Latest / Rusty's Garage / Steve Horne Part 1 - Ferrari’s Indycar & winnng the 500.

Transcript

Steve Horne Part 1 - Ferrari’s Indycar & winnng the 500. · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:14
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:27
  For this episode, I'm just south of Auckland Airport, sitting in a hangar beside a Cessna that is the pride and joy of my guest.
• 0:34
  It's a warm autumn day and you'll hear that in the sound the roof and hangar structure occasionally makes as the temperature of the day rises.
• 0:42
  There's some wonderful reminders all around us of what Steve Horne has achieved in motor racing on the global stage, particularly in the United States, as well as New Zealand and administratively in Australia over some five decades.
• 0:55
  If you go looking for articles and website content on Steve, you're not inundated.
• 1:01
  It's there, but I sense he's kind of picked his mark over time on who he's spoken to and opted to be understated.
• 1:07
  He's let his success on track as a team owner do much of the talking.
• 1:11
  But when he gets going, as he does in this episode, you are reminded why he is a great leader with an inquisitive mind who tends to observe from a slight distance, perhaps for another perspective on things, to see the best way forward, to find solutions and better processes.
• 1:27
  He has built and galvanised some impressive teams with staff of up to 100 at one point, and his own Tasman Motorsports group is held in the highest regard.
• 1:38
  To Steve...
• 1:40
  Teamwork is the foundation of success.
• 1:43
  Now we're not gonna get to all the drivers in this pod.
• 1:45
  He really needs to do a book.
• 1:47
  But suffice to say, it's a really impressive roll call.
• 1:51
  Bobby Rahal, who we'll talk about.
• 1:53
  Adrian Fernandez, Scott Goodyear, Scott Pruitt, Brian Herta, as well as Tony Canaan and Elio Castroneves, who were like family to him.
• 2:01
  There's Cristiano De Marta, Andre Ribeiro, as well as Aussies like Jeff Brabham and Vern Shupin.
• 2:07
  With a keen eye for talent, he organised tests for Paul Tracy and even worked with two-wheel legend Eddie Lawson when he went car racing.
• 2:16
  And, of course, we'll talk about his great mate Neil Crompton, whose ep you can find in our library.
• 2:21
  Before we get going, some quick thank yous.
• 2:23
  Firstly, to Freddie Foote, who did comms for Steve in this part of the world.
• 2:27
  He's the one who encouraged Steve to come on Rusty's Garage.
• 2:31
  To my Kiwi commentary colleague, Andrew Waite, who gave me some intel and has very fond memories of his time with Tasman in the New Zealand Supertourers, but especially the guidance that Steve has given him along the way.
• 2:44
  And I'm especially indebted to Steve's wife, Christine.
• 2:47
  Her record-keeping around Steve's life, the team, the drivers, the successors is exceptional.
• 2:55
  It's not lost on me the incredible part that Christine has played along the way.
• 2:59
  From working as a mechanic in Formula 5000, there's time in Can-Am, Indy Lights, Champ Car at its peak, V8s back home and a whole lot more.
• 3:09
  This is an incredible story and I'm honoured that Steve has decided to share more of it with you right here.
• 3:17
  Enjoy the conversation.
• 3:21
  Steve, welcome.
• 3:22
  This is something I feel is overdue to do, and that's to tell a lot of your story.
• 3:26
  We are here at Ardmore, and I feel like in some respects life is full circle in that regard.
• 3:32
  The love of motor racing started here.
• 3:34
  Tell us about that.
• 3:35
  Well, first of all, thanks for doing this, Rusty.
• 3:36
  It's a privilege.
• 3:38
  Thank you.
• 3:39
  But yeah, we're at Ardmore.
• 3:40
  And Ardmore was for a long time the home of the New Zealand International Grand Prix.
• 3:45
  And I first came here in 1957.
• 3:48
  I was a seven-year-old.
• 3:50
  Came with my uncle and sat in the grandstands just literally 200 metres away.
• 3:55
  And it was an unfortunate day, but I didn't realise it at the time.
• 3:58
  It was when Ken Wharton lost his life when his Monza Ferrari went upside down there.
• 4:04
  And that didn't really have...
• 4:07
  an extreme impact on me because I was too young to realize what death was.
• 4:13
  But, it, it, the thing that appealed to me was, and this is weird.
• 4:19
  It was the smell of the race cars.
• 4:21
  Cause they all ran Castrol R, which those that know it's a sweet smelling oil, I'm still around, not used that much.
• 4:28
  And the second thing was the sound of these race cars.
• 4:31
  So, um, the race was won by, um, Reg Parnell in a Ferrari, um,
• 4:36
  Peter Whitehead was second and third was actually Stan Jones from Australia.
• 4:40
  And later years, I got to know Alan really well and got to be good friends with him.
• 4:45
  So this is where the seed was planted for me.
• 4:49
  You grew up, am I right in saying, at Mount Albert, not that far from Mount Eden.
• 4:53
  Were you a studious kid?
• 4:55
  What were you like when you were younger?
• 4:57
  Sporting?
• 4:58
  I liked certain subjects at school.
• 5:00
  I think I underperformed because sometimes it was kind of too easy.
• 5:05
  But I went to Mount Albert Grammar and very grateful for that.
• 5:08
  Yeah.
• 5:10
  I played in the first soccer 11 there, played cricket.
• 5:13
  I loved the sports.
• 5:14
  I loved the atmosphere of an all-boys school.
• 5:17
  It took me two goes to get university entrance, and I never had aspirations to go to university, but everybody loves their mother.
• 5:27
  I loved my mother dearly, and...
• 5:30
  By that stage, I was messing around with race cars as sort of an after-school hobby.
• 5:36
  And I wanted to join the Air Force and become a pilot.
• 5:41
  But I failed the colour test.
• 5:44
  So I was colourblind, so I couldn't qualify.
• 5:48
  And so one day I'm talking to my mum and she said, Well, Stephen, what do you want to be when you leave school?
• 5:55
  I said, I want to be a race car mechanic.
• 5:56
  She said, Stephen, listen to me.
• 6:00
  Nobody ever makes any money being a race car mechanic.
• 6:02
  So being slightly facetious, I said, Mum, what should I be?
• 6:06
  And she said, you should be an accountant because they control the money.
• 6:11
  And I thought, there's a slight degree of wisdom there.
• 6:14
  So I went to night school to study accountancy and become an accountant.
• 6:21
  And I found that incredibly boring and a complete waste of time, but I pursued it really because I didn't really think about anything else.
• 6:33
  And then I saw a job at South Auckland Motors here for a trainee accountant, but what appealed to me was South Auckland Motors ran a car in the Benson Hedges production car race and sponsored a few race cars and I thought,
• 6:47
  Hang on, there's a bit of a link here that might help.
• 6:49
  So I worked there for, I think, for 18 months or two years and very, very grateful to my mother because once I started owning my own businesses, et cetera, I knew what a balance sheet was.
• 7:01
  I knew what cash flow was.
• 7:03
  I knew how to read...
• 7:05
  the basics of accounting, and that stood me in such good stead.
• 7:09
  I'm intrigued by that.
• 7:10
  Firstly, just in peeling back the story a fraction more, am I right in saying your dad was either a Ferrari distributor in the early days or race car distributor or something?
• 7:18
  Yeah, he was the Ferrari concessionaire, which is what they called it, and I don't quite know how he got that...
• 7:25
  It was a part-time deal.
• 7:27
  But he'd come to all the races here and look after the respective Ferraris here with spare parts, etc.
