Latest / Rusty's Garage / Ryan Story (Part 2)

Transcript

Ryan Story (Part 2) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:20
  G'day, it's Rusty here, all set for part two of my podcast with Ryan Storey, chairman and CEO from legendary supercars team Dick Johnson Racing.
• 0:29
  If you've arrived at the start line here and haven't given part one a run yet, jump back to the garage library and fire it up.
• 0:36
  From an industry-leading carbon-neutral program...
• 0:38
  to his early gravitation to computing and analytics that put him on a path to working with presidents and prime ministers.
• 0:46
  We also joined the dots on how this devoted fan ended up connecting with his hero and some chance moments along the way.
• 0:54
  We begin part two with the difficult conversation that almost led to DJR turning the lights out, the start of a hard-fought climb back to the top of the ladder.
• 1:10
  You had the very difficult conversation with DJ about having looked at it, looked at the state that it was in.
• 1:17
  I mean, it was remarkable, as you say, to think that it had gone from the highs of the Courtney title win just a few years ago to being heavily debt-laden and more.
• 1:27
  But I think, Matt, I'm right in saying you basically said, turn the lights off.
• 1:33
  Yes.
• 1:33
  Yeah.
• 1:35
  But how did he react to that?
• 1:38
  There were two conversations that took place at Dick's unit at Ephraim, where he used to live.
• 1:46
  What they didn't realise is that every asset they owned had a lean on it, including the DJI headquarters, including everything, including the unit that we were sitting in.
• 1:56
  And they didn't understand or know or have a full grasp of the situation.
• 2:02
  So it was on that basis I just said, look, I don't see any other way out of this.
• 2:07
  And DJ said to me, he said, look, I don't know how to do anything else.
• 2:10
  I said, well, by that time I'd already moved up to Queensland, but what had happened from, and just to give you some backgrounds,
• 2:21
  Indy in 2012, I stepped back from the team completely and handed back my hard card.
• 2:29
  I had a disagreement with management at the time and stepped right back and then had those meetings with DJ just to give him the real context of what was going on and said, I'll do.
• 2:41
  interests and look after you.
• 2:43
  And he was adamant about looking after staff as well.
• 2:46
  That was, I mean, that being a priority for me has come from it being the absolute number one priority for him.
• 2:53
  A necessity, yeah.
• 2:55
  And yeah, that was my advice was to shut it down and to basically, yeah, there was basically no other option.
• 3:02
  And he said, look, this is, in fact, not dissimilar to 2020.
• 3:06
  He said, look, this is all I know how to do and I want to keep going.
• 3:09
  And like I said, I just had one condition.
• 3:11
  I said, like I said, I'd already moved up to Brisbane at that point in time or to the Gold Coast at that point in time.
• 3:17
  I said, the day we have a disagreement is the day I walk away.
• 3:20
  I said, I'll be transparent with you on everything, but the day that we can't...
• 3:25
  I mean, we can have disagreements, but if we can't work it out, that's the day I walk away.
• 3:30
  And we've never had a disagreement to this day.
• 3:35
  And that's how we got through.
• 3:36
  And that's how we got through things, to be honest with you.
• 3:39
  And the harder part of that conversation was then saying to Dick, Jill and Steve, I can't do this.
• 3:47
  with Steve driving the car.
• 3:48
  We need to take Stephen out of the car.
• 3:51
  And Steve, to his eternal credit, he understood and appreciated that.
• 3:55
  Dick and Jill weren't ready for it.
• 3:58
  They weren't ready for it.
• 3:59
  And Dick was, and he is to this day, he was gutted that he felt like he hadn't given Stephen the opportunity that he deserved given his natural abilities, which I think is fair in a lot of respects.
• 4:12
  But that was a difficult conversation, but one that Steve immediately understood.
• 4:18
  And then in the early days of 2013, Steve worked in with me hand in hand.
• 4:23
  And in the early days, I was writing up scripts for call sheets
• 4:28
  and scripts for Dick and for Steve to call all of our partners and people associated with the team every day.
• 4:34
  They'd have a daily call list.
• 4:36
  And for those two years, if you go on Speed Cafe or supercars.com or any of those places, you'll see DJR spokesman because I still wanted to be that background person.
• 4:46
  I still wanted to be the person behind the scenes, the two I see.
• 4:50
  And that was what I envisioned.
• 4:52
  that I could help Steve with business.
• 4:55
  He obviously had an understanding of motor racing, but we could continue to Johnson dynasty.
• 5:00
  And then Steve got his enduro drive with Erebus and it naturally made sense for him to step back from DJR at that point in time.
• 5:07
  And to his credit, he's gone on to build Team Johnson and they've had tremendous success in the Touring Car Masters Championship.
• 5:15
  I think they've won it three times.
• 5:17
  And in building the XD TCM car that they race now, Steve had a couple of wins
• 5:25
  and just wonderful for the whole Johnson family, given the 40th anniversary of the 1981 win and then effectively the replica that's still a race car was out there winning races as well.
• 5:36
  It was pretty special.
• 5:38
  So I think things worked out the way that they needed to and certainly in the best way possible, all things considered.
• 5:47
  Yeah.
• 5:47
  Crazy conversation, Ryan, to think that lifelong, diehard Dick Johnson fan sits down with his hero and tells him, hey, we might be best to pull the pin on this thing, to call it a day.
• 6:03
  And you've turned it around, mate, to think that you, in a relatively short period of time, were able to, through that management that you talked about, ensuring that the
• 6:12
  that sponsors and people were with you and that anyone that, you know, was owed money, you put a structure in place and put staff first and foremost.
• 6:25
  I mean, you got it to a point then that it became an attractive proposition ultimately to someone like Roger Penske, mate.
• 6:32
  It was remarkable.
• 6:33
  That's true.
• 6:33
  No, thank you very much for that Rusty.
• 6:35
  I mean, look, I can't take all the credit there.
• 6:37
  DJR has always had wonderful people working for it and Dick and Gillie and the family have been remarkable, but Ron Young in particular, the late,
• 6:51
  in the period that I've been around, the Ben Croats of this world.
• 6:56
  There's a number of people who have been absolutely key, but the thing I'm most proud of is that, you know, just pay has always been, you know, the staff have never been paid a day late or a dollar short, which is good, and we've maintained every, you know, we maintained every payment agreement that we put in place.
• 7:13
  And again, in those early days, none of these
• 7:16
  suppliers and it was and it was and there were more teams up here um Erebus hadn't relocated to uh Erebus hadn't relocated to Melbourne at that point in time so the Gold Coast Motorsport ecosystem ecosystem and ecostructure such as it was when you get a call from Ryan Story from DJR they're like who the hell are you so I was making personal guarantees and paying people out of my own account for various things and
• 7:40
  And then we did the same even in the lead up through 2014.
• 7:46
  It was on the, I think, the 9th of May.
• 7:51
  Sorry, it must have been the, actually, I think it might have been the 1st of May 2014.
• 7:56
  I'd have to confirm the date when Roger, Bud Denker, Randall Seymour, Tim Sindrick, myself, Dick and Steve sat in the room and agreed to the deal on the handshake.
