Latest / Rusty's Garage / Michael Pickens - Part 1

Transcript

Michael Pickens - Part 1 · 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 in a workshop in Auckland.
• 0:30
  It's late afternoon and my guest has arrived after an almost full day of regular work to spend a few hours in the evening here with friends, family and a very devoted professional crew.
• 0:43
  prepping his cars as a busy New Zealand summer of Speedway continues.
• 0:48
  Around us are tools, trophies and some memorabilia, lots of tyres.
• 0:53
  There is a pristine speed car, or midget as they're often called, just beside us in all its winning glory.
• 1:00
  Michael Pickens has done lots of that during his career and not just at home.
• 1:06
  The Aussies have great respect for him and tend to step things up when he heads over the Tasman to compete.
• 1:12
  And as you'll hear, he's made quite a reputation for himself in the heartland to America.
• 1:20
  The speed car has no wings.
• 1:22
  It's powered by a high-revving four-cylinder engine that sounds joyous in full flight.
• 1:28
  The driver sits just behind the engine, almost over the rear wheels, and the seating position is different to many race cars.
• 1:36
  A cheeky colleague once described it like sitting on a dunny with a steering wheel in your hands and a brake and accelerator under each foot.
• 1:45
  Critics will argue they're dangerous at times, but in a pack, sideways, sliding past one another in a manner that seems almost impossible, where bravery is needed to anticipate the smallest of gaps opening.
• 2:01
  You have to stop and admire those good drivers.
• 2:04
  Michael is among the very best you will find right now.
• 2:07
  His likeable personality and easygoing style shield a kind of calculating fearlessness
• 2:14
  but his deep-set eyes leave you in no doubt of his intentions when that helmet goes on.
• 2:21
  Just outside the big door to the workshop where we are sitting for the pod is the team's transporter with a sprint car inside.
• 2:28
  Michael somehow juggles a beautiful family, work and a race program running both the speed car and the sprint car, sometimes on the same night.
• 2:39
  The sprint car is a V8-powered weapon.
• 2:42
  Think of it like the Big Brother, with wings, lots of horsepower, and they are designed to turn, to slide.
• 2:49
  Those things in a bullring are something else, as James McFadden described in his episode with us very recently.
• 2:57
  A quick thanks to some TV colleagues in Dean Neal and Dave Turner from Australia and New Zealand, respectively, who kindly allowed us to use a little slice or two of their broadcast for this chat.
• 3:10
  Both Dean and Dave do great things covering the sport on their respective sides of the ditch.
• 3:16
  Now, I've been wanting to do this episode for some time.
• 3:19
  Michael scored the first match.
• 3:22
  of now more than 200 midget feature race wins as a 17-year-old, and he's chalked up 10 New Zealand speed car titles.
• 3:31
  Keep an ear out for our chat about racing stateside and Chilli Bowl Speedway Indoors in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
• 3:41
  The things that Michael has been doing and would like to do to help the sport grow in this part of the world.
• 3:46
  And a bit of a revelation on his future plans too.
• 3:50
  That's later.
• 3:51
  As usual, we begin with early life and how the call to race would prove to be a powerful one, even if it didn't involve four wheels to begin with.
• 4:03
  Michael Pickens, hello.
• 4:05
  It is awesome to get you on for a chat.
• 4:08
  A lot of people probably don't realize, but life for you in motor racing terms kind of started on two wheels, didn't it?
• 4:15
  Yeah, I grew up on a farm riding dirt bikes, and that's a long time ago now, but that led me into, ironically, into go-karts, only for the mere fact we moved into the city and I couldn't ride the dirt bikes.
• 4:29
  It was annoying the shit out of the neighbors, so.
• 4:32
  Where was the farm?
• 4:34
  Whereabouts were you?
• 4:35
  Out of Auckland, just out of the CBD?
• 4:36
  In Coatsville, yes, so not far from the CBD.
• 4:39
  And, yeah, we moved into the city, like I say, knowing the shit out of the neighbours and pestering my dad to do something, and we went down to the go-kart track.
• 4:50
  So Mount Wellington go-kart track is where it all started for me.
• 4:53
  Very nice.
• 4:54
  Nice.
• 4:54
  The bikes, before we venture into karts here, were what?
• 4:58
  Little, like, 200 Honda or something?
• 5:01
  What was the bike?
• 5:02
  Yeah, I started on a little PW50 and two-wheeler.
• 5:06
  And then... At what age?
• 5:07
  What age are we talking here?
• 5:08
  Oh, man, I would have been...
• 5:10
  five or six years old maybe after that.
• 5:12
  Yeah, yeah.
• 5:15
  And then we had a little quad bike that I used to hoon around on as well, and then the Nexar 200.
• 5:21
  So I had a ball, mate.
• 5:24
  That was me every day after school.
• 5:27
  I'd just disappear for a few hours until it got dark, and then either that or run out of gas.
• 5:31
  I remember when I was a young fella, putting water in the petrol tank, thinking I'd keep going and learn pretty quick that didn't work.
• 5:39
  What did that do to the bike?
• 5:41
  I never said anything to my dad.
• 5:42
  He just took it to the bike shop and I guess they must have said, oh, someone's put water in this.
• 5:46
  I struck my shoulders and we carried on.
• 5:49
  Were you full gas?
• 5:50
  Were you from the get-go, you know, right into it and no fear?
• 5:55
  What were you like?
• 5:56
  Um, yeah, I suppose so.
• 5:59
  I mean, although I wasn't racing anyone.
• 6:01
  So, um, yeah, you know, later on when it, when it got to racing, then, um, then the, I guess the elbow started coming out for sure.
• 6:08
  Yeah.
• 6:09
  So the karting was what?
• 6:11
  Dirt karts or circuit racing?