• 7:32
  Very difficult to import Ferrari road cars in the 50s and 60s.
• 7:36
  There weren't many made because of import restrictions.
• 7:42
  you know, buying, quote, foreign exchange.
• 7:44
  So mainly it was a race car orientated thing.
• 7:47
  He worked as an aircraft engineer at the time with NAC.
• 7:52
  He worked at Teal on the flying boats.
• 7:56
  So that was his passion.
• 7:58
  So I ended up following him around.
• 8:00
  He actually became the distributor for Gordon Keeble Cars as well in New Zealand.
• 8:04
  Sold a couple of those.
• 8:06
  But he never had the business acumen, I think, to be a proper car dealer.
• 8:12
  Okay.
• 8:13
  So you get this accounting degree.
• 8:15
  Business now, your mum is instilled in you or recommended for you.
• 8:19
  But you're clearly mechanically minded too, were you?
• 8:21
  And when was the sort of first connection to that?
• 8:24
  I think it came from my father again.
• 8:26
  He joined the RAF in 1937 as a...
• 8:29
  as an aircraft fitter specialising in engines.
• 8:32
  He left the RAF in 1949, so his whole life was in the RAF.
• 8:37
  And he was an aircraft engineer, so I was around mechanical atmospheres at home and that, and he had a nice garage out the back.
• 8:47
  And I loved pulling shit apart.
• 8:49
  Lawn mowers that often required his help to get back together.
• 8:56
  And I just liked messing around.
• 8:57
  And when I was at school, I met, I joined the Auckland Car Club, I think when I was 15, and met a few guys there.
• 9:05
  A couple of brothers called the Halliday Brothers that were just sort of around the corner a little bit from where I lived, and they raced an escort twin camera.
• 9:12
  So I went and helped them at the weekend as a gopher.
• 9:15
  Then I met a guy called Dave Silcock, who raced a Jaguar 3.8, and I helped him.
• 9:21
  But ultimately, the big jump was every Friday night, a group of us used to go to Spears Speed Shop up on Great North Road.
• 9:33
  And there were two brothers there,
• 9:38
  And they were into making hot-up parts for cars, pistons, crankshafts, and they specialised in Fords.
• 9:46
  And one day I'm up there having a few beers and I said, oh, that butcher's shop next year, we're going to start a speed shop.
• 9:51
  Do you want to run it for us?
• 9:52
  And I was, I think, 18 or 19.
• 9:54
  I had no idea whatsoever.
• 9:55
  But I actually took the job, so we opened a speed shop up and sold...
• 10:00
  all sorts of aftermarket parts, Weber carburetors, CBA lights, Spears products.
• 10:07
  So that widened my circle, and then I started building a few engines in there, sort of in my part time.
• 10:15
  And I met a guy that's still out here actually, and still competing, a guy called Reg Cook.
• 10:23
  And he ran a mini in the New Zealand series,
• 10:30
  and I started working for him full-time.
• 10:32
  I think he paid me, I think, $300 Kiwi dollars a week, and I built engines for him, mini-engines, and we entered an RS-1600 into the Castrol GTX New Zealand Championship, and we won that, and that took quite a bit of, let's say, reading of the rule book and finding the loopholes, of which there were a couple.
• 10:55
  So we won that championship, and then,
• 10:59
  We won that championship and then Reg said to me, I bought a Formula 5000 car off Kevin Bartlett.
• 11:05
  He said, we're going to race that in the Tasman series.
• 11:08
  We don't know anything about that.
• 11:09
  There was another guy with me called Ray Grant working there.
• 11:12
  Ray went on to work at McLaren's.
• 11:14
  So we got this Formula 5000 car from Kevin.
• 11:17
  Loved it.
• 11:18
  Thanks, Kevin.
• 11:19
  But there were a number of little things that had to be fixed.
• 11:21
  We had to rebuild the engine.
• 11:23
  Had cracked cylinder heads.
• 11:24
  Yada, yada, yada.
• 11:25
  So we rebuilt this Lola T300.
• 11:28
  And Reg went and raced it in the Gold Star race at Bay Park.
• 11:33
  There was maybe 10 cars.
• 11:34
  And he won it.
• 11:35
  I thought, this is pretty easy.
• 11:38
  So we were going to do the whole Tasman series.
• 11:41
  We ended up only doing the New Zealand rounds.
• 11:44
  And I went to Australia sort of looking for a job in the Australian part of the Tasman series in 1974.
• 11:53
  And I hooked up with David Oxstone.
• 11:55
  and I volunteered with him, so we did all the four races there, helped him, and David introduced me to Count van der Straaten's son, who were looking for mechanics in Europe.
• 12:06
  So I shook hands, told him who I was, sent my resume to them, never heard any more, then one day I'm at home,
• 12:15
  in Norrie Avenue, and knock on the door, it was a postman.
• 12:18
  He said, oh, I've got a telegram for Steve Horne.
• 12:21
  Okay.
• 12:22
  And the telegram read, Steve, we'd like to offer you a job as a circuit mechanic on our European team.
• 12:29
  We'll pay you £300 a month, be it Brands Hatch on April 2021.
• 12:34
  20th whatever it was so off I went you were how old here?
• 12:38
  I was 20 22 I think 22 or 23 so I went to Europe and did the European Thorna 5000 championship I was a Second mechanic on Peter Gethin's car learned a hell of a lot made a number of mistakes So we won that champion this ship that you a Teddy Palette and
• 12:58
  We won it again the following year in 75.
• 13:02
  And then 76, the Count had this grand scheme to go to the US to run the US Formula 5000 series, which was a bigger and a better series.
• 13:15
  I think we had six or seven mechanics over the two cars, and only about three of us wanted to go.
• 13:21
  And I'd met Christine, and we were sort of living together, and I said, Christine, we're going to go to the US and race.
• 13:29
  I'm not going.
• 13:29
  She had a really good job, actually.
• 13:31
  She was the main breadwinner.
• 13:34
  But we ended up going to the US in 76,
• 13:38
  We had a Mercedes Transporter, a trailer, we had 13 Mirand engines, three race cars, and we started doing the Formula 5000 series, and I think the highest we ever finished was about a couple of third places because, you know, Mario Andretti, Brian Redman.
• 13:54
  Unreal.
• 13:55
  Danny Angais, and they were tough competitors.
• 13:57
  You know, Jim Hall Racing was, you know, his cars were better.
• 14:03
  Okay.
• 14:04
  So, but then in 77, they converted those cars to, quote, the Mark II Canham, put a fully enclosed body on them.
• 14:12
  And we did that series for four years, I think, with Warwick Brown, Jeff Lees, then Jeff Bradman, right?
• 14:27
  So in 1981, we always had these ideas, and I think...
• 14:32
  I'm a contrarian.
• 14:34
  I like to think backwards.
• 14:36
  And I think, why are they doing it that way?
• 14:39
  And then I try to understand why they're doing it.
• 14:41
  And then I think, well, actually, this way might be slightly better.
• 14:45
  So anyway, we convinced the camp to build our own Can-Am car.
• 14:48
  So we started from ground zero.
• 14:50
  I used quite a few Lola parts on it, but we...
• 14:53
  I'd become friends with a guy called Tony Sakeli, who was a professor at Cornell University, but they had a little wind tunnel there, and Tony raced himself and had designed this really cool RT1...
• 15:08
  fully enclosed body car with great air in it.
• 15:11
  So we hired Tony, did a lot of wind tunnel work, and built the VDS001.
• 15:17
  And I'll never forget, we took it to the first race.
