Transcript

Garth Tander · Rusty's Garage

0:02
A listener production.
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I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
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When you wander around pit lane or the paddock area of a racetrack, you'll sometimes hear the term car guy.
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It kind of distinguishes those who are athletes seemingly focused solely on the contest of racing to those who love the contest as well as having that strong connection to the wheels underneath them.
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Garth Tander is the latter.
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He loves cars.
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He has a muscle car in the garage at home, which we'll talk to him about on this episode, and he'll fire it up for us.
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On top of being a car guy, he's an impressive racer to boot, winner of the Supercars Championship in 2007 and a multiple winner of the great race at Bathurst.
1:07
Garth and I spoke at Fox Sports Studios while fittingly waiting to be on a show about cars and racing.
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See, I told you he was a car guy.
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I'll take that.
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Car guy.
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Can I put that on my bio?
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You can.
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You can.
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Like most, you started out racing karts as a young step.
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By your mid-teens, there were seven West Australian state titles in the trophy cabinet and an Aussie title as well.
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Can you remember your first kart and what that sensation of going fast was like?
1:33
Where were you?
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I remember my first go-kart.
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It was an old second-hand thing.
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that Dad had bought and we got into karting through family friends.
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Their kids were racing and Dad said, oh, we'll get the boy a kart and see how he goes because it was involved with motorsport as a mechanic and things like that.
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So yeah, it was an old kart.
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Yeah.
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I raced, there was me and one other kid, a friend of mine, Jamie Pages.
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I was eight years old and it was in an old industrial suburb.
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The kart track was a dirt kart track.
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Started racing on the dirt originally.
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It was an old dirt kart track in an industrial suburb in Perth called Kuta.
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The track's not there anymore.
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And there was only two of us in the class.
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So I finished second in my first race.
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And then that's how it started.
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So I don't remember the sensation.
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I was, mate, that's nearly, it was over 30 years ago.
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But I did know from that period on that I really enjoyed it.
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I was playing AFL footy as a kid back then as well, and you'd play footy on Saturdays, race go karts on Sundays.
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And I knew pretty much from that age that driving was the direction I wanted to go in, because I was reasonable at footy, but by the time I got to about 10 or 11, I had to make a decision, because footy comp changed to Sundays.
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And I had to make a decision, do I keep racing go-karts or do I go play footy?
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And I chose the go-kart route.
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So I'm thankful for that because I'm still doing what I love today.
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These days, we only really know you as a Holden driver.
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The mainstream part of your life in supercars, it's always been a Holden.
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But back then, you and your brother would travel to go-kart races in a Ford.
3:09
Yep.
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Is that right?
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Dad had XR6s and XR8s, is that right?
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Yeah, we were Ford family.
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So Dad was a massive Dick Johnson fan and Dad had XR6s.
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He had two or three XR6s.
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And by the time I got my license, borrowed Dad's XR6 a couple of times.
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Cruising around, I scratched it once.
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I've never told him this, but I scratched it once.
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I was out at a mate's place.
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and I backed it into the letterbox or something like that.
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So what story did you tell him to?
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No, well, see, he didn't notice.
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I got home late that night, so you do what you do is you park it close to the wall where the scratch was so you can't see it, and I didn't tell him.
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And then we went out as a family.
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We went to 10-pin bowling the next day, and he still hadn't noticed it until we'd sort of been in the... And then we'd come back and... Must have happened in the car park.
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I said, Dad, what's happened to your car?
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Someone scratched it.
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And he's like, oh, some lowlife must have scratched it in the car park.
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And I got away with it.
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The first car I ever got my hands on when I was learning to drive was Mum's 1987 VC Holden Commodore.
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Six-cylinder, brown with a gold stripe.
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Beautiful.
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I understand the first car you bought was a VC Holden Commodore 6.
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Is that right?
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It was a VB, mate.
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VB?
4:13
Wow, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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It was a similar colour, baby poo brown.
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Oh, that's exactly what I had.
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I think that must have been the cheapest car at the time.
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Didn't last long.
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Went to the... Because I was working, when I got my licence, I was already working the former Ford team up at Barbegillow Raceway, so the back road out to Barbegillow got quite a workout.
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And then I traded it actually on a... because the fuel was costing me a fortune driving up and to and from the track.
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So in the end I traded it.
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On a little four-cylinder Mitsubishi Lancer, and I remember driving it from, I was up at the racetrack, and I had to go to the dealership to swap the cars for five o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday, and I remember I was running late, so I thrashed the Commodore on the way to the dealership, and it had got the death knock.