• 6:13
  What, what, what, what, you know, kartsport New Zealand.
• 6:15
  What was it?
• 6:15
  Yeah.
• 6:15
  Kartsport New Zealand.
• 6:16
  So we started in, um, junior restricted.
• 6:19
  Um, my, um,
• 6:21
  Very first cart was an old Arrow A9X, if I remember correctly.
• 6:25
  Nice.
• 6:26
  What year is this?
• 6:27
  Can you remember?
• 6:28
  Oh, man.
• 6:29
  I want to say it would be about 94, 95, somewhere around there.
• 6:34
  And my second ever cart was Scott Dixon's old Amiga.
• 6:39
  Oh, wow.
• 6:39
  And I had –
• 6:40
  Got it.
• 6:41
  You bought it from the Dixons?
• 6:43
  Yeah, from Ron Dixon.
• 6:43
  Wow.
• 6:44
  And I had his Scott's old race suit.
• 6:46
  Fantastic.
• 6:47
  No one knew who Scott Dixon was or what he was going to become back then.
• 6:52
  I wish I still had the race suit to this day and the kart for that matter.
• 6:55
  But, yeah, Ron had Omega karts out in sort of South Auckland area.
• 7:01
  And, yeah, we got to know them.
• 7:04
  And, yeah, I mean –
• 7:06
  They were the old Mount Wellington kart days and we ran it at Rosebank Road also.
• 7:12
  Nice.
• 7:12
  Which was all in kart track.
• 7:13
  Did it click straight away or was it the kind of thing you crept up on?
• 7:17
  The karting for us was tough because my dad's not mechanically minded at all and I was only a young fella, of course.
• 7:25
  So it was tough because we relied on other people to help us and people will only help you so much, of course.
• 7:31
  Much, yeah.
• 7:32
  We won some races and championships in bits and pieces, but yeah, I'm not going to lie, it was tough from the mechanical point of view.
• 7:42
  Driving it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it, but that is why...
• 7:49
  Part of the reason why I got into Speedway is just, and once again, just by chance, really, no real planning or career path or anything like that.
• 7:57
  It was the fact that they ran quarter midgets and solar bikes at the Speedway at Rosebank Road, which was all in kart tracks.
• 8:06
  And I was sort of being to Speedway, not religiously or anything like that, but as a young fellow, my dad would take me along every once in a while.
• 8:14
  And we thought, oh, well, let's give this a go.
• 8:19
  The guys were good enough to give me a driver one day.
• 8:23
  So I ran the quarter midget.
• 8:24
  At the same time, I ran the cart for a little while.
• 8:27
  And it was a class back then, not maybe so much now, but back then where it was a bit more turnkey.
• 8:32
  So you'd put fuel in it, air in the tyres, and away you go.
• 8:37
  And that was a lot easier for my dad to sort of manage, I guess.
• 8:43
  and we had some success in that and I guess kind of got hooked to Speedway and from that early time period, yeah.
• 8:50
  So two-pronged question here.
• 8:52
  Does that mean by necessity that you – because, I mean, we're in the workshop here, you've got your beautiful midget in the background, TRD powered, CRC backed, it's awesome, that by necessity you learned to become mechanically minded or did you kind of have that?
• 9:05
  You had an inquisitive side in you that wanted to learn about machines.
• 9:09
  Yeah, I was definitely –
• 9:12
  Interested in it.
• 9:14
  And I had to be, but not because I had to be.
• 9:16
  I was just genuinely interested.
• 9:18
  I love the mechanical side of racing and always have.
• 9:22
  So that coupled with the fact that I had to be because if not in my position, it was going to be a struggle.
• 9:29
  So, yeah, I do enjoy that aspect of it.
• 9:31
  So the quarter midget for people that aren't aware, I mean, Kiwi listeners will know three quarter midgets, for example, that have or TQs that have 750cc Suzuki power plants in them, kind of a condensed or smaller version of what we have in the background here, your midget or speed car.
• 9:48
  What's a quarter midget and how much grunt's it got and what sort of engines in it and so on?
• 9:52
  Well, I guess it's supposed to be quarter the size of Midget, which is behind us here, but they are roughly quarter the size.
• 9:59
  A little XR, well, back then they were an XR 200 four-stroke or you could run a 125 two-stroke, which is the synths band.
• 10:08
  So they're a real neat class and still are a neat class for entry-level youngsters to get into.
• 10:16
  We've had Shane Van Gisbergen,
• 10:19
  Cassidy.
• 10:20
  Nick Cassidy.
• 10:22
  There's been a few others over time that have started in quarter midgets as well as racing.
• 10:26
  I think Shane had quad bikes and obviously go-karts as well as, but it's a neat feeder class and great for car control, I guess, at a young age.
• 10:36
  It's obviously successful because it's produced a lot of talent over the years.
• 10:41
  In essence, does it give you the base principles of what you kind of still use today?
• 10:46
  Or is it just very entry level, the learnings when you get to midget are significantly more?
• 10:51
  It is entry level.
• 10:53
  Um...
• 10:54
  On a track like Rosebank Road, Rosebank's quite small and it's got cinders, so it's quite loose.
• 11:00
  The grip level is not as great as, say, Western Springs where you've got clay.
• 11:04
  So it does teach you car control.
• 11:06
  But even TQs, to a certain extent, until you get into a class that's got a lot of power and is somewhat under-tired and you really have to grab it by the scruff and drive it, that's when you know you've got someone that's got some talent or not.
• 11:23
  Mm-hmm.
• 11:24
  You know, a lot of the classes, you know, leading up to midgets or sprint cars, they're very good for car control and learning race craft.
• 11:33
  But because you're using every ounce of power you've got in a quarter midget and in a TQ, the opportunity to have a motor or a car that's better than someone else is there.
• 11:46
  And that can make someone look either good or bad.
