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Transcript

Craig Lowndes · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:14
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:28
  In this episode, I'm catching up with Craig Lowndes.
• 0:31
  On his back deck, he and wife Lara are at home enjoying a rare break in an exhausting schedule.
• 0:38
  Lowndes, the modern-day Peter Brock, has decided to step back from full-time driving after more than 20 years at the pinnacle of the sport.
• 0:47
  But the people's champion and proud dad has plenty to keep him busy and won't be venturing too far from a life that has always involved some sort of wheels.
• 0:58
  I think the early days, the early, early days growing up, I actually preferred two wheels.
• 1:03
  I actually, I love motorbikes.
• 1:05
  I still do.
• 1:06
  And I remember going to dad's workshop.
• 1:10
  He had a service station first and then he actually then had a mechanical shop, which is what I did my apprenticeship through.
• 1:14
  But I remember going there and just being part of, I suppose, the...
• 1:19
  the grease and the dirt and the grime and pulling things apart, loving that atmosphere.
• 1:25
  And then Dad had a chassis dyno.
• 1:29
  So then he had people come in and did, like, performance side of cars, you know, the Honda...
• 1:35
  race team that the Australian Honda team used to bring, which actually was headed up, or not headed up, but run by Campbell Little, who obviously I crossed paths with later in life.
• 1:45
  And Campbell used to bring the bikes in, and we used to dyno them on the chassis dyno.
• 1:50
  So a lot of the racing connection come through that.
• 1:53
  And as I said, growing up was always an interest for me.
• 1:57
  And as I got older, then went from two wheels to four wheels with go-karts.
• 2:04
  And then I think it was just a hobby at the time, but then it became a passion.
• 2:08
  In the ridiculously OH&S world that we now live, I think it's actually a little bit sad sometimes that kids aren't always allowed to back the car down the driveway or if you've got a bit of space to go for a paddock bash.
• 2:18
  Did you do that sort of stuff when you were younger and what were the cars?
• 2:20
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:21
  I think that I grew up on five acres, just a little bit north of Melbourne.
• 2:27
  So the actual place was plenty.
• 2:30
  And I've got an older brother.
• 2:33
  We had motorbikes.
• 2:34
  We used to run around.
• 2:35
  I used to make jumps and do stupid things.
• 2:37
  What were the bikes back then?
• 2:38
  Actually, I had a Yamaha.
• 2:41
  80J, so I think it was an 84, 83, 84 model.
• 2:45
  Two-stroke.
• 2:46
  Two-stroke, yes.
• 2:48
  And I used to race, that was my race bike.
• 2:50
  And for me, I used to love that side of it.
• 2:53
  We had an old grey Massey Ferguson, which tracked it.
• 2:56
  We used to have a carry-all at the back, and I used to go down and get firewood.
• 2:59
  And I do remember, because we were on a bit of a hill, that...
• 3:02
  you'd load up the carrier with firewood, and I used to raise it by about a foot, and as we were driving back up the hill, the front wheels would come off, and you'd have a bit of fun just doing stupid things.
• 3:12
  And I remember the tractor had independent rear brakes, so while the front wheels were off the ground, you used to be able to steer it by the rear wheels.
• 3:21
  And I just had fun with all that side of it.
• 3:24
  So, yeah, and then I had – oh, yeah.
• 3:27
  My brother bought an Angular, Ford Angular, which he backed it into the mailbox.
• 3:33
  He was never a good driver.
• 3:35
  And then I had an old Datsun.
• 3:37
  What was it?
• 3:37
  What sort of Datsun?
• 3:38
  I'm just trying to think.
• 3:38
  It was a 68 Datsun.
• 3:41
  Crikey, like an old Bluebird or something.
• 3:43
  Yeah, it was before then.
• 3:44
  It was old.
• 3:46
  And I had it, I think, I didn't hit anything with it, thankfully.
• 3:50
  I got it bogged a number of times and I had to get it towed out.
• 3:53
  Column shift?
• 3:54
  What was it?
• 3:55
  It was a column shift, yes.
• 3:57
  And it was white and it didn't last very long.
• 4:00
  And then they had the other motorbikes.
• 4:02
  We actually had a Honda Odyssey, an 84 Honda Odyssey, which didn't have it.
• 4:07
  It was a solid rear end, had independent front, solid rear end.
• 4:10
  And I would be constantly pulling the rear axle out, re-bending it straight because I tried to jump it and it wouldn't take it.
• 4:15
  So I was always doing something stupid.
• 4:17
  Yeah.
• 4:18
  What were the cars that Dad had in the garage back then?
• 4:21
  Was it Holden's?
• 4:22
  Was it Ford's in this what was then a deeply divided touring car world?
• 4:27
  It was actually a bit of a myth.
• 4:28
  I think we grew up more of a Ford family.
• 4:30
  Mum had a Nissan Pintara, which we, again, Dad, in the performance we used to do a lot of turbo stuff, so we put a turbo on that.
• 4:36
  That was a four-cylinder Nissan Pintara.
• 4:38
  Dad had a Nissan Navara, which, again, we turboed that.
• 4:42
  It was a dirty diesel.
• 4:44
  Then we had a actual Ford panel van for a little while.
• 4:47
  Yeah.
• 4:48
  We turboed that.
• 4:49
  That was a six cylinder.
• 4:50
  We've had a family car or a car in the family for a number of years, for a long time, and now we've finally got it in the shed here at home.
• 4:58
  It's an old 38 De Soto.
• 5:02
  So that was sort of, that's been in the family.
• 5:05
  It's been, it was my father's grandfather's first car.
• 5:08
  So it was something that's been in the family for a long time.
• 5:12
  We've got it in the shed now.
• 5:13
  Typical, I'm now repairing it.
• 5:15
  I've just had to get the radiator repaired.
• 5:18
  But it's registered, still drives, and it's something that we're sort of working progress.
• 5:22
  That's cool.
• 5:22
  So does Craig Lowndes get on eBay and international websites and whatever else to try and find parts for this thing?
• 5:28
  What do you do?
• 5:28
  Oh, absolutely.
• 5:29
  I actually... And I suppose it's...
• 5:32
  Like anything, as you get older, you sort of get a bit wiser.
• 5:35
  And I'm actually now trying to pick Dad's brain about the history of everything.
• 5:40
  Obviously, Dad's background was with the Holden dealer team and doing his apprenticeship under Harry Firth and all that side of it.
• 5:47
  But with it, Osoto is understanding, is it the original Juco?
• 5:54
  is the interior standard.
• 5:56
  And from what I've gathered, and again, time flies, Dad said, yeah, it got repainted not long ago, 73.
• 6:02
  So, yeah, the outside actually hasn't got a lot of rust in it, which is good.
• 6:08
  But, yeah, it hasn't got the original paint on top, which is good because it means I can actually now go and do that.
• 6:14
  The interior is original.
• 6:16
  The engine's been rebuilt, but it's still original.
• 6:18
  It's got a three-speed gearbox.
• 6:20
  It's got a bus steering wheel.
• 6:22
  Dad had to put indicators on it, obviously, for road regulations.
• 6:26
  But other than that, it is absolutely as it was.
• 6:28
  What colour?
• 6:30
  It's a mustard yellow.
• 6:33
  Okay.
• 6:35
  It's got red interior, leather interior.
• 6:38
  It's got the rear doors of silver sides, so they actually open up backwards.
• 6:42
  You've got a bench seat at the front, bench seat at the back, so it carries about 15 people.
• 6:46
  And it really is one of those things that, for us, it's just one of those great things that we'll keep in the family now forever.
• 6:55
  That little tip-tap, pitter-patter of feet you might have heard then is your beautiful doll going for a run to chase the ball.
• 7:00
  It's Lola, isn't it?
• 7:01
  Yeah, Lola.
• 7:02
  She's a pug cross Jack Russell.
• 7:06
  So, yeah, she's a bit of a maniac.
• 7:08
  She's full of energy.
• 7:10
  The pug side of it is that she's very cuddly.
• 7:13
  The Jack Russell side of it, she's very adventurous.
• 7:15
  So luckily where we are, we've got some land, and she ventures up the back and with her nose, sniffs out everything.
• 7:21
  She's a showstopper.
• 7:22
  She'll steal this interview, which is quite cool.
• 7:25
  I can remember, mate, a freckly-faced, ginger-haired, Jack Perkins in the paddock following his dad, Larry.
• 7:30
  He'd come into the commentary box, G'day, mate, you know, and he'd set me straight, quite rightly, on some racing stuff.
• 7:36
  You're a little bit older, but...
• 7:38
  Like him, was Pitt Lane, was the paddock in motorsport, did that kind of become a home away from home at times for you?
• 7:44
  It did.
• 7:44
  I think Sandown was probably more the frequent pits.
• 7:48
  I do remember running around the back of the pits at Sandown.
• 7:51
  I think I was about 10, 12.
• 7:54
  Yeah, probably the same, annoying the crap out of everyone, saying hello to everyone, having a pass to be able to get most places.
• 8:01
  And, you know, Dad was a chief scrutineer at sort of those times as well.
• 8:04
  So, yeah, fortunate enough to be able to see the good old days of what the cars were, what the category was.
• 8:11
  You know, the interaction of Brock was very early in my days.
• 8:16
  How did you first meet him?
• 8:17
  He became a great mentor for you, obviously, which we'll get to in this chat.
• 8:20
  But what was the first meeting with him?
• 8:22
  It was at the, I'd say it was probably around that time, about 12.
• 8:25
  Dad introduced me to him.
• 8:27
  I actually, I don't know if I still got it.
• 8:29
  I might still have it somewhere in an archive box somewhere.
• 8:32
  I posted with him signing it to Craig, best wishes, Peter Brock.
• 8:38
  And I've kept it forever.
• 8:41
  As I said, it'll be in an archive box somewhere.
• 8:42
  But, yeah, that was the early days.
• 8:45
  And because of Dad's connection through that, that he obviously knew Peter.
• 8:49
  And Peter was, you know,
• 8:51
  as what he was you know he was very giving very friendly and of course you know from that point then I become more annoying and and hanging around and watching.
• 9:00
  Were there cars back then that really caught your eye on the track was there a car that like wow that is cool.
• 9:06
  Oh, I think the early, early days, the early Commodores, the big bangers.
• 9:11
  Like when you used to hear them run down the main straight of Sandown, the noise and the rumble.
• 9:16
  And I think that, you know, I do remember probably the latter days, I think it was 96 or so, even at Oram Park.
• 9:24
  They got all the old cars back and they did a demonstration.
• 9:27
  And, you know, the only time I've ever seen the whole of pit lane put their tools down and run to pit wall and hear these cars run around again.
• 9:35
  And I think that for me, the memories of all those big bangers running around and, of course, growing up in that era, for me, was unbelievable.
• 9:44
  And then, of course, getting the opportunity to drive the 72 Tirana was...
• 9:47
  around on the Brock Parade in 06 was, for me, a bit of history just to see what they dealt with and what they had to deal with in the sense of what we do today.
• 9:58
  We'll come to that story soon.
• 10:01
  Obviously, with the crazy stuff around the property, your dad must have got to a point where we went, right, let's go motor racing.
• 10:07
  Four wheel, four wheel.
• 10:09
  What was it?
• 10:09
  Obviously, karting first time.
• 10:10
  Where was it?
• 10:11
  And what kind of kart?
• 10:12
  That sort of thing.
• 10:13
  It was an arrow cart, Drew Price, and it was something that Dad bought it.
• 10:20
  I was a rookie.
• 10:21
  I was, like, junior.
• 10:23
  I just, you know, we were racing motocross at young age, but, you know, sort of around the 10, 9, 10 mark that we got a go-kart.
• 10:31
  I remember going, it was Whittlesey, where the Eastern Lions go-kart club, which is still running, but now it's up at Pocapunil.
• 10:37
  Yeah.
• 10:39
  But it was at Whittlesea at the time.
• 10:41
  It was a little kidney-shaped track.
• 10:43
  It was really like a 12-second, if that, sort of lap time.
• 10:46
  It was really quick.
• 10:48
  But I do remember that we went there for the first time.
• 10:51
  I was on my P's.
• 10:52
  Actually, I was on my Looners.
• 10:55
  They allowed me to, normally at the time, and now, that you obviously, as you're going through your grading, you have to start at the back of the field the whole time.
• 11:02
  But back then, I don't know for what reason they decided, they allowed me to rotate through the field, and I actually won one of the races.
