Latest / Rusty's Garage / Dave Reynolds - Part 2

Transcript

Dave Reynolds - Part 2 · Rusty's Garage

0:02
A listener production.
0:19
G'day everybody, Rusty here.
0:20
All set for part two of my pod with David Reynolds, released just a week out from the start of the 2024 season of Supercars.
0:28
We hope you're all excited about that.
0:30
We will talk about his new chapter in the Team 18 Camaro in this one, and a whole lot more.
0:36
A reminder, if you've arrived here and perhaps missed part one, make sure you check that out too.
0:41
From growing up in Albury and the family love of racing.
0:45
How he almost took a professional tennis path
0:48
the powerful motivator of never having a certain future in his early days and why he thought at times that Formula Ford and Porsche Carrera Cup might mark the end of the road for his racing dream.
1:01
You'll find part one in the garage library, all good to go.
1:05
This seems stupidly PC to do, but someone will probably tell me that neither of us are medicos in this conversation when it comes to the very small part where we chat about the pandemic and his views around the vaccine.
1:20
Can we please keep the pandemic in the bloody rearview mirror?
1:24
And let's just accept that his view might be different to others.
1:29
Respect the difference of opinion and let's leave it at that, okay?
1:32
We begin part two of this conversation by focusing on his time with another big team in the supercar's pit lane and a different manufacturer.
1:41
A move to blue that would really mark his arrival in the sport.
1:47
Can we come to the Tickford chapter for you now?
1:51
Can we look at it in a framed way, right?
1:55
What is your takeaway from that period with them now?
1:58
Tickford.
1:59
Yeah, Tickford.
1:59
I mean, was there unfinished business?
2:01
Was there stuff that you're massively proud of?
2:04
Maybe give us a balanced view of both.
2:06
Yeah, I suppose.
2:08
When I joined that team, I was like the young driver, still the young driver.
2:12
And I had Will Davison and Mark Winterbottom in the two main cars, they called them.
2:16
And I was the third car.
2:17
Good benchmarks.
2:18
Guns.
2:18
Yeah, awesome.
2:19
Like they were guns.
2:21
And those old school cars, unreal.
2:23
Did you like those cars?
2:24
I loved those cars.
2:25
They were so much fun.
2:26
They were just really cool supercars to drive.
2:28
And they reminded me of what I grew up watching.
2:31
And just the stuff you could do with them and the amount of engineering the boys used to put into them were ridiculous.
2:35
Like...
2:36
There was at one point, everyone started running water brakes.
2:40
So to cool our brakes down, they used to have this little tank in the back.
2:43
They used to come in, fill up the water tank and the fuel as well.
2:47
And we used to spray water on the brakes to try and cool them down so we could cool our front tires down so we could have faster lap speed.
2:54
But by the end, they had water brake spray, rim spray, rear brake spray, rim spray, and they had like...
3:02
Like we used to come in for like say 100 kilos of water and 50 kilos of water that we used to spray over like 30 yards.
3:08
100 kilos of fuel and 50 kilos of water.
3:10
Ridiculous.
3:10
It was just pouring out.
3:12
It was so much fun watching all that happen and it made a big difference to our lap speed and our performance.
3:18
So it was unreal to watch all that sort of unfold and that sort of wasn't happening until I got there and then –
3:24
They heard of like 888 doing all this stuff and just what they were trying to do during the race.
3:30
And that's where all the engineers started building stuff.
3:32
And then, oh, we don't have enough water.
3:34
Like they built like a tank of 30 liters and then they had to like weld this other like 20 liter like tank onto it to try and make more water.
3:40
It was just cool.
3:41
Just all the stuff they used to do was unreal.
3:43
I really miss those periods.
3:44
Like you fast forward today where everyone's got the same shocks, the same this, the same that.
3:49
There's no real engineering being put into the car.
3:52
Innovation.
3:52
Yeah, it's all about tuning.
3:54
and matching your car to the track and the tire on the day and getting the most out of it.
3:58
So back then it was way more wild where they could build so many cool things and all the test days were always trying different brand of shocks, different brand of this, different upright, different steering arms, different clevis.
4:11
Everything was just so much more fun and enjoyable where over time they try and wean it down and make them, not stupider, but just more formula based, which is,
4:23
You know, arguably it's not as fun for the engineers.
4:25
So it's harder to actually attract probably good engineers.
4:29
Some people have a viewpoint that that is a little bit, be careful what you wish for too, because if everyone's got the same widget to an extent, I mean, you're all operators at, you know, such an incredible level.
4:45
How do you then get, you know, one standout over another?
4:48
Whereas in years gone by, some of those...
4:51
funky little innovations.
4:52
They were the things that set you apart, weren't they?
4:54
Oh, for sure.
4:54
And sometimes it would work at one track and not at the other.
4:57
And you had to go find that out yourself.
5:00
So you'd be like right up the front for one track and then you'd be down the back for the next one.
5:04
It's like, maybe we should take that out for that track.
5:07
It's like, yeah, we probably should.
5:08
But it was just unreal to watch all that unfold.
5:11
But yeah, the Tickford Times.
5:12
So yeah, 2012...
5:14
Um, I was just learning the car cause the car was so different to drive.
5:17
Like I wasn't used to that style of car and the way they set it up and it took me ages to get the hang of it.
5:23
Um, 2013, we got the car of the future, the new car and I think.
5:29
I think, I can't remember, but there was like a big, big parody talk back then.
5:34
Um, cause the Ford got docked a little bit of rear wing.
5:37
Always happens with a new.
5:38
Always, always happens.
5:39
Yeah.
5:40
Always happens.
5:41
And we did all the testing on, you know, more angled rear wing.
5:44
And then for the race, we had to take it off and our car was just sucked for a bit until we could figure out how to rebalance it.
5:50
And, um, 14, uh, I think I had a really bad year.