• 11:48
  Gotcha.
• 11:49
  So when you get into a midget, there's no hiding.
• 11:52
  It doesn't matter what model you got, what tyre you got, what shocks you got, what fuel you got.
• 11:56
  You're cheating a knot, it doesn't matter.
• 11:58
  You've got to stand on your own two feet when you get to that level.
• 12:00
  Yeah, cool.
• 12:01
  Love that.
• 12:01
  So at what point does quarter midgets become a bit of an obsession for you and clearly the speedway path beckons?
• 12:10
  Because you said you were juggling both for a time there, weren't you, the karting as well?
• 12:13
  Yeah.
• 12:13
  Yeah, I guess the results is what drew us to quarter midgets.
• 12:17
  You know, we had, I guess, almost instant success.
• 12:22
  We did buy a really good car off Jamie McDonald, who ironically I'm still racing against in sprint cars today.
• 12:27
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:28
  So we had instant success damn near and had a lot of fun because of that.
• 12:34
  So it was rewarding in that respect, and that's really what drew us to Speedway, yeah.
• 12:40
  How did family kind of bolt all this together?
• 12:44
  I mean, you talked about Dad not necessarily having the, you know, the deep mechanical acumen, if you like, as you start doing this and you're going to more tracks and you've got to get budget and how did that all sort of work?
• 12:55
  How did that come together?
• 12:56
  You know, the quarter midget deal was we chucked it in the 6x4 garden trailer and went racing.
• 13:03
  We stopped at the gas station on the way to the track.
• 13:05
  What was the tow car?
• 13:05
  What were you towing it with?
• 13:07
  I think our dad had a Mitsubishi Paduro back then.
• 13:10
  It was like a 91, 92.
• 13:11
  Okay.
• 13:12
  You know, it was just super low-key.
• 13:15
  Stopped on the gas station on the way to track, filled the thing up with gas and go, you know.
• 13:19
  What tracks?
• 13:20
  Give people a sense of the tracks you were racing.
• 13:22
  I mean, did you get to go to the Western Springs, for example, and things like that?
• 13:24
  Yeah, definitely.
• 13:25
  That was like the mecca, I guess, of, you know, places to go.
• 13:31
  Although the racing was best at Rosebank Road because it was smaller and like I said earlier, it's got less grip so the cars move around a lot more.
• 13:36
  You learn more there.
• 13:38
  But they were really the two tracks that we raced at and at that sort of age it was just so cool to be at Wistland Springs and I was in absolute awe of it.
• 13:51
  like Kerry Jones and Alan Wakeland and sprint cars back then.
• 13:53
  And I guess, you know, in the midgets back then, there was, you know, Brett Horriban, Graham Standing was at the top of his game.
• 14:03
  And ironically, he was the guy that wrote us a letter of dispensation to Speedway New Zealand to get me into a midget at age 15.
• 14:10
  Fantastic.
• 14:10
  He's still in the pit lane today, kind of doing interviews and stuff, isn't he, in the paddock there?
• 14:14
  Yeah, he sure is.
• 14:14
  So at a young age, it was neat to be at Western Springs rubbing shoulders with those legends back then.
• 14:20
  Did the whole notion of going sideways and the Speedway bug kind of then bite hard?
• 14:26
  Were you like, right, this is...
• 14:28
  me this is I mean did it become a bit of a distraction at school or what was it like?
• 14:32
  Yeah definitely um you know when you start winning I guess in anything or being successful in anything it definitely um grabs your attention and you want more so um at that young age I thought this is um something I want more of and and uh we never like I said earlier we never had a plan we never had a um anything sketched out as this we're going to do this at this age and that at that age and um.
• 14:54
  And, you know, by the time you were this age, this is where you're going to be at or hope to.
• 14:58
  We were just sort of having fun, really.
• 15:02
  And we're just fortunate that we did certain things at certain times and obviously things sort of fell into place for us.
• 15:09
  So what were the...
• 15:12
  you know, the pivotal moments or titles or race wins that helped you ultimately open the door to racing at the kind of premier level, if you like, to ultimately midgets and sprint cars.
• 15:24
  But my question is more about...
• 15:28
  the realisation maybe by others around you that, right, this kid's got something here and we could do more than just quarter midgets and lower key stuff.
• 15:38
  Yeah, it was – I guess it started with my very first race in a midget.
• 15:45
  Back then, and still now, actually, you have to start off the back for the first three races.
• 15:49
  And the very first two heat races I ever ran, we started off the back and won.
• 15:54
  And it wasn't an A grade as such.
• 15:55
  It was a lesser grade.
• 15:57
  But it was, I mean, people were sort of like, you know, who the hell is this kid?
• 16:02
  And just by chance, Brett Morris from...
• 16:06
  then was Seamount racing.
• 16:08
  His daughter was in the crowd and she happened to go to school with my brother.
• 16:12
  And she went home and told Brett, hey, this young kid, that's the brother of a kid I went to school with, just won his first two ever races off the back.
• 16:19
  So that...
• 16:21
  led into sponsorship from Seamount Racing in our first ever year.
• 16:25
  And from there, we slowly built a relationship and Brett got an interest into Speedway because he had been involved years before, but he had had a few years out of it.
• 16:37
  He got a bit of a bug, I suppose.
• 16:41
  And if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have had the equipment or the people around me to progress my career further, that's for sure.
• 16:49
  So that was definitely...
• 16:51
  a permanent moment in my career.
• 16:52
  The name Brett Morris appears in your world on both sides of the Tasman because you have a another friend in Aussie by the name of Brett Morris, who we'll talk about in the, in the podcast here.
• 17:02
  Let's keep with the Kiwi version that you've just, that you've just raised here.
• 17:06
  Having, um, almost, uh, guiding or mentor figures like that is vitally important.