• 11:09
  So...
• 11:10
  I think from that point on, it'd become more of a passion.
• 11:14
  I remember going to the track.
• 11:15
  It was my club track.
• 11:16
  You know, sometimes it'd be raining, sometimes it wouldn't.
• 11:20
  Back then, we weren't allowed to have wet-weather tyres, so Dad would just push me out, say, good luck, basically.
• 11:26
  But he'd also go out, although he's not a race driver as such, but he's more of the mechanical background, he'd stand on the track and make me drive around him to try and learn the apexes and the lines and everything else.
• 11:41
  the craft and understanding what and how to look at corners and how to flow things, you know, and those early days running around with out-wit-weather tyres, you learn how to find the grip on the track, you know, running around the outside of corners like we all do now.
• 11:54
  And so a lot of the background for me of what I know and my ability all comes from those early days.
• 12:00
  You originally wanted to buy, if memory serves, a Ford Escort RS2000 as your first car.
• 12:06
  Cool car.
• 12:07
  I still love those.
• 12:08
  But your dad kind of encouraged you, swayed you towards a Cortina, a little bit of an older car, 1966 Model Mk I.
• 12:17
  Where did you find that?
• 12:18
  What state was it in?
• 12:19
  And you've kept it, haven't you?
• 12:21
  Yes, I did.
• 12:22
  Still in the garage at home.
• 12:23
  And that story is that, yeah, I, for some reason, I grew up loving the RS2000 car.
• 12:31
  I think it was more just the, more a little bit of the rally side of it as well and just the robust of what the RS was.
• 12:37
  And I wanted to buy one.
• 12:40
  Typical dad, I remember sitting in the lounge room going through the trading post, which was paper back then.
• 12:44
  Now it's all electronic.
• 12:45
  Flicking through the paper and trying to, and I'm circling all these cars and I'm like, dad, dad, you know, this has got this and this has got that.
• 12:51
  He's like, how much?
• 12:52
  I tell him, like, nah.
• 12:53
  I was like, oh, damn.
• 12:55
  How much back then?
• 12:56
  What are we talking?
• 12:57
  Oh, I think they were about $1,200.
• 12:58
  Like it was.
• 12:59
  Which was a lot of money.
• 13:00
  Which was a lot of money back then.
• 13:01
  And dad's like, nah.
• 13:02
  And I'm like, oh, God, here we go.
• 13:04
  So I'm flicking through the paper trying to find it.
• 13:05
  Anyway.
• 13:07
  He sort of persuaded me to look at Cortinas, and Dad was part of the actual, the 500, the Cortina 500 that we're racing.
• 13:15
  And so anyway, so I started looking at them.
• 13:16
  I wasn't a really big fan of them, but Mongbok, which is out east of Melbourne, I think.
• 13:22
  found this red one.
• 13:23
  It was a 440.
• 13:24
  It was a four-door.
• 13:26
  It was registered at the time from memory.
• 13:29
  It was straight.
• 13:30
  It was a bit dirty in the sense that the colour was faded, but it was all sort of, in a sense, mechanically a solid car.
• 13:37
  So I bought that.
• 13:38
  I bought another green one because I was doing my apprenticeship at the time.
• 13:41
  So I'd left school and, you know, trying to earn money and everything else.
• 13:44
  So I bought the red one, bought a green one.
• 13:47
  I think you owned three all up, didn't you?
• 13:49
  And then I bought an original GT, which is what got me fascinated.
• 13:53
  I bought an original GT and I bought it south of Melbourne, but it was parked on the side of the road and someone ran out the back of it, so all the back of it had all been stovet in, but it had all the GT parts.
• 14:03
  Nice.
• 14:04
  Then I looked at what I was going to do and I was actually going to think about, because where Dad's workshop was, the next door was the panel shop, and I was talking to them about whether we could re-
• 14:12
  structure this GT car.
• 14:14
  And then we had a good look at it.
• 14:15
  The front strut tower had been seamed, welded, so we had a crash in the front and hit the back and they said, look, you know, it's not worth it.
• 14:22
  So then in the end, I took the red one off, off basically the road, stripped it completely, had it in dad's workshop, so after at night,
• 14:32
  I'd go around and, um, and I'd pull the engine out, wash down the engine bay, sort of got that painted.
• 14:38
  We looked at everything else and then we left the red color on it for that time being still had the original four cylinder in it.
• 14:45
  Um, but I put the GT running gear in it.
• 14:47
  So the gearbox, uh, the, uh,
• 14:50
  The little short housing that comes up through the nose and sort of up through the centre of the car and the little short shift gear change, had all that.
• 14:57
  Centre console, put the GT dash in it, which was the centre gauges, sort of turned it into a lookalike.
• 15:05
  And I actually remember driving it to Queensland, driving it back from Queensland, and I just got past Albury from memory, and it broke a valve spring, an exhaust one from memory.
• 15:17
  So anyway, I kept driving it.
• 15:20
  I drove it home, finally got it home.
• 15:22
  Good old thing it was.
• 15:23
  And then I obviously looked at the engine, and the engine was pretty damaged.
• 15:27
  So at that time, we had a car at work that a lady didn't want anymore, and it was an escort, and it had the Pinto engine, and I'm like, how good is this?
• 15:35
  So I literally bought that.
• 15:37
  I then took the engine back out of the Cortina, then transplanted the...
• 15:42
  the Escort Pinto 2-litre engine into the engine bay, which then I had to cut and shut the cross member to suit the engine mount.
• 15:50
  So I also had to then cut the tunnel to open up the tunnel to accommodate the Escort gearbox.
• 15:56
  I think from memory it makes about 140, 150 horsepower at the rear wheels.
• 15:59
  It revs to about 7, 8 horsepower.
• 16:04
  So it revs out well.
• 16:06
  It's a very unassuming engine.
• 16:07
  And, of course, I used to have fun because of being back then on my sort of on my P's, power to weight ratio, which was something that most people didn't think about.
• 16:15
  So my friends had SLE Commodores with the 253 V8, thinking it's a V8, it's going to blow everything off.
• 16:21
  And, of course, my little, sorry, Cortina with the Escort engine, it used to blow them away.
• 16:26
  Greg Murphy, who you won Bathurst with in 96, had a Datsun 1200 in his first car.
• 16:32
  And he's now got a 1200 SSS, which he let me drive recently.
• 16:36
  So it's got, I think, a 1500 motor in it with twin side-drafter autos.
• 16:40
  And, mate, it's a little car, so I look like a gorilla in a sardine trying to drive it.
• 16:47
  But you forget, don't you, how far cars have come.
• 16:50
  So heavy steering, the brakes aren't anything like today.
• 16:53
  What's the Cortina like to drive?
• 16:56
  To be honest, Lara drives it more than I do.
• 16:58
  What are we talking, Sunday coffee runs with the peer review?
• 17:01
  Well, no, she actually drives it down to the shopping centre and gets it out.
• 17:05
  But you're right.
• 17:06
  You actually sit in it and you forget how short and closed up you are inside.
• 17:09
  It's got no power steering, no brake assists.
• 17:11
  So you've got to hit the brake pedal hard to get it to stop.
• 17:15
  It has got side draft webbers that actually put...
• 17:18
  And now thinking back on it, I think Dad sold me a bit of a furphy.
• 17:21
  So I put 48 side giraffe webbers on it, and it used to have this real flat spot down low.
• 17:28
  So you used to have to rev it to get it going.
• 17:29
  And he's like, oh, that's just standard.
• 17:30
  That's it.
• 17:31
  So for all my years, I've had this flat spot in this car.
• 17:37
  And what it actually did is the car spent 10, 11 years at the Ford Museum down in Geelong.
• 17:42
  The museum shut down.
• 17:43
  So I get this phone call about three years ago saying, look, we need to get you to come and pick up your car.
• 17:47
  I'm like, oh, that's right, I still got that, haven't I?
• 17:49
  Completely forgot about it.
• 17:50
  So got it back.
• 17:52
  Dad got it roadworthy to Melbourne.
• 17:54
  We got it shipped up to Queensland.
• 17:57
  And then I was going to get it registered and I was going to put it on the club reg.
• 18:00
  And then obviously there's some certain regulations that you obviously need to drive them a certain amount of time and everything else.
• 18:05
  And I thought, no, bugger this.
• 18:06
  I want to drive it when I can or when I want.
• 18:08
  So we went to go get it registered.
• 18:11
  And the problem was we had to find evidence of my ownership of it.
• 18:16
  Wow.
• 18:16
  And I'm like, hmm, how am I going to find that out?
• 18:19
  I put that.
• 18:20
  Well, I have it at the glove box.
• 18:22
  No way.
• 18:23
  There was an old registration sticker and paperwork in my name back in 1996.
• 18:30
  I love it.
• 18:31
  So it had been sitting in the glove box all these years, which I had never... For some reason, I don't know why I left it in it.
• 18:37
  And then, of course, I took it down to the road traffic branch up here in Queensland.
• 18:41
  They obviously knew who I was.
• 18:43
  They, you know, believe me enough.
• 18:45
  And I got the car registered.
• 18:47
  So we have been driving it.
• 18:48
  I've...
• 18:49
  Finally had it on a dyno again up here.
• 18:52
  And the guy that dynoed it for me, which does a lot of performance stuff, was basically laughing, going, why did you put 48 side draft webbers on this thing?
• 18:59
  I said, well, I got led to believe that that's what I needed for obviously the camshaft, the valves, everything.
• 19:04
  Needed a bit of breathing space.
• 19:06
  And he goes, well, the...
• 19:07
  The chokes that you have inside it were too big, hence why you've got a flat spot.
• 19:11
  So anyway, long story short is that he got some new chokes made up because I had to get them made because I had to be downsized so much.
• 19:20
  And it's now got rid of the flat spot.
• 19:23
  It's now a nicer car to drive.
• 19:25
  It's still got the horsepower, but it's completely transformed the car.
• 19:28
  So all these years, my dad dudded me, and I thought it was just normal that the car drove like a pig, but it's actually not.
• 19:35
  It's a nice car to drive.
• 19:36
  I love it.
• 19:36
  There is something cool about driving a car like that.
• 19:39
  Formula Ford, as we kind of venture back to racing here, proven pathway for so many supercars, Formula One, you name it when you look at the bios.
• 19:46
  Single seater, no wings.
• 19:47
  Back then, a 1600cc Kent engine, I think, wasn't it?
• 19:51
  You made the step from karts.
• 19:53
  Did that come easily?
• 19:54
  What were the early learnings of Formula Ford?
• 19:57
  Dad was always very much a belief of...
• 20:01
  for me to do all my preparation and my work, and that was through the go-karts.
• 20:04
  We got to a stage where we could have stayed in go-karts and gone, okay, this is it.
• 20:08
  This is my life.
• 20:09
  I played football, AFL, played cricket in summer.
• 20:12
  So I was an active kid, but driving was a passion.
• 20:15
  Obviously, Dad, you know, through his line of work was obviously a passion.
• 20:19
  So we got to a point where we said, all right, we can sell everything up as a go-kart side of it, see what we've got, and then we'll look at what we can buy.
• 20:26
  And I said, okay, fine.
• 20:27
  So we actually sold all the go-karts, the trailer.
• 20:29
  At that stage, we had two frames, which were both arrows.
• 20:33
  I think we had about four engines, the go-kart trailer, sold everything up, all the spares.
• 20:39
  And then we basically didn't have a lot of money.
• 20:42
  I think Dad borrowed some money.
• 20:44
  We bought this 85 Van Demon that was a little bit sort of how to do in the sense it needed a bit of repair work, it needed a bit of tidying up.
• 20:55
  We had time at that time to be able to do that.
• 20:59
  I can't remember exactly the cost.
• 21:02
  I think it was about $15,000.
• 21:04
  And that was the car that...
• 21:07
  the trailer and the spare wheels.
• 21:10
  And that was really literally it.
• 21:11
  So we got the car again, after work, cause I was doing my apprenticeship with dad at the time, we'd pull the thing apart, we'd have a good look at it.
• 21:19
  And dad was very methodical about, you know, learning how to pull things apart and understanding them, looking at them, measuring them, taking photos of them, whatever you had to do to make sure that we could put back together.
• 21:29
  So that was a huge learning curve for me.