• 8:10
  at that point in time, we'd clean things right up and we're in a position to do this properly.
• 8:17
  And they saw it also as an opportunity to help rebuild a truly successful, legendary, iconic team in the series.
• 8:26
  So I think it made sense to those folks on that level as well.
• 8:29
  They weren't inheriting a dog, but they had the opportunity to help rebuild a team to its glorious
• 8:38
  Days of old.
• 8:39
  And that path comes about by a chance moment.
• 8:43
  I think it was, wasn't it Richie Swan getting a business card, maybe at a Gold Coast event?
• 8:48
  You've kept that business card, I think, and it literally set the wheels in motion for one of the doyens of the automotive industry to become a part of your operation, didn't it?
• 8:57
  It was.
• 8:57
  There was a fellow by the name of Don Hanson, and he had worked for Trans-Pacific.
• 9:06
  And in 2013, Penske Automotive Group, which is the listed Penske entity.
• 9:12
  So there's Penske Corporation, which is privately held by the family.
• 9:15
  And there's Penske Automotive Group, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
• 9:19
  So Penske Automotive Group bought the transportation arm from Trans-Pacific, which...
• 9:25
  and MAN and Dennis Eagle truck distributorships here in Australia.
• 9:31
  And later, Penske Automotive Group also acquired MTU Detroit Diesel Australia from Daimler as well.
• 9:40
  But yeah, Don Hanson, who was working for Trans Pacific, was now working for Penske.
• 9:45
  He was the head of marketing.
• 9:47
  He handed his business card to our team manager at the time, Richie Swan, who's a massive part of why DJR's still around today.
• 9:54
  I mean, the work that he put into the team, he worked tirelessly through 2012, 2013, 2014, and he's had a long history with DJR back to the Sierra days.
• 10:04
  He's a big part of that.
• 10:06
  of DJR's history, no question, but simply handed him a business card.
• 10:11
  And we all took it with a pinch of salt.
• 10:14
  We didn't really think anything of it.
• 10:16
  And then I spoke to Don about a week later and he basically gave me the full sales pitch and said, Roger, we'll call you in the next few days.
• 10:24
  And I got off the phone and went, yeah, right.
• 10:26
  Because as you know in motorsport, there's a lot of people
• 10:29
  In any pit lane at any given race weekend, you could be handed a business card from any person claiming to be anything.
• 10:38
  Unfortunately, these things can happen from time to time.
• 10:44
  I can put my hand up.
• 10:45
  I've been caught out a couple of times signing partnership agreements in days gone by with companies that haven't been around all that long.
• 10:54
  It's something that happens.
• 10:55
  in all sports, but yeah, I took it with a pinch of salt.
• 10:59
  And then it was, I was due to go to hospital to have major surgeries, quite considerable surgery.
• 11:07
  And I was not,
• 11:13
  It was not certain I was going to come out the other side of it, but basically I put together...
• 11:18
  I put a heap of notes of these things in place and basically had shared all this information with Dick and with Steve Brayback and with Campbell Little, who was with us at the time.
• 11:29
  And then the day...
• 11:30
  I was at Paradise Point where I was living at the time, getting ready to head into hospital, and my phone rings and it's a US number.
• 11:39
  And I answer the phone...
• 11:41
  And it's, this is Roger Opensky here.
• 11:44
  You do the, yeah, right.
• 11:45
  I'm like, hello, Mr. Opensky, it's Ryan Story.
• 11:50
  Wonderful to hear from you.
• 11:52
  And I sort of, I played along until I was absolutely convinced it was him.
• 11:56
  The plus one was a bit of a giveaway, but I still was a bit...
• 12:00
  I mean, this is a guy who's up there with Enzo Ferrari when it comes to icons of motorsport.
• 12:07
  And he gave me the full sales pitch, like it was the full corporate sales pitch.
• 12:12
  This is what Penske can do for DJR.
• 12:14
  This is our business structure.
• 12:15
  This is our success in racing.
• 12:17
  This is what we want to do.
• 12:18
  We want to use racing as a way to market our businesses.
• 12:21
  We've got growth...
• 12:22
  We've got growth expansion plans and I want to meet you.
• 12:25
  I want you and your team to come over.
• 12:28
  I'll send the jet.
• 12:29
  We'll slot, you know, we'll organise it all.
• 12:32
  We want you to come over in a couple of weeks.
• 12:34
  And I'm frantically taking notes while all this is happening because, again, I'm about to jump in the car and head to hospital and I'm not 100% certain I'm going to be coming back.
• 12:42
  So I'm writing all these notes.
• 12:45
  And I just couldn't believe it.
• 12:45
  It was one of those pinch yourself moments.
• 12:47
  I was talking on the phone to Roger Penske, who wanted to basically partner us in DJR and wanted us to be part of the Penske empire and the Penske family.
• 12:57
  It was nothing short of extraordinary.
• 12:59
  So once I'd finished taking all these notes, and this was a hangover for my political days, but you can get these great post-it notes, which are double the standard size and they've got line markings on them.
• 13:13
  And it was a bit of a trademark of mine that I'd have thousands of these post-it notes and I'd always write notes on them.
• 13:20
  I took about six notes from the call and took photos of them and emailed and text them to DJ, to Steve and to Campbell, which included Roger's phone number, when he wanted us to be there.
• 13:36
  And then when I came out of surgery, I was, everything was all good.
• 13:39
  I had the computer, I was communicating with him by email and we put all these things in motion, but I was absolutely insistent that no, please do not send the jet, we'll fly a commercial.
• 13:50
  They offered to pay for that, which I thought was incredibly kind of them.
• 13:55
  But I later learned that they were actually quite impressed that we turned down the jet.
• 13:59
  Apparently not many people do that.
• 14:01
  I think that my fellow passengers were probably not as pleased that I'd turned down the private jet.
• 14:09
  It just didn't sit right with me to do that.
• 14:11
  It just didn't sit right with me to do that.
• 14:13
  But I later learned just through having a close friendship with Tim that
• 14:18
  It was all sort of thrust upon him.
• 14:19
  And, you know, before we met with them, he'd read the supercars operations manual, but it was completely foreign to them.
• 14:26
  And I was to later learn that they turned down the Ford GT program, which Chip Ganassi took up, to race supercars instead.
• 14:36
  So what an incredible...
• 14:39
  What an incredible turn of fortune for us.
• 14:41
  And to think that Roger Penske picked Dick Johnson Racing over a Le Mans program, and his primary reason for it was that supercars suited his business interests more, and that his dream, and he said it many times publicly and privately, to be honest with you,
• 15:05
  have his opportunity to do that with the deal that he has now in place with Porsche.
• 15:11
  I think there's no question that in a couple of years' time, I'd love for nothing more than to see Team Penske or Team Penske-Porsche win at Le Mans.
• 15:21
  That would be...
• 15:22
  Just, I'd just love for that for Roger, because he's such an incredible person.
• 15:28
  Just, I'd love for him to have that.
• 15:31
  But that's how it happened, yeah.
• 15:34
  So I took down all his nights, and then it was about 10 days later, we were on a plane.