• 17:15
  And clearly he played a big, a big role, mate, didn't he?
• 17:17
  He certainly did.
• 17:18
  You know, the sponsorship was one thing in the first year, but it wasn't until three years later.
• 17:24
  We had some issues with motors blowing up and whatnot, and I actually sat a good part of my second and third season on the sidelines watching just because we blew up motors.
• 17:34
  We didn't have the budget to have spares and whatnot.
• 17:37
  How tough was that?
• 17:38
  Oh, man, it sucked as a youngster.
• 17:40
  How old were you at this point?
• 17:42
  First season, I was 15, 16.
• 17:45
  Amazing, because in Australia, they'd sort of go, you know, it's such an awesome age to be doing that sort of stuff.
• 17:51
  Yeah, it certainly was.
• 17:52
  And Brett was helping us on and off within the first couple of years.
• 17:57
  And in my third year, he actually owned the complete car for the first time in my third season.
• 18:01
  And that whole season, Damian, we sat out with engine issues.
• 18:06
  And that was...
• 18:07
  potentially a blessing in disguise because he got the shirts and thought, no, stuff this, we're going to buy the best stuff we can.
• 18:15
  And we did that.
• 18:16
  And that's really when I – that was really my big break.
• 18:21
  Although I hadn't got a lot of miles on my belt at that stage, it was –
• 18:25
  an opportunity to have the best gear underneath me and with that came the best people.
• 18:29
  So I was really fortunate to have Tim Clark by my side and also Kevin Payne, who is uncle of Matthew Payne, who's running V8 Supercars now, and he's a really, really clever crew chief and a person that I've become really good friends with over the years.
• 18:48
  We just clicked instantly and that was really the...
• 18:53
  the point working with Kevin Payne as a crew chief where the results started happening.
• 18:57
  Where were you for the first drive in a midget?
• 19:01
  So they've been called midgets for as long as I can remember.
• 19:05
  Speed cars is kind of the more modern day term for them.
• 19:10
  The iterations that we look at today don't run a wing.
• 19:14
  They have a four cylinder power plant.
• 19:16
  What are we talking horsepower wise now?
• 19:18
  What sort of number would you be pulling now?
• 19:20
  So the midgets, around the 380 mark.
• 19:22
  Mega.
• 19:23
  And they weigh what?
• 19:24
  They weigh, without a driver, they'd weigh 407 kgs.
• 19:28
  Beautiful, sweet sound when they're sitting.
• 19:30
  What, they rev to?
• 19:31
  In America, they're rev-limited.
• 19:33
  So that sort of reflects on where we rev them to because they're designed around that limiter.
• 19:40
  So we rev the TRD to 88, 86, 87, 88.
• 19:45
  It's still neat.
• 19:47
  It's neat, mate.
• 19:47
  It's a two-valve pushrod, four-cylinder,
• 19:51
  turning that RPM reliably week in, week out is pretty impressive and they sound badass.
• 19:56
  Yeah, and you literally sit over the top of the driveline effectively.
• 19:59
  I mean, I think Mike Raymond, the great Australian Speedway commentator, used to talk about it being like sitting on a dunny kind of thing and you're steering them.
• 20:07
  Where was the first place you drove one?
• 20:08
  And in this audio experience, mate, paint a picture of what that car was like, clearly the sort of smile and the feeling that it left you with.
• 20:20
  Yeah, I mean, it was 25 years ago.
• 20:24
  Really?
• 20:25
  And I'll never forget it because we turned up at practice.
• 20:29
  It was a Cosworth.
• 20:30
  It was a BDP Cosworth, which was a Speedway version.
• 20:35
  And it was a decent car in its day, but it was long in the tooth by the time we got it.
• 20:42
  And it was unbeknown to me, we were actually running on three cylinders.
• 20:46
  And I thought, oh, this is not too bad, you know.
• 20:48
  Anyway.
• 20:49
  We got back to the pits and someone came over saying, obviously it sounded off, which I didn't realise, and they said, listen, you're missing a cylinder.
• 21:00
  So they had a plug lead off or something and banged that back on, went out for the second session and I damn near shipped myself.
• 21:08
  I thought, bloody hell, this is...
• 21:10
  Got one more grunt than it had before.
• 21:11
  Yeah, this is full on here.
• 21:13
  So I'll never forget that.
• 21:15
  It was the first ever time in a midget, and that's something I'll never forget because I thought, you know, as a 15-year-old kid, that's never doing anything else.
• 21:23
  I mean, back then the Cosworth was, I think, maybe around 320 horsepower or something like that, and it would turn to, I think, from memory, around about 10,000 RPM, 9,000 or 10,000.
• 21:35
  Mega.
• 21:35
  It was a cool throaty old sound to it, too, four-valve twin cam.
• 21:40
  But yeah, that's an experience I'll never forget.
• 21:43
  So are you at this stage at school doing things that help you on the mechanical side or is it night times, you know, working with the crew, learning?
• 21:50
  What are you doing outside of the car to make you a better sort of rounded racer that you are today sitting across the table from me?
• 21:58
  Yeah, I've always worked on my own cars because I've had to, but also I like doing it, I enjoy doing it.
• 22:04
  And I think it's important as a racer to understand mechanically what's going on underneath you, particularly if you want to make changes or if you have an issue, you don't have to rely on anyone else, you can be a bit more self-sufficient.
• 22:19
  And, yeah, we just – it's always – I've always had a full-time job unless I've been racing full-time overseas.
• 22:26
  So it's always after hours.
• 22:28
  And to be honest, it's a lot of fun and it's a part of it I actually really enjoy.
• 22:34
  In a couple of hours, the boys will be here washing the sprint car tonight.
• 22:37
  Excellent, excellent.