• 21:31
  He'd go from go-karts, which you know, a little engine on the side of the cart, no gears, no nothing to a gearbox,
• 21:37
  suspension clutches everything and anything so for me it was a huge learning curve but I did all the work and you know we had a gentleman Ray Robbins who was very much a big part of supercars he was doing panel work next door
• 21:51
  So he actually did all the body work for me and helped me do all the body work side of it.
• 21:55
  So Ray did all that.
• 21:57
  I did all the mechanical sides.
• 21:58
  I remember we raced it at Winton for the first time.
• 22:01
  Winton was my first club track.
• 22:03
  And I got pulled up for an illegal intake manifold.
• 22:08
  What we didn't know at the time is when we bought it, the manifold, and what the trick was back then was to run a double gasket under the carburetor to give it more torque.
• 22:17
  And then, of course, that become illegal to run double gaskets and then they made them run them back to single, which is what they come with.
• 22:24
  But then when you've got to appreciate, when a road engine sits in a road car, it sits on an angle, so they machine the manifold for the carburetor to sit flat.
• 22:32
  But then when you put the engine flat, the carby leans forward.
• 22:37
  So what they did was instead of...
• 22:40
  machining the high spot down to run the carby flat, this manifold actually built up the low spot, which was hence the same as what you'd run two gaskets.
• 22:50
  So it had more, anyway.
• 22:51
  So long story short, we got pulled up, tapped on the shoulder, and I got excluded from the first race, if I ever did, which again, I was going through my P's because of this illegal manifold, which I had no idea.
• 23:00
  So we had a steep learning curve.
• 23:02
  Obviously fixed that.
• 23:03
  We built the first engine rebuild on the engine.
• 23:08
  Did that at the workshop.
• 23:11
  Dad's, again, dad's motto was it was a three-year program.
• 23:15
  The first year we would do club racing.
• 23:18
  Second year we'd use the same car but as a national program.
• 23:22
  And then hopefully the third year get enough training
• 23:24
  interest sponsorship to obviously do the third year.
• 23:27
  We started off the first year doing club racing at Winton.
• 23:31
  We managed to win that as a club.
• 23:35
  We then put the second year into program.
• 23:38
  We got a little bit of sponsorship to be able to do that.
• 23:40
  So dad said, look, we'll run the same car, the 85.
• 23:42
  And that was back in, so the first year we did it in 91.
• 23:45
  Second year was 92.
• 23:48
  We'll do the national races and see where we end up.
• 23:51
  So the first year,
• 23:53
  We did all the club races.
• 23:54
  We also raced at Phillip Island and Sandown just to get a familiarisation and a feel.
• 24:00
  Second year we did all the national – we started with the national rounds.
• 24:03
  We got halfway through the year and a gentleman by the name of David Ratcliffe who has a trucking spares in Sydney who I was racing against tapped us on the shoulder and said, look, I've got this 89 Raynard, another Formula Ford, NJV.
• 24:19
  said, I've got two daughters, a family that's not really interested in motor racing anymore.
• 24:23
  I want to spend more time with them.
• 24:24
  I need to sell the car, but I need the car to perform.
• 24:27
  So I would like you to run the car, race the car.
• 24:31
  You maintain it and, you know, see where we end up.
• 24:35
  So the end of that year, which was in 92, we ended up 16th in the National Series.
• 24:39
  At the end of the year, David got to sell the car because of the performance that we'd done in it.
• 24:43
  And at the end of that 92, he turned around and said, look, for what you've done, I'm going to buy you a 93 current Van Diemen car.
• 24:53
  And you guys, again, I'll supply the car.
• 24:55
  You maintain it, run it with costs.
• 24:58
  And history shows that we ended up winning that year in 93.
• 25:02
  And if it wasn't for David Ratcliffe to be able to do what he did, I wouldn't probably be here.
• 25:06
  You've kept one, did you?
• 25:07
  Was it the very first one you raced and you've restored that too?
• 25:11
  So, yeah, so when we sold our 85, we actually sold it to Jim Murcott, who at the time was running the driver training school in Sandown.
• 25:20
  I actually was an instructor out there for a number of years.
• 25:22
  Jim was always very good at helping young junior drivers develop and giving them a job as an instructor.
• 25:28
  So I actually instructed out there with Karen McConville and a few others out there at the time, early days.
• 25:31
  So he ended up buying the 85 office.
• 25:35
  to use it as a club or a school car.
• 25:38
  So we knew where the car was all the time.
• 25:40
  Unfortunately, Jim's passed on, and then all the cars, the business sort of sold all the cars up.
• 25:46
  So at the time, Dad had an opportunity to buy the car back, and we did.
• 25:49
  And then it sat, the car actually sat in Melbourne, in a shed actually, Laurie Nelson, who used to be an old Group A racer.
• 25:56
  used to race a Mustang, sat in his garage or his shed up at home for about two years to basically go to a point where Dad said, pull your finger out, what are we doing with this car?
• 26:06
  So then over one Christmas, the kids and I actually went down to Melbourne, spent two weeks in Melbourne.
• 26:12
  We pulled the car completely apart.
• 26:15
  It was yellow.
• 26:16
  They repainted it yellow because we had it white and blue and completely restored it.
• 26:21
  So it's sitting in the shed now.
• 26:23
  99% done.
• 26:24
  It actually just needs a setup done in it.
• 26:27
  Have you driven it?
• 26:27
  I've started it.
• 26:28
  I haven't driven it.
• 26:29
  Lara's sat in it and we know we can get gears.
• 26:32
  The gearbox works.
• 26:34
  And we've literally driven it into the shed and it stayed there.
• 26:36
  So I've got to get Dad down and actually take it into the workshop, AAA, and do the proper setup now of it.
• 26:41
  But it's mechanically all good.
• 26:44
  And it took us about a year to restore it.
• 26:48
  Actually, the interesting thing is Ray Robbins said,
• 26:51
  Later, like now later down the track, this is, I'm talking about 15 sort of more years, he still had the same paint.
• 26:58
  No way.
• 26:59
  And the colours of what, when he painted originally.
• 27:01
  So, again, we gave Ray the body work.
• 27:05
  He cleaned it up, patched it up and it's painted back in the white and blue as what, and the same paint as I had it back in...
• 27:12
  91 or end of 90, 91, 92.
• 27:15
  I've got to get the stickers made up and literally just finish off a few things, but it's ready to go.
• 27:21
  So you mentioned Formula Brabham or what became known as Formula Holden.
• 27:24
  This is going to be a really crude description for listeners, but it's kind of for non-motorsport followers.
• 27:29
  It's like a scaled down looking Formula One car, wings powered by a Holden engine back then.
• 27:35
  Tell us about the one you campaigned.
• 27:36
  I think it was a Cheetah chassis, wasn't it?
• 27:37
  What a...
• 27:38
  Yeah, it was a Brian Sampson, actually Australian-built aluminium monocoque.
• 27:43
  I think from memory it was an 80s-built, and we called it the Black Death.
• 27:50
  What?
• 27:50
  Well, it was black, and it was one of those cars that –
• 27:57
  It looked like he was, when Brian was building it or designed it, it looked like he was building a canoe and went wrong, flipped it upside down, cut a hole in the bottom of it, put some four wheels on it and wings and went racing.
• 28:09
  It was really a very square-looking agricultural style of car.
• 28:14
  Every time we went up a category, we tried to do the basics well.
• 28:17
  So the first thing was to get the thing mechanically right.
• 28:21
  I remember at Eastern Creek, the foam in the fuel tank was that bad.
• 28:25
  It used to fall apart, fill up the fuel filter all the time, and we finally got the tank out.
• 28:31
  We cleaned it out, got it all sorted.
• 28:33
  And the car itself was a reasonable car.
• 28:35
  Like, it wasn't a bad car, but we were racing against carbon fibre monocoques and, you know, 91, 92 Raynards.
• 28:43
  And as I said, this old car was old.
• 28:47
  And every time we used to run it, because being in aluminium and all the rivets and it was that old, we used to have to corner weight it every time we raced it because the rivets would move and the car would change.
• 28:57
  I remember having a wet race at Winton and we were leading the national race.
• 29:03
  And I think we ended up second or third race.
• 29:06
  And no one could believe it.
• 29:07
  But because it was so old and so soft, like in the sense of the chassis, we had such good traction and we blew them away.
• 29:14
  And then we got to a point where we needed to do something.
• 29:16
  So 94 was that year in that car.
• 29:21
  And we ended up winning the Silver Star or sort of the B class.
• 29:24
  I think we were sort of the top five or six in the national class.
• 29:29
  And then we needed to do something.
• 29:31
  But the end of 94 was probably my first...
• 29:35
  big chance in touring cars.
• 29:37
  And that's when...
• 29:40
  Jeff Gretsch rang up dad and said that, you know, we want to put Craig in the car.
• 29:46
  We want to basically see what he's got.
• 29:48
  So I remember doing a day out at Calder Park during that year and basically I was the gopher, you know, bedding in brakes, the gearbox, everything that needed to be bedded in and basically all the crap jobs I did.
• 30:04
  And then at the end of the day, I...
• 30:07
  They basically said, look, we're gonna give you a set of ties.
• 30:10
  This is what we want you to do.
• 30:11
  This is a lap time we hope you can do.
• 30:13
  And basically went out there and I can't remember I did it in half a dozen laps, but I got past, I bettered the time that they wanted.
• 30:21
  And Rick Kemp,
• 30:27
  Fred or Tony Fredgerton, those guys that were on the mechanic and on the car and that sort of came up.
• 30:32
  And I remember Rick Kemp saying something to me like, you know, he was really impressed.
• 30:39
  And I said, oh, thanks.
• 30:40
  And I didn't realize what we'd sort of accomplished at that point.
• 30:44
  Everyone was like, oh yeah, great job, yeah, awesome.
• 30:47
  And it wasn't until sort of, I think a week later that I, and then we got another phone call from Jeff Brett saying that we want you to be part of the lineup for Sandown and Bathurst at the end of 94.
• 30:55
  And that was like, that was huge.
• 30:57
  So for me, we threw that test drive.
• 31:02
  we managed then to be part of the driver line-up for Santa Ana Bathurst.
• 31:04
  Which car in the HRT family was it back then that you got to drive?
• 31:09
  And just share with the listeners a bit more about that experience, that first time you were let loose and really allowed to explore it.
• 31:17
  It was the Brock car from memory.
• 31:20
  Peter, because we were using Calder Parkers, that was their test track.
• 31:24
  And they were testing and obviously they were getting ready for the Enduros.
• 31:28
  And yeah, I think that we did the run in Brock's car and we, I can't remember, we weren't far off Brock's time from memory and that's what blew them away.
• 31:39
  And for me, I was probably naive, I was naive, but I just drove it for what I felt the car was, and I was capable of doing.
• 31:48
  So yeah, from that, I partnered up with Brad Jones.
• 31:52
  I remember going to Sandown,
• 31:57
  I think we set the fastest lap time in 1994 from memory.
• 32:02
  But I knew Sandown really well because I was a driver instructor out there through the Mercot schooling.
• 32:07
  So I knew Sandown really well.
• 32:08
  So I was quite comfortable in the car at Sandown, but it wasn't until I got to Bathurst is when I really struggled.
• 32:13
  That was, for me ultimately, that was the biggest challenge to get my head around.
• 32:18
  And again, the team were really good.
• 32:20
  I remember Jeff,
• 32:21
  sitting me down talking to me saying, look, you know, we're not putting any pressure on you.
• 32:23
  We don't want you to try and overdrive the car or do anything silly.
• 32:27
  We just want you to, you know, circulate, bring the car back and see where we end up.
• 32:31
  And I'm like, wow.
• 32:34
  What people probably don't appreciate and understand is early in that year at Bathurst, it was the 12-hour.
• 32:42
  And I remember I raced the 12-hour hoping that end of that year that we'd get a drive at Bathurst.
• 32:49
  at Bathurst in anything.
• 32:50
  So I used that 12 hours as basically a learning tool.
• 32:54
  I remember racing a triple S Pulsar, Nissan Pulsar.
• 32:57
  And I remember saying at the time it took me two laps to find a radio station, because it was literally a production car.
• 33:03
  Had a roll cage, a seat, and that was it.
• 33:06
  And I actually raced with the Morris brothers.
• 33:09
  And we won our class,
• 33:14
  And it was quite amazing.
• 33:15
  It was, yeah, it was a great experience.
• 33:19
  But then from driving a Nissan Pulsar, which was a two-litre front-wheel drive car, to then like a supercar or, you know, a Group A car or a Touring car.