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Oh, by the way, just in case you're wondering, a death knock is kind of when something horrendous is about to happen to the engine.
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It's developed a rattle or something really bad, and typically it's about to blow.
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It had got the death knock up massively on the way in, so I stopped at the servo, poured some thickest oil in it that I could find, and idled into the dealership, grabbed my car, the new car drove out, and that was it.
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I think the Commodore went to the great car yard in the sky after that.
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They were the early days when racers are always doing it tough from a money point of view.
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And the focus is the racing.
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Did you have enough left over to do any modifications to your first cars?
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Or did you not worry about that back then?
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No, I thought I was pretty cool.
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So I got the Oxytorch out and lowered it with the springs, lowered the car that way.
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Classy.
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Yeah, so the ride quality was strong.
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And so I did that.
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And then on the Lancer, Dad...
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was trying to supplement the motor racing by, started a new business with Mag Wheels, importing Mag Wheels from Italy.
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It was actually Fond Metal, they were a Formula One team at the time.
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And we were importing these wheels into Perth with a friend of the old man.
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So I got a set of demo wheels on the Lancer and lowered that properly.
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I learned from the first test
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time that you don't lower the car with the oxytorch so i got proper springs in the lancer but lowered it really really low and put an exhaust on it as you do so it was really loud really low so it was one of those cars you can't take into car parks um yeah and uh yeah that was that was the lancer um
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which I kept all the way till when I started driving supercars.
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And then we sold that at the dealership at Gary Rogers and got a company car from then on.
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Crazy.
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Like most young racers, you went from karts to Formula Ford.
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You won the Aussie title in 97.
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And then you pretty much stepped straight up to Gary Rogers and supercars.
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Other people went different directions, Formula Holden, whatever.
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Was that a dream come true?
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Was it daunting?
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What was that like at the time?
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Yeah, all of the above.
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And it wasn't straight in because we won the championship in 97.
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in Formula Ford and it was large, we had sponsors certainly, but largely the Formula Ford deal was all funded by mum and dad.
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I think dad did a lot of shonky stuff with the finances that mum didn't know about.
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So in the end we finished that, we won the championship which obviously very fortunate, but we had no, there was no money left at all, no funding left at all to do anything racing wise.
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So I finished...
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1970s, Australian champion in Formula Ford, driving for Fastlane Racing.
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And I was working for those guys full-time as well as driving.
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So I basically just was working full-time.
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I was working on...
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In an engineering kind of capacity?
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Yeah, yeah.
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Well, we had just based...
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It was Perth-based, and the year that I did it, we were based in Perth.
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And then we set up another truck and had some warehouse space in Melbourne.
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And I spent the first... Basically, the first three months of...
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of 98, sleeping in the sleeper of the truck and working on three Formula Fords in this warehouse in Melbourne.
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And when those three cars were Christian Murchison, Tim Lay, who I'm still very, very good friends with today, and Leanne Ferrier, who's now Leanne Tander, my wife.
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So, yeah, I mean, it wasn't a waste those first three months of not racing, because I obviously met my wife.
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But it was tough because you're sitting on the sidelines as the reigning Australian champion and
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You're working on those cars still and no career progression from Formula Ford.
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But then the opportunity came up with Gary's in April.
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Steve Richards left the team.
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He got an opportunity with Nissan Motorsport in the UK to drive in their two-litre program when British Touring Cars was at its peak back then.
8:21
Nissan Primera, wasn't it?
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Yeah, it was with Nissan.
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Yeah.
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And that left an opening at GRM, and Jason Barguana was there driving in the second car.
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And when I won Formula Ford, Gary had always sponsored a Formula Ford with Valvoline money.
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And that Formula Ford in 1997, the year that I won, was Marcus Ambrose.
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And he finished second behind me in the championship, and Marcus had left and gone to the UK to race over there in the UK.
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And so Gary knew who I was because I...
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beat the Valvoline Formula Ford.
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So he gave me a call and I dead set thought it was my mates playing a prank on me.
8:56
What did you say?
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I said, yeah, righto, mate, no problems.
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I'd never spoken to Gary in my life and it was one of those, you know, yeah, okay, mate, no worries.
9:01
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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And then in the end, I was like, you know,
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And this could be real.
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A minute or so, and the conversation was like, well, this sounds like it's real.