• 15:38
  I'm in unbelievable goddamn pain.
• 15:40
  Like, it was just unreal.
• 15:43
  I should not have traveled.
• 15:43
  It was the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life.
• 15:47
  So we all flew over.
• 15:49
  We flew over, we were there for five days.
• 15:51
  For the first four days... We're talking Mooresville here too, mate, aren't we?
• 15:54
  That's where you went.
• 15:55
  Yeah, so we flew to Mooresville.
• 15:56
  For the first four days we had nothing locked in.
• 15:59
  Tim had arranged for us to go to the NASCAR Hall of Fame
• 16:11
  and didn't move.
• 16:12
  I was just in that much pain.
• 16:13
  And then we went to the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which was a pretty cool experience.
• 16:17
  And I've subsequently been there since.
• 16:18
  I was there for Roger's induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
• 16:24
  I was there for the Team Penske 50 celebrations.
• 16:27
  So I've been fortunate to have been there a couple of times.
• 16:30
  And then on the Friday, we went out to Team Penske's HQ, sat in their boardroom, which had a Marlborough Team Penske IndyCar wind tunnel model mounted on the wall and had a number of trophies around the room.
• 16:43
  It was a very Penske room, precise, just everything in its place, just pristine and perfect.
• 16:49
  And the expectation that I had was that I was just, I was nothing in this meeting.
• 16:54
  And I later learned they were, I later learned from their side, they were confused that there were four of us in the room.
• 17:01
  They were like, why are four people here?
• 17:03
  Like who owns the place?
• 17:04
  Who runs the place?
• 17:05
  Why are there four people?
• 17:06
  That was the question that they asked internally and we jokingly talked about afterwards.
• 17:11
  Basically, they'd reached out to me as the guy who was running the team, but I didn't think I was qualified to go over and have a meeting with Roger Penske and Tim Sindra.
• 17:21
  So to me, it made sense to have Dick and Steve because the three of us were effectively partners in the team, and it made sense to bring Campbell because he was our technical director and he could answer all the tech questions.
• 17:33
  Then we get into the room, and I'm the one answering all the questions.
• 17:38
  And then over time, I built up a rapport and a relationship with Tim that was 100% built on trust.
• 17:46
  So they came out to... Tim brought out Jamie Ellison, who was then the head of Ford Motorsports globally for Homebush at the end of 2013.
• 17:57
  And...
• 17:58
  And at that point in time, Penske's interest was well known.
• 18:02
  So every team bar one had sent them a pitch.
• 18:06
  And the House of Eights was the only one that didn't, but every other team in pit lane sent them a pitch.
• 18:13
  And the reason why they went with us was because of the trust relationship we'd built, the fact that we were in Queensland and the fact that in Dick they had a household name and an ambassador that was going to give them credibility
• 18:26
  almost instantly and also for them the the the ability to be part of this rebuilding structure of this this great motor racing team you are missing a little piece of the puzzle I reckon there and that is that you snuck Roger in for a look I think the staff were all given the afternoon off or something or other he came and had he came and had a look at the facility and he he half fell in love with it because it reminded him of uh of another time in IndyCar for him did it not
• 18:54
  It did.
• 18:55
  It did.
• 18:55
  It reminded him of the...
• 18:59
  So, currently, the IndyCar program and the NASCAR program and what was the Acura sports car program,
• 19:09
  program and will be the poor sports car program are all under one roof.
• 19:12
  It's an old Panasonic air conditioning factory, I believe, but it's an enormous facility.
• 19:18
  And Tim, at the time of the merger, he was the president of Team Penta.
• 19:26
  the IndyCar team, and Penske Racing South, the NASCAR team, was separate.
• 19:31
  But where the IndyCar team was based was in Reading, Pennsylvania, and 10 Emery Street Stapleton reminded both Tim and Roger of Reading, simply because everything had its place.
• 19:43
  And when Dick and Wayne Caddick built 10 Emery Street back in 1998, it was the first purpose-built motor racing facility in the country.
• 19:53
  So everything had a place by design,
• 19:55
  And when Roger did his sneaky tour in, there were a couple of sneaky tours.
• 20:01
  There were sneaky tours while we were negotiating and putting a deal in place.
• 20:06
  And then there were sneaky tours after we made the deal before we made the announcement.
• 20:11
  And then there was more public tours after the announcement was made.
• 20:15
  One of the things that Roger wanted to do and he taught us very early on is that if you get the presentation right everything else follows and I've maintained that to this very day and it's absolutely true.
• 20:27
  So one of the things that Roger did and I ran around him like the remember those old cartoons where you've got the lap dog running around after the big dog sort of following and
• 20:35
  Again, it's my natural inclination to be the 2IC and to be – that's my natural – that's my default position is to be the bloke making it happen, not necessarily the bloke formulating the –
• 20:51
  formulating the big picture and hitting the go button.
• 20:54
  So I was more than happy fulfilling this role.
• 20:57
  So I was following around behind Roger and he was saying all these things that he wanted modified to effectively do a complete refurbishment of the facility.
• 21:06
  And then when he subsequently saw it afterwards, he was blown away, and Brian Robertson and his team and Brian Wells, who was the facilities manager at Penske, they did a wonderful job.
• 21:18
  And in fact, we're about to do it.
• 21:19
  We're about to give the outside of the building a fresh coat of paint and some other upgrades to the building.
• 21:24
  I've spent quite a bit of money this year just on capital investments just to –
• 21:32
  future-proof the business and also just because it's the right thing for us to do to invest back into the business and especially given that I've consolidated some of my other interests within the DJR entity.
• 21:46
  But yeah, we'll give the thing a fresh coat of paint and there'll be a couple of other surprises in store and we hope to be able to have the museum open and some interactive displays and things in 2022.
• 21:56
  Hey, there is a little aspect of the timeline here that I'm not sure of the detail on, and you might be able to fill in the blanks for me.
• 22:03
  So somewhere here, Roger and maybe Tim Sindrick are at a NASCAR meet.
• 22:10
  I don't know whether it's 2013 or maybe even before that.
• 22:12
  I'm not sure.
• 22:13
  But they tap loosely Marcus Ambrose on the shoulder and say, hey, we're thinking about doing this.
• 22:18
  We hear you might be.
• 22:20
  tempted to go home and if you are, would you be a part of it and so on.
• 22:25
  Where in the mix of the discussions did the name Ambrose first pop up and where did you get a sense that that might be part of the plan?
• 22:32
  I'm not entirely sure of the precise timing between when I first spoke to Roger and when Roger and TC spoke to Marcus.
• 22:41
  I think that it was afterwards, because I believe it was only afterwards that TC was in the loop with what RP wanted to do in terms of supercars and in terms of the Australian business.
• 22:52
  But basically from day one, when there were serious conversations, they took place with Marcus.
• 22:58
  In fact, Marcus warned them off DJI.
• 23:00
  He said, you know, they're a basket case.
• 23:01
  You don't want to go near DJI.