• 33:29
  Massive horsepower difference.
• 33:30
  I mean, everything, you know.
• 33:31
  Well, I struggled and I remember going there and I was miles off the pace.
• 33:35
  I was like three seconds off the pace or something ridiculous.
• 33:37
  And I can remember Brad Jones having meetings in the corner basically saying, what in the hell have you done to me?
• 33:44
  Why have you put this kid in my car?
• 33:46
  And...
• 33:47
  It wasn't until the point where Brock sat me down and then explained term one to the last corner, where to place the car, how to run the car, what to look for, how to flow the car, get off the brakes here, allow the car to do this.
• 34:01
  And it was the next session that I went out that I'd closed the gap by a second and a half.
• 34:08
  And I was still about a second off the pace, but I was much closer to where I needed to be.
• 34:12
  And then from that point on, I got faster and faster, and I got more familiar with the feel of what I needed to do and drive the car and how to drive the car around a place like Bathurst.
• 34:21
  So for me, it wasn't until Brock sat me down that I was out of my depth.
• 34:25
  I was massively out of my depth.
• 34:27
  And then, of course, you go fast forward.
• 34:30
  At the race itself...
• 34:33
  Like, I wasn't supposed to be in the car at the end of the race.
• 34:37
  That was not the plan.
• 34:38
  Like, the whole plan was for Brad to bring it home.
• 34:40
  Start the race, me to do the middle bits, be the sort of the... Lunchtime driver.
• 34:44
  The lunchtime driver, the rookie, and then for Brad to bring it home.
• 34:47
  But somewhere along the line, either the calculations got out of whack or whatever happened, Brad had done his time.
• 34:53
  He ran out of time, literally couldn't continue to do any more laps.
• 34:57
  So that meant I had to get back in the car at the end of the race.
• 34:59
  And so I'm at the back end of this race...
• 35:02
  We were second at the time.
• 35:04
  We had a safety car.
• 35:07
  And I remember because conversation I had with John Bowe later in life, Bowe radioed to the team, which was Dick Johnson's team, and said, oh, who's behind us and who's the competition?
• 35:19
  And I believe from what Bowe had told me that Tim had come back, said, oh, yeah, Craig Lowndes is in the 015 car.
• 35:29
  But he's no threat.
• 35:31
  The next one beyond that, I think, was Tony Longhurst.
• 35:33
  And it was Longhurst and I think it was Larry was third and fourth.
• 35:37
  So they sort of dismissed me.
• 35:39
  And then at the restart, I got up and got a good run on.
• 35:42
  I come out of turn one and I remember I had a great run on Bowie.
• 35:45
  And the strength of the Commodore back then was it had good straight line handling, it had good straight line speed.
• 35:49
  And I had a slipstream up over the crest of the mountain straight.
• 35:52
  I pulled out, got alongside him.
• 35:54
  And I still reckon that Bowie had broken early because I thought I broke about where I normally did or probably a little bit beyond where I normally did.
• 36:01
  But the way it looks, and if anyone Googles it, I just had this massive slingshot around the outside of him into turn two.
• 36:08
  And then I led the biggest race of my life for a lap and a half.
• 36:12
  And so for me, I was just, again, gone from being so slow at the beginning of the Bathurst week to then leading the race.
• 36:20
  And then it wasn't until we had a back marker at the last corner that just interrupted my flow because I went down the inside of him.
• 36:27
  I remember it.
• 36:28
  He then turned in on me and I had to check up.
• 36:31
  And then Bowie got a run on me down pit straight, got me into turn one.
• 36:36
  We went back up mountain straight and I think I was about a second and a half off him.
• 36:39
  sort of the team would sort of encourage me, trying to get my head right.
• 36:42
  And I was just at a point where I was just getting...
• 36:45
  sort of more familiar and get the flow back.
• 36:47
  And there was about a couple of laps to go and the fuel light come on the dash.
• 36:51
  And I radioed to the team and they basically said, look, you're going to have to stop the pursuit and now just bring it home.
• 36:59
  Save fuel where you can.
• 37:00
  I think at that point we had a big enough gap on third, which was Longhurst.
• 37:04
  And so I had to then back off because I was slowly sort of catching Barry again.
• 37:08
  I don't know whether I would have been able to pass him, but hopefully...
• 37:11
  You'd be able to close the gap back up to him and make it look interesting.
• 37:14
  But we had to back off, save fuel.
• 37:16
  We finished second.
• 37:18
  And that's what started my career.
• 37:19
  But what I didn't know at the time, and again, talking to Bowie down the track and cagey old man he is, he told me that he was about half a lap away himself from having to back off.
• 37:32
  Because they were running out of fuel.
• 37:34
  So he said if I'd pursued him for another half a lap, he would have had to back off because he wouldn't have made it home either.
• 37:41
  So he said he was very thankful that I backed off first, then he can then ease it off and we both finish one too.
• 37:47
  But, yeah, if I had enough fuel, if only, what maybe, what could have been?
• 37:52
  Who knows?
• 37:53
  It was clearly a turning point, though, for you, mate, because you came to grips with Bathurst.
• 37:59
  Did that happen because of the stress?
• 38:02
  Were you relaxed about it?
• 38:04
  Were you just revelling because of the track and the place?
• 38:06
  What transpired there?
• 38:09
  I think until, as I said, to point to where Brock sat me down and I got comfortable with the track.
• 38:16
  And I think that...
• 38:18
  If I hadn't had that, I would have struggled and it would have taken me probably a number of times to get used, a number of years to get used to it.
• 38:23
  And I don't know whether I had that opportunity.
• 38:25
  The team were very good in the sense of the backing and the support they had.
• 38:28
  But it wasn't, as I said, it wasn't until Brock sat me down that we actually then got comfortable to be able to keep pushing the limits of the car and, you know, finding the limits, especially over Skyline and, you know, not braking over Skyline to allow the car to flow down into the dipper and...
• 38:43
  get out of forest elbow, make sure that, you know, you look for that crack in the inside corner just to straighten it up and drive it out.
• 38:48
  So for me, it was a big turning point, I think, just in that week.
• 38:53
  But then to have the result we did in the race, unfortunately for both Brad and Thomas Mazira, the following year in 95, then we paired up with Murph and, you know, we stuck it on pole position the second year.
• 39:07
  And then, you know, oh,
• 39:10
  I probably took the track probably a little bit for granted because 95, we had it on pole.
• 39:17
  I remember running down Conrod straight and we had the engine issue.
• 39:20
  And I remember I was chasing Jimmy.
• 39:22
  We were running second at the time.
• 39:23
  Jimmy Richards was in front of us and, you know, he was pulling away.
• 39:27
  And I remember going down the gears, trying to keep the thing going.
• 39:30
  And then, of course, it seized and we managed to roll it into the pit lane and our day was done.
• 39:33
  96.
• 39:36
  Again, Murph, you know, we had... Like, 96 was a complete amazing year.
• 39:42
  You know, to win the Shell-A-Turing car championship, then to sand down, then to go on to Bathurst.
• 39:46
  But then 97...
• 39:49
  As I said, probably I was a little bit cocky.
• 39:52
  I came back, again, partnered up with Murph, hit the wall passing a car across the top of the mountain where I probably shouldn't have been, probably just a little bit overconfident.
• 40:01
  And I was chasing scaife at the time, put it into the wall, destroyed our race.
• 40:06
  And I think that was at the time, at that moment,
• 40:10
  You take a step back, go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 40:12
  This place, you need a lot of respect for.
• 40:14
  You recounted about Bathurst with Brad Jones before.
• 40:16
  That was in the VP Commodore.
• 40:18
  96, epic year, championship.
• 40:20
  The Bathurst win, as you say.
• 40:22
  That was in the VR Commodore.
• 40:24
  Share a little bit about that car with us, what it was like to drive.
• 40:27
  How much of a step up or a change was it from the VP?
• 40:31
  Massive.
• 40:32
  I think Aero's...
• 40:34
  although we didn't have as much as we do now, but even just the transformation from one model to the next was definitely a big improvement.
• 40:41
  The other thing that people probably also need to appreciate and understand that back then we had tyre war.
• 40:45
  So we were racing against Dunlop and Yokohama and Bridgestone, who we were running, were passionate about...
• 40:53
  being superior.
• 40:54
  So I remember at the end of 95, we did like 13 days testing.
• 41:01
  Went to Eastern Creek, Malala, Phillip Island, Oram Park, everywhere and anywhere we could get a car on the track, we tested and it was 13 days.
• 41:10
  And I remember the test,
• 41:12
  vividly at Eastern Creek, which is now Sydney Motorsport Park.
• 41:16
  We were testing Bridgestone tyres against the Dunlop tyre.
• 41:19
  So Bridgestone had bought a whole heap of different compounds, structures, and literally I spent a day, I remember Brock and I were doing it, we spent a day just doing race runs, like 30-lap runs.
• 41:33
  Oh, really?
• 41:34
  And they didn't tell me what tyre it was, just they bolted a set of tyres on and they said, all right, go and do a 30-lap run.
• 41:41
  So you do a lap, see how consistent they were, see the tyre wear.
• 41:45
  Bridgestone guys would take them away, put another set on.
• 41:48
  So we started 96, far more structured and prepared than what anyone thought.
• 41:55
  Because I remember our first race was at Eastern Creek.
• 41:59
  Short track, under lights, we won it.
• 42:02
  I think Bowie was second.
• 42:05
  I can't remember who was third.
• 42:06
  It might have been Gardner.
• 42:07
  And I remember going into the weekend, Gardner basically saying, hey, cocky little driver, he won't even win a race, let alone a championship.
• 42:13
  And, you know, it was sort of – because at that point, no team had really put a lot of emphasis on young people or young drivers.
• 42:21
  So for me, it was a –
• 42:27
  at the end of 95 is something what I needed to be comfortable going to 96 so for me I and to be honest I was probably cocky enough not even worry about who the other drivers were I just wanted to win races and you know we won we won at Eastern Creek we went on to win another one and then another one and then all of a sudden people going oh okay this is something now different but we also knew and as I brought up the tyre war because we knew we got we when we go to tracks like a Malala track the Dunlop was superior you went to Orham Park
• 42:53
  the Bridgestone was going to be superior.
• 42:54
  You go to Sandown, it's pretty neutral.
• 42:56
  So you knew tracks that were going to be good for you and we knew tracks that were going to be a challenge.
• 43:01
  So we just had to make the best of what we had.
• 43:04
  And I remember, you know, we actually had a spreadsheet and we were just, as the year was going on, we were ticking off what we wanted to achieve.
• 43:10
  So, and it got to a point where I think it was Lakeside,
• 43:15
  where Bridgestone said, all right, whatever, if we could make you the perfect tyre, what would it be?
• 43:22
  And I said, you know, you need a soft compound at the outer layer that's obviously for qualifying, but then as it wears through, you want the compounds to get harder for the temperature and to maintain consistency, and they built it.
• 43:40
  This is Greg Rust and you're listening to Rusty's Garage.
• 43:44
  More with Craig Lowndes in a moment.
• 43:47
  In this series I speak to some of the most passionate car lovers I know, like former Australian Top Gear host, engineer and pure car nerd Steve Pezzardi.
• 43:57
  So they shut the road down and I was in a radical SR3 race car.
• 44:01
  And it was raining and foggy and misty and all this sort of stuff.
• 44:04
  And I thought, how have I ended up here?
• 44:07
  I'm on the Isle of Man TT Road in a race car, empty, no one around.
• 44:11
  And we were doing this filming and it sort of got me really annoyed because we were just doing these 50k an hour passes.
• 44:16
  And I said, you know what, stuff this.
• 44:18
  clipped it back a couple of gears and said, I'm out of here.
• 44:19
  I thought, I'm never going to get a chance to do this ever again.
• 44:21
  I don't care if the producer cracks it, I'm going to go.
• 44:24
  So I got to drive for about 15 minutes without the producer, without cameraman, and you know how rare that is, Rusty.
• 44:31
  And honestly, it sounds silly, but I thought, if I go over a cliff and die in a fiery wreck, I'd be happy with that.
• 44:39
  It doesn't get any better.
• 44:40
  Listen to the full episode with Steve Bazzardi here on Rusty's Garage.
• 44:49
  Naturally aspirated vs. super or turbocharged.
• 44:52
  A naturally aspirated engine takes in air to mix with fuel and create combustion on its own.