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I better recover this situation.
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And, yeah, like, literally I had spoken to Gary for five minutes on the phone, and I was on the plane.
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So this phone call was on a Friday, and I was on a plane the following Monday, and we tested at Winton on the Tuesday.
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What were those initial impressions of a supercar like?
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I mean, they're raw, so much more power than a Formula Ford.
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They're the thing that all...
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young Aussie race kids in karts and things generally aspire to unless they're going to go down the Formula 1 path.
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They're an addictive thing, aren't they?
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Yeah, they are.
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And for me to be a professional racing car driver was only ever going to be here in Australia.
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I mean, we certainly didn't have the funding to continue my driving here in Australia ourselves let alone go to Europe or America and try and crack it internationally.
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So to stay as a professional race car driver was going to be supercars here in Australia and this opportunity came up.
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And I'd already driven a supercar a couple of times.
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I'd had a test with Dick Johnson Racing
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in 97 through John Bauer.
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He's heat that up.
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And I did about 20 laps at Malala in a DJR Falcon.
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I had done about 10 laps prior to that in a Falcon in Perth, an ex-Glensetan Falcon that was locally owned.
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And then I had done about 10 to 15 laps in the Holden Young Lions Commodore at the end of 97.
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So my entire supercar testing career was about 40 laps prior to driving for GRM.
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And I certainly didn't sort of have my head around it a lot at the start of the day because the cars are so wildly different.
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You're getting out of a 500 kilo, 100 horsepower Formula Ford into a 600 horsepower, 1350 kilo sedan based locked diff.
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very little power steering, quite agricultural really, race car that did completely different.
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So it took me most of the day to get my head around it.
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But in the end of the day, I think I got reasonably close to Barks' time, he was testing there as well the same day.
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And yeah, I got my head around it.
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And that was on a Tuesday.
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I had a meeting in Gary's office on the Wednesday.
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And he said, do you want to race this weekend?
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It was Phillip Island.
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Within seven days, I'd gone from no prospect of driving a supercar on the Friday morning to speaking to a team owner for the first time to testing his car and then racing his car the following weekend at Phillip Island.
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That is Gary Rogers in many ways, isn't it?
11:16
Yeah.
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I want to come back because I picked up on your test there with Dick Johnson.
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As you and I sit here recording this, we're at Fox Sports.
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There's a legend show happening at the moment with Fred Gibson, Alan Moffat, Jim Richards, absolute legends of the game.
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Was Dick the main influence for you or inspiration?
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Actually, no.
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Certainly as a very young kid it was because Dad was a big Dick Johnson fan.
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So, I mean, we did that test for DJR at Mallard and Dad was like a kid in a candy shop.
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He came to that day and he's running around getting photos and Karen Allen's doing the full embarrassing Dad thing.
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For me, my influence growing up, probably more so, was Jim Richards.
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Once I was old enough to understand the game myself and my influences, it was Jim.
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So, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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That was getting to know Jim through my career has been, for me, one of my highlights.
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regardless, you know, up there with Bathurst Winds and all the rest of it.
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Just, you know, I'm very good mates with Steve Richards, and I see Jim socially every now and then, and having a beer with Richo is pretty cool.
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He's incredibly versatile.
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I mean, he's going to turn 70 this year in 2017.
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He's still racing.
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And he was called affectionately in the public eye, Gentleman Jim, for a long period of time.
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But you talk to the racers and they say, he's anything but a gentleman.
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He's quite on track.
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He doesn't muck around, does he?
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No, it's great.
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Actually, when we were here, they were doing the pre-meeting for the Legends show and the term Gentleman Jim came up and Alan Moffat...
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Mike Raymond, Fred Gibson, they all just pissed themselves off because the gentleman Jim, my ass.
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But to talk to him is the most quiet, most unassuming guy and like you said, really incredibly versatile.
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You could have a coffee with Richo and he would ask you all about his world and you'd have no idea that he has been as successful and as revered internationally as he has been.
13:08
I mean, I've known Steve's kids for a very long time since they were growing up and it's actually been funny watching them.
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I reckon it's probably only in the last three or four years that Clay and Priya have realised that their grandad is actually a pretty cool thing.
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He's a pretty cool dude.
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So, you know, like kids growing up, it's just grandad.
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Let's go to 2000, Bathurst.
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You win the great race for the first time for Gary Rogers.
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Crazy day, weather-wise.
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To top it all off, you got burnt too, didn't you?