• 23:04
  And what happened as a consequence of that is that they'd separately hired John Crennan, who famously was a co-founder of HSV and HRT and worked for Tom Walgreenshaw for all those years and with the Kellys as well.
• 23:23
  And he was, John, I mean, if we're telling the official story of DJR Team Penske or Penske's involvement in supercars, Nick Hughes, who became our technical director, Brad Eyes, who had worked for Penske and IndyCar in the US, and John Crennan were the first three employees.
• 23:43
  So John was basically tasked if they were to start a team from scratch, which was one of the options on the table supercars were prepared to provide
• 23:56
  but their preference was to go it alone.
• 23:58
  So they had John meet with me to effectively, as it was, the way it was, it was sold to me by Tim and Tim's a brilliant leader.
• 24:11
  It was sold to me as, oh, we'd love for you to talk to John because we think there's a great opportunity for us to work with him, particularly on the commercial side of the business.
• 24:19
  But John was given very strict instructions.
• 24:22
  Eyeball the bloke, we want to know if he's any good, we want your opinion on him.
• 24:27
  And I later saw the email, and with all parties' permission, I later saw the email that John sent back, and in typical Crenno style, it was comprehensive.
• 24:38
  And I think that was what sealed the deal.
• 24:41
  We had a very good rapport.
• 24:43
  I think that John saw that I had a...
• 24:49
  a clear direction of what the team could do and where it could go.
• 24:53
  And also, I think, too, a part of what made DJI Team Penske so successful was oversharing, I suppose.
• 25:06
  I think there's nothing worse than...
• 25:08
  I sort of try to put myself in their shoes for a moment and think, imagine having a business that's 15,000 kilometres away at arm's length,
• 25:18
  wouldn't you want to know everything that goes on?
• 25:21
  Wouldn't you want to know if there was a tree snake out in the garden?
• 25:24
  Like I shared everything with Tim to the point where we would email each other sometimes a dozen times a day, talk regularly, SMS regularly.
• 25:36
  There was nothing ever hidden from those folks.
• 25:41
  part of what got us to being DJR Team Penske in the first place and then ultimately the success we had as a team.
• 25:49
  The foundations, once you launch into this, I mean, everyone was massively excited about it.
• 25:54
  And we were equally excited, Ryan, about the return of Marcus Ambrose.
• 26:00
  The appearance at Homebush at the end of 14 wasn't necessarily, you know, what he wanted.
• 26:07
  But we were like, okay, let's just wait here.
• 26:09
  And then, bang, he gets the thing in the shootout at Adelaide round one.
• 26:13
  And we thought, far out, it's on here.
• 26:16
  He's back.
• 26:17
  And...
• 26:18
  It wasn't to be he made a very difficult phone call to Roger to ultimately, after a difficult Grand Prix, to pull the pin.
• 26:26
  What was that process like from your side, trying to keep Marcus?
• 26:32
  Or did you just sense that he'd made up his mind it was not savable?
• 26:36
  What did you think?
• 26:37
  It's quite interesting.
• 26:48
  business and go about racing and he's still just a wonderful friend.
• 26:52
  He and Annette are just wonderful people.
• 26:54
  And he and Marcus had formed a bond because exactly as you said, from very early on in 2013, discussions had been had and Marcus had given Roger his word that if Roger entered supercars, he'd drive for him.
• 27:09
  But the decision that Marcus had made, he and Sonia had made already, is that regardless of what Roger did, they were going to pull a pin and come home at the end of 2014.
• 27:20
  That was the plan.
• 27:22
  So he was in this mindset and had been in this mindset and been living this challenging life for a number of years of doing 38-odd race weekends a year.
• 27:37
  Yeah.
• 27:39
  going from place to place with the two girls, with the family.
• 27:42
  And he'd had enough.
• 27:45
  I think it's a shame he was never given a car that he could have shown his true talents in.
• 27:49
  I think that if he was ever in a Penske Ford or in a Penske Dodge, he would have won oval races, he would have won more road course races, he would have found his way into the sprint, or whatever the hell they call it now, the playoffs.
• 28:08
  I think there's no question that he had that talent.
• 28:12
  And by the same token, in 2014 when he came out to Homebush, after he drove the car at Lakeside, he did a rides day at Lakeside before he did a test day at QR.
• 28:23
  I think it became apparent to him the current car that he was driving compared to what he was driving last time around in, what, 2005, was...
• 28:31
  It was completely different.
• 28:32
  These cars you could trail brake, whereas his default style when he was driving supercars was basically pull the thing up, get through the apex and jump on the loud pedal and basically do it better than anyone else.
• 28:45
  So the driving style had changed a lot.
• 28:49
  But the engineers were of a universal belief, particularly after Adelaide, not only did he still have it, but with time, this guy was going to be able to win races.
• 29:00
  He just did, he simply resigned himself to the fact that he wasn't prepared to put in that time, particularly in a one-car team.
• 29:08
  He didn't think that he would be doing the team justice.
• 29:11
  He, in fact, thought that he would be doing us a disservice to...
• 29:18
  He didn't think that it was appropriate in that scenario.
• 29:21
  But he did say that if we had been a two-car team and if he didn't have that pressure to perform and if he had the ability and the capacity to grow and to understand that,
• 29:35
  might have been different, but it is what it is and it was what it was.
• 29:38
  And the thing I'm most pleased about is that we were able to involve him in the launch of the Mustang supercar in 2019 when he drove, we actually, Ford air freighted out a current spec NASCAR for him to do demo lapsing, which I know he just absolutely loved doing.
• 29:54
  And then when he helped fill in as part of the Supercast Telecast at Simmons Plains, as soon as I caught wind, because I wasn't at the event, as soon as I caught wind that he wanted to have a steer of the car, I was like, okay, let's make it happen.
• 30:08
  So we got him a helmet, got him a race suit, got him all sorted, and he got to have a steer of one of our current cars, which was effectively a championship-winning car and a race-winning car and get to have at least
• 30:23
  an understanding of his own mind of the development progress that we had made and really understand how the car had developed from the time that he was last in it proper in 2015.
• 30:35
  So I was really pleased to be able to give him that opportunity.
• 30:37
  And certainly if and when he and Sonia and the family find themselves in Queensland again and we're doing a driver eval day or we've got a rides day on,
• 30:48
  He's more than welcome to put himself behind the wheel again just for the hell of it.
• 30:53
  I think what he's doing, and sorry to interrupt Rusty, I think what he's doing
• 31:01
  T82 in particular is really commendable because he's got a real passion for the sport.
• 31:05
  The fire's still in the belly and he wants to help young kids from, he wants young kids to benefit from his experience and he also wants to obviously help them, help them achieve their full potential.
• 31:16
  So it's a real credit to him.
• 31:17
  I think that anyone who can have success in a chosen field and then elects on their own and on their own accord to give back, I have the high, I hold those people in the highest regard.
• 31:30
  I do too.
• 31:31
  And I reckon he'd quietly jump at that opportunity to have a little steer at some stage too.
• 31:35
  Hey, in what then follows in this incredible building process and the race wins and titles that we saw in recent years, the first sprinkling of Scott McLachlan, where did that for you first kind of appear on the radar and how did that...