• 22:38
  And it's always – it's just a fun time because we – you know, we –
• 22:43
  We shoot the shit and carry on and we enjoy each other's company and I think that's really important.
• 22:49
  You spend so much time around these guys throughout the summer and winter for that matter, but you have to enjoy each other's company and enjoy what you do.
• 22:57
  The trucks literally just arrived back from Christchurch, which I think was, was it national titles you were down there?
• 23:01
  Correct, yeah.
• 23:02
  Second?
• 23:02
  Yeah.
• 23:03
  Second?
• 23:03
  Has that hurt a little bit?
• 23:04
  Oh, look, it's not the result you go there for, but there's 41 other cars trying for that top spot.
• 23:11
  So sometimes that's the result you got, and you've got to be happy that it's not in a clean sack having to rebuild the whole thing.
• 23:20
  So, you know, I would say I'll try again next year.
• 23:24
  Bryony Ingersen, who's a Speedway commentator in Australia and works for Supercars nowadays as a producer and presenter, good operator, loves the Speedway.
• 23:32
  She said for me to ask you, sprint car or speed car?
• 23:36
  And that's probably a very hard thing to answer, mate, or is it the midget that is your thing?
• 23:40
  I get asked that all the time, honestly.
• 23:42
  Every couple of weeks someone will ask me, and my answer's always the same in that –
• 23:47
  As a race car, the sprint car is more rewarding.
• 23:50
  You know, the sprint car is around 900 horsepower.
• 23:54
  It's super light.
• 23:55
  The power to weight ratio is just stupid.
• 23:58
  You've got nearly a tonne of downforce on a high speed track.
• 24:01
  So the aero is crazy.
• 24:03
  Tyres are crazy big.
• 24:05
  Horsepower is crazy.
• 24:06
  It's a rewarding race car to drive.
• 24:10
  The midget is more racy because of the lack of aero.
• 24:15
  They tend to move around a lot and you can manipulate the car a lot more because of the lack of aero.
• 24:21
  It's not locked down as such.
• 24:23
  So from a racing standpoint, the midgets to me is probably more enjoyable.
• 24:28
  From a race car perspective, the sprint car is more rewarding.
• 24:32
  Cool.
• 24:33
  Good answer.
• 24:33
  They have the speed cars or midgets have this kind of beautiful
• 24:38
  um, simplicity about them.
• 24:39
  And that that's actually the wrong word.
• 24:41
  I probably shouldn't say that, but where I'm going here is that the essence of what they sort of started out with is still embodied in, in some ways in them today.
• 24:51
  It's not, uh, I'm sure you'll tell me there's lots of great and very important tweaks about them, but, but they haven't gone insane with, um, data and all sorts of other, there, there is a, um,
• 25:04
  simplicity is the word I was saying before about them, isn't there?
• 25:07
  Yeah, you actually did write that simple and that's why the sport is as popular as what it is here and overseas because you don't need an engineer with a laptop and an engineering degree to operate a Speedway car.
• 25:22
  And that's why they've kept the rules the way they are overseas because obviously that all filters down to New Zealand and Australia.
• 25:29
  But there's virtually no electronics other than ignition, of course.
• 25:36
  There's, you know, traction controls are illegal.
• 25:39
  Swaddle position sensors are illegal.
• 25:42
  Map sensors, you know, you're basically not allowed any data logging at all.
• 25:47
  But it's awesome because we've got mechanical fuel injection devices
• 25:51
  It's just jamming fuel into a cylinder regardless of what stroke it's on.
• 25:56
  And it shoots massive flames and sounds awesome.
• 26:01
  It's what makes Speedway Speedway because a blue-collar guy can go racing and work it on himself in his garage at home during the week and turn up to the track with his cupboard in trailer and potentially go and win against anyone with any budget.
• 26:17
  Amazing.
• 26:17
  What's tunable on the run as a driver?
• 26:21
  And that's probably quite, quite limited.
• 26:24
  The reason I asked the question is that there was, um, great yarn they did on Fernando Alonso in Formula One and how he could, the myriad of buttons that are on an F1 steering wheel and what he could change and adjust on the run.
• 26:35
  And he could almost do it by braille, mate.
• 26:38
  He'd learnt, um,
• 26:39
  You could put a blindfold on and know which button to press.
• 26:44
  Because you're doing laps at some joints in, I don't know, 13 seconds, 12 seconds, whatever it might be, I mean, it's busy.
• 26:50
  It's busy for you.
• 26:50
  And then you're in a crowd of X amount of cars and so on.
• 26:53
  So what is changeable on the run?
• 26:55
  And does that become a bit like that, a bit braille?
• 26:58
  Like you know you can do a click and you don't even have to look at it.
• 27:02
  Does it become like that?
• 27:04
  It does, although, you know, when you've got a good crew chief, they'll get the car to the point where it should be pretty well...
• 27:14
  close to being perfect.
• 27:15
  Um, the wing and the sprint car, we can adjust four and a half, which makes a massive difference.
• 27:21
  And you are always adjusting that, um, depending on fuel load and the way that track changes.
• 27:27
  Um, the midget is more about adjusting shocks, but to be perfectly honest, we don't really adjust a whole lot.
• 27:34
  Um, you've, you've pre done that knowing track evolution or what you're expecting of the track, et cetera, et cetera.
• 27:39
  Yeah.
• 27:39
  The only races we will,
• 27:41
  almost always adjust the shocks will be like a 50 lap or somewhere like that.
• 27:45
  We start with quite a heavy fuel load and by the end of it, you've burnt off a good amount of weight in the back.
• 27:52
  Plus the track has gone away obviously a lot because of the 49 laps prior because it's the last lap that counts, of course.
• 27:58
  So, yeah, I mean, not a whole lot and, you know, I think when,
• 28:05
  When you've got a crew chief that's maybe a little bit more hit and miss, then it probably opens up the opportunity to adjust shocks.