5:55
I had no pace until...
5:56
They changed the car for the very last round, and that was at Homebush.
6:00
And that sort of brought all my pace back, and I was sort of, I got a podium, I think, for the first time that year.
6:06
I had a really dim year.
6:07
And then 15, we got the FGX.
6:10
And it was just like one of the best cars, supercars at that time.
6:15
The aero was heaps better.
6:17
And, yeah, we went pretty close to winning the championship.
6:20
We ended up third.
6:21
Obviously, Mark won the championship.
6:23
I finished third.
6:24
And, yeah, we put on some really good races, won a few races, got some poles.
6:28
And, yeah.
6:30
Unfortunately, then I had to move on to Erebus and start that chapter.
6:34
But in summing up Tickford here, a couple of things.
6:36
Firstly, they're going through a period of change there at the moment, a reshaping, if you will.
6:42
Do you feel like you were kind of there at the zenith for them maybe in some respects?
6:45
It was a pretty decent period, wasn't it?
6:47
Is that like the peak?
6:48
Oh, yeah.
6:48
You know, like a… Yeah, I suppose like…
6:52
Um, I was there when I was the third car and then, you know, Rod Nash was, he was the third car license owner and then he ended up buying the whole team itself with Sven Burkharts and, um, Rusty French.
7:04
So I kind of watched all that unfold.
7:06
And at the time Sven was my manager.
7:08
Wow.
7:08
He was like looking after all my affairs and, um, everything like that.
7:12
So I watched him become a team owner and, and go on to run a team.
7:16
It was weird.
7:17
It was so weird.
7:18
Who the hell, who the hell invented the shoeie?
7:20
Because you do it.
7:21
Yeah.
7:22
Dan Ricardo does it.
7:25
Various people have put their hand up and said that it's...
7:28
I actually stole it off someone.
7:30
Who?
7:31
Ryle Harris.
7:31
It is.
7:32
So is Ryle, do you believe, the original innovator of this?
7:36
I think so.
7:37
100% he is.
7:37
Yeah, he's crazy.
7:38
I love Ryle.
7:39
He's so much fun.
7:40
But I watched him do it.
7:42
Did he win at Perth, the Ute race?
7:45
And I said, next time I win a race, I'm going to do that.
7:48
Do that.
7:48
And it was the next race he went to was Darwin.
7:50
I'm like...
7:51
I have to do it.
7:52
I have to do it, so I did it.
7:53
And everyone's like, what are you doing, you dickhead?
7:54
Like, isn't that disgusting?
7:55
So awesome.
7:56
Yeah, I know.
7:56
And everyone gave me shit for it.
7:58
And then all of a sudden it took off and went crazy.
8:00
So, yeah, something I've helped started.
8:04
Well, you helped push along.
8:05
Yeah, I was the vice president.
8:09
Vice president, Shui.
8:10
As is your way, you know that you can't sort of keep doing the same trick.
8:14
So, at some point, we started hurling pot plants off the floor.
8:20
I don't know.
8:20
Podium.
8:22
What was the backlash from that?
8:24
Well, there wasn't much backlash back then.
8:27
Triple J actually rang me up.
8:29
Did they?
8:29
Yeah.
8:29
What did they say?
8:30
They said, why'd you do it?
8:31
Yeah.
8:32
And I said, I don't know, I'm just an idiot.
8:33
And I think to this day, I'm the only supercar drive to make it to Triple J. Yeah.
8:37
I think.
8:38
Okay.
8:39
They actually rang me up from an exclusive interview and everything.
8:41
It was all about the podium celebration.
8:43
It wasn't about winning.
8:43
Yeah.
8:44
And you relived it too, didn't you?
8:46
I did, yeah.
8:47
Ten years later, I won that race and there was still pot plants there.
8:50
I'm like, I'll do it for old time's sake.
8:52
And everyone from my team's like, no, don't.
8:54
Because now you get fines.
8:56
Because in 2018 at...
9:01
Was it 18?
9:03
At the Grand Prix, I think we won the last race there.
9:07
And we used to drop the champagne bottle off the podium.
9:10
And Dennis was there downstairs to catch it, and he didn't catch it.
9:14
And it smashed everywhere, all in front of the Formula One pits.
9:17
And ever since then, they brought in a rule that you're going to get fined.
9:20
OH&S, David.
9:21
Yeah, OH&S, yeah.
9:23
So I'm the explorer of OH&S in many ways.
9:26
So yeah, ever since then, everyone's been a bit scared to throw stuff off.
9:30
Grabbed a fire extinguisher.
9:31
Got a fire extinguisher, yeah.
9:34
It didn't go how I planned.
9:35
I planned to go so differently.
9:36
I thought it was going to be one of the CO2 ones.
9:38
It was going to disperse all this smoke everywhere, and everyone wouldn't be able to breathe, and they'd be on the ground dying, coughing, and laughing at the same time.
9:46
And I pressed the thing, and it was like one of those electrical ones, and it was just shit.
9:51
It was just terrible.
9:53
Like a tripling hose.
9:53
Yeah, it was so bad, man.
9:55
It was just average.
9:56
But, yeah.
9:58
You win a race, celebrate.
10:00
Everyone gets up there.
10:01
This gets back to what we talked about, about character, mate.
10:03
It should be, in my opinion, encouraged.
10:07
When you win a race, that is the happiest moment of your life, pretty much.
10:13
But everyone gets up there and accepts a trophy because it's fun.
10:17
I can go mental.
10:18
Do something.
10:19
Trash the stage, whatever.
10:20
Whatever happens.
10:22
4%.
10:22
And you've had a win.
10:23
You've had a win, yeah.
10:24
And you should be stoked.
10:26
I'm over the moon.
10:27
You couldn't say anything to me to bring me down.
10:30
I'd be that happy.
10:30
So, yeah, that's how I feel and that's how I...
