Latest / Rusty's Garage / Karl Reindler (Part 1)

Transcript

Karl Reindler (Part 1) · Rusty's Garage

0:02
A listener production.
0:14
I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
0:27
In this episode, I'm in Singapore for the return of the F1 night race.
0:31
It's early afternoon on a humid race day with some decent rain clouds moving in.
0:37
Now, there's no cars on track just yet, but an Aussie has kindly come into work early to chat with me.
0:43
He's the sports medical car driver, a role that he shares during the season, given that there are more than 20 races for the title held all over the world.
0:53
It's a bit ironic that this former racer now pilots what is kind of a first responder F1 ambulance.
1:00
That's because Carl Reindler survived one of the biggest fireball crashes in supercars history.
1:07
You'll hear his vivid recollections of that day a little later and the emotional toll it took on family.
1:14
Carl's story shouldn't be just defined by that incident.
1:18
He's an Australian champion in Formula 3, did the hard yards, chasing an international career in single-seaters, and raced against some great names while doing that, and he represented Australia in A1GP.
1:32
He's the first to admit that the supercars chapter isn't brimming with stats and trophies.
1:38
With hindsight, we'd probably all like the chance to do a few things in life differently, and he opens up on career moves that he thought was the right call at the time, but it didn't turn out that way.
1:49
Stopping isn't easy for racers, but Carl has found a mixture of ways to stay involved, including driving standards advisory roles in race control at national meetings back home and driver coaching too.
2:03
His demeanour is perfect for that.
2:05
He also has a serious appreciation and understanding of the training and athletic side, in part from being surrounded by some high achievers in sport.
2:16
His good mate is Olympian Steve Hooker, who won gold in the men's pole vault in Beijing in 2008.
2:22
And Carl's now wife, Elise, beat the world's best to win gold in the sailing at those games as well.
2:29
This is an easy conversation, thanks to Carl's trademark smile, which seems to ooze through the microphone and his way with words.
2:38
It's also aided by the good time the Aussie contingent has had here in Singapore from England,
2:43
reminiscing about Carl borrowing a colleague's mower in Melbourne and being caught on CCTV doing it looked like a story from a current affair and he is the only one of us bold enough to ask will I am from the black-eyed peas for a selfie he got it and it is a beauty the boy from West Australia is going all right
3:05
I love to start these conversations with a little bit of life and time where you grew up.
3:09
We know that you grew up in Western Australia and there's a bit of racing passion in the family.
3:13
Have you even had the chance to race with your brother at times, haven't you?
3:16
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
3:19
My dad used to compete himself.
3:20
In fact, you probably don't know this, but my dad used to own Alan Moffat's old Daytona left-hand drive RX7.
3:29
So I grew up with this obnoxiously loud peripheral port 13B Mazda RX-7 in the backyard.
3:36
They do laps around the block to tune it at 10 o'clock at night and wake up not only our neighborhood, but the next neighborhood over.
3:43
So that's, I guess, where the initial bug came from was from dad.
3:46
That car is still, I think, in a museum in Perth as it finished the race, am I right?
3:51
Um, I'm not too sure.
3:53
Um, dad sold it regretfully.
3:54
It's probably one of the most regretful sales.
3:57
Uh, if, if only he knew, uh, you know, the, the demand for, for those heritage, um, heritage race cars now, but, um, yeah, so that's, I guess that's, um, where it all started.
4:07
Uh, I used to go up to then Wanneroo Raceway now, uh, well, went to Barbagel.
4:12
I think it's gone back to Wanneroo Raceway now.
4:14
Um, just kicking around as a kid with my brother and sister.
4:17
Uh, we got into go-karts,
4:21
It's such a great family sport.
4:23
That's what I...
4:24
Some of my best memories, I think, are just touring up and down the state in WA, going to somewhat exotic locations in the far north, the far south, out to Kalgoorlie, just with the family, mum and dad.
4:36
Dad had no idea what he was doing on the tools.
4:39
Pretended.
4:40
No, he didn't even pretend, actually.
4:42
And yeah, competing with my brother and sister.
4:45
And then you're right, yeah, I did actually race with my brother in a mini challenge car at Barbagallo Raceway until he binned it at Turn 7.