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Tell us about that.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So I had the team radioed me.
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I was in the car.
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Back then there were sort of 30, 33-lap stints on a tank of fuel.
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And I was in the car with about 60 laps to go.
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And then they called me up about, you know, 45 to go.
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He said, how do you feel about doing a double stint?
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We think it's going to be better for you to be in the car at the end of the race.
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Just give our listeners an idea.
13:59
How long, roughly, is that in the car?
14:01
Oh, that's two and a half, two hours 40, something like that.
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Which is hard going.
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Yeah, it was.
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And I was 23 at the time.
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You're 10-foot tall and bulletproof.
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Yeah, man, I'll do that, no problems.
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And on my car that year, we'd been running a side exit exhaust.
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So they were quite in their infancy back then.
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Not a lot of teams were running just single exit exhaust out the passenger side for weight distribution.
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But for Bathurst, the team were worried about that muffler lasting 1,000 kilometres.
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So they went back to the old tried-and-tested dual exit exhaust, so literally a muffler right under your backside.
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And they didn't put any of the heat shielding back in that you normally would run.
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So when we were doing 30-lap stints, 33-lap stints in the first part of the race, it was fine.
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You'd get out of the car and you're like, well, I was a little bit uncomfortable, but no dramas.
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But then when we did this double stint at the end of the race, I literally...
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burnt my backside, like literally.
14:56
And it was the size of, you know, decent.
14:58
It was like a decent sized pancake, you know.
15:00
It was not a little one.
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And yeah, I couldn't, basically after the race, I couldn't sit down for two months afterwards.
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It was, yeah, it was pretty significant.
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And as a 23 year old kid, you're not going to tell anyone your weaknesses or anything like that.
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So you sort of grin and bear it.
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But yeah, it took, I mean, I still remember Christmas, still having dramas with it.
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Yeah, I've got a lifetime reminder of my first ever Bathurst win.
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It's just got to look in the mirror to see it.
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But the pain was maybe made that little bit more bearable by a Bathurst win, which is huge.
15:32
Yeah, mate.
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I mean, it's the first time I'd finished the race.
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So that was my third attempt.
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It's the first time I'd finished it.
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And I remember saying to Mike XLAI, engine miller at the time, which, you know, you...
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23 and super cocky, oh mate, all you've got to do is finish this race and you win it, it's like, how hard is it, and it took me 9 years to realise after that, to get my second one, that it was not quite that easy, but yeah, I mean, I was 23 years and 6 months, I was second youngest to win it at that stage, Lounsey was 22 and 9 months or something like that,
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And I've always seen through my career that Lowndesie's always beat me to these career milestones or these first stats by about six months.
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But yeah, it was amazing.
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Obviously, GRM's first ever Bathurst win, Gary, is a lot like Alan Moffat.
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Bathurst is equally as important as the entire other 11 months of the year.
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And there was always a lot of preparation and a lot of focus put on the Bathurst race.
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So for him to get that win, certainly in that year as well, we were pretty close in the championship.
16:32
We didn't quite get it, but to get the Bathurst win, you know, it was really satisfying to share the car with Bugs, get the win.
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No one really thought that it would work because he's three foot tall and I'm ten foot tall, but we made it work.
16:43
This is Greg Rust and you're listening to Rusty's Garage.
16:47
In this series, I speak to some of the most passionate enthusiasts I know, like actor, comedian, car and bike lover, Shane Jacobson.
16:56
If you gave me the DeLorean now and said, Shane, where are we going?
17:00
The answer would be back to when I was 18 to get rid of that freaking Tee Cortina because it's the most embarrassing thing.
17:06
As a car lover, we all know you can't help but go, you know.
17:09
Listen to the full episode with Shane Jacobson here on Rusty's Garage.
17:20
OBD.
17:21
OBD stands for Onboard Diagnostics.
17:24
All modern road cars have some sort of engine computer in place that can tell you when something has gone wrong.
17:29
Yeah, where's the fun in that?
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I asked Jamie Wincup this question recently because he's actually gone and bought an old race car that meant something to him and restored it and has it kept away.
17:40
Is there a car along the way in your career so far that you would like to own or that you've got eyes on?
17:45
Ah, I mean, I think ultimately I'd love to have the 07 championship car.
17:52
We still have the 2000 Bathurst winner at GRM, that's still there, and it's still as we finish the race.
17:59
So it's only been driven twice since 2000, that car.