10:34
I celebrate.
10:35
Life is over-regulated for all sorts of stupid reasons now.
10:37
In Australia it is, yes.
10:38
Yeah, in Australia it is.
10:39
Sorry, yes.
10:39
And actually last year when the world tour came for TCR, all those international drivers said, we love your country, it's amazing.
10:46
But they all go, oh my God, too many rules.
10:49
Too many rules, too many rules.
10:50
In Australia we've got a habit of making new rules but not taking out old ones.
10:54
So where I'm kind of going here is, does the sport, I mean, I want to say Stephen Richards really tried to kind of get like a driver's body, a driver's group together many years ago.
11:04
It's gone close on a number of occasions.
11:07
Does the frontline people, because I think it should be about you guys now, we don't very sadly have a Ford versus Holden rivalry anymore.
11:14
That's gone.
11:14
We still sort of do, but not really.
11:16
It's not.
11:18
Well...
11:18
Going back to your marketing department days, the drivers are the thing for me, right?
11:23
Your stories, who you are, you know, the comedian, as Shane Jacobson said, that goes racing, you know, whatever.
11:29
We need stuff like that, right?
11:30
So my point is, do you feel like you guys have enough of a say at the table?
11:34
And does the sport need something like that?
11:35
And could it actually really, you know, could it actually work?
11:39
Would it work?
11:40
Yeah, that's a hard, really hard question.
11:42
I've tried to start an association up before.
11:45
Obviously, when I went through all my shit in 2015.
11:47
Mm-hmm.
11:49
With the famous...
11:50
Wagon.
11:51
The wagon.
11:52
The wagon.
11:52
Yeah.
11:53
Let's live it at that.
11:53
The Volkswagen.
11:54
Yes.
11:55
It was a line out of a movie, wasn't it?
11:56
Was it...
11:58
It's out of Kill Bill.
11:59
That's it, Kill Bill.
11:59
Thank you.
12:00
I couldn't remember.
12:00
Go.
12:00
Keep going.
12:01
Yes.
12:01
Let's live it at that.
12:02
You were there that round, weren't you?
12:03
I was.
12:03
I was.
12:04
You were.
12:04
Yeah.
12:06
And I was like, all right, I felt so hard done over by the sport that...
12:11
I felt like there was no avenue for us to explain anything or tell our story or anything.
12:14
And that's why I tried to get an association started.
12:18
But out of that came our podcast.
12:21
Because I wrote the basis to our podcast.
12:23
And I said, I wrote the little business plan.
12:26
This is what we want.
12:27
This is what we want to do.
12:28
This is in 2015.
12:30
And it wasn't until Michael Caruso...
12:33
wasn't racing full time that he's rung me up and said, Hey, do you still want to do that podcast?
12:36
Like three years later, it's like, dude, cool.
12:38
So I've always wanted to do it.
12:39
So that's what kind of started that.
12:41
And that, that gave us the avenue to sort of voice, mate, to like long form conversation.
12:45
Exactly what you do is to explain your story and your case a lot better than, you know, a soundbite or a bloody.
12:50
People read one word, he's a dickhead or, you know, whatever happens.
12:53
So yeah, that's kind of the thesis of that.
12:56
But yeah, our sport would a hundred percent,
12:59
run more smoother, run more professionally if there was some... You'd have a better voice at the table, you guys.
13:03
Yeah, for sure.
13:04
I think, yeah.
13:04
At the minute, the teams run the sport.
13:07
Yes.
13:08
They have the controlling interests where the drivers were just paid subcontractors, I suppose.
13:14
And they don't...
13:15
really, they care, I suppose, a little bit, but probably not to the extent what the fans think.
13:22
The fans really think that a driver makes a team, but at the end of the day, we kind of don't.
13:27
The team makes a team and we're just the organic component behind the steering wheel.
13:34
So I think definitely we need an association.
13:38
We need some form of representation on the board level or whatever.
13:45
we can do to help out.
13:46
We've got our driver's chat that was really helpful last year.
13:50
That was the first time we all had a WhatsApp group, and we'd all talk about issues from the track, safety perspective, or the running of the calendar or running of the day happened or whatever.
14:00
So there's kind of a framework there, a loose framework.
14:02
Yeah, it's unofficial.
14:04
There is definitely an unofficial.
14:05
And Chas has tried really hard to get some sort of...
14:09
what's the word, like binding agreement together, but I'm not sure how that's going.
14:13
But yes, the team owners don't want it because they think we'll be asking for better conditions, more money, that sort of things.
14:24
It's needed.
14:24
It is 100% needed, yeah.
14:27
And it's not an out-of-place thing with, I mean, Formula One's had one for years.
14:31
There's no reason why you shouldn't have something like that.
14:34
You've touched on it there, mate, on kind of courting controversy ride from the wagon to...
14:39
unfortunately what went down in the pandemic and so on.
14:43
How do you deal with all that stuff on the run?
14:46
Because that then gets mainstream, right?
14:48
Which part?
14:49
Which one first?
14:51
Okay, let's come to the first one.
14:52
I mean, I don't know that we need to, because it cost you 25 large or something, didn't it?
14:58
It's a tax deduction though, Rusty.
15:01
The wagon.
15:02
I'm always real positive.
15:03
The wagon controversy.
15:04
So it's a tax deduction because it's a made-up fine.
15:08
It's not from a government body, so it's a fake fine.
15:10
It's really a fake fine.
15:12
I paid on my credit card, so I got a large Qantas points.
15:16
And I bought a toaster with them.
15:18
You bought a toaster?
15:19
Got a new toaster.
15:20
I don't have any toast anymore.
15:22
Oh, thanks.
15:24
We don't have to necessarily...
15:26
It was like a horrific time in my life because there was so much oddness going on.
15:29
There was no communication going on.
15:31
I had no idea what was going to happen.