• 28:11
  But I've got the best guys around me and that's – yeah, we don't really muck around too much with them on the run.
• 28:17
  When did you get to that point where you could look at the track and know, I don't know, from –
• 28:24
  early in the night, how much water was in it and what it was likely to do, the way it was likely to go, the direction it might go, and then walk around the pits and paddock here and go, you know, and like notice different things other drivers were doing.
• 28:37
  When did that sort of stuff become a bit second nature to you?
• 28:40
  It was probably after I went to America because it's just so competitive up there.
• 28:45
  Because that is an art, mate, isn't it, all that stuff?
• 28:47
  I mean, yes, it's a learned thing from all the miles you do, but it is an art, isn't it?
• 28:51
  Yeah, it really is.
• 28:53
  And that's where a really good crew chief comes into his own because they are experts in the track themselves.
• 29:01
  Yeah, I guess the first time I went to America and come back to New Zealand, everything seems to slow down here.
• 29:06
  It seems easier.
• 29:11
  And reading the track and that sort of thing and the way they run the cars so hard up there is definitely an advantage for you there.
• 29:19
  Yeah.
• 29:28
  If you're enjoying this episode of The Garage, make sure you check out Rusty's chat with World Speedway bike racing legend Jason Crump.
• 29:35
  The fans sure got pretty rowdy when the Aussies took the chocolates in Poland.
• 29:40
  At the end of the meeting, we actually had to have...
• 29:43
  about 10 police cars to drive us out of the stadium.
• 29:47
  We were on the floor in the van.
• 29:48
  We had two armored police sitting in the front that were driving it.
• 29:52
  We had police cars and vans in front beside, take us straight to our hotel.
• 29:58
  The police got us out of the vehicle and took us into the hotel and actually had Riot Squad out the front of the hotel room for the whole night.
• 30:08
  From two wheels back to four, as we continue the chat with Speedcar star, Michael Pickens.
• 30:14
  Fill in some blanks for us before we get to America and Australia and things like that.
• 30:19
  How does – you alluded to it before, Britt Morris decides to go harder in terms of the gear that they buy and the –
• 30:29
  the program that you're doing, what year is this and does this really then start to take off?
• 30:35
  And what sort of part-time job are you working on the side or something or what's your full-time job on the side?
• 30:40
  So it would have been my third year in Speedway.
• 30:44
  So you're about, what, 17, 18 here maybe?
• 30:46
  Yeah, it would have been...
• 30:48
  About 19, I won my first New Zealand title.
• 30:53
  So that was 2002-03 season.
• 30:57
  And that season was a season I really come of age, I guess, and got my feet on the ground and got comfortable.
• 31:07
  and has some really good car speed.
• 31:09
  So that was really 2002, 2003 would have been the year.
• 31:14
  And at that stage, I was an apprentice auto electrician.
• 31:18
  So yeah, turning up to work, most days pretty tired and buggered from either working on the race car or racing or whatever.
• 31:26
  So there's some good times back then.
• 31:29
  Was it you planning to try and experience the American scene or go to Australia or was the phone starting to ring?
• 31:35
  How did those opportunities come about?
• 31:37
  Thank you.
• 31:37
  It was just a natural progression of winning races here, and particularly back then they had, well, they still do now, but they had the best of the best guys coming down from America to race and also from Australia.
• 31:54
  And that's when I first really experienced racing overseas is going to Australia and racing at what was Parramatta and Sydney there.
• 32:02
  Great track, that.
• 32:02
  Great track.
• 32:04
  It's probably been, it probably is my favourite dirt track.
• 32:07
  It's such a shame it's gone.
• 32:09
  Yeah, it really is.
• 32:11
  And so I ran for a guy, well, actually Mark Cooper over there, who's actually a Kiwi but lives there now, and then ran for Steve Smith.
• 32:19
  And he really gave my first big break in America.
• 32:24
  by taking his own cars from Australia to America.
• 32:26
  He built his own Chev-based engines in Australia and he wanted to showcase them in America.
• 32:30
  So he gave him a first break with that and good equipment in America and that was a big turning point for me for sure.
• 32:39
  What tracks on that first trip and how difficult was it?
• 32:41
  Was it sort of shoestring?
• 32:43
  Were you doing it tough?
• 32:44
  What was that for you?
• 32:45
  It was Shoestring, yeah.
• 32:47
  I mean, he was one man band essentially.
• 32:50
  And we had, you know, his two cars.
• 32:55
  They were actually New Zealand built chassis, our breakers.
• 32:57
  So I was somewhat familiar with them, which was an advantage.
• 33:02
  Yeah, we won my first ever race at Sun Prairie, which was in Wisconsin.
• 33:07
  And, I mean, I'll never forget that.
• 33:10
  That was back when Sun Prairie ran on a Sunday night and was hugely competitive because there's no other racing around.
• 33:15
  So guys would travel from all over to race there.
• 33:18
  I mean, to give you an idea, Tony Stewart ran there for years and never ever won a race.
• 33:22
  Oh, wow.
• 33:23
  Yeah, so it was a tough deal.
• 33:26
  And I'll never forget, I got a message the following week after I won a race there from a gentleman who is originally from Ashburton, New Zealand, but he had worked for Ralph Racing for maybe 25 years at that stage.
• 33:40
  And he said, hey, would you be interested in testing a craftsman truck?
• 33:45
  Fantastic.
• 33:45
  Yeah, so that's sort of how the NASCAR thing started.
• 33:48
  And I mean, I was as green as grass, had no pavement experience at all other than go-karts.
• 33:53
  So we went to North Wilkesboro, Speedway, North Carolina.
• 33:57
  Which features in the Days of Thunder movie, I think.