18:02
and that's up in the mezzanine display at GRM.
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So that's cool.
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Every time I go to work, I see that car there.
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So I'm not sure.
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Gary's a used car salesman.
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I'm not sure I'll be able to do a good deal with him on that one.
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He'll win in that deal.
18:15
But the 07 car, I had a couple of goes at buying that off Lucas D'Umbrell
18:19
when he was finished with it, but he wanted too much money for it or too much money that I could afford, so I never got it.
18:25
And it's actually gone to a collector and it's been fully restored back to the 07 car.
18:29
But if I won the lotto tomorrow and the lotto was big enough, that would be the car I'd go after.
18:35
What was it like driving the 24-hour at Bathurst?
18:38
Because Holden built a couple of weapon Monaros, 427Cs, 7-litre, 427-cubic-inch engine.
18:46
They were a big tennis racket, mate, weren't they?
18:49
That was taking a sledgehammer to break open a bag of ice.
18:53
They were significant cars.
18:57
There was a significant hold and investment in that because obviously that was used as part of Monaro's relaunch in Australia when that car was relaunched as a road car.
19:06
And GRM were the team that were tasks with building, developing and driving.
19:11
And I was driving at GRM then and I was part of that project from day dot.
19:16
So to go to Bathurst and race there in the 24-hour race was unbelievable.
19:23
But in saying that, the first race, we didn't have a lot of competition.
19:26
It was...
19:27
You know, we had to change the fuel tank after the first six hours or something like that.
19:31
We lost 14 laps and we caught that up.
19:33
So that sort of says how much, how quick the car was and how well prepared we were compared to the competition.
19:39
But the race was in its infancy.
19:40
I mean, we only did two races, but the race, obviously, it was first race.
19:44
Second year we're back with the second car and Brock and Murph and Todd Kelly and Jason Bright were in the second car.
19:52
That was the red car and then in the yellow car it was the same crew that we had the first year where we won.
19:57
It was myself, Steve Richards, Cameron Conville and Nathan Pretty.
20:00
So we were the guys.
20:02
When the second car came the second year we were like, well we're not going to let these blokes show up and win it.
20:05
Especially Brock, we're not letting him have another one.
20:09
So yeah, there was a bit of competition between the two cars.
20:13
And we had a lot of fun.
20:14
There was eight drivers and we all got on really well and we had a lot of fun.
20:17
But ultimately when it came down to it the last hour, there was, we were trying to win it.
20:21
Richo, Stephen Richards tells me that
20:24
because it's a 24-hour race you'd have to force yourself to get some sleep he said i'd lie down and try and go to sleep is it but you could hear that distinctive sound over everything else he said so you'd listen and you'd hear it come back down okay across the start finish line right i'll try and get some sleep now and then i'd do another lab he said it was near on impossible to sleep
20:41
It was impossible.
20:42
I think the target lap time then was around 2 minutes 15.
20:45
So you had this 2 minute 15 second window to fall asleep because you'd hear it go, we'd be staying in motorhomes in the paddock and behind the pits and you'd hear it go past, yep, still in the race.
20:54
And then you got two minutes to try and fall asleep before it comes around again.
20:57
So we didn't get a lot of sleep.
20:59
But there is another story the first 12 hour.
21:01
We had two motorhomes and four drivers and we had this sort of rotation system.
21:05
Nathan Priddy and I were sharing one motorhome and...
21:10
and Richo and Cam McConville sharing the other one and that's just how it worked with the driver roster.
21:13
So as each driver came in, they had to wake the other one up and get them, they had to go have a shower and get ready to go.
21:18
And Nath came in to wake me up and said, oh mate, it's all good, we're going okay, we're still going okay.
21:22
And this is part of the phase where we're catching up through the race and he goes, but I scratched it.
21:27
And I said, oh yeah, okay.
21:28
I said, how is it?
21:29
He goes, yeah, no, mate, no problems, no problems, but it's just got a little scratch on.
21:32
And I said, yeah, okay, no worries.
21:34
But he said, don't worry, mate, we're still trucking on, okay, and all the rest of it.
21:36
So it was about another hour before Richo was getting out.
21:39
So you're out in pit lane.
21:40
The first time I'd seen the other side of the car, because it was on the driver's side that he'd scratched it, and the first time I'd seen it is when you're standing out in pit lane and the car lobs, and it's like a banana, mate.
21:49
It is bent in half.
21:51
And I'm like, Nathan?
21:52
He scratched it.