15:33
So I was just sitting down doing my debrief notes at the end of the day and then knock at the door.
15:39
I'm like, Jason Barguana, what do you want?
15:41
And he goes, here's a $25,000 fine.
15:45
You have to accept it.
15:46
If you contest it, they're going to double it and kick you out of the sport.
15:48
I'm like...
15:50
Fuck.
15:51
Whoa.
15:52
And I shit myself, like badly shit myself.
15:56
And then I sort of, I had to accept it.
15:59
And I heard later that they were trying to give me a $250,000 fine, which I don't understand the severity of things, clearly.
16:07
Anyway, it's another thing.
16:09
It's another thing.
16:09
I mean, it kind of gets back to what we talked about before about where is the line and all that stuff, right?
16:14
I always have one more positive story.
16:16
Go, go.
16:17
I got polled that year at Bathurst in the shootout and they gave me a check for $5,000 and all I wanted to say was five down, 20 to go.
16:24
They didn't let me because ever since that happened and made headlines and everything, I always had like a supercars representative staring at me for every interview I was doing, making sure I wasn't going to stuff up again.
16:38
And I asked him whether I could say that and they said,
16:40
No.
16:40
No.
16:41
Okay.
16:41
That was like one of my all-time greatest lines anyway.
16:45
As you were saying.
16:46
A lot of time since then, right?
16:47
And this gets back to the where is the line thing before and right and wrong in the current climate that we live in, what have you.
16:54
Yeah.
16:54
But what I'd like to ask is, were the girls actually okay?
16:58
I mean, have you spoken with Simona since then or any of that sort of stuff?
17:00
They're all fine, aren't they?
17:01
The girls didn't care at all.
17:01
There you go.
17:02
They did not care at all.
17:03
They thought like, I think Simona didn't even know what that meant.
17:08
Okay.
17:08
And then obviously Renee's Renee.
17:12
She didn't care at all, but I have no idea why it happened or no idea, man.
17:17
But then ever since then, I realized society's taken a turn for the worse.
17:22
And obviously where we are today is completely down that path of offense and all this stuff.
17:29
It's just, it's too crazy.
17:30
In that media training example we talked about before, that's the hard part because you- How do you do your job?
17:36
How do you tell someone-
17:37
to be themselves, but don't be themselves.
17:39
Yeah, that's right.
17:40
Don't have those thoughts.
17:40
Yeah, correct.
17:41
Or if you are, be super careful how you articulate it, how you, you know, yeah.
17:47
I mean, it's a bit crazy in that sense, because on the other hand, here we are also demanding of you to be characters.
17:54
Be characters.
17:55
So what do you do?
17:55
You're sort of caught between two worlds, aren't you?
17:57
It's like, fire out what I do.
17:59
So that's why most people just go into their shell and just spit out...
18:03
automated responses or I call them NPC responses.
18:06
Which are rubbish for media and for coverage.
18:09
It's rubbish for the fans.
18:10
Exactly, mate.
18:12
When I grew up, I used to love watching Thomas Mazzaro talk on camera because he was funny.
18:16
And those sort of guys that they were entertaining, that's what I wanted to see.
18:20
We need that back.
18:21
I don't know the answer to that.
18:22
I don't know how we get that, but we need it back.
18:26
Have you seen UFC?
18:27
UFC?
18:27
Yeah.
18:28
Yeah.
18:28
They don't care, do they?
18:29
No.
18:29
They say whatever they want and their owner, that Dana White, just says, I'm not here to tell anyone how to speak.
18:36
They do whatever they want.
18:37
Yeah.
18:37
You brought up the podcast before.
18:39
I love that, mate.
18:40
I loved, um, you had Murph on at one stage.
18:44
It was very funny.
18:45
And you hit him up about the fact that he lives in the distance from my place, right?
18:48
We can, we're a couple of k's away, we can see each other and, crikey, and the next thing you're talking about.
18:54
and looking through people's windows and all sorts of stuff, crazy stuff.
18:58
Do you still live there?
18:59
I still live there.
19:00
I can see his joint in the distance.
19:01
I love Murph his best.
19:04
He's working hard at the moment too.
19:06
Sure is.
19:07
So...
19:08
There was you, Michael Caruso.
19:10
Caruso really got his teeth into it in terms of the polish around the edges that was required for different things, didn't he?
19:17
You could free wheel, which was great.
19:19
And Andrew Van Leeuwen, who's off doing good things with Speed Cafe and work for motorsport.com and what have you, he bought a journalistic...
19:26
He brought sense to the argument.
19:29
He brought sense to it.
19:30
But on paper, like if you walked into, I don't know, something in supercars with a whole heap of people and you said, hey, I'm going to create this podcast.
19:38
Here's the three people we're going to get.
19:39
People would go, oh, I don't know how that's going to go.
19:41
Stay away from them.
19:41
Yeah.
19:42
Don't touch them.
19:43
It might explode.
19:44
But in fact- It exploded.
19:45
It went really well.
19:46
Yeah, it did.
19:46
And I still, to this day, still myself, Michael and Andrew get told when's it coming back.
19:51
Yeah.
19:51
And we haven't done an episode for four years.
19:54
It's crazy, isn't it?
19:55
Why did it stop, mate?
19:56
Why did you?
19:57
We sort of went...
19:58
So largely it was supposed to be an audio-based podcast, and that's how I wanted to keep it.
20:02
Then we went on to KO, became a video thing, and there was a bit of artistic confliction.
20:06
And going to Sydney all the time to do it wasn't really what I wanted to do.
20:12
And then...
20:13
Um, cause you can do all that stuff remotely now.
20:15
You can be, you can be anywhere.
20:16
You can, yeah, but there's nothing, there's nothing more genuine than a one-on-one conversation.
20:21
Like if you, even when we did it through zoom and stuff, it still wasn't, it wasn't the same.