• 15:20
  Jeff had tested it, and the first problem was we couldn't get springs stiff enough on it because they had so much downforce.
• 15:26
  And we went up to...
• 15:29
  into Canada to race at Edmonton.
• 15:31
  I remember rolling it out of the trailer and Barry Green's standing there because he was working with a team up and Barry said, holy shit, we're fucked.
• 15:41
  Use the language.
• 15:42
  That's all right that you can do that.
• 15:43
  Anyway, we put it on pole, and the biggest thing we had to convince Jeff was to slow down, because A, it was too quick, and B, it just wore the tires out really quickly.
• 15:54
  Anyway, Jeff won that race, beat Teo Farby, and ultimately won that championship in 1981 with a car that even today, when you look at it, you think that's very special.
• 16:06
  There were two of them, Bill.
• 16:09
  But at the end of 81,
• 16:11
  Rusty, I was kind of burned out.
• 16:12
  I'd really been working a lot.
• 16:15
  And, you know, Christine and I were married at that stage.
• 16:18
  We'd done a couple of Tasman series in between.
• 16:20
  That's triggered another story, actually.
• 16:22
  It was a good one.
• 16:23
  And we said, oh, let's go back to England and be real, you know, be real humans again.
• 16:30
  So told the counter I was leaving.
• 16:32
  We moved all our stuff back to England.
• 16:33
  We already had a house there.
• 16:35
  And I...
• 16:38
  I got a phone call right before Christmas, and it was Bobby Rahul who I'd met through the can, and he said, He said, Horn, we need you.
• 16:46
  I said, What for?
• 16:46
  He said, I'm going to do IndyCar, and I've got a sponsor, and Jim Truman's going to own the team, and we need somebody to run it, and you're the guy.
• 16:54
  So I said, Well, I'm not really sure I want to do that.
• 16:57
  I don't know anything about IndyCars.
• 17:00
  I don't know about oval racing.
• 17:03
  But then Kristen and I said, well, let's just go and have a look.
• 17:06
  So I went over and sat down with Jim Truman, who was, I think the nearest way of describing it to people is he was a Tony Quinn, a great entrepreneur, pretty, not tough on people, but he liked people to perform for him.
• 17:22
  He gave you the opportunity.
• 17:23
  So we started this IndyCar team from ground zero in 1982 with Bobby Rahill driving it.
• 17:29
  We went to the first race at Phoenix, which was an oval, and we had no idea.
• 17:35
  We qualified second to last.
• 17:38
  The car caught fire in the pits, and I thought, holy shit, we're in trouble here.
• 17:44
  So we actually skipped the next race to go and do some more testing.
• 17:48
  I remember talking to the chief technical officer about the setup on the cars and he said, Steve, what sort of tilt are you running?
• 17:54
  What corner weights are you running?
• 17:56
  I said, what do you mean?
• 17:57
  I had no idea, but we learnt really quickly because we're all beginners.
• 18:01
  There were no, quote, IndyCar experts on the team.
• 18:06
  And that season we finished second in the championship to Rick Mears.
• 18:10
  I think we won four races and...
• 18:13
  Suddenly, we learned really quickly because we taught ourselves.
• 18:17
  We didn't have any preconceived ideas about what this was.
• 18:24
  Yeah, so Tasman.
• 18:26
  Tasman series.
• 18:26
  Well, can I come back a fraction here because you've triggered so many different things.
• 18:31
  Can I come back to you talking about being a contrarian, right?
• 18:33
  Yeah.
• 18:34
  So you'd been a mechanic.
• 18:35
  Yeah.
• 18:36
  But are you starting to lean in now towards being...
• 18:40
  a team manager, a leader, a realising that you could sit back and look at things in a different perspective?
• 18:46
  I think in those days, a big team was 10 people.
• 18:50
  But I did the hiring and no firing.
• 18:54
  And, you know, when I needed money, the account sent money.
• 18:59
  So I was a team manager, but I still had a toolbox.
• 19:04
  You know?
• 19:06
  And I was the guy that put my head in the car.
• 19:08
  There were no engineers back then.
• 19:10
  I think with the VDS01, we did have an engineer that helped with the setup.
• 19:17
  But it was very old school, Rusty.
• 19:20
  So I think just by graduating up the pathway, I got the official title of team manager.
• 19:30
  And that...
• 19:31
  I learned as I went along one very basic rule.
• 19:35
  I looked at somebody when they're working and I thought, could I do that job?
• 19:40
  And if I couldn't, I wanted to know about that job.
• 19:44
  But I also learned that if he was struggling to do it because we're working long hours or something like that, I'd be the same.
• 19:53
  So my goal was to make it...
• 19:55
  a job that was specialized, but they were comfortable about doing and became experts at it.
• 20:03
  The best mechanic we had at Truesports was a bricklayer.
• 20:06
  Wow.
• 20:07
  He was a bricklayer by trade, but he did all our transmissions and gearboxes, Jimmy Prescott.
• 20:13
  One of the most naturally talented mechanics I knew, but he had no formal training.
• 20:18
  I was never trained as a mechanic.
• 20:19
  I taught myself.
• 20:21
  The only thing I didn't like doing was welding.
• 20:24
  I was never shit at welding.
• 20:25
  But you clearly, in analyzing the roles and how to make them work,
• 20:31
  effectively there's almost like a military precision in that is there not or a an understanding of process an understanding of of how to do it the best possible way was it either that a natural thing for you um i think it was inquisitiveness yes okay that's the way i would put it i was like we're having an interview here now i'm going to go home and think
• 20:53
  How's that working?
• 20:55
  So I'm always inquisitive about things.
• 20:58
  I'm a great rabbit holer.
• 21:00
  I go down all sorts of rabbit holes.
• 21:02
  Later in life, I taught myself about trading on Wall Street.
• 21:06
  Okay.
• 21:07
  Why did I do that?
• 21:07
  Because I was paying other people to manage money for me, and I thought...
• 21:12
  I can do that better.
• 21:13
  Whether that was true or false, I don't know.
• 21:16
  So I'm always being inquisitive about learning about things.
• 21:21
  And from Jim Truman, I learned to empower people.
• 21:25
  You never know how far somebody's going to go unless you give them the opportunity.
• 21:31
  And the other thing is people...
• 21:34
  have a specialty, you should encourage that specialty.
• 21:37
  Yeah, yeah.
• 21:39
  Can I come to Jim here?
• 21:40
  Yeah.
• 21:40
  Jim Truman.
• 21:42
  His philosophy, I think, or one of them that you spoke about was do whatever it takes to be innovative.
• 21:49
  What sort of memories have you got of him that you can share with people?
• 21:52
  First of all, he had a chain of hotels called Red Roof Inns, and he was continually building them across America.
• 21:58
  I think I went there, he had 100.
• 22:00
  By the time he died at 86, I think it was probably 200, roughly.
• 22:06
  He loved motorsports.
• 22:08
  He drove himself.
• 22:10
  He eventually bought Mid-Ohio Racetrack.
• 22:12
  But the basic thing he did was empower people.
• 22:16
  And I'll give you a really good example that kind of shocked me.
• 22:21
  So every month I'd do a report for him, a written report, give it to him, never hear anything back.
• 22:26
  And he'd come in the shop now and then, but not that often.
• 22:28
  He's always at the racetrack.
• 22:30
  I was doing deals on sponsorship.
• 22:32
  I didn't have to worry about that.
• 22:33
  But we were at a stage, I think it was in 1985, where do we run March Chassis or Lowellas?
