then there's a hell of a lot of work to be done.
• 52:23
  Yeah.
• 52:25
  I understand how the chassis are going to be supplied, one for a two-car team, you know, so they can start building them up.
• 52:32
  But they've all got to be, you know, built and then tested in Angus.
• 52:38
  So there's a lot of work to do here.
• 52:42
  Is there a driver that you would love to have run at some point that maybe had discussions with at Stones that didn't come to pass?
• 52:50
  Maybe it could be an international driver at some point or someone local at it?
• 52:54
  Oh, yeah, there was a few.
• 52:55
  There was always some opportunities.
• 52:59
  Like we talked to Murph at one stage and I had to rush out of his trailer to go and get oxygen when he told me how much he wanted to drive.
• 53:11
  Which track were you at?
• 53:12
  Oh, that was at Sandown.
• 53:15
  So anyway, but there was an IndyCar driver that,
• 53:25
  He'd hurt himself in IndyCars and, you know, we were talking about running in supercars.
• 53:34
  But I said to him, don't think it's going to be a soft touch here and if you've got unfinished business and IndyCars stay there, dig in, you know, and it turned out all right for him.
• 53:46
  Finally, just to wrap this up, I mean, a couple of boys that grew up near Bukakaui,
• 53:53
  Championship wins, Bathurst win, Hall of Fame in supercars, other stuff abroad.
• 54:01
  I mean, it's been just a remarkable journey, hasn't it?
• 54:04
  It's surreal.
• 54:06
  Yeah, it's actually quite funny.
• 54:08
  As Jimmy would help me with the Ambrose car, and indeed the Engle cars, we rebuilt it.
• 54:14
  And he said to me one day, he said, you know what, I think we tried a bit hard because, man, we used to work some hours, you know.
• 54:23
  You just couldn't get a team to do it these days, I don't think.
• 54:27
  But... Is that hard on the family?
• 54:31
  Oh, it is, but luckily I've got a very understanding and supporting wife.
• 54:35
  And I'm spoiling her now because we're going to go to the Grand Prix.
• 54:40
  And the kids, in a broader stone sense, have a footprint in the sport.
• 54:46
  I mean, Anna's gone and done some amazing things with Supercars Television, with Channel 7 more recently and so on.
• 54:52
  Matt, as you pointed out, has got his own team and so on.
• 54:54
  Yeah.
• 54:55
  The stone name will continue, mate, won't it?
• 54:57
  Yeah, well, Matt's Jimmy's son, so he's my nephew.
• 55:01
  And our son, Nick, he worked in motorsport for quite a few years, and he does his own thing with IT work now.
• 55:10
  I can remember him being in the background at SBR back in the day doing some things.
• 55:15
  Yeah, yeah.
• 55:16
  Websites and stuff, wasn't he?
• 55:17
  Oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
• 55:18
  Yeah, yeah.
• 55:20
  And he used to do data and stuff like that.
• 55:23
  Yeah.
• 55:25
  What are you most proud of?
• 55:28
  I don't know.
• 55:29
  I'm 69 soon.
• 55:30
  I didn't think I'd live that long.
• 55:32
  Congratulations.
• 55:34
  It's been wonderful to shoot the breeze with you and get some backstories here.
• 55:38
  You've covered some ground, Ross, and you both should be enormously proud.
• 55:43
  Yeah, yeah, we are.
• 55:44
  And there's so many other little side stories you'd go into, but another time or, oh, we're sitting going to write a book.
• 55:54
  for the grandkids.
• 55:56
  You should do that.
• 55:57
  Yeah, just for the grandkids so they can...
• 56:00
  So then you don't need any lawyers involved.
• 56:04
  I look forward to reading that every bit.
• 56:06
  Yeah, OK, cheers.
• 56:07
  Cheers.
• 56:14
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 56:18
  Series editor and producer is Ed Gooden.
• 56:22
  Audio production by Link Kelly.
• 56:24
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• 56:29
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• 56:30
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• 56:43
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