20:26
Like you don't get the response.
20:27
You don't get the, the cues.
20:29
You don't get.
20:30
I don't know.
20:31
The interaction that we've got now.
20:32
Yeah, that human element you try and capture.
20:34
It wasn't the same.
20:36
And through all the pandemic stuff, all that COVID vaccine stuff, that was something that sort of hit the nail on the head and ever since then it stopped.
20:46
Was there pressure up higher levels from supercars around some of that stuff?
20:52
Yeah, I suppose like at the end, I was in Fox Sports and we literally just started recording and they come in and said, everyone has to leave.
21:02
Holy.
21:03
I had to leave the building.
21:04
So I had to go home and that was our very last time.
21:09
And someone from Supercars rang someone to Foxport, said Reynolds can't be in that building.
21:16
And then they come and kick me out.
21:19
Wow.
21:19
Yeah, that was our very last day.
21:22
Never got going again.
21:23
I'd love to get it going back in its original form, but not...
21:27
not as in a video.
21:28
Base thing, an audio conversation.
21:30
Someone to listen to, clean the house, driving your car, whatever, going for a run, something like that.
21:37
You may not be able to say too much about this, mate, that the COVID thing and, you know, you clearly had views on vaccine and stuff like that, right?
21:47
How'd you get through that?
21:49
You know, because at the end of the day- How'd I get through it?
21:50
Yeah, really tough.
21:51
That was a very, very hard time.
21:52
You love your racing and you wanted to- Yeah, I love my racing.
21:54
And that's why I ended up getting it.
21:56
Even though it was against all my morals and my, all my health reasons, I didn't think, well, at the time when you, when you read all the reports and everything, it didn't stop transmission and they were telling you it was, but it wasn't.
22:09
So I didn't know what to believe.
22:11
So, um, later down the path, it actually turned out to be a total farce as far as I can, as far as I can think.
22:18
Um, and since then I got like, I got something called a topic heartbeat and.
22:23
What's that?
22:24
It's like when your heart skips a beat and it thinks you're having a heart attack.
22:29
But it's only when I was resting, so when I'm going to bed, I get this really heavy chest, like this weird sort of palpitation, and I think I'm having a heart attack, and then
22:38
It'll go away a minute later and they'll be fine for a few days and then it'll happen again.
22:42
And this happened a lot for maybe a year and a half.
22:46
Is it gone now?
22:47
Yes.
22:47
Well, I haven't had an episode for a while.
22:49
And I went to all these doctors, got all these tests, got ECGs, got calcium scores, got ultrasound, everything like that.
23:01
And they said, no, your heart's fine.
23:03
And then I saw the cardiologist and he said, it sounds like this.
23:06
Yeah.
23:07
And since...
23:09
And I haven't had probably an episode for maybe a year.
23:12
So thankfully it hasn't been anything too violent.
23:15
But I know people on the other side have had horrific conditions from them.
23:30
The journey of David Reynolds has more twists and turns than a rally track.
23:34
And we love him for it.
23:35
And another exciting new chapter awaits with Team 18.
23:39
More on that coming up soon.
23:41
Their team boss and his story is in the library.
23:45
That was great to get those first three and that was COVID.
23:47
Always disappointed we could never have a proper podium and spray some champagne or anything during those years.
23:54
But obviously Frosty getting that win was exceptionally special and it meant everything to me.
24:01
It was for that hard, hard slog of getting that win done.
24:05
And as you know, Frosty's always said, I'm going to get you a win.
24:08
There's no dramas about that.
24:09
It's just when it happens, it'll happen.
24:11
Don't worry.
24:13
Hopefully Davey and Charlie can come together for a few wins in 2024 and beyond.
24:18
Stay tuned.
24:20
Following the timeline of your career here, we naturally get to Erebus and so on and winning Bathurst in 2017, mate.
24:26
It's cool, mate.
24:26
How massive.
24:27
Huge.
24:28
How massive that day was.
24:29
Unreal.
24:30
For you.
24:30
This is one of the best days of my life.
24:32
What's your most vivid recollection of that?
24:34
Is it final lap?
24:37
What sticks out in your mind the most?
24:39
Uh, just the last, like last stint, the whole last stint when it was just fluid and faultless and all that.
24:46
Just everything was like a knife, a hot knife through butter.
24:49
That's how it felt like everything was so easy and it was just, just simple.
24:54
But at the time it was super intense, but it was happening so easily.
24:59
Um, yeah.
25:00
Why did it come so together so well for you all?
25:02
I mean, you had, um, good engineering people around you.
25:06
You had Luca Yulden, who was rock solid, all of those things.
25:10
They're just good ingredients, weren't they?
25:12
You know, it was just the perfect weekend for us.
25:14
You know, our car was fast from, from lap one.
25:18
It was super fast in the dry, mainly in the wet.
25:21
It wasn't.
25:22
And for most of that race, it rained.
25:24
And we were going backwards.
25:26
But when it started to dry up, our car come alive.
25:29
And when I saw Scott's car have an engine failure, I thought to myself that this is ours for the winning.
25:36
And in the last stop, something didn't go well and we ended up on the back foot a little bit.
25:43
But that kind of played into my hands because the track was still drying up.
25:46
So there was blokes in front of me spearing off trying to be the pioneer.
25:49
And that sort of got me to the front.
25:52
And I remember the whole last six laps, I suppose, and all the butterflies in my stomach and almost throwing up three or four laps to go because I realized what's about to take place.
26:03
We're about to win the Bathurst 1000.
26:05
And think about we were one of the smallest teams in Pitlane.
26:09
And I always say Pitlane order goes on how good your team was the year before.
26:12
We were second last.
26:13
So we were the second worst team winning the biggest race, taking on all the big guns.
26:17
It was... David and Goliath.
26:18
I love that.
26:18
Yeah, it was cool as well.
26:18
I love that.