• 22:42
  So I did a big study on it, and pros and cons, et cetera, et cetera.
• 22:48
  And I took it over to him, and he said, oh, leave that with me.
• 22:51
  But a week later, I said, Jim, have you read that?
• 22:53
  He said, oh, come over to my office now.
• 22:56
  So I went over there and one of these guys always had stacks of paper on his desk.
• 23:00
  You know, there's paper everywhere.
• 23:02
  Yeah.
• 23:02
  And he shoves around, pulls it out.
• 23:04
  And I said, what do you think?
• 23:06
  He said, I haven't read this.
• 23:08
  He said, why would I read it?
• 23:11
  Because he empowered you.
• 23:12
  He trusted you.
• 23:12
  Is that what you said?
• 23:13
  Exactly.
• 23:13
  He said, Horn, that's your fucking job, not mine.
• 23:17
  You make that decision.
• 23:18
  You know, you've written it all down.
• 23:20
  Do you believe it?
• 23:21
  I said, yeah.
• 23:22
  You go and do it.
• 23:23
  So he empowered people.
• 23:24
  Yeah.
• 23:25
  But he always knew the boundary of empowerment.
• 23:27
  Yeah.
• 23:28
  That's one of the biggest lessons I learned from him.
• 23:31
  Okay.
• 23:32
  And I think I've carried that onwards.
• 23:34
  In your own projects.
• 23:35
  In my own projects and people I've worked with to a degree.
• 23:41
  And I love it.
• 23:41
  You watch somebody succeed, Quinny does it.
• 23:44
  Yes.
• 23:45
  He does it all the time.
• 23:45
  Yeah.
• 23:46
  You've got a responsibility.
• 23:47
  We're going to pay you to do a job.
• 23:48
  And if you don't do it, well, there'll be kind of consequences of that.
• 23:51
  Yeah.
• 23:51
  Look at Josie.
• 23:52
  Sidetracked.
• 23:52
  Look at how she started with where she is now.
• 23:55
  He empowered her.
• 23:56
  Yeah.
• 23:56
  And she's flying.
• 23:57
  Yeah.
• 23:57
  Absolutely flying.
• 23:58
  On Jim, I mean, I think there was one point there where he owned a stack of land and was even going to build a track maybe in St. Louis and stuff like that.
• 24:03
  Is that right?
• 24:04
  Yeah.
• 24:04
  Yeah.
• 24:05
  Let's come to what you were talking about in that season there with Bobby.
• 24:10
  I think from memory, you win in Michigan.
• 24:13
  Jim Truman's not at the track that day.
• 24:15
  That's right.
• 24:16
  You had to call him.
• 24:17
  And how did that call go?
• 24:18
  Well, actually, he was out in Aspen because he had some property out there and he loved skiing.
• 24:23
  So I think in the back of my mind, he thought, well, they're not going to do very good.
• 24:27
  I won't go to the racetrack.
• 24:29
  So anyway, he calls...
• 24:32
  me after the race and said, how did we do?
• 24:34
  I said, well, we won.
• 24:35
  And he said, no, no, what really happened, Horn?
• 24:38
  I said, no, Jim, we won.
• 24:39
  He said, put Rahul on.
• 24:41
  So Bobby gets on and Bobby tells him, yeah, we won the race.
• 24:46
  Who was second?
• 24:47
  Rick Mears.
• 24:48
  Well, how much did you beat him by?
• 24:49
  Three seconds.
• 24:50
  And he said...
• 24:52
  He said, because we'd learnt the craft of oval racing, and Bobby was an immensely good driver.
• 25:02
  He's what I call a 360-degree driver.
• 25:04
  He always knew what was going on around him.
• 25:07
  He was able to explain the car.
• 25:08
  We'd learnt...
• 25:09
  how to set the cars up we had a good engineer in lee dykstra and suddenly shit this is fun yeah um so i think we actually enjoyed over racing as much as road course racing in the end how big was the the change from what you had done with some of the stuff in england and the early um things around uh racing in the united states but going over racing is such a
• 25:32
  It is.
• 25:34
  It's, you know, obviously an American product.
• 25:39
  And you are initially sceptical.
• 25:42
  You think, why would people race around in circles?
• 25:45
  That's got to be easy.
• 25:47
  think of it a little bit differently when when I hear people tell me that are not necessarily into the sport I say think about an NBA game you go there you see everything unfold in front of you think about the strategy in an NBA game the plays that they're going to do a lot of that stuff comes into motor racing you have to look at it differently and it's a great fan experience isn't it one thing we learned early on is to be good at pit stops so we were always the best so we trained hard at being pit and pit stops because it was obvious to me there's free money there yeah um and
• 26:13
  But, no, overracing, I love it.
• 26:18
  It requires a special discipline from the driver and from the team, but it's fascinatingly fun.
• 26:25
  In that early period of what you did there, is it fair to say that that first kind of season with Bobby, you probably performed ahead of where you thought you might be, and then the kind of couple of years that followed, before we get to 86, were a little bit tougher, weren't they?
• 26:41
  A bit more of a learning, maybe.
• 26:42
  Yeah, I think the first year we exceeded our own expectations.
• 26:48
  Finishing second in a championship to Penske and beating a lot of top teams like Patrick Racing and others was...
• 26:56
  sort of a dream come true and I think we might have got slightly overconfident so in 83 I think we might have finished fourth in the championship or something 85 we started uh actually 84 we started modifying the car ourselves um
• 27:15
  And we just got slightly overconfident, and I think got away from some of the basics we'd learned.
• 27:22
  We thought we were smarter than everybody else, which wasn't true.
• 27:25
  And it wasn't really until 86, we sort of regrouped and said, guys,
• 27:32
  We know March build a really good race car, but it's a production car.
• 27:37
  Let's fix the things that are problematic, like the wastegates on it, the body fit, the refueling.
• 27:43
  Let's fix all the things that make it a better race car, but fundamentally it's really good.
• 27:49
  So let's just have a better 86 March than everybody else.
• 27:52
  Let's not reinvent it.
• 27:55
  The 86 race at Indianapolis is a highlight.
• 27:59
  Can I come to a couple of key things in the build-up to that?
• 28:02
  So I think at times you went to the far end of pit lane to be a little bit away from the media spotlight, let's say that, and you made a really interesting call around...
• 28:15
  um the team and keeping the team galvanized and tight you went back to base didn't you in over the month and let them spend time with family and so on so back then indie lasted three weeks the first time i went there it lasted a month but it lasted three weeks a lot of practice running your t-car etc etc
• 28:34
  The first thing was I didn't like the media because I found them to be a distraction, particularly with the driver.
• 28:40
  So we'd go way down the other end of the pit lane.
• 28:45
  It was probably, you know, a good three quarters of a mile walk.
• 28:49
  And Bobby always complained, what the hell are we doing down there?
• 28:52
  And I said, because we don't want those guys hanging around.
• 28:55
  Those that actually make the effort to get down there, we'll talk to.
• 28:58
  Yes.
• 28:59
  But I tried to take a distraction away, and it kind of worked.
• 29:03
  The second thing was we qualified pretty well, I think fourth.
• 29:07
  And everybody worked on their cars in the garage in that week between qualifying and the race.
• 29:13
  But I thought, we live in Columbus.
• 29:15
  It's three hours away.
• 29:18
  I think we'll do a better job preparing the car, getting the crew mentally prepared by being at home with their families in their own workshop.
• 29:25
  Yeah, we had to drive six hours, but it actually worked.
• 29:29
  Everybody, I think our team was fresher mentally when we got back to the track.