• 31:54
  Well, there's a few different versions of the story.
• 31:56
  There's, so Tim Sindrick says that Marcus put Scott on their radar and that's probably his recollection.
• 32:06
  But when we first started our discussions, I sent through a document, quite a comprehensive document on a review of all the teams, a review of DJR's strengths and weaknesses and a review of all of the drivers that were...
• 32:21
  but it was basically looking five years into the future.
• 32:24
  And number one on the list was Scott McLaughlin.
• 32:27
  And Steve Braback and I had become friends with Wayne McLaughlin.
• 32:31
  And we'd started talking to him.
• 32:33
  We actually initially started talking to him in 2012 because we were hoping to try and sign him before Gary did to join us in 2013, but it wasn't to be.
• 32:43
  And we were fortunate enough to get Chas in the end, and it worked out okay.
• 32:48
  But we had discussions.
• 32:50
  I mean, we were having discussions with Wayne early on and then ultimately with Andrew Croxford, who was looking after some of Scott's things a bit later down the track.
• 33:00
  But he was very much from the early days someone who we looked at as a potential star of the future.
• 33:08
  And there's no doubt that he's delivered on his promise.
• 33:10
  Yeah.
• 33:11
  Most definitely.
• 33:12
  Quickly, before we move on to some of the great things that you and Penske achieved, what's your report card on his performance this year in IndyCar?
• 33:20
  I just thought he, on balance, hit it out of the park.
• 33:23
  It was a superb debut season, wasn't it?
• 33:26
  I completely agree.
• 33:27
  I mean, you didn't have to scrape the things off of the catch fence at ovals.
• 33:34
  He had a couple of incidents and things like that.
• 33:37
  But,
• 33:39
  was very good.
• 33:40
  He's clearly still coming to grips with the red sidewall tyre, but given how well we know he is over one lap and how incredible and brilliant he was at qualifying
• 33:51
  Once he gets his head around that, I think it'll be scary how many P1 stickers he gets on the wing end plate of his Dallara IndyCar.
• 34:01
  But I think that he did as, he certainly did as well as could be expected.
• 34:05
  And to have won Rookie of the Year over someone as well credentialed as Romain Grosjean, and especially given that.
• 34:14
  Scott, I think, had only competed in two open-wheel events his entire life prior to the one last year.
• 34:23
  The final event of the season last year, straight after Bathurst, I thought was pretty extraordinary.
• 34:31
  got a great mentor in the legend that is Rick Mears.
• 34:34
  He's surrounded by good people and he's a kid who's smart enough to listen.
• 34:39
  So there's no doubt in my mind that he'll be successful simply because his work ethic and his commitment won't allow for anything less.
• 34:57
  I auditioned to be the voice of Alexa.
• 34:59
  Didn't get the gig.
• 35:01
  Why?
• 35:02
  They said I was too robotic and didn't show enough genuine emotion.
• 35:06
  Sad face emoji.
• 35:08
  Crying face emoji.
• 35:10
  Genuine emotion emoji.
• 35:13
  You get the business collectively as a group out of trouble.
• 35:16
  You get the automotive icon in Roger Penske involved, all these building blocks, the sum of many parts that you talked about in life before start coming together.
• 35:26
  What's the moment, the first sweet taste of success where you really thought, this is incredible, this has absolutely come together here and you could not rest on your laurels but just take a moment to go, we're doing it?
• 35:42
  It's a winning machine, a winning combination.
• 35:44
  Well, there were a couple of false starts.
• 35:47
  So in New Zealand in 2015, Scott Pye got a podium and Roger was there for that race.
• 35:55
  So that was just, I mean, that was unbelievable.
• 35:59
  It was a sense of relief that we were making progress because it had been a really, really tough year.
• 36:04
  But third place for Roger Pye,
• 36:10
  and it's binary, you've won or you haven't.
• 36:12
  It's pretty simple.
• 36:15
  There's no prizes for coming second.
• 36:18
  So there's a great story of I think it was Perth that year where Roger was out because MTU had a lot of customers in the mining sector so it was an opportunity to meet with a lot of the Penske business customers.
• 36:36
  finished in the 20s and on the ride back to the airport, Roger made a remark about how that wasn't something he was used to.
• 36:46
  Maybe a little bit more colourful than that.
• 36:49
  But certainly New Zealand at Pukki in 2015, that podium, I thought, okay, we're just, I think this could be the start.
• 36:59
  And then the following year, when we went back, we were a little
• 37:08
  Marcus wasn't quite as quick as some of the other co-drivers and we got him out of sequence with the co's.
• 37:13
  So he was up against main, so we lost a bit of track position, which was ultimately going to hurt our end result in the race anyway.
• 37:19
  But we had a power steering failure that put poor Scotty Pye on the wall at the great, basically at the highest G-load you can, at the highest G-loads we have in our championship.
• 37:31
  And let me tell you, there's nothing worse than,
• 37:35
  the responsibility and the responsibility to first have a, have clarity on the safety of your driver when they've been in a huge accident like that, make sure they're safe, then follow up with their respective partners and family, meet them at the medical centre, follow them to the hospital, make sure they've got the appropriate care and all.
• 38:00
  My whole world stops and I think it's the same for any team boss.
• 38:06
  of my cars has been in an incident and potentially someone could be injured.
• 38:10
  And Scotty cracked a couple of ribs and then at the following event at Gold Coast, he had to have a nerve block put in and I went with him to that.
• 38:16
  Because again, I think that duty of care to drivers and even to staff if they're injured, if that happens, I mean, and it does happen from time to time.
• 38:24
  It has to be, you have to drop everything to focus on that.
• 38:30
  So prior to that, after that Bathurst weekend, because we were competitive and
• 38:42
  and then ultimately having the power steering failure.
• 38:44
  But that potential was enough to convince Roger to expand to two cars for 2016.
• 38:50
  Then come opening round 2016, we get pole position on Saturday and pole position on Sunday and I'm thinking, I think this could be the start of something here.
• 39:01
  Just to give you more of the story.
• 39:06
  I had shingles.
• 39:08
  I had shingles the week of the Adelaide 500 in 2016, so I didn't plan on going.
• 39:13
  And all of a sudden I was on my way to see an ophthalmologist because there was a concern that I had a, I might've had a shingles sore in my eye.
• 39:23
  So I was on my way to see an ophthalmologist to just make sure that there wasn't any optic nerve damage or anything needed to be done.
• 39:29
  And all of a sudden my phone was just ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, lighting up like a Christmas tree.
• 39:33
  And I'm thinking, what the hell's going on?
• 39:35
  And my first thought was we'd had an accident because I knew it was qualified.
• 39:38
  I thought that we've written the car off.
• 39:42
  I hope the driver's okay.
• 39:45
  You know, what?
• 39:46
  Okay, well, I'm just going to just leave.
• 39:48
  I'm just going to get to where I need to go and I'll just check the phone.
• 39:53
  And I checked the phone.
• 39:54
  Scott Pye got pole position.
• 39:57
  I couldn't believe it.
• 39:57
  And at first I thought it was a G up, but I had about 100 text messages of all these people saying congratulations.