26:19
It was one of the coolest days ever.
26:20
And just the party that happened afterwards and then the end of year party we had.
26:25
We watched Bathurst again.
26:26
Did you?
26:27
Yeah, it was just hilarious.
26:29
It was just... Yeah, it was a really, really good working bunch of guys.
26:31
Yeah, it was so much fun.
26:33
In your world, mate, how did that change?
26:35
Like, you know, here's this kid from Albury who's... Everyone thought I was a dickhead until I won something.
26:40
Yeah.
26:42
But I suppose you can either win the championship and be that champion or be the Bathurst champion.
26:49
And I didn't realize how important Bathurst 1000 was to our nation until you win it.
26:54
You've got no idea.
26:55
That's the only race that people watch.
26:57
It's like the Melbourne Cup or...
26:59
the AFL grand final or something like that, it's the majority of people will watch that.
27:03
The following year is just the polar opposite in the way that it played out.
27:11
I had a great conversation with you in the wake of that about I think your words to me at the time were I wanted to win it in style.
27:17
And that's not a wanky thing I'm saying there.
27:21
I don't mean it like that.
27:22
That's how I said it.
27:22
That's how I would have said it.
27:24
Yeah, and it was about...
27:26
showing that the 2017 was certainly no fluke and that you were more than up for the defence.
27:32
I wanted to dominate.
27:33
Yeah.
27:34
That was my full intention of that weekend.
27:36
When you look back on that now, what are we?
27:38
We're February 2024 as we record this.
27:41
So, you know, a good six years on.
27:43
Yeah.
27:44
How do you sort of...
27:46
look back on that and go, okay, what, what wasn't right?
27:49
What wasn't, you know?
27:50
Well, a funny, I said a funny thing in like the lead up to it.
27:53
Uh, I think I was on the desk talking to Jess and Scaifey and I said, the only way you're going to get this trophy from me is, is if I'm in a body bag.
28:01
Dead set.
28:02
Really?
28:02
Dead set.
28:03
And, um, I wasn't reminded until like weeks later, Daniel Klaminko told me that I was like, I did too.
28:09
Shit.
28:09
Wow.
28:10
I almost like forecasted my own fate, didn't I?
28:12
But how do I rationalize that?
28:13
It just was like,
28:14
Firstly, how drained did you get?
28:16
Oh, I always smoked before I come to the track.
28:19
Like I did, like everyone, all the news stations, all the TV stations want to talk to the last year's winters, don't they?
28:25
Yes, yes.
28:26
So, you know, of course, you just say yes to everything.
28:28
I end up doing 35 appearances in four days.
28:31
which is way too much.
28:32
Like, you know, in your contract, you might do 30 appearances for the year.
28:36
I did them in four days.
28:37
I was smoked.
28:39
And I always like to give everything.
28:42
I like to give myself out to...
28:44
I like to give myself 100%.
28:46
So, you know, doing any little...
28:49
Uh, radio interview is going to take a little bit out of me and over time it's just going to end up amounting to something.
28:55
And I got to the track and, uh, my, the sponsorship manager for Penright goes, geez, man, what's wrong with you?
29:02
You look fucked.
29:03
Really?
29:03
He looked at me, my eyes were all glazed over and he goes, you look tired.
29:07
I'm like, I've fucked.
29:08
Hmm.
29:09
And that just carried on until Sunday.
29:11
I just never had the time to recover.
29:13
Were you like...
29:15
I was stressed.
29:16
Were you?
29:16
Yeah.
29:16
So I was like doing all that stuff, then thinking to myself, I have to put on the performance of my life.
29:22
I have to dominate this race to show everyone it wasn't a fluke last year.
29:26
I just probably put too much pressure on myself.
29:30
Qualifying a pole was probably the worst thing for me.
29:33
Uh, you know, qualifying on pole.
29:35
You must've taken some energy out of yourself to do that.
29:37
Did you mate?
29:37
Like to, to, yeah.
29:38
When you're driving, it's all happening automatically a little bit.
29:42
Um, qualifying on pole is the worst thing for me.
29:46
Get extra media.
29:47
Worst night's sleep.
29:48
Man, my car's fast.
29:49
This is, this is yours to lose.
29:51
Like having all these stupid thoughts like that.
29:53
How much sleep do you get?
29:54
Oh, I got like three hours, maybe two hours one night, three hours the next night, two hours the night before the race.
30:01
I was just in a downhill spiral of, yeah, I wasn't feeling good.
30:07
So, unfortunately, I had an end point.
30:11
And...
30:12
And unfortunately, it was when I was leading the race with the fastest car with like 20 laps to go or something.
30:18
So yeah, it sucked.
30:19
God, that must have been gut-wrenching.
30:20
It was the worst.
30:21
One of the worst times I've ever felt like I'd, I struggled to walk because my cramps are so bad.
30:26
I felt like two, almost up until the next race was two weeks later and it was, um, the Gold Coast race.
30:32
And I struggled to walk up until arriving at the Gold Coast.
30:35
Really?
30:35
Because my cars were so badly cramped.
30:36
My foot, my feet was so sore that I struggled just to walk around after that.
30:42
With your diet, mate, what sort of, I mean, were you doing things to try and supplement vitamins or something?
30:47
Yeah, always.
30:47
Always.
30:48
My diet's pretty strict and I'm pretty good at that.
30:51
Everyone sees it as a- Negative.
30:53
No, as a dehydration.
30:55
Yes.
30:55
Oh, sorry, sorry.
30:56
Yeah.
30:56
But I actually suffered something called adrenal fatigue.
30:58
Okay.
30:59
So obviously, you know, adrenals, adrenaline, that's what gets you up in the morning and gets you ready for the fight.
31:05
Yeah.
31:06
I think my body had enough and couldn't pump any more adrenaline to keep the fight going.
31:10
So it just started shutting parts of my body down.