21:53
I was like, how am I even going to open the door?
21:55
Luckily, the door still opened.
21:56
And so then when I went in to wake him up, I wasn't kind when I woke him up.
22:00
The next time I literally jumped on top of him with my helmet still on, headbutted him.
22:04
So, mate, he scratched our race car.
22:06
But anyway, we got the race win.
22:08
Was it a good car?
22:08
What was it like?
22:09
What was it like?
22:09
It was a good car.
22:10
Everyone sort of says, oh, you know, I mean, to be honest, we never really tried to go flat out with that car, except for probably the last three or four laps when Murph and I were battling at the end of the second one.
22:19
But everyone sort of said, oh, that car would go sub two minutes.
22:22
It was such a, such a sports sedan, such a hot rod.
22:24
But it wasn't, it wasn't that fast down the hill.
22:26
It was built to go up the hill.
22:28
So at the time, it was quicker than a V8 supercar.
22:30
So from the exit of turn two to the hump at the exit of the cutting, it was a second and a half of that fast in a supercar in just that phase of the track because it had so much torque, mate.
22:40
It would pull trees out of the ground.
22:41
It had that much torque.
22:42
But it was not that fast coming down Conrad.
22:45
We only do 255, 260, and most of the time we were half throttle saving fuel because seven-litre engine, mate, they drink fuel like it's going out of fashion.
22:52
So most of the time we're driving the car to fuel economy numbers.
22:55
Garth mentioned Murph there before.
22:57
He's another Holden hero, a proud Kiwi, and we'll talk to him on the podcast in coming sort of episodes, I guess you could say.
23:04
Racing, you said before, it's in your family.
23:06
You talked about your dad, your wife, Leanne.
23:08
She's the 2016 Australian Formula 4 champion.
23:11
Does dinnertime convo only revolve around race cars?
23:15
No, that's the last thing we talk about because it's so all-consuming for the rest of our day that the last thing you want to talk about is...
23:22
is cars and racing and all the rest of it.
23:25
You need to have a bit of off time.
23:26
And certainly since the kids have come along, that's, you know, now our dinner time conversation is school and school uniforms and daily excursions and which birthday party they're going to this weekend.
23:37
So that's probably changed our focus a little bit.
23:40
But, you know, Leanne, racing-wise, she's still, I mean, last year you said she won the Australian Formula Ford Championship, which is something she...
23:47
Been really keen to win, even when she tried to win it the first time in 1999 and 2000.
23:50
She didn't quite get the job done then.
23:52
She finished third.
23:52
But, you know, I look back at what she achieved last year.
23:55
She was she's studying full time.
23:58
She's gone back to study.
23:59
She's studying to be a psychologist.
24:01
She's managing the household.
24:03
She's effectively my PA. She manages the two kids.
24:06
And then she went and raced.
24:08
and beat a bunch of kids that were 15, 16, 17 that would kill you for the next grid position and took them on and beat them soundly.
24:17
I look at that and just think, man, that was super, super impressive.
24:20
So I, you know, you look at that, I'm a little bit in awe of what she achieved and people will say, oh, yeah, but that's your wife, you have to be.
24:26
But, you know, some people that have been involved in the industry for a long time have sort of come to me since then and said, man, what she did was pretty, pretty special.
24:32
So I'm pretty proud about that.
24:34
When you go to those races with her, you're not just supportive husband and dad.
24:38
You get right involved, don't you?
24:40
Are you on the tools?
24:41
Are you engineering?
24:42
What are you doing?
24:43
I'm on the tools, mate.
24:43
I do it all.
24:44
Drive the truck there, mechanic the car.
24:46
Are we talking semi-trailer?
24:47
No, we used to have one of them.
24:49
I mean, when we had the F3, we had our own F3 team when Leanne was racing F3 prior to the kids.
24:56
And we had our own full-size 45-foot trailer.
24:59
What was it, Kenworth?
25:00
Yeah, we had a Kenworth.
25:02
We had our own factory.
25:03
We had three full-time staff.
25:04
We had four Formula 3 cars.
25:06
It was starting to get a little out of control.
25:08
But now we have a very, very, very tiny little Isuzu truck.
25:12
We call it the bread van because it looks like a tip-top delivery truck.
25:15
So I drive that.
25:17
I work on the car.
25:20
I engineer the car.
25:21
I do the data.
25:23
I do the whole shoot and match.
25:24
And I love it.
25:25
I really do.