• 29:33
  It kind of shocked Bobby.
• 29:34
  He said, what are you doing?
• 29:35
  What are you going home for?
• 29:36
  Because I think it'll just work better for us to be at home sleeping in our own bed.
• 29:41
  You know, we'd spent two weeks in motels and,
• 29:44
  Just going to the speedway every day, walking in there, where's your doubt?
• 29:48
  So tell me about that day and where does that rank for you?
• 29:51
  And I mean, you've done some incredible things in your career, but the significance of that race to crack it there in the mid-80s in a good period.
• 29:58
  And so what did that mean to you?
• 30:01
  Well, obviously winning the Indy 500 is an epitome of motorsports.
• 30:06
  It's one of the greatest races in the world.
• 30:08
  I think it was a really tough race.
• 30:09
  There was a lot of potential winners in there.
• 30:12
  I think strategically we hit all our pit stops right.
• 30:16
  We read the yellows correctly.
• 30:19
  I think Bobby drove a fantastic race because before the race we talked about what are the things that are going to change during the race.
• 30:27
  And obviously the race can be two and a half, sometimes three hours long, and
• 30:32
  The track changes, the cloud cover changes, the wind direction changes.
• 30:36
  Let's be aware of all those things.
• 30:38
  And I can't tell you about that, but you can observe it and think about it.
• 30:43
  And so I think we knew we were in the hunt.
• 30:49
  And it would, sometimes we were front straightaway behind.
• 30:52
  We'd make it back up on the pit stop, or something would happen, and Bobby would get in that lead pack of four or five drivers.
• 30:59
  And we'd sat down and said, look, 100 miles to go, we need to just up it a bit.
• 31:06
  Same thing happens in Formula One now.
• 31:08
  You saw it yesterday with Max Verstappen.
• 31:09
  The guys on the race said, OK, now go.
• 31:11
  So we hit the go button, and Bobby was right there, racing for the lead, and...
• 31:19
  it's fickle because yellow flags accidents can decide an outcome that goes for you or goes against you and there was a yellow I think it was about ten laps to go eight laps to go and we were sitting second or third and we talked a lot about restarts before and how to do them and how to get the jump and had a brilliant restart
• 31:43
  Bobby hit the front and we won it.
• 31:45
  Unreal.
• 31:46
  But the biggest thing, it was so emotional because Jim Truman was on his deathbed.
• 31:51
  He was dying.
• 31:52
  11 days later, I think.
• 31:53
  11 days later.
• 31:55
  You're growing up even now.
• 31:56
  Even now.
• 31:59
  Sorry, Steve.
• 32:00
  Here's a man that had given me an opportunity and he was gone.
• 32:03
  But we'd given him something.
• 32:05
  Yeah, before he left.
• 32:07
  And I thought that was the end.
• 32:08
  I thought, OK, that team is now going to be dissolved because the team owner's gone.
• 32:14
  But I saw him once more at his home.
• 32:18
  He was in bed and he was going.
• 32:20
  He said, Steve, we're going to be OK.
• 32:23
  I didn't know what that meant.
• 32:24
  Yeah.
• 32:27
  But they read his will.
• 32:29
  And he'd left a large amount of money for the team to keep going.
• 32:32
  Unreal.
• 32:33
  And he'd given me 25% ownership in the team.
• 32:36
  Sorry.
• 32:36
  Sorry, Steve.
• 32:37
  No, don't be sorry, because I'm proud that I can still feel that emotion.
• 32:42
  Good.
• 32:43
  That was so important, you know, in what was to come, wasn't it?
• 32:46
  So I didn't go to his funeral because we were racing that weekend.
• 32:49
  But we went and won that championship.
• 32:53
  And that was amazing.
• 32:56
  Bobby was so damn good.
• 32:58
  The team were great.
• 32:59
  But 87 come around, we won it again.
• 33:03
  We had the magic formula.
• 33:04
  We had the belief in ourselves.
• 33:06
  We had the funding.
• 33:08
  Jim's widow, Barbara, was really good with the team.
• 33:13
  She was inquisitive about
• 33:14
  what made race teams work.
• 33:17
  And I spent a lot of time educating her.
• 33:21
  And it was great.
• 33:23
  It was fantastic.
• 33:25
  So we won two championships, little known.
• 33:28
  We actually won the 1987 Indy Lights Championship as well with a Belgian kid called Didier Teys.
• 33:34
  And he had sponsorship from Racing Team VDS.
• 33:36
  Unreal.
• 33:37
  Yeah, so life's a big circle and...
• 33:40
  Yeah, it was emotional.
• 33:43
  Thanks for dragging that out again.
• 33:54
  Steve has a close friend, Neil Crompton, and he's also great mates with Brad Jones, whose feature episode with Rusty will appeal for all sorts of reasons, including the time they went to meet legendary F1 team owner, Frank Williams.
• 34:08
  So I pick up my briefcase and Neil's got on some, you know, like chinos that are almost white.
• 34:13
  You know, they're sort of like.
• 34:14
  Perfectly creased.
• 34:15
  Yeah, perfectly creased.
• 34:16
  And I picked up my briefcase off the wet grass and sat it on his knees and gone, just move that to the other side of the car.
• 34:22
  So then when he's lifted it off, it's like mud.
• 34:26
  He's like, oh my God.
• 34:28
  And I'm like, are you kidding me?
• 34:29
  What, you think Frank Williams is going to go, wow, you look talented.
• 34:32
  I'm going to put you in a Formula One car.
• 34:35
  While they didn't get an F1 test call up that day, Brad's memories of his own racing career, team ownership and working with the late Jason Richards make this one unmissable listening, just like Steve Horne.
• 34:49
  You've rattled off a couple of really good names as drivers, to which I wouldn't mind tapping into.
• 34:53
  Can we talk about Bobby?
• 34:54
  What was he... You know, all the different drivers you work with, invariably they're wired differently, and you talked about him being this 360-degree driver.
• 35:05
  What was he like out of the car and his commitment to racing?
• 35:10
  And the Rahul name is now from, you know...
• 35:12
  I first actually met Bobby in New Zealand because he came here to do...
• 35:16
  quote, the Tasman series when they were running Atlantic cars and he was driving for Fred Obert.
• 35:20
  So that's when I first met Bobby.
• 35:21
  He was driving a Chevron.
• 35:24
  Then he was running the Can-Am series as well.
• 35:27
  So we were around each other.
• 35:29
  We knew each other.
• 35:30
  I don't think we became bosom buddies at that stage, but I knew he was damn good.
• 35:35
  When we were doing Can-Am, he was with jumping around teams a little bit, but he was always really fast.
• 35:44
  And I liked his race craft.
• 35:46
  You just get a sniff of what it's about.
• 35:49
  So again, 360-degree vision,
• 35:53
  He was inquisitive about what made the cars work.
• 35:57
  He knew when to push and when not to push.
• 36:01
  Back then, some of the road course races we did were 300 miles long.
• 36:04
  Like, Cleveland was 300 miles.
• 36:06
  And we won that race because we just, steady as you go, steady ship.
• 36:11
  We were always there or thereabouts, but when it was time to go.
• 36:14
  So by 360, and I think Scott Dixon's got this as well, he knows which way the wind's blowing.
• 36:20
  He knows what the temperature is.
• 36:21
  He knows what his tyres feel.
• 36:23
  He knows what's happening behind him and you can see what's going to happen in front of him.