31:12
Wow.
31:14
Yeah, it sucks.
31:15
You've learned a lot, eh?
31:16
I've learned a lot about myself, yeah.
31:18
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
31:19
But everyone just sees that.
31:21
You drink your pickle juice, that will fix them.
31:22
I'm like, no, no, no.
31:23
It was just you need rest.
31:25
That's the only thing that gets your adrenals back in function.
31:29
And all the drivers would know about this or anyone that's had a massive weekend, either on the pierce or...
31:35
or, you know, driving hard over the weekend, that Monday, Tuesday, you feel absolutely stuffed and it's because of, you know, it's just everything, all the...
31:42
It's like someone's pulled a battery out of you, doesn't it?
31:44
Yeah, basically, yeah.
31:45
Someone's just, you know, yanked all your energy out of you and it's through your adrenal glands apparently.
31:49
So, um, yeah, that's, that was my story.
31:52
And it sucked though, because, you know, if I had my time again and if the team had their time again, you know, they would probably say...
31:59
Maybe do five, six appearances.
32:01
Do the big ones.
32:02
Don't do all the small ones.
32:03
And that's a lesson that I think we all learned together, how to manage people's energy throughout the race weekend.
32:08
Because at the end of the day, everyone has a finite amount of energy.
32:13
At the end of the day, we are athletes behind the wheel.
32:15
We need to give our best performance every time we get in the car.
32:18
And we do that in our freshest, most...
32:21
most energetic state and, you know, doing, doing everything that you're doing, all these appearances just really took it out of me.
32:29
So, you know, I think, um, at the end of the year, uh, DJI learned, obviously I went on record and spoke about that.
32:38
And Ryan Story said at the end of the year, when Scott won the championship that year, they actually stopped all their appearances in the lead up to the last race.
32:45
So he could just fully concentrate on his job at hand based on what I told them.
32:49
Told them.
32:49
Wow.
32:50
Wow.
32:50
Isn't that cool?
32:51
Very.
32:52
I taught Ryan Story something.
32:55
and that's hard to do he's a smart guy okay we've been talking for a little bit here but I'll get to a few key ones to finish got all the time in the world for you Rusty you may or may not be able to talk about it why did you leave Erebus you had a massive deal with them and you know and how difficult was that to do
33:12
Yeah, very, very difficult to do.
33:15
If you can't say, you can't say.
33:16
Don't get into it.
33:17
I don't know what I'm allowed to say.
33:19
Then don't, then.
33:20
I'm very respectful of that stuff.
33:22
Okay, thanks.
33:23
Did you feel reinvigorated at Groves?
33:24
Because the growth that joint's gone through, the things that they have done, I mean...
33:29
I know you've gone on to, which we'll get to in a second, a great new opportunity as well.
33:33
But man, that whole joint has come alive there.
33:35
They're in great shape.
33:35
In really good shape.
33:36
Really good team.
33:37
Unreal to be a part of and watch it all grow.
33:40
So obviously I joined Kelly Grove Racing when it was half Todd, half Grove family.
33:45
And then at the end of that year, the Groves took over everything.
33:50
And, yeah, they employed people like David Couchy from Triple Eight to run the team.
33:55
And he brought a whole new perspective as to what they were doing to win all their races and all their championships.
34:00
I'm like, shit, man, that's got to be good.
34:03
Like, it was like, how do we compete with those guys when they have all this other stuff at their disposal?
34:09
At their disposal.
34:10
Disposable.
34:11
Yeah.
34:12
And the showver.
34:14
It is disposable to many things.
34:19
So yeah, it was like, it was really, really cool to watch him go about his job and try and put all that ethos into all the other workers and watch.
34:28
He was pretty much the person that sort of turned that place around, I'd like to say.
34:32
He really come in and did a fantastic job at the engineering department, making sure they, you know, down to the finest details and
34:40
and everything like that.
34:41
So it was really, really cool to see and turned our cars around because we went from, you know, at the end of 2021, we were not very fast.
34:51
And then we rolled up at Eastern Creek for the test day and like we were one of the fastest cars.
34:57
It was so cool to just watch that turnaround in such a short space.
35:01
And then the year, you know, after the Erebus stuff, it probably took me maybe about a year to get over that mentally, maybe a bit longer.
35:08
I probably suffered for a little bit
35:10
Um, but then, you know, I had some really good people around to sort of build me back up and, and start to believe in myself again.
35:18
And then started, you know, performing really well.
35:20
It was humming toward the end of 2023, wasn't it?
35:22
Like, you know, just like 2022 I'm talking about.
35:25
And then obviously Gen 3 came along and, you know, we were on the Ford side, you know, arguably the, not the, not the better side.
35:31
And, but I still believe our car was really good.
35:34
Hmm.
35:34
Even though the results weren't good, our car was probably one of the better Fords out there.
35:38
And that didn't highlight until the last four rounds when we got the bigger wing from the category.
35:44
And we got four podiums on my car in a row.
35:47
Matt Payne won the final race for a rookie, which is unbelievable.
35:51
He's a great kid with a bright future.
35:52
He's unreal, isn't he?
35:53
He's such a fun kid.
35:54
I had such a good time with him.
35:56
I didn't really know how I was going to take him.
35:58
but I had the best time with him and loved hanging out with him.
36:00
It was so much fun.
36:02
Um, yeah, but to, but to watch that place, you know, turn into the powerhouse it is today, it's really, really cool to see.
36:08
So you reunite with Frosty.
36:10
You're now with Charlies.
36:11
You're at team 18.
36:12
You've gone forward to Camaro.
36:14
They've worked over the summer period to try and iron out some, some differences between the cars, uh, performance wise, get better parity.
36:21
Do you feel like you guys are in good shape for the 24 season?
36:24
I hope so.
36:25
You don't really know how you're going to go until you turn up at the first round and when the timesheets start rolling out.