4:53
But yeah.
4:55
Hello, Chris, if you're listening.
4:57
Now, can we get to where this became obsession for you?
5:01
And you had this beautiful kind of nice, almost placid nature out of the...
5:06
out of the car, but I sense you're this competitive, almost feisty person when the helmet goes on.
5:12
Is that a fair judgment?
5:14
Yeah, you know what it's like with us drivers, if I can still call myself that.
5:18
I've hung the helmet up professionally, but, yeah, I think...
5:24
I loved it from a young age.
5:25
I used to, like a lot of guys, stay up late at night.
5:28
It was the special thing to do with Dad on a Sunday night, stay up late to watch the Grand Prix.
5:34
And we committed to higher karting from a really young age.
5:38
I was probably six years old.
5:40
We had to put wooden blocks on the pedals so that I could reach it.
5:43
But back then it was all about just having some fun.
5:47
um having a having two siblings especially younger brother that was very um you know he's one of those gifted athletes no matter what he did he was good at it and being the younger brother we got very competitive it didn't matter what it was it was you know running to the top uh top of a flight of stairs it'd be elbows out dirty tactics and um doing what we could to to beat each other um and
6:10
The actual turning point for me was a guy by the name of Stephen Jones.
6:15
I went to school with him and he got into the sport and he was really quick straight out of the gate.
6:22
And it got out of my skin that this guy jumped into the sport so quickly and was competitive.
6:27
And it probably instigated this fire in me, this competitiveness that I didn't realise existed.
6:34
And once you've got it and you, you know,
6:37
you know how to kind of channel that competitiveness.
6:40
It's, you know, there's no turning back.
6:42
How did it go from becoming this childhood obsession to ultimately occupation?
6:48
And where was that sort of decision made?
6:50
Was it a high school thing where you went, this is all I want to do, I'm not, I mean, forget banking or whatever the hell you might've been considering.
6:55
What were you considering?
6:57
It's a tricky one to answer because it's not like a defining point in time.
7:01
It sort of transitions to it.
7:02
You're out there having fun, but the idea of being a professional race car driver seems so unrealistic when you're 13 or 14 years old.
7:10
But I do remember sitting at school.
7:13
There were subjects I enjoyed, but the ones I didn't enjoy, I'd have a go-kart magazine hiding behind, and I'd be reading all the latest news and who was winning what.
7:22
And I think it was when I – I must have made a decision with Dad.
7:26
I remember having a bit of a D&M on a New Year's Eve about –
7:31
whether we have a go at this or not.
7:33
And dad said he's willing to support it, lean on friends and see if we can make it work and have a red hot go.
7:41
And I reckon I would have been probably the tail end of year 11 heading into year 12.
7:46
But he said, you have to focus on school as well.
7:48
You've got to do it properly.
7:49
I don't want you to be one of these guys that end up with, you know, no other skill sets outside of motorsport, which is probably fantastic advice in hindsight.
7:58
So I stuck out year 12, started doing some testing in F3 and a bit of Formula Ford with Brett Lupton up at Barba Gallo.
8:07
Just trying my hand at a few different things.
8:09
And it was probably at that point I thought, you know what, I love this sport so much.
8:15
I can't think of anything else other than family and friends that I love so much.
8:21
I tell you what, it's easy when you love something to pursue it and go through the grind.
8:26
Everyone talks about sacrifice.
8:27
I don't think there's actually that much sacrifice.
8:30
Everyone talks about it, but what are you actually sacrificing?
8:33
Going out and getting drunk with mates on weekend.
8:36
I was out there traveling the world, driving race cars.
8:40
So I don't understand when people talk about sacrifice to be a professional athlete in your chosen sport.
8:48
So yeah, I committed to F3 and there were certainly trials and tribulations along the way.
8:53
I had a very, an enormous accident in a Formula V. I had to do Formula V to get my license to race in Formula 3.
9:02
but started doing quite well and loved the tactics and the strategy with Formula V, the race craft that you learn in a category like that.
9:10
It's like Formula Ford as well.
9:12
It's just unbelievable.
9:13
But I got down to the last race of the season.
9:16
I thought we might as well finish the season off.
9:18
We're looking good for a state championship here.