• 44:58
  Supercharged or turbocharged engines use some kind of compressor to force additional air into the engine.
• 45:03
  Much more fun.
• 45:06
  So at the height, the dizzy height of it all, Europe beckons a move back to open wheels.
• 45:10
  Why did you decide to do that?
• 45:12
  And was the dream Formula One, mate?
• 45:14
  Was that what you were thinking at the time?
• 45:15
  Well, it was.
• 45:16
  And I think that I suppose the connection through HRT at the time with Tom, he had the Arrows Formula One team based in Europe or England.
• 45:26
  So, yeah, the dream was still to have an open wheel career.
• 45:30
  Yeah.
• 45:32
  And we were hoping through the touring car side of it that we could create that, which we did, to be honest.
• 45:37
  I think that...
• 45:40
  Sat with Tom and Tom was, we were, and it was a crazy time because we had, we signed a management agreement with Tom, which was, which the whole purpose and the idea of that was to go forward to Formula One.
• 45:55
  And I do remember that Barry Sheen at the time, we were at Phillip Island, we were about to sign the deal and I spoke to him and Barry said, don't do it.
• 46:02
  Wow.
• 46:03
  Don't do it.
• 46:05
  And I'm like, no, no, but I want to get to Formula 1 now.
• 46:06
  This is my dream.
• 46:07
  This is what I want to do.
• 46:09
  And anyway, which later in life would become a bit of an issue.
• 46:14
  So you see, it's probably right.
• 46:15
  You should listen to the old Baz.
• 46:17
  But no, it gave me an opportunity through Tom because I remember at the end of 96, Tom invited me over to Europe.
• 46:25
  We went there and tested in Formula 3000.
• 46:28
  Actually, we tested a Formula 3 car.
• 46:31
  And because he, Tom himself had a junior Formula 3 team.
• 46:37
  And it was very quickly at that point that they could see that I was overdriving the car because I was so used to more horsepower.
• 46:45
  And whether that would have been a better option, don't know.
• 46:47
  But then we went and opted to do a test in a Formula 3000 team.
• 46:50
  So the first one was with Supernova.
• 46:54
  And it was at Sneddon.
• 46:55
  And again, the team could see that I had a background of touring cars already, the way my- The way you evolved.
• 47:03
  The way I evolved and the way I was driving.
• 47:05
  So they wanted to do a second test.
• 47:08
  We did the first test day, reconvened back to headquarters.
• 47:13
  They wanted to do another test.
• 47:14
  They rang Tom, said, we're going to go down to Jerez.
• 47:17
  and do another test.
• 47:19
  But unfortunately on the way down, when they were in France, the transporter got caught up in some sort of convoy blockade and whatever they did down then.
• 47:29
  So then that opportunity wasn't going to be able to present itself as quickly as we needed it to.
• 47:34
  So then Tom said, well, look, we've got another team with RSM Marco.
• 47:37
  They're testing at Hungary, which was the Formula 1 track.
• 47:44
  So we'll send you over there and do that.
• 47:46
  I said, okay, great.
• 47:47
  So I went over there, the test drive, it was two of us at the time, Ricardo Zonta and myself, we tested, we spent the day there testing.
• 47:56
  I came back to base, back to England, sat with Tom.
• 47:59
  Tom said, what you feel?
• 48:01
  Which team?
• 48:02
  What do you like?
• 48:03
  And at that time, both teams were very much English influenced in people.
• 48:09
  So I said, well, look, for me, it doesn't matter.
• 48:12
  Probably what I didn't appreciate at the time is where the teams were located.
• 48:16
  And I should have taken that into more consideration.
• 48:20
  Probably.
• 48:20
  But again, I was naive.
• 48:21
  I'd just come out of Australia.
• 48:23
  First time out of Australia in the sense of a full-time.
• 48:25
  I left it up to Tom.
• 48:26
  I came back to Australia at the end of 96.
• 48:29
  So it started in 97.
• 48:32
  Sorry, there was a big hype and obviously the media about me going back to Europe, racing, doing whatever I could.
• 48:37
  Tom did a deal with RSM Marco.
• 48:41
  Now, that team is based in Graz in Austria.
• 48:43
  So for me, again, hence why I probably should have taken more emphasis on where the team was based because I lived in Graz in Austria.
• 48:50
  So I ended up going over there, lived in Graz in Austria for 10 months, didn't really understand the language, had to try and learn German or Austrian, really struggled with the climate, everything, and really just got thrown in the deep end, to be honest.
• 49:04
  But what actually happened in a team relation is that,
• 49:07
  Literally all their team employees from the end of 96 left.
• 49:12
  So the start of 97, when I went back over there, they're a completely new team.
• 49:16
  Like very, very much an Austrian team.
• 49:21
  Matty Boniface, who was quite frequent here in Australia in touring cars, he actually came over to help engineer the car or actually run the car.
• 49:30
  Paul, who was from WA, he was the truck driver.
• 49:33
  He was the only two English-speaking people I had in the whole team.
• 49:35
  So from what I tested with to what I went back to was absolutely a brand-new team.
• 49:41
  My teammate was Juan Pablo Montoya, and basically that year was a huge...
• 49:47
  massive learning curve, massive.
• 49:49
  You drove RSM Marco, Helmut Marco, okay?
• 49:52
  So he's now the advisor to Red Bull owner, Dietrich Martisic, for their Formula One program for junior driver development.
• 50:00
  He's a hard taskmaster, made a tough boss.
• 50:02
  Was he fair?
• 50:03
  What was he like to work with?
• 50:04
  How did you find that?
• 50:05
  Oh, he was hard.
• 50:06
  He was very hard.
• 50:08
  So the point of at the start of the year, there was two cars, obviously Montoya and myself.
• 50:12
  We had one engineer who was Austrian.
• 50:14
  And he basically set both cars up the same.
• 50:17
  And I struggled for the first half of the year because coming from a touring car background, I had some bad traits, but the way that the car was getting set up didn't suit my style.
• 50:25
  So there was actually a gentleman that came from New Zealand who I'd worked a little bit with when I did the Formula Holden in New Zealand at the end of 95, Alan McCall.
• 50:35
  And he'd worked with some great Jim Clarks and other people and had a massive history.
• 50:40
  He actually, he and his wife,
• 50:44
  paid for their own way over, and he started to engineer me in the second half of the year.
• 50:48
  And we started to turn things around.
• 50:51
  You know, our best result was down at Enna, down in Sicily, and we had a fourth there.
• 51:00
  We were running fourth at Helsinki, our streets track, when the drive shaft broke.
• 51:05
  So really I was...
• 51:07
  At the end of the year, I think we finished 17th out of 32 cars, but that still wasn't enough momentum to go into the second year.
• 51:15
  So unfortunately, that was my only time in a single seater over there.
• 51:19
  But yeah, back to Dr Marco, you know, we go testing and he wanted to know from one lap why it wasn't faster than the previous lap and he was always on our case about, you know,
• 51:29
  different things.
• 51:31
  Squash was something I had to learn how to play because that was, you know, back then, that was something that he got all their drivers and whoever else,
• 51:41
  to play.
• 51:42
  And so Montoya and I used to play squash a lot.
• 51:45
  And he'd invite us to his house.
• 51:47
  I didn't have a car at the time.
• 51:48
  So he'd pick me up, take me out there, and then basically said, fine, get a cab home.
• 51:55
  Make your own way back.
• 51:57
  He was very, very straight up and down.
• 52:01
  So for me, it was a huge learning curve coming from a team like HRT at the time who were very much a supportive and supported you through everything to a team that was like black and white, either sink or swim.
• 52:14
  You mentioned Juan Montoya before.
• 52:15
  You said to me in a TV interview last year that he was a young man, a bit arrogant back then, but...
• 52:21
  I think you guys have cleared the air since then, haven't you?
• 52:23
  You've spoken about it.
• 52:24
  Are you cool now?
• 52:24
  Yeah, yeah, we're all fine now.
• 52:25
  I think that's – oh, look, he was cocky.
• 52:27
  He was young.
• 52:29
  You know, I found it frustrating because, you know, I was a qualified motor mechanic.
• 52:33
  I worked hard to get through to where I was.
• 52:36
  His parents were architects.
• 52:38
  um in columbia very not like lovely people um he was just really cocky and arrogant like he was just a complete different driver and a teammate that i've ever had um i learned again i learned as i said that year was a very much a character building year for me on and off track um you know i learned a lot um and you know for me uh
• 53:01
  at the end of the day, like, you know, I remember, you know, down in Sicily, when we were racing around the track down there, you know, he had a flat tyre.
• 53:06
  He was, he was fourth, I was fifth.
• 53:08
  He had a flat tyre.
• 53:09
  I went to pass him.
• 53:09
  He tried to drive me into the fence, um, cause he didn't want me to beat him.
• 53:12
  Like he was just a real arrogant driver.
• 53:15
  So, you know, uh,
• 53:16
  As I said, you learn different things along the way.
• 53:19
  And, you know, he was one of the drivers out of any of the drivers I've ever been with mentally had not – had mentally sort of got to me.
• 53:27
  And I think from that, though, point I became – I came back to Australia and I became a much stronger mentally –
• 53:34
  prepared driver than I'd ever been.
• 53:36
  The proof is that you reunite, you pine for home, you reunite with HRT, back in business, and the success story continues, mate.
• 53:42
  Two more championship wins, Lowndes and Holden, it just seemed meant to be.
• 53:48
  But in the early 2000s, you make a move that would shock many to forward a fresh challenge.
• 53:54
  Why?
• 53:56
  Because at the time...
• 53:58
  We were living in Queensland, the team were based in Melbourne.
• 54:01
  We started going different directions, to be honest.
• 54:03
  I think that the team directions where they were going were different sort of, and philosophy and I suppose a bit of that side of it was just different.
• 54:15
  So we spent six months in 2000.
• 54:18
  During 2000, we spent six months trying to renegotiate with the team.
• 54:24
  And I was keen and more than happy to stay with Holt.
• 54:27
  There's no doubt about that.
• 54:28
  But just, you know, the team itself wasn't where I wanted to be and the philosophy and the way they were operating was definitely not where I was.
• 54:36
  And it really was one of those moments where...
• 54:42
  You knew that it was definitely on the outer.
• 54:44
  Again, living in Queensland, I remember when Glenn Seton had his big crash at Phillip Island in 2000.
• 54:52
  And I rang my engineer at the time, Matty Crawford, and I said, have you heard anything about Glenn?
• 55:02
  And he says, yeah, yeah, we were first to the scene.
• 55:05
  I said, what do you mean you're first to the scene?
• 55:06
  She said, oh, we're down here testing, didn't you know?
• 55:08
  So they'd gone testing without even telling me or inviting me.
• 55:12
  I was definitely on the outer at that point.
• 55:14
  So there was a bit of bad blood at that point.
• 55:20
  And, you know, from both sides.
• 55:21
  It wasn't just from me or them.
• 55:23
  And we got to a point where we couldn't come to a resolution about where I wanted to be and where the team wanted me to be.
• 55:31
  And...
• 55:34
  I remember at the time as we're going through that six-month period that Jeff Polites from Ford rang up.
• 55:39
  He rang up and said, hi, it's Jeff from Ford.
• 55:43
  We understand and believe that you're going through some difficulties.
• 55:47
  We're here if you want to talk.
• 55:49
  or if you get to a point where you want to change, we're here to talk.
• 55:53
  I can't remember exact words, but something like that and just left me alone.
• 55:56
  So like two months went by.
• 55:58
  We got to a point where we couldn't make any headway into making a change.
• 56:04
  So I remember sitting...
• 56:08
  in a conference room in Melbourne, and Tom was there, and basically my lawyer was there.
• 56:15
  There was a couple of other people there, and Tom looked across the table at me and said, all right, just tell me straight up now, you want to stay or go?
• 56:24
  He was just blunt as that, and I said, I'm going.
• 56:27
  So that was the end of that.
• 56:29
  That was the end of the HRT drive side of it.
• 56:33
  Getting back to the Barry Sheen time was then we had to resolve the management agreement because we're still under contract to Tom as a manager.
• 56:40
  So we'd sort of resolved one hurdle, but then we jumped into another.
• 56:47
  I inadvertently made broken embargo on the news back then, which I deeply regretted, a hugely stressful time for you.
• 56:53
  How much did Brock help you through that?
• 56:55
  Because he'd walked a tough road before like this, hadn't he?