25:26
And people say, oh, that's...
25:28
don't you have enough of racing?
25:29
But that's like my golf, that's my hobby.
25:32
I don't play golf, I don't do other stuff.
25:36
When I've got downtime, I'll go down to my shed and we've got three Formula Fords down there or the Camaro and I'll work on that and that's how I pass my time.
25:45
You have treated yourself to a 1969 Chevrolet SS Camaro.
25:51
Red for memory, muscle car.
25:54
you've always wanted one, is that right?
25:56
Yeah, absolutely.
25:57
I mean, I really enjoy the history of motorsport and understanding the cars from earlier on.
26:07
So, I mean, I know all about the Group C touring cars and...
26:11
Group A and then that sort of led me on to learning more about American muscle cars and the Trans Am cars that raced in the mid to late 60s through that period and I actually read Mark Donoghue's book, An Unfair Advantage, Mark Donoghue who raced for Roger Penske.
26:29
And I was reading his book and they talked a lot about the Camaro program that they did through that period.
26:35
And I was like, oh yeah, that's pretty cool.
26:37
And then I've always read, you know, the historic car classifieds, those magazines that come out and sort of like the shape of the 69.
26:44
And I was sort of watching the prices and they were going up and up and up.
26:48
If I don't buy one soon, then I won't be able to justify spending the money.
26:51
So when I got my first contract after I left GRM, because Gary won't mind me saying that he's not the biggest payer in Pitlane.
27:00
When I got my first contract when I left GRM, I sort of treated myself and bought the Camaro in 2005.
27:05
And I've had it ever since.
27:08
And I'm thankful I bought it then because the dollar wasn't too bad.
27:11
And, um, um, but yeah, yes, I've had it since then.
27:14
And, uh, it was more the racing connection that sort of drew me to that car.
27:18
Um, then the, then, you know, it's street cred, if you like.
27:21
Was it here in Australia?
27:22
Did you get it out of America?
27:23
What state was it in when you got?
27:25
No, it was, it was, I bought it out of Queensland, out of the Gold Coast.
27:28
It was new to Australia.
27:30
It hadn't been registered in Australia.
27:31
It was, it was a fresh import.
27:33
Um, I flew, I'd read about it.
27:34
I got emailed the guy through, he was a broker, um,
27:39
Flew up and had a look at it.
27:40
I took Leanne with me on the plane on the way home.
27:43
I asked permission if I was allowed to buy it because she's the accountant.
27:46
She runs the books.
27:47
So she said, well, if that's what you want, you can get it.
27:50
So I got it and, yeah, yeah, had it ever since.
27:52
Has it been modified?
27:53
Is it a 350?
27:54
What are we talking about?
27:54
No.
27:55
Bored is a 350 small block manual left-hand drive, four-wheel drum brakes.
28:02
So that's good fun in traffic, getting it to stop.
28:05
So I haven't done a lot of work to it.
28:08
I've sort of just been maintaining it over the journey.
28:11
But the plan is...
28:13
And I've been saying for the last three or four years is the plan is to do a full nut and bolt resto on it, take a strip it completely, soda blast it, and then have a look at what needs fixing and start from scratch.
28:24
And then I'll probably four-wheel disc brake it at the same time.
28:27
But I'll keep it 350 small block and keep it genuine to what it is.
28:31
It certainly won't be a pro stock car.
28:34
It'll be true to the error for sure.
28:38
Here you go, Rusty, a sound of SS69 Camaro, 350 small block, standard steel heads, my summer baby.
28:49
Thank you.
29:04
I said at the top of the chat here about you being a car guy.
29:07
We've seen on social media, Garth's Garage and things like that.
29:10
You enjoy working on the car, don't you?
29:12
That's a fun thing for you.
29:13
Yeah, well, that's sort of what I did.
29:14
When I left school, one of my sponsors in go-karts owned an electronics business, which was telephone systems and satellite TV.
29:23
This was pre-Foxtail.
29:25
So he gave me an apprenticeship in electronics as an electronics technician, and I lasted about...
29:33
not even 12 months and I just hated it.
29:35
I mean, I was grateful for the job and for the opportunity because getting an apprenticeship, you know, was a big deal back then, but it certainly wasn't me.
29:42
And I was racing Formula Ford at the time and, you know, in go-karts I'd always worked on all my own go-kart stuff.
29:49
That was pretty adamant on me learning about the kart by working on it myself.