• 40:04
  So I was on the next flight to Adelaide.
• 40:09
  So I saw the ophthalmologist, said it was all good, spoke to my doctor.
• 40:14
  And shingles is not a fun thing, but everything had crusted over.
• 40:18
  I was not at risk of putting anyone.
• 40:20
  I was not at risk of spreading shingles throughout metropolitan Adelaide, so I jumped on a plane and away I went.
• 40:28
  And then the following day, Fabian got pole.
• 40:30
  So we had both poles, but yeah, the race outcome, let's talk about something else.
• 40:34
  But like I said, there were a couple of false dawns, but when it really hit us, I mean, in that 2016 year, that was a great building year for us.
• 40:42
  And it was the first year where we developed all
• 40:47
  we basically had a Tickford car with a DJR Moztech engine, but we went to our own front suspension, which was a big game changer for us.
• 40:57
  It meant that we weren't relying on other setups and we weren't limited by what we could do from, we weren't limited in terms of what we could experiment
• 41:06
  with based on the hardware that we had at our disposal.
• 41:09
  So it meant we could do different setups and try different things and try different geometries and things of that nature.
• 41:17
  So we developed all of that and in fact at Homebush, the same cars that raced at Homebush in 2016 were the same cars that raced in 2017 in Adelaide that were podium contenders.
• 41:31
  I think we scored second.
• 41:36
  Lula Lacroix and Scotty joined us at the start of 2017, but the car itself was the same.
• 41:44
  The mechanical, all of the mechanical componentry was all of the same.
• 41:48
  It wasn't until the end and the latter part of 2017 when we had additional developments to put on the car, but we were super fast almost from the get-go in 2017.
• 41:58
  And then...
• 41:59
  Winning the first race at the Grand Prix, that was quite a highlight.
• 42:05
  And it really just set the ball rolling.
• 42:06
  But we made too many unforced errors that cost us the championship that year.
• 42:10
  I don't – I mean, I think the fact that we're still in with – you know, we had the fastest car.
• 42:15
  We should have won it.
• 42:15
  We won the team's championship, which we did.
• 42:17
  We didn't.
• 42:22
  to the DNF at Bathurst than anything that happened at Newcastle.
• 42:26
  But where I do give Scott enormous credit is it's, and you know this as well as anyone, how rare it is for a sportsman or sports person of any kind to bounce back from, from, from,
• 42:48
  championship.
• 42:49
  It was nothing short of extraordinary.
• 42:51
  And in his book, Road to Redemption, he talks a lot about his relationship with Emma Murray, who's a sports psychologist and has worked closely.
• 42:58
  And in fact, they were connected through the mutual friend Jack Riewoldt, who plays for Richmond.
• 43:03
  And Emma looks after Richmond.
• 43:04
  She's a wonderful, wonderful person.
• 43:07
  And she was able to turn this kid into an absolute...
• 43:10
  absolute winning machine.
• 43:12
  And, and she was really at both, both her and Scott's relationship with his wife, Carly, were no doubt the pillars of him being able to bounce back so successfully and just so brilliantly in 2018.
• 43:27
  What is the proudest achievement of the lot?
• 43:30
  Do you think?
• 43:34
  That's tough.
• 43:35
  Um,
• 43:38
  That's tough.
• 43:38
  I think the re-establishing Dick Johnson Racing at the end of 2020 would be in my top five.
• 43:49
  The 2018 Championship, winning against a car that was clearly better than ours, would be in my top five.
• 43:57
  Delaying Gen 3 would be in my top five.
• 44:01
  And also...
• 44:05
  also being the first carbon-neutral supercars team would be in my top five.
• 44:10
  So there's four out of my fifth.
• 44:12
  I'm not going to say the fifth because the fifth is one that's –
• 44:18
  The fifth is one that's, it's almost boastful, it's not meant to be.
• 44:25
  And my role in the process is not widely known.
• 44:31
  So I'll keep that one to myself, but suffice to say, I have given some thought, particularly just reflecting on the season and the fact that I haven't been able to go to the races.
• 44:43
  And I'm also putting pen to paper and,
• 44:48
  putting some words together for a book that will come out next year that will no doubt be on the discount shelves the following week.
• 44:57
  No, it won't.
• 44:59
  But, yeah, that's four of my top five here.
• 45:02
  2018 – oh, sorry.
• 45:03
  Actually, I've even changed that.
• 45:06
  Instead of the hidden fifth one, I'd say bringing Mustang and Ford back into the
• 45:12
  They would be my top five.
• 45:14
  Ford and Mustang, the 2018 Championship win, Delane Gen 3, being carbon neutral, and Penske.
• 45:22
  I think that might even be different to the five that I listed before, but they're the top achievements anyway.
• 45:29
  I might have to put pen to paper and actually put together the definitive list.
• 45:34
  All are incredible achievements, mate.
• 45:35
  Absolutely incredible achievements.
• 45:37
  I don't know, you may not want to
• 45:40
  to cover this.
• 45:43
  Fabs, I sense when he came on the pod recently, has moved on and doesn't really want to cover it.
• 45:49
  For others, it remains, you know, still a pretty emotive subject, and that is Bathurst 2019.
• 45:54
  What happened is well documented.
• 45:57
  What I'm kind of interested in, with the benefit of time, is how you frame it or perhaps compartmentalise it now.
• 46:05
  So it's something I still live with to this day.
• 46:07
  It's caused me tremendous health issues.
• 46:14
  It's been quite a journey and it's been a healing journey in a lot of respects.
• 46:19
  But the reality is I could tell the story, Rusty,
• 46:27
  will never believe it, but suffice to say, I've been successful in some defamation action based on some comments and some commentary that people have made based on my role in it.
• 46:40
  But with the benefit of hindsight, I do take responsibility for it happening because it happened due to my negligence more than anything else.
• 46:50
  And the reason why I say that is because it was an unusual pit stop.
• 46:54
  It was an unusual double stack because at the time the 12 car was overheating and we thought that the thing was going to cook itself at any point in time.
• 47:05
  And at that point in time, we'd had the engine come out of 17 Saturday after the shootout, which also was having similar issues.
• 47:14
  So we were seeing the same thing in the telemetry.
• 47:16
  We were seeing the same...
• 47:17
  issues with oil and water temps going up.
• 47:19
  We thought the thing was eating water and we thought that we could have been in all sorts of trouble.
• 47:25
  So we started putting plans together to put, we had a pressurised water vessel, which I was helping Josh Silcock filling.
• 47:31
  So I wasn't where I needed to be.
• 47:33
  So normally what would happen is, normally what would happen under a double stack or under a safety car is that as part of the strategy plan,
• 47:43
  before the event and in real time during the event, you set your LAT windows for when a double stack would be called by default, if a certain LAT count is reached and we'd reached a LAT count where it was a default double stack.
• 47:57
  But when that was called, the engineer for car 12 was on the pit wall.
• 48:04
  And at that point in time, we didn't run an intercom system that allowed for multi-channels to be heard at the same time.
• 48:09
  So he was talking to – so the safety car had been called by Tim Schenken.