• 56:59
  Oh yeah, I remember sitting up at the house, when they had the house at Doreen at the time with Bev and Peter and sat with them and I said, look, you know, this is what we're going through.
• 57:07
  They knew what was going on.
• 57:09
  They weren't blind and the people in the industry knew what was going on.
• 57:12
  And I sat with Peter and,
• 57:15
  And Bev, and they basically said, you're not going to lose anything.
• 57:17
  And I said, well, how do you sort of claim that?
• 57:19
  Because at that point, we said that we're moving to Ford.
• 57:23
  And he said, well, you're going to have sort of 50% of the Holden base that are going to hate you because...
• 57:29
  you're defecting.
• 57:30
  You're still gonna have 50% that still appreciate and understand and love you for what you've done.
• 57:34
  Then on the other side, you're gonna have 50% of the Ford people hate you because you're still a Holden driver.
• 57:38
  But then you have the other 50% of Ford going, about time.
• 57:42
  So you're gonna have 100% of support anyway.
• 57:44
  You're not gonna lose, and it was actually right.
• 57:46
  It was, it was,
• 57:47
  100% right.
• 57:48
  Like we had Holden people that didn't like us because they felt like I betrayed them.
• 57:53
  And then you got the other side of it, the Ford fans going, no, no, no, you're still a Holden driver.
• 57:57
  We didn't want you anyway.
• 57:58
  And at that time it was a real competition within Ford because Jeff Polites wanted me to come across.
• 58:05
  And then you had Ambrose, Marcus Ambrose, that was getting sort of groomed to come in as well.
• 58:13
  So there was a bit of a battle there.
• 58:18
  internally in Ford about who was going to be the shining light, really, between Marcus and myself.
• 58:25
  You handled it superbly, mate.
• 58:26
  You paved the way for a lot of drivers in many respects that would follow because it was a deeply divided game in brand loyalty terms and you obviously spent a lot of time figuring out how you would manage that with the fans.
• 58:38
  That was important, was it?
• 58:39
  Oh, it was, and I think that fans have always been a massive influence for me and what I do and how I do it, and Brock was probably one of the biggest keys of understanding that side.
• 58:48
  Like, in the early days, you know, you go back to Bathurst, like, he'd drive into Bathurst, the circuit, and, you know, he'd look at the crowd, look at the grandstand, look at the mountain and go, like, you know, how good's this?
• 58:59
  You know, the atmosphere, the energy, everything was all a positive outlook.
• 59:03
  And so, for me, it was always about that side of it.
• 59:05
  And...
• 59:07
  I got told back then, like, you're never going to please everyone.
• 59:12
  But I didn't believe it.
• 59:13
  Like I thought still then you still make everyone happy.
• 59:16
  So for me, yeah, the fans have always been a massive part of who I am and what I've done.
• 59:21
  And, you know, for me, it was really important to try and continue that.
• 59:26
  Back into the cars.
• 59:27
  Memories of the first Ford supercar you drove.
• 59:31
  Where and what was it like?
• 59:34
  AU back it's, it was actually,
• 59:38
  A Stone Brothers car that the team had purchased.
• 59:42
  It was at Winton.
• 59:44
  And it was just a different beast.
• 59:47
  It was just harder to drive because the Commodore had such a broader window of operation.
• 59:51
  The AU potentially had the same speed, potentially had the same lap time, but you had to be more precise.
• 1:00:00
  So it wasn't that you couldn't do it with a Ford.
• 1:00:03
  It was just harder work to do it with a Ford.
• 1:00:05
  And I remember driving it around Winton thinking, oh, God, we've got a lot of work to do around here.
• 1:00:11
  Compared to what you'd had with HRT, which was your benchmark.
• 1:00:13
  Well, yeah, it was, and they were the benchmark, and they still were the benchmark at the time.
• 1:00:17
  And as I said, the Commodore just had a wider parameter, a window of operation, and you could get away with a lot more.
• 1:00:23
  And there was a timeframe there for a number of years that that was always going to be the case.
• 1:00:28
  Podium finishes at Bathurst with Glenn Seaton, the infamous plastic bag and the radiator.
• 1:00:32
  I mean, there were glimpses, mate.
• 1:00:34
  But early on, it just didn't yield the results.
• 1:00:37
  And actually, you touched on before, it was during the emergence of the Stone Brothers Ford team as well.
• 1:00:42
  They were really starting to hit their straps, weren't they?
• 1:00:44
  Oh, absolutely.
• 1:00:44
  And I think that, you know, Ford were really trying to get into motor racing in a big way and, you know...
• 1:00:54
  It really was one of those things that Stone Brothers were kicking goals.
• 1:00:58
  You know, we started with the Gibson outfit, but then it become a little bit turmoil because then the ownership of the team wasn't exactly in the – and the way it was set up wasn't exactly the way it was presented to both Ford and ourselves.
• 1:01:12
  And then, you know, Forbes then became the – well, he always was the owner of the team and –
• 1:01:20
  Then, of course, we got to understand that side of it.
• 1:01:22
  And then we had to change names from Gibson to 00.
• 1:01:27
  It was a bit of a turmoil in that sort of process.
• 1:01:29
  And then at the end of the second year...
• 1:01:34
  Jeff Polites then rang me up and said, all right, you know, we're going to set up this new super team for performance racing.
• 1:01:42
  We want you to head it up.
• 1:01:44
  We're going to join forces with Glenn Seaton.
• 1:01:47
  We're going to house it out at Broadmeadows.
• 1:01:49
  So basically there was not an option to say no.
• 1:01:54
  You weren't tempted to go to Stone Brothers?
• 1:01:55
  Was there ever an opportunity for you to go to Stone Brothers?
• 1:01:59
  Not at that point, no.
• 1:02:01
  No, and I think that they were pretty happy with their line-up, you know, with Russell and with Marcus.
• 1:02:05
  I think that really for them, they'd found goodness in both those two drivers.
• 1:02:11
  And so, yeah, so Ford were very keen to set up this super team with Ford Performance Racing, and, you know, that was when the process...
• 1:02:18
  The original part of it when I moved across, we still worked out at Glenn Seaton's original workshop, and then we then moved into the super...
• 1:02:25
  factory at Broadmeadows and of course, again, the dynamics, but just the ingredients wasn't there.
• 1:02:35
  It was, and I remember sitting down at the end of the year, at the end of 04, because I joined AAA in 05, and I sat down with the team and the principals and everyone, and Glenn was there, we're all there, ran the coffee table, and I said, all right, what is, and I was out of contract, and I said, well, what's the program look like?
• 1:02:50
  Like, what does 05 Beyond look like?
• 1:02:53
  And I can remember them sitting there saying, well, what you see now is what we've got.
• 1:02:59
  Well, that's not good enough.
• 1:03:01
  And I was frustrated because we'd come from a team like a HRT.
• 1:03:05
  We were winning races, championships.
• 1:03:08
  And then, you know, yeah, we struggled through the Gibson 0-0 era.
• 1:03:12
  We moved to full performance racing.
• 1:03:14
  It was obviously aligned with the road car side of it.
• 1:03:17
  We won at Phillip Island.
• 1:03:18
  Yeah.
• 1:03:19
  By mistake, in a sense, you know, we pitted it right.
• 1:03:22
  It absolutely teamed down rain.
• 1:03:24
  We were leading the cars when it got red flagged, hence we inherited the win.
• 1:03:30
  We hadn't won it on merit or speed.
• 1:03:33
  Team, I think, got a little bit arrogant about, you know, this is the start of goodness.
• 1:03:37
  And it was like, no.
• 1:03:39
  And then, of course, at the end of 94, sorry, 04, I had to ring Ford up and say I wanted to change again.
• 1:03:47
  And at that time, Glenn was moving to Dick Johnson.
• 1:03:52
  I said, I want to move to this team called Triple Eight.
• 1:03:54
  And they weren't keen on it, but they backed it.
• 1:03:59
  And, of course, we'd raced against Roland with Paul Radishish and Max Wilson, who I'd raced against Max Wilson in 3,000 a day.
• 1:04:09
  So we'd crossed paths again, a little young Brazilian.
• 1:04:14
  And watching the Triple Eight outfit...
• 1:04:17
  have mechanical issues for the first two years of their operation.
• 1:04:20
  And I was moving and I wanted to move to it.
• 1:04:22
  So the Ford were a little bit apprehensive of going, well, we've sort of noticed this last two years and it's not what we expect you to be, but what they didn't see and what, you know, I'd went through the workshop with Roland, he'd showed me and laid out the plans and what was going to happen.
• 1:04:38
  So I saw the ingredients of what I'd almost saw back in HRT days.
• 1:04:43
  And it was like, yeah,
• 1:04:45
  He's got the ability to create some good things.
• 1:04:48
  You're talking about Roland Dane, Triple Eight team owner.
• 1:04:50
  I mean, hardcore racer, but seriously good businessman, mate.
• 1:04:54
  So the ingredients were obviously in place and it proved to be a masterstroke.
• 1:04:59
  You've been with him for over 10 years now and it's yielded some incredible results.
• 1:05:04
  Oh, absolutely.
• 1:05:04
  And I think that, again, we've gone from strength to strength and it's that emotion.
• 1:05:08
  And I've got it this year, even with winning at Tasmania, like with Autobahn Lounge Racing, like,
• 1:05:16
  We went into the team.
• 1:05:17
  So the end of 04, we were living in Queensland.
• 1:05:21
  We relocated, obviously, different teams.
• 1:05:23
  We basically started afresh in 05.
• 1:05:26
  And Steve Allery was my teammate.
• 1:05:29
  And I'd raced against Steve Allery in go-karts.
• 1:05:30
  So again, we crossed paths many years later.
• 1:05:34
  And it wasn't until the victory at Eastern Creek, Sydney Motorsport Park.
• 1:05:40
  against Marcus Ambrose.
• 1:05:42
  Actually, I think we ended up equal on points, but we won the last race, so we won the weekend.
• 1:05:49
  And it was that turning point of the belief and the visual...
• 1:05:56
  but belief also of the faces within the team that they went from hoping and wishing to now understanding we can and we will win races.
• 1:06:06
  And it was that turning point that really turned 05 around.
• 1:06:10
  And then to go into it, we had such a strong car at Bathurst.
• 1:06:14
  Now, we'd won Sandown with Ivan Muller.
• 1:06:18
  We then moved on to Bathurst.
• 1:06:19
  We had such a strong car.
• 1:06:21
  We were leading.
• 1:06:21
  We pulled away from Marcus.
• 1:06:23
  I had clipped the wall, broke the Watts link.
• 1:06:25
  We repaired that, got back out.
• 1:06:28
  Then I hit the tyre into the window, which for me was just a massive blow because that was probably out of all the Bathurst, that was the one Bathurst that got away.
• 1:06:38
  That vision you can find on YouTube, it's frightening.
• 1:06:42
  Fast forward another 12 months, sadly, your great mentor, Peter Brock, passes away in a tarmac rally crash in WA.
• 1:06:49
  Where were you when you first learned about that and how did it make you?
• 1:06:52
  What was your reaction?
• 1:06:53
  I just come back from a function.
• 1:06:55
  I remember being – I just got back home where I was living at the time.
• 1:07:00
  I remember I laid down because I had a really early start and I remember laying down and the phone just ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing.
• 1:07:08
  I'm like, holy, what's going on?
• 1:07:12
  And then at the time I got told that potentially the rumour is that Brock has been fatally injured in a rally crash, a tarmac rally crash.
• 1:07:22
  So for me it was like, no, that's not true.
• 1:07:25
  That can't be right.
• 1:07:25
  So over the next sort of hour or so, you'd turn the news on.
• 1:07:29
  There was more speculation.
• 1:07:31
  There was then a vision of the car wrapped around the tree.
• 1:07:36
  And then all of a sudden there was three choppers land on the property.
• 1:07:41
  And we went back to Channel 9 from Emory.
• 1:07:46
  to do a live, you know, basically pick up.
• 1:07:49
  I remember there was Bridie, they got Bright and a few other athletes and people that he touched and, you know, we had it, and then it got confirmed and yeah, had an interview about it.
• 1:08:02
  just i mean even to this day it's still hard to comprehend just weeks later you go to race at bathurst and it turns out ultimately to be a full roller coaster a fairy tale result but you mentioned at the beginning of our chat here you got to drive the 72 holden that morning in a special parade in in his honor could you soak up what it was like to drive that car was it just an emotional blur what was it like
• 1:08:28
  We went into that whole week of Bathurst knowing why we were there.