• 33:59
  So, yeah.
• 34:00
  Yeah, and they've actually just renovated the whole facility and they're going to run there again.
• 34:04
  But back then it was grass was growing out of the cracks in the track.
• 34:08
  Crazy.
• 34:08
  And it was literally just a...
• 34:10
  a backyard track really.
• 34:12
  It was run down.
• 34:14
  What was that truck like, mate?
• 34:16
  What was that thing like to drive?
• 34:17
  I jumped in it and it was what they called the gong show.
• 34:21
  So Discovery Channel funded this whole deal through Rouse Racing.
• 34:26
  And it was pretty cool.
• 34:29
  I jumped in the thing, didn't even know.
• 34:30
  I had to ask the guys, where are the gears at and this.
• 34:33
  And it was the first time I'd ever driven a dog box.
• 34:36
  They had a four-speed Jericho in them.
• 34:39
  And it was just really cool.
• 34:40
  You know, you put the thing in first and the whole truck sort of shutters and they might have been 800 odd horsepower.
• 34:48
  I suppose.
• 34:49
  Just animal of a thing.
• 34:52
  Yeah.
• 34:52
  And the track was super green because there was no racing on it.
• 34:56
  There was no rubber on it at all.
• 34:57
  and super green, super abrasive, and the trucks are just sliding around all over the show.
• 35:02
  So it was a really, really cool experience.
• 35:06
  And from that, I got invited back the following year by Roush Racing Discovery to do the, I guess, the second version of the gong show, which was at Martinsville.
• 35:17
  Nice.
• 35:18
  So I started with 25 drivers, made it down to the final cut, which was 12.
• 35:24
  We went to Darlington Speed One, South Carolina.
• 35:26
  And that was to this day, other than getting married and having a daughter, of course, one of the best experiences I've ever had in a race car was that just scared the living shit out of you.
• 35:37
  It was unbelievable.
• 35:40
  So there's 12 of us, like I say, we turn up to Darlington.
• 35:45
  It was before they repaved it.
• 35:47
  They repaved it maybe six, seven years ago, and it was super abrasive.
• 35:51
  And so your tire degradation would...
• 35:55
  would be insane.
• 35:57
  So we turned up there and they put us in a room so we couldn't see what was going on.
• 36:01
  And they had Carl Edwards and another guy, I can't think of his name, but they had the two pro drivers that were employed by Roush at that stage to shake down the two trucks because they had the truck that the smaller guys would fit in and the truck that the bigger guys would fit in.
• 36:14
  So they wanted to have some parity between the trucks and shake them down properly.
• 36:18
  We could hear them go out.
• 36:19
  They ran on a tyre that they used in the IROC series, the International Race of Champions.
• 36:24
  It was a super soft tyre so the tyre would fall away super quick with the abrasiveness of the track.
• 36:30
  And you'd hear them go into turn one wide open, so no lift at all.
• 36:35
  So the truck's got actually a fair amount of aero.
• 36:38
  which you wouldn't really expect.
• 36:39
  Marcus Ambrose described it to me.
• 36:41
  He came on the pod years ago and he talked about the way it would run down the side of the truck and off the edge and the little things that you would never imagine that are there for that effect, mate.
• 36:51
  Yeah, that's pretty cool.
• 36:53
  So we heard these drivers anyway going into two-in-one wide open
• 36:56
  and you'd hear them lift and then roll back into it and whatnot.
• 37:00
  So we're all just sitting there listening to that.
• 37:02
  That's all we could do is listen to how much.
• 37:04
  Picture, try and picture what it's doing.
• 37:05
  And we quickly noticed that after three or four laps, they weren't going to turn one wide open anymore.
• 37:11
  So you knew the tyres were falling away super quick, and then by the end of the run, which was maybe 10, 15 laps, it was nowhere near fourth while getting to turn one.
• 37:19
  So, anywho, by the time we got strapped into the truck, I knew in the back of my mind I can go into turn one wide open, and that was...
• 37:27
  I think, 180 mile an hour.
• 37:29
  So you damn haul in the mail and you're in the – Strap those belts in.
• 37:34
  Yeah, and they were nice trucks.
• 37:36
  They were proper race trucks.
• 37:37
  They weren't just some old shit as they had parked up back.
• 37:40
  And so anyway, went in there wide open and –
• 37:43
  If anyone's familiar with Darlington, you run the car down to the bottom of the apron and then the truck will just slowly just drift up, all four wheels will just sort of… With the force going through the corner basically, yeah.
• 37:56
  Yeah, while you're wide open.
• 37:58
  And then you basically slide to the very top of the track and then you get a little bit of grip right up by the wall and that's where you end up exiting the turn.
• 38:05
  Wow.
• 38:07
  Like I say, it scared the shit out of me.
• 38:09
  at that point you've got nothing to lose you know you've just got to nut up and get it done and after three or four laps you knew it was coming but definitely the tyres fell away super quick so the truck's moving around like crazy at the end and like coming off a turn four it's quite an art to come off a turn four and the amount of throttle you can use coming off there feels like nothing and
• 38:33
  So much power and so little tire at the end of the run.
• 38:36
  It was just such an awesome experience.
• 38:40
  It was really, really cool.
• 38:41
  Awesome thing.
• 38:41
  Where did that sort of end up?
• 38:43
  Was it the kind of thing that tempted you for more or was it just tough because of the competition?
• 38:48
  Yeah, well, the problem I had was I had no pavement experience.
• 38:51
  And so I was up against, if anyone's familiar with, David Reagan.
• 38:55
  So he ended up getting the ride that year and he ended up in cup.
• 39:00
  um and he he still runs part-time now but those guys were running like models and arca yeah he came out of arca um the other guys were all coming out of um asa late models or pavement speedway cars so um i mean i was as green as grass um we got down to the um fourth person um and and the cut but and i got a four deal out of it they they helped me a little bit but um
• 39:25
  it was a big investment for them to make in someone that had no experience.