• 48:15
  And Mark was talking to Fabian on the radio saying –
• 48:20
  debris debris I don't know what I still to this day don't know why he said debris not to see but he said look we don't know where it is and the reason why he said I don't know where it is is because while he was talking to Fabian he was standing out on the pit wall without access to the intercom without access to a big screen and he spoke over the top of Tim when Tim said we have a car off at the last last last corner so while that was happening
• 48:47
  At that point in time, he was on the top of the hill and the 17 and the 88 were quite a way ahead.
• 48:53
  I was helping Josh fill up the water,
• 49:08
  where I could see the car slow on Conrad because if I had seen it, I would have jumped on the radio and said, you know, go faster.
• 49:16
  It would have been somewhat more colourful than that.
• 49:18
  And, in fact, after the fact I said to, I believe it was Andre who was behind him, I actually said to him and I said it jokingly but only half jokingly, why didn't you send him?
• 49:30
  Because there was no reason for the car to be going that slow down Conrad.
• 49:33
  Yeah.
• 49:35
  In fact, we thought that the car had stopped.
• 49:38
  So when the 17 came into pit lane, I was still, again, and this is where I state as the director of the teams, the team principal at the time I was negligent, I was not where I needed to be, where I could have intervened.
• 49:54
  because it's just my default natural inclination, particularly when we've got a problem, I wanna know the problem.
• 49:59
  And part of that too is to relay to key stakeholders.
• 50:02
  I mean, Roger was there for goodness sake.
• 50:04
  So I had Roger and DJ there.
• 50:05
  I wanted to make sure that I knew exactly what was going on to be able to relay it to them in real time.
• 50:11
  And then I remember both Roger and Dick asking me afterwards,
• 50:14
  what the hell happened?
• 50:15
  And I didn't know.
• 50:16
  And the first time I saw it, the first time I saw the replay of it, was basically when I did the interview live with Murph.
• 50:27
  So I saw the replay and just went, oh, Jesus.
• 50:31
  And then got the tap on the shoulder and I'm live to air doing an interview, just going like a deer in the headlights, looking like a complete idiot.
• 50:39
  But my...
• 50:42
  Yeah, we honestly thought the card stopped.
• 50:44
  And so much so when the 17 entered pit lane, Ben Croke, who's the car controller and was team manager, now team principal, he spoke to Fabian.
• 50:55
  So he spoke to Fabian.
• 50:56
  Fabian was at the chase.
• 50:57
  But our expectation was that he was right behind the 17.
• 51:01
  He was going to be back.
• 51:04
  So he said, mate, you're gonna be double stacking, pull up alongside Red Bull or something to that effect.
• 51:10
  But at that point in time, he was in the chase, not in pit lane.
• 51:14
  So when the 17 rolls in and the 12 doesn't, we're all going, what's going on?
• 51:19
  And yeah, our initial thought was the thing had cooked itself
• 51:25
  But then again, later when seeing the footage, it was, it was a, it, it, yeah, I was lost for words.
• 51:33
  And I went, I went, and then went through, went through quite a comprehensive process just in terms of trying to understand what the ramifications of that were.
• 51:42
  Did it impact the outcome of the race?
• 51:45
  My personal belief is that it impacted from third back.
• 51:48
  You know, when we finished that seat, that cycle of pit stops,
• 51:53
  The 88 was ahead of the 17 and basically the 97 was behind.
• 51:59
  17 and 97 opted to save fuel and hope for a safety car.
• 52:03
  After a couple of laps, the 88 said, bugger it, let's build up a lead and march on.
• 52:08
  So when looking at it from that perspective, I don't believe it changed who came first or who came second.
• 52:16
  third and lower.
• 52:17
  But my biggest regret, and I'll never let it happen again, was that I was in the wrong position.
• 52:23
  I was not doing my job by not being where I should have been to have been able to react and intervene in that situation.
• 52:31
  And since then, we have an intercom now that has all of the key people connected.
• 52:38
  The ability for us to communicate with each other is significant
• 52:49
  for one of the junior engineers or one of the junior woodchucks who was at the data stand who was able to see the car speed because the car speed went about 100km or something like that down Conrad.
• 53:00
  He would have seen it and would have been able to flag it to someone's attention and we could have intervened accordingly.
• 53:06
  How much did the fallout, the heat around this whole subject affect Roger?
• 53:11
  Well, Roger was in the same boat as me.
• 53:13
  I mean, after the cars had both stopped, he said to me, what happened?
• 53:18
  And I said, I honestly don't know.
• 53:20
  I said, I need to find out.
• 53:22
  So it was a few minutes after that, we were reviewing back and scrolling through to them and saw that the car had slowed down
• 53:31
  like, and slowed down incredibly so.
• 53:34
  And then it was after that that we saw that replay and knew for sure what had happened.
• 53:40
  And to be honest, I was horrified by it, to be honest with you.
• 53:43
  What about the fact that you as a group now, I mean, you've talked before about COVID, the impact that it had, and Rodgers, you know, and the Penske Group's decision to,
• 53:54
  to move on as a group you have to.
• 53:57
  You still, I think it's clear, Ryan, from the approach in pit lane and what you do, you retain some of the Penske touches, that's obvious.
• 54:06
  Do we miss him and the Penske involvement in the sport?
• 54:11
  Oh, for sure.
• 54:12
  I mean, like I said, he's up there with Enzo Ferrari in terms of legendary motorsport icons.
• 54:18
  I mean, in terms of what he's achieved in motorsport, he's almost without peers.
• 54:22
  So we're better having had Roger Penske in our championship as much as we're the lesser for not having him as part of it today.
• 54:32
  But there's no question that our team will continue.
• 54:38
  and the age that if you get the preparation right, the rest will follow.
• 54:42
  And we want to continue to be the benchmark team on the track and off the track.
• 54:47
  The results this year were part of a building year and a lot of changes for us in terms of bringing in new drivers.
• 54:54
  And we clocked up six wins.
• 54:59
  Anton got the pole award, so there's plenty of promise as we lead into next year, which we're really, really excited about.
• 55:05
  But it goes without saying, the quality and calibre of our team, we hope to maintain for a very long time.
• 55:13
  And that's part of what Carbon Neutral is all about.
• 55:15
  It's part of about what our involvement with charity is all about.
• 55:20
  We've got this unbelievable platform of people who are passionate about our team, who are
• 55:24
  passionate about what we do, we need to take advantage of that platform for good.
• 55:29
  And it simply can't be to line our own pockets.
• 55:32
  It simply can't be to, you know, for our own amusement simply to go racing.
• 55:37
  We have to think bigger than that and use and leverage the platform that we have for good.
• 55:41
  And I've said before many times that
• 55:45
  To me, it's a moral, ethical and a social responsibility to run a sports team because we're in the entertainment business first and foremost.
• 55:53
  If you're not entertaining, you're not in business.
• 55:55
  I think that goes without saying.
• 55:57
  But we want to ensure that we provide absolute tenfold return of investment to our commercial partners and that we're an organisation that our supporters can be proud of.