• 1:08:32
  And we as a team, and I say we as a team, because Brock used to get up to me all the time, he's like, we, you always say we.
• 1:08:38
  Like, is it you and who?
• 1:08:39
  Like, who else is driving this car?
• 1:08:41
  And it's just me.
• 1:08:42
  I just always say we.
• 1:08:43
  Me and the team.
• 1:08:46
  We as a team went into that week just with the focus on winning the race.
• 1:08:53
  Knew the enormity of what and why we were there.
• 1:08:57
  So we tried to put it out of our brain as much as we could for the first couple of days.
• 1:09:01
  And it was.
• 1:09:02
  It was a media frenzy like everyone was asking.
• 1:09:05
  And Holden had done that tribute car and had it out the back and we all signed it.
• 1:09:11
  Then there was the opportunity to drive the Tirana.
• 1:09:13
  And I remember making a call to Ford saying, look, because we were Ford then, ringing them up and asking, look, I've got this opportunity to drive Brock 72 Bathurst winning Tirana on the parade lap.
• 1:09:26
  I'd like your wishes to be able to do it.
• 1:09:28
  And in the back of my brain, to be honest, I was going to do it anyway.
• 1:09:32
  Okay.
• 1:09:34
  If Ford had said no, I would have said thank you, but bad luck.
• 1:09:38
  But they said, no, absolutely, go for your life.
• 1:09:41
  So Ford gave me the wishes, which was really strange at that time, or any time for one.
• 1:09:44
  Great respect.
• 1:09:46
  Yeah, great.
• 1:09:46
  And that was the thing.
• 1:09:47
  It was the respect of what he was as a person, not what he drove or what he did.
• 1:09:51
  It was him as a person.
• 1:09:54
  So for me, yeah, to drive, and I remember we went out to the back of the dummy grid and I met the owner and he told me and we walked around the car and looked at the car and he said, look, please don't let it idle too long.
• 1:10:04
  It's going to foul at the plugs and then it's not going to run right and it's going to spit and fart and pop and bang.
• 1:10:10
  So I'm like, oh, Christ, okay.
• 1:10:11
  Okay.
• 1:10:11
  There's nothing like our cars, but anyway.
• 1:10:14
  So I get in the car and then to drive it, and the ergonomics is anyone's ever not driven a XU1, please go and sit in one.
• 1:10:22
  The ergonomics, the pedal box is off to the right, the steering wheel is off to the left, nothing's in line because of the tunnel.
• 1:10:28
  Obviously, everything is just the way I built it back then.
• 1:10:31
  So sitting cockeyed, driving it like that.
• 1:10:35
  gearbox was all crunchy, trying to become mechanically sympathetic for what they were and what they had back then.
• 1:10:42
  As we're doing the lap, I remember the crowd were all standing.
• 1:10:45
  I was the second car behind James Brock.
• 1:10:49
  And then to do the lap or finish the lap, have the cars parked on pit straight, and then to have the minute of silence.
• 1:10:57
  And I say it was a deathly silence because it –
• 1:11:04
  Normally, if you have a minute of silence, the wind's blowing, the birds are chirping, there might be a baby cry.
• 1:11:09
  There's something out there.
• 1:11:11
  There was not a sound for that minute.
• 1:11:14
  And that, for me, was really amazing.
• 1:11:17
  Like, I always remember it.
• 1:11:18
  And then Bev come up and gave me a hug when we're still standing beside the Tarana.
• 1:11:25
  And she whispered it in my ear and said, you know, Peter would be proud.
• 1:11:27
  And that's when we walked back to the garage and I was in tears.
• 1:11:36
  I think most people were.
• 1:11:37
  Brock was such a big part of my upbringing in that time.
• 1:11:42
  And I remember walking into the garage, Roland said, I can see you're upset.
• 1:11:45
  We can put Jamie in the car to start.
• 1:11:46
  I went, no.
• 1:11:48
  I wanted to have respect and show and drive this, start of this race.
• 1:11:52
  And we went into the race and we weren't the fastest car.
• 1:11:54
  We were far from it.
• 1:11:56
  You know, Scaife and Todd Kelly, the combination, they had it on pole.
• 1:12:00
  They were the fastest car.
• 1:12:01
  Then there was Bright and the Falcon.
• 1:12:05
  I can't remember who he was driving me at the time.
• 1:12:07
  He was the next favourite.
• 1:12:09
  There was others in front of us in speed world that we didn't have.
• 1:12:13
  Brock fries the clutch on the start line.
• 1:12:15
  Jack Perkins finishes him off as he goes over the crest and crashes the car.
• 1:12:19
  Bridie goes out of the race with a mechanical issue.
• 1:12:22
  All of a sudden, things start opening up for us.
• 1:12:24
  And we went through our rotations, Jamie and I and Jamie and I and Jamie and I, and I'm back in the car at the end.
• 1:12:30
  And to be honest, having that battle with Rick,
• 1:12:34
  at the end of the day, was exactly what I needed to stay focused.
• 1:12:37
  And we were faster across the top of the mountain.
• 1:12:40
  We could always pull a gap on Rick.
• 1:12:42
  So I knew every time I'd come out of Forestdale Bale, if we didn't have two car lengths on him, going down Conroy's Strait, he'd have a go at us.
• 1:12:50
  So that went on for, I think, 12 laps, a number of laps.
• 1:12:54
  until the end, to the last one.
• 1:12:56
  And I remember turning the corner, last corner, and Murray's corner, and basically I could have rolled across the line.
• 1:13:04
  And we'd raced sort of in cloud most of the day and the sun was bearing down on pit straight.
• 1:13:11
  And I'm not superstitious, but the gap, I think from memory, was 0.05 to Rick.
• 1:13:17
  The sun came out, everything just aligned.
• 1:13:20
  Am I right in saying, I think I saw it at Tail and Bend recently, that Roland Dane has kept that car?
• 1:13:25
  Is that correct?
• 1:13:25
  Yeah, yeah, Chassis 10.
• 1:13:27
  It's still in the better electrical colours.
• 1:13:29
  It's the only car that Roland has kept in the team.
• 1:13:34
  I'm pushing him to, and hopefully he hears this, I'm pushing him to go to Goodwood.
• 1:13:38
  I'd love to drive that car.
• 1:13:40
  Fantastic.
• 1:13:40
  I'd love to drive that car again and hopefully, you know, I hope he doesn't sell it, but, you know, if he does go to sell it, I hope that whoever buys it, I'd love to drive that car again.
• 1:13:49
  It has very fond memories.
• 1:13:51
  It's, you know, as I said, for Roland, it was Roland's first victory at Bathurst, which for him under the circumstances why we were there,
• 1:14:02
  He has very strong connections with that car and he made no qualms about when he came to Australia, why he was in Australia.
• 1:14:10
  He wanted to win Bathurst and that was the first year.
• 1:14:13
  So your teammate Jamie Wincup has kept a car too, a car that's known as Kate.
• 1:14:17
  He calls it Kate.
• 1:14:18
  Have you got an ambition to own a supercar or you don't want to do that?
• 1:14:21
  Not really, to be honest.
• 1:14:23
  I've been lucky enough that I got my first road car, I got my first race car, but I've
• 1:14:28
  For me, and I've said this to Jamie, like to own a race car like that, it still needs to be run and operated.
• 1:14:34
  He doesn't sort of see the...
• 1:14:37
  So he doesn't really see it that way.
• 1:14:39
  He just sees Kate as, you know, yes, Kate's the most winning supercar in history.
• 1:14:43
  It's won a Bathurst.
• 1:14:44
  He's probably spent the national debt on it to get it because it actually had got – it changed paint schemes when it was owned by the team.
• 1:14:53
  So he had a gentleman that was his number one at the time –
• 1:14:59
  Bales to, and he sort of works within the team every now and then, spent two years restoring this Kate.
• 1:15:07
  To every nut and bolt, Graham Bailey is one of the most fanatical players
• 1:15:15
  Meticulous.
• 1:15:16
  Meticulous.
• 1:15:17
  Fanatical.
• 1:15:18
  So he spent two years restoring this car.
• 1:15:20
  And, yeah, so Jamie's got this car, Kate.
• 1:15:22
  I believe it's sitting over at Tailwind Bend with Chassis 10.
• 1:15:25
  And, you know, as I said to Jamie, you need to run it and get it working.
• 1:15:28
  And that's probably why I won't buy a car.
• 1:15:30
  We actually did talk, you know, say we, Laura and I, did talk about buying the last ever full-time supercar, which is what we're obviously currently running in.
• 1:15:38
  But now I've got no ambition, not unless Roland wants to give it to me as a present.
• 1:15:41
  Yeah.
• 1:15:42
  Stellar career, mate.
• 1:15:44
  650 plus starts, three titles, six Bathursts, and there's every chance that that tally will grow.
• 1:15:50
  But you have decided to step down from full-time driving.
• 1:15:53
  How hard to make that decision and why?
• 1:15:58
  Why?
• 1:15:59
  It's the right time.
• 1:16:01
  And Roland and I have had this conversation over the last four years, on and off, and...
• 1:16:09
  Obviously, he knows that I'm not getting any younger.
• 1:16:12
  He also knows that if long as I maintain my fitness and everything else, he would continue to run a car.
• 1:16:17
  He also said he'd never run three cars.
• 1:16:20
  And when we found out that he signed Shane, well, obviously, that was a big turning point for me.
• 1:16:26
  But then he also decided to run a third car, which was hopefully something that I...
• 1:16:34
  I'm just trying to think of what I'd describe.
• 1:16:36
  I pulled out his heartstrings and got him to open up a heart a little bit.
• 1:16:42
  Because I know he's got a heart.
• 1:16:43
  It's just the steel cage that goes around it.
• 1:16:44
  You've got to break through.
• 1:16:45
  So you've got to get that.
• 1:16:47
  He did...
• 1:16:49
  run a third car, we've had a great career with him.
• 1:16:52
  As I said, we've had this conversation on and off for the last four years.
• 1:16:55
  And, you know, during last year and the end of last year, everyone was yelling at me to retire.
• 1:17:00
  You know, performance, qualifying was terrible.
• 1:17:04
  You know, you're not doing what you should be doing.
• 1:17:05
  You're not winning.
• 1:17:06
  Like I went through the whole year without winning a race.
• 1:17:09
  So you have that in the back of your brain and you go, hmm, look.
• 1:17:12
  What do you physically think you can get or do out of – and you say, well, maybe you can do two more years and that was the end of last year.
• 1:17:20
  Then the big thing is, you know, again, I sat down with Lara and her background in the sense of the change management and everything else was like, you know –
• 1:17:28
  If you have another year like last year or this year, which it was the end of last year, you basically sealing the deal.
• 1:17:36
  So we also looked at how we're gonna change that up.
• 1:17:39
  I sat with Irish with John McGregor, my engineer.
• 1:17:41
  He's evolving, like he's still a rookie as an engineer in our fraternity.
• 1:17:47
  But he thinks outside the square, what he lacks in experience, he gets with youth and exuberance.
• 1:17:52
  Like he just wants to win.
• 1:17:54
  So we sat down over Christmas.
• 1:17:56
  We went through a lot of different scenarios, how to change, how to operate.
• 1:18:01
  how we can make a change.
• 1:18:02
  And, of course, then having that win at Tasmania, we accomplished so much in that weekend alone.
• 1:18:09
  And it gets back to that factor of seeing the belief within a team.
• 1:18:12
  So the Saturday's race, being on the podium, first time for podium for us, and the team were just elated.
• 1:18:18
  Like they were just running around.
• 1:18:20
  It's like they won the lotto.
• 1:18:21
  And then for Sunday to back it up with the pole position, then to back it up with a win, like for them it was their Christmas season.
• 1:18:27
  And, again, the feeling internally in me, it was, like, so good to be able to give something back.
• 1:18:34
  And then we sort of sat down with Roland again and you sort of go through that process like, yeah, we've got a contract for next year and you go, yeah,
• 1:18:43
  We think this is the right time.
• 1:18:44
  You know, we've been in the high levels of what this sport requires for over two decades.
• 1:18:50
  And we're on a high.
• 1:18:52
  We're winning races, on podiums.
• 1:18:55
  You know, we always said we wanted to go out on a high.
• 1:18:58
  We didn't want to make up the numbers.
• 1:18:59
  We didn't want to sort of migrate or fall back into the...