• 39:30
  So he got the Ford deal out of it, and then that progressed to where we put a deal to run ASA North Series, which is similar to a TA2 car that they've launched in New Zealand, but the...
• 39:44
  less of horsepower, but basically the same, similar sort of car for oval racing on pavement.
• 39:49
  And we set quick time at Milwaukee, won a race up in Michigan.
• 39:56
  And I had a third place at Hickory, North Carolina.
• 39:59
  So got some results, but just lacked a whole lot of funding behind me to make that next step.
• 40:06
  But experience I'll never forget, that's for sure.
• 40:08
  Did you go to Roush in North Carolina there?
• 40:11
  I mean, it's in Charlotte.
• 40:13
  I went a few years ago.
• 40:15
  Lee Diffie's a colleague and friend and commentates IndyCar for NBC now and so on.
• 40:19
  He gave me the tour and introduced me to some of the key people at Roush and got to go behind the scenes and have a look.
• 40:24
  And most people don't – I mean, it's like a mini suburb, mate.
• 40:27
  You go in there and there's, you know, turn left down that cul-de-sac and that's engine shop and then paint's down the way and it's massive, mate.
• 40:34
  Absolutely massive, isn't it?
• 40:35
  Yeah.
• 40:35
  It's absolutely crazy.
• 40:36
  And that was back when I did it.
• 40:38
  It was Ralph Racing and –
• 40:40
  not Ralph Spenwell, RFK what it is now, but it was when they had track-specific cars.
• 40:46
  So they had short track, medium track, long track, road course cars, and all the bodies were metal, steel.
• 40:54
  So the panel shop was obviously...
• 40:57
  Wow, busy every week.
• 40:59
  And from memory, they had about 100 cars between the drivers and what cars they needed for certain tracks.
• 41:04
  It was – I mean, it's different now, of course, with what they run.
• 41:09
  But, yeah, man, it's eye-opening for sure.
• 41:13
  So the focus is after the kind of the foray with a bit of that stuff, it's still clearly dirt.
• 41:20
  You obviously wanted to experience more American tracks.
• 41:23
  Where are we going?
• 41:23
  Did you go to Kokomo?
• 41:25
  What places did you go on race at when you were there?
• 41:28
  So I needed to get my name out there.
• 41:30
  I would have been sort of early 20s at that stage, and I just needed to win races.
• 41:36
  like any young driver, I guess.
• 41:38
  And I based myself out of Wisconsin and Indiana, so the Midwest of America.
• 41:44
  So you made a move.
• 41:44
  You went there or just temporarily?
• 41:47
  Yeah, I temporarily stayed up there for the entire summer and then I would race back here in our summer.
• 41:52
  So I'm fortunate enough to have the opportunity to almost live summer round, but did that for a few years.
• 41:58
  And we won a bunch of races, but my focus was always NASCAR and always getting onto pavement whenever I could.
• 42:06
  But we went to, yeah, Kokomo, Indiana, Bloomington, Lawrenceburg, like all over the show.
• 42:11
  I mean, I've raced at a tonne of tracks.
• 42:13
  I've probably forgotten half of them.
• 42:15
  But, yeah, it's an experience I'll never get.
• 42:19
  And the Midwest of America is, yeah, really...
• 42:22
  awesome part of the country.
• 42:23
  They have a thing that Owen Kelly told me about in the podcast recently that, you know, it's maybe it's not the same now, but for a time that, you know, drivers could turn up, people were looking for drivers, drivers were looking for rides and so on.
• 42:35
  How did opportunities come about in America beyond that initial introduction?
• 42:40
  Before the,
• 42:43
  Global financial crisis in 2008, it was really, really strong up there.
• 42:47
  Yeah, I mean, car owners were literally looking for drivers.
• 42:52
  They had multiple cars.
• 42:54
  It was awesome.
• 42:56
  Their manufacturers were putting a lot of money into Speedway.
• 43:01
  And they are now, but after 2008, it definitely slowed down a lot.
• 43:06
  People were cutting back.
• 43:08
  But, yeah, before 2008, when I first went up there, it was –
• 43:12
  You know, it was crazy that the Steve Smith guy that I drove for out of Australia, GM USA, were using his engines from Australia as a GM engine.
• 43:23
  Wow.
• 43:23
  It was Chef Bay.
• 43:24
  So it gives you an idea of the opportunity that there was back then.
• 43:27
  It was really cool.
• 43:28
  And it's come back to the point now where the manufacturers are putting money back into it, particularly Toyota.
• 43:35
  Toyota wasn't really around in Speedway.
• 43:37
  Well, they weren't around in Speedway back then, but it was a pretty neat time.
• 43:48
  That's the end of part one of my podcast with Speedcar star Michael Pickens.
• 43:52
  Don't forget our new short casts are regularly in the Rusty's Garage Library where we tackle all sorts of current issues in the world of motorsport and automotive.
• 44:03
  We recently debriefed the drama of the Formula One Australian Grand Prix.
• 44:07
  And I'm also grateful to Shane Van Gisbergen who came on after his summer of Speedway in New Zealand to talk about the challenges around Gen 3 and moving forward to the world.
• 44:18
  after a bit of a flashpoint opening of the supercar season in Newcastle.
• 44:22
  That is a great chat that I hope you enjoy.
• 44:26
  Michael Pickens, though, is one of our regular long-form episodes, and I know that you love those.
• 44:31
  The good news is we are only halfway through.
• 44:35
  Jump back to the library when you're ready and enjoy part two.
• 44:38
  Chilli Bowl, some moments that will forever be etched in his memory, plus a bit of a revelation on his future plans.