• 56:10
  They can wear their Shell V-Power Racing Team polo shirt like I am today and be proud to do so.
• 56:16
  And that's the culture that we want to have and that's the team that we have.
• 56:20
  And that all, I mean, all of that comes back to Dick and Jilly, really.
• 56:23
  I mean, they're the two who have been around for all of them.
• 56:26
  and the team started as the people's team off the back of just race fans, people watching the 1980 Bathurst 1000 calling up Channel 7 and offering up this bloke who'd taken a second mortgage on his house money so he could keep going racing and take it up to Peter Brock and even Plastic Pemberton saw the sort of potential of having a, you know, with Moff now in a rotary with the RX7s, even Pemberton, even Plastics rather, sorry, I know I know that,
• 56:56
  so even Plastic saw the potential of having someone like Dick flying the blue oval Ford flag.
• 57:05
  Being the people's team and having that social, ethical, moral responsibility I think is so critically important and I think it's what our supporters expect of us.
• 57:15
  Couple to finish, the car for you, whether it be from Dick Johnson Racing, from the DJR Team Penske period, there's a couple of special ones in all of that, but what's the one for you?
• 57:30
  I'd have to say a 2018 championship-winning FGX Falcon because it's the last Falcon ever.
• 57:37
  It's a championship that we won through incredibly hard work.
• 57:42
  That was the hardest, toughest championship of all of them.
• 57:48
  That's the car.
• 57:50
  You know, I've got a massive soft spot for Sierras.
• 57:54
  We've got Paul Linfoot building a replica Sierra using DJR's original show car from the 80s and he's basically the
• 58:08
  the Sierra RS500 Cosworth Group A expert in the world, so to have him build it, I mean, he couldn't be in better hands.
• 58:14
  So we look forward to getting that car back at some point because I reckon that'll be a real thrill out at ride days when up against potentially Gen 3 cars and our current cars and the Sierra with a passenger seat in it.
• 58:27
  I reckon that'd be a hell of a thrill.
• 58:29
  But, yeah, definitely, definitely.
• 58:30
  You've got some.
• 58:31
  Sorry to interrupt.
• 58:32
  But, yeah, definitely the 2018 FGX championship car and the Sierras.
• 58:37
  And as I mentioned before, the EL Falcon, I think that's just a – I've just got a soft spot for that car.
• 58:42
  It just looks so good.
• 58:43
  Speaking of soft spots, you've got some great memorabilia too, mate.
• 58:46
  I think from Senna Helmets, there's Schumacher and Webber race attire in addition to supercar stuff and some beautiful artwork, I should point out too.
• 58:55
  Have you got your eye on something or is there another one that you will just never let go of?
• 58:59
  Is there a piece of memorabilia that's close to your heart for a reason?
• 59:04
  There's a...
• 59:06
  I'm a huge fan of Tazio Nuvolari, who is considered the best there was, the best,
• 59:17
  there was and the best there ever will be.
• 59:20
  He's an Italian driver.
• 59:22
  He drove for Alfa Romeo and drove for Auto Union.
• 59:25
  This is all pre-Formula One.
• 59:28
  And I won't say which trophy he won, but he won, he won Targa Florio and won a number of Grand Prix.
• 59:36
  And he's just an absolute legend.
• 59:39
  And a symbol, his personal symbol was a turtle with the letters TN in it.
• 59:45
  And I've been to the Tazio Nuvolari Museum at Manteo in Italy, which is just spectacular.
• 59:52
  But I own two trophies that Tazio has won, Tazio won that are of significance in terms of motorsport that will be taken from my cold dead hands.
• 1:00:06
  I want to be buried with them.
• 1:00:08
  They're pretty special to me.
• 1:00:10
  Very cool.
• 1:00:10
  Actually, I probably won't be buried with them.
• 1:00:13
  They're too important.
• 1:00:14
  They need to be, they should be on display for everyone to see.
• 1:00:17
  They're pretty special items.
• 1:00:19
  Amazing.
• 1:00:20
  Hey, you've alluded to your health a little bit during our chat here.
• 1:00:24
  You're not big on talking about that.
• 1:00:26
  I understand it.
• 1:00:26
  Probably I want to just finish by saying, mate, are you okay health-wise at the moment?
• 1:00:30
  Because you missed Bathurst and we would love to have seen you there.
• 1:00:33
  Yeah, I was gutted to not be able to attend, but I'm fully expecting to be at all 13 events next year from Newcastle on, and I just can't wait.
• 1:00:44
  But no, health is good.
• 1:00:45
  I just need to look after myself a little bit more, which I'm not very good at doing.
• 1:00:51
  And I think that if I do that, I'll be just fine.
• 1:00:54
  But can't wait to get to Newcastle.
• 1:00:56
  We've got a big break between now and March and plenty of time to think about how we can come out firing on all cylinders.
• 1:01:07
  Really looking forward to it.
• 1:01:08
  That's been a wonderful chat, mate.
• 1:01:10
  Thank you so much.
• 1:01:11
  I wish we were face-to-face for it.
• 1:01:13
  Congratulations on everything you've done from, you know, amazing work in the political arena to channeling some of the learnings of that into motor racing and to being a very significant cog in the machine that has achieved so much.
• 1:01:34
  And I know you, you do some great things philanthropically as well in the area of charity and so on.
• 1:01:39
  And for that year to be congratulated as well.
• 1:01:42
  Thank you so much for talking to us.
• 1:01:44
  Thanks Rusty, it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:01:47
  May I just say, a lot of people don't know this about you, but it comes across whenever you're on telly.
• 1:01:53
  But for those who know you and have the privilege of calling you a friend, you're one of the most kindest and most compassionate people I've ever met.
• 1:02:01
  You've always got a nice word to say about everyone.
• 1:02:03
  You always take the time to see how people are doing and to check in.
• 1:02:06
  You're a great bloke mate.
• 1:02:09
  It's been a pleasure to be part of Rusty's Garage, and it's an even greater pleasure to call you a friend.
• 1:02:21
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 1:02:25
  Series editor and producer is Ed Gooden.
• 1:02:28
  Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
• 1:02:31
  If you've got a guest suggestion, get in touch with me via social media.
• 1:02:36
  The Garage.
• 1:02:37
  It's where a journey begins with a tank full of passion fuel stories.
• 1:02:54
  Testing 2-1-2-1-2.
• 1:02:55
  Mate, I'm just to go.
• 1:02:56
  The voice memo's got a... Beautiful, beautiful.
• 1:03:01
  I can also do this one as well.
• 1:03:03
  The former president.
• 1:03:06
  He's a piece of work, this guy.
• 1:03:07
  But let me tell you, Greg Rust.
• 1:03:11
  Greg Rust is a great guy.
• 1:03:12
  I've known about him for a long time.
• 1:03:14
  People say, they say to me, they say, Mr. President, Greg Rust is one of the best podcasters, best broadcasters ever.
• 1:03:21
  He's just one of the best there ever is.
• 1:03:23
  So naturally I agreed to come on the show.
• 1:03:26
  I just had to do it.
• 1:03:28
  This is fantastic.
• 1:03:29
  That's awesome.