• 1:19:04
  20th, 15th realm of finished results, which we had last year.
• 1:19:08
  And that was something that was probably a big trigger.
• 1:19:12
  So, yeah, I said to Roland, we think this is the right time.
• 1:19:13
  He said, yeah, I think, yep.
• 1:19:16
  He backed the deal.
• 1:19:17
  He also then turned around and said, look, if you want to go and drive for another team, I'll tear up the contract now and go and find another drive.
• 1:19:23
  And I said, no, I'll stop you there now.
• 1:19:24
  I don't want to do that because, A, there's very few teams in pit lane that I believe have the facility and the infrastructure of what 888 has.
• 1:19:33
  So if I can't do it here...
• 1:19:35
  I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it.
• 1:19:36
  And, you know, there is teams like Erebus that are showing good forms.
• 1:19:40
  There's great teams like Penske that are, you know, and their drivers are signed, sealed and delivered.
• 1:19:46
  So unless they want to run a third car, never going to happen.
• 1:19:49
  So then you look at what else is out there and, you know, for me it's the right time.
• 1:19:53
  I've had a great stellar experience.
• 1:19:55
  innings with Rowland.
• 1:19:56
  There is a reason why I've stayed with Triple Eight for such a long time because I believe in what they do.
• 1:20:01
  Yes, he is a hard task mask, but he can be fair.
• 1:20:07
  So I think at the end of the year, I'll be happy.
• 1:20:10
  And I think since I made the announcement since Townsville that I don't wake up at any point, at any morning, thinking I've made the wrong choice.
• 1:20:18
  I think that's a good telling fact.
• 1:20:21
  Absolutely.
• 1:20:21
  So you took to socials as well, mate, to shut down myths, theories, anything else about, you know, were you pushed, were you, you know, this is clearly your call.
• 1:20:31
  It was, and I think that people probably think that because we're having such a stellar year that it wasn't my choice.
• 1:20:37
  But then people got to remember what last year was all about.
• 1:20:40
  And as I said, like people were yelling for me to retire last year, but then this year they're going, oh, but you're performing now, so you should be okay.
• 1:20:47
  But then you go, all right, well, if I go 12 months down the track next year and I have another poor performance year, they're going to go, well, you should have retired last year or this year.
• 1:20:55
  You just can't win.
• 1:20:56
  Like for me, it really – and now made the decision, as I said,
• 1:21:01
  regret it and I really look at all the athletes and and and people that have gone through that in their brain and I always I remember being in Scaife's retirement you know when he announced it and he was really emotional about it and like I can now look back and honestly say that that you you're the only one that can make that decision
• 1:21:20
  So you're not going to end up at Jamie's Car Wash Cafe as a barista.
• 1:21:25
  That's good.
• 1:21:26
  Let's get rid of that theory.
• 1:21:27
  You're going to be doing the Enduros, which is terrific, and you'll be around the sport, which is the main thing.
• 1:21:32
  You love it too much, don't you?
• 1:21:33
  Well, it is.
• 1:21:33
  It's been – I'm 44.
• 1:21:34
  As I said, over two decades I've been driving at this level, so it's been over half of my year of living as a person.
• 1:21:41
  I've been involved in this sport.
• 1:21:42
  So for me, I've still got a lot to give back.
• 1:21:45
  I think that there's one element, and I said it, I think, in a quote with –
• 1:21:49
  to go over.
• 1:21:50
  It's a chapter of my book.
• 1:21:52
  It's not the book.
• 1:21:53
  So I'm not going to stop.
• 1:21:55
  I'm not going to hang my helmet up, boots and gloves for the last time.
• 1:22:00
  It's just I'm going to stop driving full-time in supercars.
• 1:22:03
  Allow, you know...
• 1:22:05
  the team to move on, whether they run two, three, four, as Roland says, I actually don't know.
• 1:22:10
  As I said, you can get any information out of Roland, you're doing such a good job.
• 1:22:15
  And of course, for me to be still part of the team, Roland still wants me to have a role within the team, which is fantastic.
• 1:22:22
  For me to be able to now look at the business side and the corporate side of the other side of the business,
• 1:22:26
  Still do the co-driving long distance.
• 1:22:29
  And again, whether that's Jamie or Shane, a lot of people are saying I should pair up with Jamie because of the history we have.
• 1:22:34
  And I'd love to do that.
• 1:22:36
  But again, it's not my call.
• 1:22:38
  Whether I get Shane and Jamie to do rocks, scissors, papers, I don't know, but see what happens.
• 1:22:43
  Either one of them, I've driven their cars on any given time and I've driven both their cars very well.
• 1:22:47
  So that side I'm really looking forward to.
• 1:22:49
  But along that, and as I said a long time ago, if you're going to be a co-driver,
• 1:22:54
  And Richo, for me, this year, dead keen on trying to make a good men's and a closure to the chapter for me.
• 1:22:59
  But as Richo does and many others, you've got to keep driving something else.
• 1:23:03
  So it's not the end of driving.
• 1:23:05
  I've just been watching in awe of the Spa 24 Hour, and I've done that.
• 1:23:11
  I'd love to do that, love to do Le Mans, love to do other things.
• 1:23:14
  It now hopefully gives me an opportunity and a chance to be able to open up those doors that haven't been able to do because of the supercar
• 1:23:22
  calendar always crosses over or has the same weekend earmarked and that's really what what it is so for me and yeah i'll be around racetracks just in a different role one of the things i guess you might like to explore is time for some escapes and you've done that with darrell beady you went was it in the simpson desert you went riding a motorcycle is that right tell us about that uh yeah it's been amazing that um
• 1:23:45
  When you're race drivers and you're racing, you're just competitors and you've got rivals.
• 1:23:51
  So to do the ride, DV rang me up and we're both Honda ambassadors and he said, look, you've got to come for this ride.
• 1:23:57
  And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:58
  I'd love to.
• 1:23:58
  Time permits.
• 1:24:00
  Lara said, all right, bugger this.
• 1:24:01
  So she actually got in contact with DV and said, you guys got to get this ride.
• 1:24:06
  Happening.
• 1:24:07
  So anyway, it happened.
• 1:24:09
  And it was good because it was heading to a race that I've always admired, which was the Fink.
• 1:24:15
  It was the 40th anniversary.
• 1:24:16
  Stars all aligned.
• 1:24:18
  I flew into Birdsville.
• 1:24:19
  He'd then at already that point had done the trip from Alice to Birdsville across the Simpson going west to east.
• 1:24:25
  Then we were going to the return track east to west into Alice, watch the Fink, and then come home.
• 1:24:30
  But then bugger me, as I said, we've got rivals when you're on track.
• 1:24:33
  Larry Perkins turns up.
• 1:24:34
  He comes part of the thing.
• 1:24:35
  You've got Jack Perkins riding on the bike.
• 1:24:38
  So Jack's on the bike.
• 1:24:40
  Larry's in his uni mob.
• 1:24:41
  And it's really funny.
• 1:24:43
  It's great to catch up with people like that outside of the sport.
• 1:24:46
  And, you know, to catch up with them around a campfire, beer in the hand, basically, you know, Larry telling some great stories.
• 1:24:54
  And I said to him at the time, I said, Larry, I used to hate you, you know, mate.
• 1:24:58
  You know?
• 1:24:59
  Remember you hit me all the time.
• 1:25:01
  We went to the stewards and you made this big crap about how your back was so sore because they hit you and I got penalised for it.
• 1:25:07
  And he goes, yeah, that's right, cock, I remember that, yeah.
• 1:25:11
  And I'm like, oh, Jesus.
• 1:25:12
  So anyway, so the time that we spend just away from the sport, and I loved it because we were not even 30 seconds out of Birdsville, no mobile service until we got to Alice Springs.
• 1:25:23
  So that was about five days in the Simpson.
• 1:25:25
  Riding across, I definitely want to do more riding.
• 1:25:29
  I ride an Africa Twin on the roads.
• 1:25:32
  I know that Daryl's now just opened up an Africa Twin Trials.
• 1:25:35
  So whether it's on that or doing something like that, but yeah, I'd love to do more outside of it.
• 1:25:39
  I love the outback.
• 1:25:40
  I love going to different places.
• 1:25:42
  And through motor racing, we've been able to do that.
• 1:25:45
  Like I've driven from Melbourne to Darwin, Darwin to Perth, driven all around Australia because of the sport that's allowed me to do it.
• 1:25:52
  So just take a step back, do another DB ride.
• 1:25:54
  He keeps cracking on about the Cape ride.
• 1:25:57
  Never been up to the Cape York, so maybe that's the next one on the list.
• 1:25:59
  He does a great job, doesn't he?
• 1:26:01
  And you get to see some remote, incredible countryside.
• 1:26:04
  All right.
• 1:26:05
  Favourite race car?
• 1:26:06
  Is it that 06 Falcon?
• 1:26:08
  Well, you say 06, but I almost...
• 1:26:09
  say the 96 because we had a clean sweep we won the championship Sandharm Bathurst with a Kiwi friend so it's either the 96 car which I've actually spoken to the owners which is the Ecclestons they have ownership of the car they've completely restored the car and I am going to at the time when we're down in Melbourne to go out and have a look at the car and that would be another car that I'd love to be able to put my backside in and start the key and drive it around just for old memories so
• 1:26:37
  The 96 or the 06 would definitely be my favourite cars.
• 1:26:41
  Any future resto projects or have you ticked the box then?
• 1:26:44
  No, no, actually, we, and I say we again, Lara and I have, we want to build a kit car.
• 1:26:49
  So once I get some spare, actually, there's two things I've got to do.
• 1:26:54
  I've got to get some room in the shed and then I've got some spare time and then we'd love to do a kit car.
• 1:27:00
  And whether that, one of my favourite all-time road cars was the AC Cobra.
• 1:27:03
  So whether it's something like that or something else, don't know, but in the next hopefully five years, we'll put pen to paper and nut down what we want to do.
• 1:27:12
  Does that make the Cobra the grail car?
• 1:27:15
  If Craig Lowndes had unlimited budget and could go out and get something today, what is the thing you would have to have?
• 1:27:21
  See, I'm just a lover of cars.
• 1:27:22
  So AEC Cobra is definitely one of the lists.
• 1:27:27
  Oh, I've always been a big fan of the Nissan GDR, but the old 33, 32, 33, like when Scaife and Jimmy were running.
• 1:27:35
  So that's another – I love older cars.
• 1:27:39
  I also love Alinor, the old Mustang.
• 1:27:42
  Beautiful.
• 1:27:43
  So, yeah, anything to do with cars, I'm just a big fan of.
• 1:27:45
  And it's not just because they seem to be Ford cars, but it's just I love our old cars.
• 1:27:49
  Driving habits that make Craig Lowndes mad.
• 1:27:52
  Are you a calm guy on the road?
• 1:27:53
  What are you like?
• 1:27:54
  People sitting in the right-hand lane doing under the speed limit, that drives me absolute nuts.
• 1:27:58
  And the other thing is not indicating.
• 1:28:00
  So big thing for me is indication.
• 1:28:03
  Like, you know, on the roads, hate, hate people that don't indicate because you just don't know where they're going.
• 1:28:10
  What do you listen to when you drive?
• 1:28:11
  Ooh, everything.
• 1:28:13
  The one thing that we do, we do a Bathurst road trip every year and we're still going to be doing it while I'm a co-driver, is that we always put ACDC on as we go over the Blue Mountains and we drive into Bathurst.
• 1:28:24
  ACDC is always on the music.
• 1:28:26
  Awesome.
• 1:28:26
  Any particular songs?
• 1:28:27
  Back in Black?
• 1:28:27
  Back in Black.
• 1:28:28
  Back in Black's the main one, yeah.
• 1:28:29
  But Thunderstruck, all those good old songs, and you ask Lara, that'll be always on the playlist as we're driving into Bathurst.
• 1:28:37
  The race result in an incredible career, which is not done yet, that you're most proud of?
• 1:28:43
  Oh, 06 Bathurst.
• 1:28:44
  Winning it for Brock was the most emotional race that I've ever done of my whole career.
• 1:28:50
  And I can honestly say that I probably will never be in that situation again.
• 1:28:53
  So that for me was... And to stand on top of the podium at the end of the day and have your name yelled out by everyone, we were Ford, but everyone was there to have respect.
• 1:29:08
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 1:29:12
  Series producer and editor is Alex Mitchell.
• 1:29:16
  Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
• 1:29:25
  Listener.