• 36:26
  That's what I call 360 degree That's a Bobby was Probably one of the very best at that there was there are others I work with but in Bobby's secret advantage, he was bloody good with marketing He knew how to love on sponsors, which took a lot of load off my shoulders Yeah, well for people
• 36:47
  I mean, I was 16 years of age back then.
• 36:48
  So what was prize money like back then?
• 36:51
  What's the media attention like?
• 36:53
  It was strong.
• 36:54
  Prize money was really good.
• 36:56
  You know, I think at Indy we won $400,000 or $500,000.
• 37:01
  And that's some of that, you know.
• 37:02
  A lot of money then, a lot of money then.
• 37:03
  The driver traditionally gets about 40%.
• 37:06
  I think I got 10%.
• 37:08
  And the rest gets distributed through the team, et cetera.
• 37:11
  But in 1987, there was a thing called the Marlborough Challenge.
• 37:16
  which was outside the championship.
• 37:18
  It was held in Tamiami Park, and that was a million dollars to win it.
• 37:24
  And I thought, Bob and I said, we should have a go, we should really focus on this because we're in a good position in the championship.
• 37:30
  We won that as well.
• 37:32
  So I think that season we won over two and a half million dollars.
• 37:35
  That's a lot of money.
• 37:36
  Huge.
• 37:37
  Back then, yeah.
• 37:37
  Huge.
• 37:38
  The money was good, I think.
• 37:41
  Somewhere here, and the team continues,
• 37:44
  I might not have the timeline right, so correct me if I'm out of sync here.
• 37:48
  But somewhere here, Ferrari begins making noises about joining.
• 37:52
  You lead the project, from what I can gather.
• 37:55
  The car got built, but I don't think you ever raced.
• 37:57
  Is that right?
• 37:59
  Never raced, no.
• 38:00
  Cut some laps, obviously.
• 38:01
  Is it in a museum now in Marinello?
• 38:03
  Tell me about this project.
• 38:05
  So it really started late and started in 1985.
• 38:09
  Leo Mao was...
• 38:10
  running the Goodyear Racing Department and obviously Ferrari running Goodyear tyres.
• 38:14
  And he approached Jim Truman and said, look, whisper, whisper, but Ferrari are interested in Indy cars and I've recommended your team, Truesport, as being the best team to associate with.
• 38:27
  So Jim and I went to Marinello recently.
• 38:32
  before he died and it was...
• 38:34
  So you met with Enzo?
• 38:35
  Yeah, we went there and I remember getting to the airport in Milan and this guy had to sign up Mr Truman and we jumped in this Ferrari and did about 1,000 miles an hour down the freeway to Maranello.
• 38:50
  Got there at...
• 38:53
  10 or 11 in the morning and we went through the gates and there was all this flash flash flash flash flash what the hell is all that and all these photographers hidden around were taking pictures who's coming to throw but yes i met enzo um it was like she and the pope you know yeah um and they wanted to proceed ahead with the project they wanted true sports to be the
• 39:16
  the team that helped them and become the factory team to run this car in Indy.
• 39:21
  Because he was passionate about Indy 500 because Ferrari had run there in the 50s, early 50s and unsuccessfully.
• 39:29
  So he wanted to win that again.
• 39:32
  So we sent a car to,
• 39:35
  Maranello we sent I think four or five mechanics that spent probably four months there just working on the project sent a couple of Cosworth engines they diner'd them they looked at them and produced a car designed by Gustav Brunner
• 39:54
  But Ferrari was struggling in F1 at the time.
• 39:57
  There was a lot of politics going on.
• 39:59
  There was rule changes around engines.
• 40:01
  I think that played somewhat into the final decision.
• 40:04
  But Harvey Postlethwaite was the F1 designer.
• 40:08
  Nice guy.
• 40:09
  Did a reasonable job, I think.
• 40:11
  But they hired John Barnard from McLaren.
• 40:15
  So John went to Ferrari, and I think he made the right decision.
• 40:19
  He said, if we're going to win F1, we need to put this IndyCar project to one side.
• 40:24
  We can't do both at once.
• 40:27
  And he was correct.
• 40:29
  So the Ferrari project got put on ice.
• 40:33
  They paid us out of the contract.
• 40:35
  And the car was built, I think it might be in the museum at Indy, actually.
• 40:40
  Okay.
• 40:42
  So I've seen it.
• 40:43
  It ran on the track.
• 40:44
  Michele Alboreto drove it twice, I think.
• 40:47
  But that was the end of that project.
• 40:48
  So it's a period of my life that, again, I was here seven years old watching a Ferrari win the New Zealand Grand Prix that, as you say, it just keeps going full circle.
• 40:59
  Circle.
• 41:00
  Yeah.
• 41:00
  You are, I think, a great coach and you have some great one-liners, some great life lessons, I think.
• 41:08
  One of them you talk about is emotion being the enemy.
• 41:12
  Just explain what you mean by it.
• 41:13
  It seems quite obvious in a motor racing sense, trying to take that out of it.
• 41:16
  I don't think I'm an emotional person.
• 41:18
  I think I might have cracked there a little bit.
• 41:23
  Emotion in motorsports to me means you get upset with the guy you're racing against, you get upset with the mechanic next to you because he made a mistake, you get upset because I've got to work long hours, and they're all emotional things.
• 41:39
  So if you can control that emotion, particularly as a race car driver, you're going to be better than the guy next to you because he will be going through similar emotions.
• 41:49
  So I always try to teach the kids, look,
• 41:52
  Don't get too wrapped up in, he did this to me, I'm going to get him at the next corner, or come in and tell us in the pits about something that happened on the track that triggered an emotional decision.
• 42:04
  It's wrong.
• 42:04
  It's your enemy.
• 42:07
  Control it.
• 42:08
  Bobby was really good at it.
• 42:09
  Was he?
• 42:10
  And I think, Rusty, over the years you've seen drivers become too emotional and it hurts them.
• 42:16
  And if you get too emotional, it can actually have serious consequences.
• 42:19
  So that was always my one-liner.
• 42:21
  Emotion is the enemy.
• 42:24
  It's one of many great things that you've spoken about over the years.
• 42:30
  In that period there, gym passes, there is a plan, if you will, from a family perspective to keep true sports going and so on.
• 42:39
  Just walk us through the next kind of few years there and how that progresses.
• 42:42
  Yeah, I think the sport's always evolving.
• 42:46
  And I realised it in 1987 that A, we were buying chassis from England, March and Lowellers.
• 42:54
  Every year you'd throw the old one away and you'd buy a new one because they were better.
• 42:58
  They evolved.
• 43:00
  But Penske was building his own cars in England.
• 43:04
  And it became obvious to me that if you control your own destiny a bit more, you could always make a march better or a lola better, but if fundamentally there were some things that you didn't like about it, you couldn't change those.
• 43:21
  So...
• 43:23
  And the other thing that was happening is the engines were changing.
• 43:27
  You know, we'd always used Cosworth, the DFXs, they were bloody good engines, everybody had the same, but Ilmore had come along, funded by Penske, and they were building and had built a better IndyCar engine.
• 43:40
  So I realised I've either got to have that engine to be right at the front or do something else.
• 43:45
  So we tried to get an Elmore engine, and it was controlled by Pat Patrick and Roger Penske at the time, and there was a lot of round and round and circles.
• 43:58
  So...
• 43:59
  But it became clear that those that were going to get that very limited supply of engines going forward were not going to be teams that, in my opinion, would threaten those organisations.
• 44:13
  So we couldn't get it.
• 44:15
  It was always, well, next year, you're first on the list.
• 44:18
  So again, being a contrarian, I thought, well, we've got to control our own destiny with engines a bit.