36:31
But in testing, we were pretty comfortable with our car.
36:35
We only had our first day together the other day and I'm working with Richard Holloway, Krusty.
36:40
Nice, nice.
36:41
And I haven't worked with him since 2008 when I joined Paul Dumbrell in the Autobahn car.
36:47
Car, yeah.
36:48
Um, so yeah, he was just a wealth of knowledge and experience and just so cool, so chill and, and so, so easy to get along with.
36:56
So I'm, I'm, I'm loving it.
36:58
I'm really, really loving it.
36:59
Every day I turn up to work or every day I turn up to the, I call it the office, but the team.
37:05
Not a 10 to five.
37:06
Not a 10 to five.
37:07
Some days, you never know.
37:08
I might turn up then.
37:11
Yeah, I turn up with a big smile on my face and I walk in there and everyone's happy.
37:16
It's a really cool working environment.
37:18
It's got that really good feeling about it that I think I'm going to thrive in.
37:22
So yeah, I can't wait for the season to get underway.
37:24
We've got a bit of a road ahead of us to sort some of our engineering things out, but I think we'll get there.
37:30
Good stuff.
37:31
Nice to hear that positivity in your voice.
37:33
Yeah, I love it, man.
37:34
It's so cool.
37:34
Can we finish on a positive note?
37:36
Always.
37:36
The RX-7.
37:38
The RX-7.
37:39
Now, am I right in saying this is your first car?
37:42
It's my first car.
37:43
You've got it.
37:44
Have you kept it the whole way along or you've got it back?
37:46
What did you do?
37:47
No, I've kept it.
37:48
But now you're in resto mode.
37:50
Is that right?
37:50
Well, it's the first car I ever bought.
37:53
Okay.
37:54
What series is it?
37:54
Series 1.
37:55
Series 1, 1979.
37:56
A 12A or?
37:58
It started life out as a 12A bridge port.
38:00
Immediately it was all fuck.
38:02
I bought it for $1,000.
38:03
It was a shocking car.
38:05
It was buggered.
38:06
And I spent, I was 16 or 15 when I bought it, and I got it ready for paint when I was 16 and watched all that happen and tried to realize I didn't want to be a panel beater after that because the amount of hours you spend rubbing back stuff and all that, it was just crap.
38:23
I'm not good at this.
38:24
I hated it.
38:24
I realized I hated work, so I have to do something.
38:27
I don't know what else happened.
38:29
But...
38:30
And then, so yeah, got it going when I was about 17, put some P plates on it, drove it around for a bit.
38:37
I got this really big engine for it, like a 13B turbo after my engine shut itself.
38:42
I think it broke.
38:43
Like a proof report?
38:44
What is it?
38:45
It's a 13B turbo, but the original engine, I think it failed when I was doing donuts on my school oval late at night, I think.
38:52
And we had to push it off.
38:52
Don't try this at home, kids.
38:53
Yeah, don't do this at home, I think.
38:58
So what is it going to become and when will it be on the road?
39:01
I don't know if that's going to make it.
39:04
So the last time it drove was 2006.
39:07
And ever since then, it sat in my mum and dad's shed in Albury.
39:11
And I literally- Dusted it off?
39:13
Yeah.
39:14
Dad's sick of looking at it just under the covers.
39:16
And so I said, I'll take it and-
39:19
and try and get it going again.
39:20
And yeah, it's almost gone.
39:22
It's only maybe a few weeks off getting it going, fully going again.
39:25
And there was nothing wrong with it.
39:27
The engine was fine.
39:28
The only thing that was wrong was all the brakes were shot because all the seals were buggered.
39:31
Buggered, yeah.
39:32
The engine was completely fine.
39:34
The clutch was buggered.
39:35
And some of the regulations has changed, so I have to move some fuel pumps around and whatnot.
39:40
So, yeah, I'm not doing any of the work because I'm just a driver at the end of the day and I know nothing about cars.
39:47
So I've got a friend of mine to work on it.
39:50
Good stuff.
39:51
Brother, it's been fantastic to get you in the studio.
39:52
It's been long overdue.
39:54
Yeah, I know.
39:54
It's been too long.
39:55
It's been too long.
39:56
Did you come on our podcast at all?
39:57
I don't know that I did in the end.
39:59
Did I come on?
40:00
I think you lived in New Zealand.
40:01
Yeah, yeah.
40:02
Anyway, I mean, I genuinely hope at some point you can reignite that.
40:07
I hope that Team 18 gives you the same kind of buzz that you've been getting in recent years because I think that's –
40:13
that's ace.
40:14
Congratulations on things that I've been very, I feel very fortunate along the way to have been there at a couple of key moments like your Baptist in 2017, mate.
40:22
And well done.
40:23
Keep powering.
40:24
Thanks, man.
40:25
And I'm going to tell you again, I love you, Rusty.
40:27
You told that to the whole world, you know that, don't you?
40:30
See, like when I'm happy, I just do stupid shit.
40:31
Stupid thing.
40:32
I love it.
40:32
That was awesome.
40:33
I have a photo of that somewhere where you are.
40:35
I'm around the corner on a microphone.
40:37
Bathurst podium is unfolding and I'm, you know, big voiceover guy.
40:40
Ladies and gentlemen, second place.
40:42
And you're the best at it.
40:43
And then you come out of nowhere.
40:44
I don't know whether you're on someone's shoulders and you, I love you.
40:47
I'm in the microphone.
40:50
I never change, bro.
40:51
Thanks, man.
40:51
Thank you.
40:52
Cheers.
40:52
Cheers.
40:59
Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
41:03
Series editor and producer is Thomas Dullard.
41:06
Audio production by Link Kelly.
41:09
If you've got a guest suggestion, get in touch with me via social media.
41:13
The Garage, that's where a journey begins with a tank full of passion-fuelled stories.