29:55
uh i went to the formula ford team that i was racing with at the time and asked if there you know if there are any jobs going and and i started there and so pretty much from other than 12 months of throwing cables in the ground or in ceilings as a try hard telephone guy i was been working on cars since i left school so um i i like i said before i really enjoy it it's um it's my escape you know if you like and and um
30:19
But it's still heavily connected to what I do for a job.
30:21
A couple of final questions.
30:22
Dream Garage.
30:23
Would the Camaro still be in it?
30:25
And what else would be alongside it?
30:26
My original Camaro would still be in it.
30:29
But you can build a brand new 69 Chev Camaro.
30:32
There's enough reproduction parts.
30:34
So I'd build one that had...
30:36
that was just crazy.
30:37
And if someone was gonna park the latest front engine Ferrari in your garage and say, you can drive that for a little while, I'd take it.
30:44
But it's not super practical now because I can't tow the caravan or put the kids in the back.
30:51
So yeah, I mean-
30:52
I'm fortunate I get to drive a race car 15, 20 times a year, which is, you know, you get your satisfaction from driving like that.
31:02
I mean, I drive a Nissan Navara on the road.
31:04
I drive a diesel Nissan Navara nowadays, and that gets me from A to B, and it saves a lot of money with fuel.
31:11
It's your 20th year full-time in supercars.
31:14
I'm picturing you in that Navara with a cap on.
31:18
20th year full-time in supercars.
31:21
Does it still give you the same buzz when you go out of pit lane?
31:24
And what does the future hold, mate?
31:26
Because you subbed for Mark Skaig wasn't too flash recently.
31:30
He was a little crook and he missed a round of the championship.
31:32
And you did a bit of commentary for us.
31:33
And I think you did a superb job.
31:35
Does that kind of thing appeal to you?
31:36
Yeah, it does.
31:38
Yeah, certainly I still, first part to your question with the driving stuff, yeah, absolutely still love it, still enjoy the challenge of the competition that what Supercars provides, not only the competition from your peers, but also the competition of driving yourself to continually be better.
31:58
And, hey, look, to be honest, I'm probably not as fast as I was from sort of 25 to 30.
32:04
I reckon that's your peak as a driver.
32:07
you've got fitness, you've got youth, you've got reflexes, you've got it all going then.
32:11
I don't think I'm as good now as I was then from an outright speed point of view, but certainly I really enjoy the team aspect, getting the whole organisation working in one direction for one goal.
32:25
And then when you have success as a team, the satisfaction of seeing that on everyone, seeing the satisfaction on everyone else's faces, I really, really quite enjoy.
32:33
So, yeah.
32:35
So I'm really enjoying the sport still.
32:38
What the future holds, there's some options available.
32:41
Certainly within GRM there's some options there as far as managing the race side of the business because Gary has a huge business portfolio away from the racetrack and Baz will probably head more into looking after the other side of the business and I'll look after, potentially looking after the racing side of the business.
33:01
Or there's some media opportunity as well.
33:04
I enjoy that stuff.
33:05
I clearly remember when I very first started, I hated it.
33:08
I hated talking to the media.
33:09
And it was yourself and Lee Diffie and Mark Osler and all these guys that were really, really patient with me and taught me a lot.
33:17
But now I sort of, you know, I enjoy it.
33:21
You go in and they turn the bright lights on and the camera's there and you have a bit of fun.
33:25
Well, you don't struggle.
33:26
We've found that here today.
33:27
And as always, mate, very insightful.
33:29
Great just to chat a bit of cars with you.
33:31
Thanks, mate.
33:31
Thank you.
33:34
On the next episode of Rusty's Garage, I talk with motorcycle racing legend Troy Bayliss from his time living in Monaco, learning to speak Italian so he could communicate with his racing team mechanics at Ducati to his return to Australia with the family.
33:49
so hard after all them years away and then you come home and you're so used to being racing week in, week out and maybe the the spotlight, I don't know about the spotlight but the winning or the the competition.
34:03
Uh, when I went down to see the team at Phillip Island for the first round of the World Super Bikes, I was like, like so depressed.
34:10
I could hardly even go into the box and speak to the guys.
34:13
It just felt so wrong to even be there.
34:15
And I felt like that for years but,
34:18
I used to go back and test the bikes and do a bit of work with the guys and was always thinking, no, I should be back there racing.
34:31
Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
34:35
Series producer and editor is Alex Mitchell.
34:38
Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
34:48
Listener.