• 44:25
  So I think...
• 44:28
  I was kind of ahead of the times.
• 44:30
  We decided to go with Judd engines, which were branded Honda Judds.
• 44:35
  Okay.
• 44:36
  So I realised there was a Honda involvement there somewhere, and engine developments that made the engines was owned by John Judd and Sir Jack Brabham.
• 44:44
  So Jack obviously had a strong connection with Honda.
• 44:47
  So I put two and two together and got about eight.
• 44:51
  And so we became the US distributor for Judd engines, ran them in 1988 and 1989, continued to develop them and got them going better.
• 45:02
  They were never super competitive on ovals, but on road courses, they weren't so bad.
• 45:08
  But
• 45:08
  Where the Ilmore engine had a big, big advantage was in the electronics on the engine.
• 45:15
  So they could control each cylinder.
• 45:17
  They could control their fuel mileage a lot better, etc., etc.
• 45:21
  They could make more power in qualifying.
• 45:23
  The Judd had a semi-mechanical fuel system on it.
• 45:29
  And so I went and talked to Bosch, who were also supplying Ilmore.
• 45:35
  and said, look, we would like to use your product.
• 45:38
  Will you help us develop it?
• 45:39
  An electronic fuel injection system, is that what you mean?
• 45:41
  Yeah, yeah.
• 45:42
  Yeah.
• 45:43
  Develop it with, particularly for this engine.
• 45:46
  And I got an initial positive response.
• 45:49
  Then I got the phone call, oh, no, we can't help you.
• 45:52
  Yada, yada, yada.
• 45:54
  We haven't got the resources.
• 45:55
  But clearly... You're being blocked.
• 45:57
  Yeah, we're being blocked, yeah.
• 45:58
  So that was the disadvantage we had with the Jutt engine.
• 46:01
  We went all the way, we had our own engine shop, we produced our own cylinder heads.
• 46:07
  We really got the engine working pretty well, but we could never quite catch up.
• 46:11
  We were certainly better in the Cosworth, some of the teams were running Cosworth, but we could never catch up to Irmoor.
• 46:17
  So was that a mistake?
• 46:19
  I think I read the room, but I was looking too far down the road.
• 46:23
  Honda eventually did come into IndyCar, and yes, we did get involved with them, but there was a period there that we were kind of second-class citizens in the engine arena, and Bobby didn't like it.
• 46:36
  And fair enough, I would agree with him.
• 46:39
  We did win a couple of races.
• 46:42
  But he felt he wasn't getting the best product, and we'd been together for a long time.
• 46:50
  So he moved on to another team.
• 46:52
  And with Budwise, I think he actually went to a competing beer company.
• 46:57
  I can't remember.
• 46:59
  But we hired a young kid, Scott Pruitt, who, again, in the beginning, I thought, hmm.
• 47:06
  Not 100% sure about Scott, but he was bloody brilliant.
• 47:11
  Bloody really good.
• 47:12
  And as history has proven, a fantastic IndyCar driver.
• 47:17
  So we also, again, me looking down the road, decided to build our own car because I looked at all the things that it took, and they all existed in America.
• 47:28
  And Dan Gurney was building his own cars quite successfully.
• 47:32
  So we decided to build our own IndyCar.
• 47:35
  There's some great stuff on YouTube that people listening and watching can go and find called Made in America.
• 47:41
  And you'll tell the story better than I can here, but I mean, you made scale models, you had a rolling floor, a tunnel, but I mean, you're doing everything.
• 47:49
  We did everything.
• 47:52
  interesting about the wind tunnel we we were in Columbus Ohio and during the Second World War that airfare was a big big factory for Rockwell who built aircraft out of there and they had this huge wind tunnel there a big 40% size wind tunnel but it was sitting dormant and it was controlled by Ohio University and we come back from a race one day and I said to the team manager we should go and have a look in there.
• 48:17
  So anyway, we got a hold of the university.
• 48:19
  They semi-reluctantly let us have a look around, and we looked inside, and, man, it was a time warp.
• 48:25
  Huge wind tunnel not being used.
• 48:27
  Obviously, it didn't have a rolling road, but I thought, this is exactly, if not better, than what I've seen in England.
• 48:34
  So we said, OK, but we need a rolling road.
• 48:39
  And we got quotes from England.
• 48:41
  They were astronomical.
• 48:42
  Again, thinking out of the box, I said, well, a rolling road is just like a conveyor belt with some different stuff on it.
• 48:49
  And we had a company called Emerson Electric who made conveyor belts, right?
• 48:54
  So, and the CEO was a big race fan, right?
• 48:58
  And I talked to him a little bit about it and he went back to his engineers and I explained what we want to do and some design parameters because really what we needed was a high-speed conveyor belt with suction underneath it.
• 49:09
  And they all got together and said, we can do that.
• 49:12
  So we actually built a rolling road in less than two months, I think, and it was really successful.
• 49:16
  So again, thinking out of the box, again, I just said it's not a specialised, it is a specialised motorsports tool, but it's just a moving conveyor belt that needed suction underneath it and some software.
• 49:29
  So again, we had our own wind tunnel, we built our own models, we had our own internal carbon shop.
• 49:35
  We had over 100 employees because we had an engine shop as well.
• 49:38
  That's massive.
• 49:39
  And somehow I was able to, and I still don't know how I did it, to convince a lot of people that IndyCar should be made in America.
• 49:47
  And we're going to do it, and we're going to win.
• 49:50
  And I convinced Budweiser...
• 49:53
  They made a three-year commitment to the project, which gave me some security, but a little backstory to that.
• 50:00
  I convinced Barbara Truman, and away we went.
• 50:05
  But unfortunately, in 1990, Scott Pruitt was going to be, he had a really serious testing accident, very serious.
• 50:14
  It was down in West Palm Beach, hit a concrete wall head-on when we had a brake failure.
• 50:23
  broke his back, broke his knees.
• 50:26
  How did you cope with that sort of stuff?
• 50:27
  I mean, it's your driver and they're kind of like family.
• 50:29
  We had to cut him out of the car.
• 50:32
  We got him to the local hospital.
• 50:34
  He was conscious all the time.
• 50:36
  He was in deep pain.
• 50:38
  And luckily IndyCar Championship Auto Racing teams had a driver insurance program, and they had a specialised guy that, all he had to do was look after the driver.
• 50:49
  So I called him up and said, hey, we've had a big accident here, we need some help.
• 50:52
  And I called Scott's parents, and the initial call was he's, you know, broken four vertebrae and he could be paralysed.
• 51:04
  And like, man.
• 51:07
  thankfully not so anyway we organised an ambulance flight from West Palm Beach up to Indy and a doctor there I'm trying to think of his name now I can't remember but
• 51:23
  He was a specialist in back surgery, and he fixed Scott up.
• 51:27
  But I remember that flight, like it's black and white now, getting on this Learjet and Scott's on her, and I just sat there and held his hand the whole way.
• 51:36
  All right, Steve.
• 51:39
  And I felt bad because he'd had the accident because we made a mistake.
• 51:44
  We'd made a mistake.
• 51:46
  And I always regret that.
• 51:48
  But anyway, Scott recovered.
• 51:50
  That season we had Raul Boisel drive for us and he was good.
• 51:55
  But in 91, the car came out and first races at Surface Parabas.
• 51:58
  Parabas, yeah.
• 51:59
  And we finished fourth.
• 52:00
  Lucky in some ways.
• 52:02
  We kind of weren't on the front running pace, but it finished fourth.
• 52:06
  And it went on that year, a couple of front rows, I think one or two podiums, I'm not sure, maybe not.
• 52:15
  And we continued to develop the car, but then I started hearing these noises from Budweiser, been a management change in the sports marketing and why aren't we winning anymore, because we'd won.
• 52:28
  And I felt the rug pull starting to happen.
• 52:35
  And that's exactly what happened and they said in the end, look, we don't think this is the right thing to do.
• 52:41
  We don't believe in it.
• 52:42
  And it was all new management and that was the end of that.
• 52:46
  And did that sort of then align maybe with a change from perhaps Jim's family and what they wanted to do?
• 52:53
  Where did that kind of lead to?
• 52:54
  Yeah, I think Barbara herself was unsure.
• 52:59
  It's easy to sell the product and when you...
• 53:02
  make predictions about the future and they're not quite in that window then the doubt creeps in but she was very fair the team continued on for one more year they managed to put a new more engine into that chassis but it wasn't right and it was they actually had a worse season than 91 but I realized that
• 53:24
  I put my heart and soul into it.
• 53:28
  I think a lot of people were probably a bit disappointed and I realised there was no long-term future doing what I believed should be done.
• 53:39
  So I left.
• 53:40
  I think I left on reasonable terms.
• 53:43
  A number of the other key people left the project as well and we went and had a few beers and drowned our sorrows and then we said, shoot, we'll start again.
• 53:53
  Um, so we thought more logically this time, we thought, well, if we're going to build the infrastructure of an IndyCar team, we need to start with our heads in a better place.
• 54:06
  So we started with Indy Lights.
• 54:07
  Brian Hurter was our first driver.
• 54:09
  We didn't have a lot of money, I think.
• 54:10
  But this is the formation of Tasman Motorsports.
• 54:12
  This is the formation of Tasman in 1993.
• 54:14
  Yeah.
• 54:18
  93, 92.
• 54:20
  And we did Indy Lights, and we didn't have a lot of money.
• 54:22
  I think we capitalised a team with $100,000, borrowed a trailer, borrowed a truck, had a small workshop, probably the size of this here.
• 54:30
  Am I right in saying you were almost reliant on prize money in some respects to go to the next race?
• 54:35
  In fact, in the beginning...
• 54:39
  I ordered two cars off Carl Huss, who was the Lola distributor, but I said, I can't quite pay for them right now.
• 54:47
  And, you know, I'm working on budget.
• 54:50
  I haven't got a car, I've hired Brian Hurter, but he doesn't have a lot of money.
• 54:54
  And I've got another couple of drivers on the hook.
• 54:57
  Carl, do you think I could sort of just borrow one of the cars?
• 55:00
  I won't use it.
• 55:01
  I just want it in the workshop so when a prospective driver comes along he can see it.
• 55:06
  And bless his soul, because everybody knocked Carl Haas a little bit.
• 55:10
  He was a tough guy.
• 55:11
  But he said, Steve, I trust you.
• 55:13
  That's cool.
• 55:14
  So he lent us a car, sat in a workshop.
• 55:19
  We hired Steve Robertson from England, who was blindingly fast.
• 55:22
  Fast, yeah.
• 55:23
  Really good, fun guy.
• 55:25
  His dad was great.
• 55:26
  And we won that championship with Brian Hurd.
• 55:28
  And we had to win races because it was $25,000 to win, and that paid the expenses to get the next race with Brian.
• 55:34
  And that started Brian Hurd's career.
• 55:36
  He was off and running then.
• 55:38
  And we managed, he won the championship, and I managed to,
• 55:41
  Twist AJ Foyt's arm and he went and drove for AJ Foyt.
• 55:44
  Unreal.
• 55:44
  What was what was Brian like as a as a human being away from the car?
• 55:48
  And then even as a lovely guy.
• 55:50
  Yeah, lovely guy a lot of fun to be around He was a very workman like hard fast driver But like Bobby in a lot of ways I think I loved working with Brian and Steve Robertson was just stand on the gas You know like lap three.
• 56:04
  That's my quick lap He was fun, too, and he gave Brian a
• 56:08
  really good run for his money and Steve came on for the second year and we hired Andre Ribeiro to drive for us which was golden.
• 56:18
  I know I can sense you're a little upset that he's been gone as we sit here I think two years now hasn't he?
• 56:25
  Yeah I think Andre was a foundation for our next level of IndyCar.
• 56:31
  He had finished second in the championship in
• 56:34
  94 to Steve Robertson, but Andre had some money from a Philip Morris in Brazil, about maybe 50% of the budget to do the season.
• 56:47
  And I just said, we've got to do it.
• 56:50
  We've got to get on and do it because if I keep waiting until every last dollar's in the bank, we'll never get there.
• 57:00
  So we ordered some Lowellers from Carl again, ordered two new Lowellers, were able to get some Elmore engines, signed a contract for five Elmore engines, and then one day I get this phone call from a guy called Robert Clark at Honda Performance Development.
• 57:15
  He said, Steve, are you coming out to the Firestone Convention?
• 57:19
  It was in December at Las Vegas.
• 57:23
  I said, yeah.
• 57:23
  He said, oh, we need to have a chat.
• 57:25
  So I get out there and I talk to Robert.
• 57:26
  Didn't know, I've never seen him before.
• 57:29
  And he said, look, we've got a bit of a problem, and really there's no team that wants to use our engines because they'd had a really bad time the year before, didn't even qualify at Indy.
• 57:41
  Would you be interested?
• 57:42
  We've been watching you.
• 57:46
  They took a pun on you.
• 57:48
  Is there a footnote to this story here too?
• 57:50
  They took a pun on you.
• 57:50
  Yeah.
• 57:51
  Is there a little footnote to this story that you'd worked with Bobby in the past, it didn't go so well for whatever reason with Bobby and Honda, but you knew, and I think even he knew, that as an organisation, I mean what they do in MotoGP, what they're now doing in Formula One... Honda don't fail.
• 58:05
  They don't fail.
• 58:06
  No.
• 58:06
  Exactly.
• 58:07
  Yeah.
• 58:07
  So we, by luck, chanced it right.
• 58:10
  There's a funny story to it because once we'd sort of done the deal...
• 58:15
  And I met the Japanese part of the management there, a guy called Mr. Osaka, he was probably in his 50s.
• 58:24
  And I thought, he looks familiar.
• 58:27
  He looks bloody familiar.
• 58:29
  I said to Jeff, do you know this guy?
• 58:30
  And he said, oh yeah, there was always this Honda, this guy hanging around the Indy lights, 10 at a time taking pictures, and I thought he was a journalist.
• 58:38
  It was bloody Honda, they'd been following us for six months.
• 58:48
  I love that, and I love the deep loyalty which goes both ways.
• 58:51
  Pretty cool what he achieved with Honda.
• 58:53
  We still have lots of Steve's career to cover, and we'll do that in part two, which is equally as gripping as this first part.
• 59:00
  We have it all loaded up in the library for you right now.
• 59:02
  You can enjoy that at your leisure.
• 59:04
  It's almost another hour's worth of discussion too.
• 59:07
  From champ car memories and what it was like as the sport endured a bitter split, the commercial impacts of that.
• 59:13
  Knowing when to call time on something, even when it's been so successful and you've passionately built it from the ground up.
• 59:21
  Plus returning home to tackle super tourers in New Zealand.
• 59:24
  his philanthropic work helping young drivers on the pathway and even swapping team management to go to the other side to help the supercars commission.
• 59:33
  All that and more on this edition of Rusty's Garage with Steve Horn.