9:21
And
9:23
I remember it was the last lap of the last race, of the last round of the season, going into the last corner.
9:28
He couldn't have scripted it.
9:30
And I'm overtaking someone, got the toe over the top of the hill, and gone to pass him around the outside and he's gone left hand down, turned into me, and I've rolled five times, landed flat on the belly of the car.
9:46
And being a space frame chassis, and what I mean by space frame, it's, you know,
9:54
It's tubing, it's not a monocoque carbon fiber tub.
9:59
So you've got bar work that your legs can rattle around and hit.
10:03
So I've ended up with a lot of injuries to my legs, a lot of lacerations.
10:08
It was quite a serious accident.
10:09
At one point I heard, actually it sounds dramatic, but I heard the word amputation mentioned.
10:15
They just didn't know how serious the injuries actually were.
10:18
At this point, I didn't realize I'd actually fractured my spine as well.
10:22
I had a compression fracture.
10:24
So this was a major, probably the first of many major setbacks that you encounter in a career of motorsport.
10:31
And that was, again, another defining point for me because something like that could deter you from ever going back into the sport.
10:38
Or for me, it had the opposite effect.
10:40
You know, I had three months off.
10:43
I was lucky it was a pretty minor compression fracture.
10:46
I didn't need to wear any bracing, but I had to take it easy.
10:50
And you have three months to sit around and question what you're doing, why you're doing it, what's important.
10:58
Do you want to continue pursuing this?
11:00
And then, of course, I got to the end of that three months of rest and recovery and thought, no, it's going to take a lot more than that to deter me from pursuing the sport that I love so much.
11:10
It sounds heavy, that accident.
11:13
Can we just underscore your determination to come back here that you've just described?
11:17
Cam van der Duggen, who's a friend and colleague of both of ours, talks about you turning up just a few months later, I think, to what was probably then a Confederation of Australian Motorsport training camp, and you were bitterly determined not to miss that opportunity, am I right?
11:34
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
11:36
I'd almost forgotten about that, Cam.
11:37
So I was invited purely based off the results from the previous year.
11:42
I think my dad tried to talk me out of doing it because I wasn't probably 100% yet after that big accident.
11:50
Even Cam, I think, was a little hesitant.
11:52
Should we be allowing this guy in off the back of a spinal injury?
11:56
But...
11:57
Yeah, I wanted to go.
11:59
I think that's one thing I've always done along the way in the sport is when an opportunity has passed across my desk, whether I felt I was up to it or not physically or otherwise, I thought, you know what, I'm going to have a go at this.
12:12
And it's amazing.
12:14
how one thing leads to another and opens doors here and there.
12:17
And it's only something I've sort of realized or reflected on in the last few years.
12:21
I've had a bit of a yes attitude or can-do attitude.
12:25
You know what?
12:26
I'll give this a go.
12:27
It's amazing.
12:29
I feel very lucky with the opportunities I've had, but I think a lot of it's to do with saying, you know what, I'm just going to give this a shot.
12:36
If it works out, it works out.
12:37
It doesn't.
12:38
I'm going to learn a heck of a lot from it.
12:40
CV says F3 Rookie of the Year in Australia in 03.
12:43
You would win the title in Formula 3 in 2004 for Team BRM in a Dallara.
12:50
If I've done my homework right, I think it was something like 11 podiums that year.
12:52
Just an epic, epic season for you.
12:55
How did you stitch that together?
12:57
And kind of it is with a little tinge of sadness for me that it was the final year before it became the Australian Drivers' Championship too, wasn't it?
13:04
Yeah, I missed out on that one, the Gold Star.
13:08
So, yeah, it was a great year.
13:10
It came down to the last race of the season.
13:13
It was a good line-up of people.
13:15
I think Caruso raced the previous year.
13:18
We had Chris Gilmore, who still jumps in the odd race.
13:21
It came down to between Chris and I at the Gold Coast 600 event.
13:27
It was the IndyCar event back then, actually, so it was the long circuit.
13:32
Cool cars too, mate, those F3 cars were.
13:34
They are some of the best cars I've ever driven.
13:36
They are the perfect race car just about.
13:40
I loved racing in supercars for the stint I had there, but I still gravitate back towards these open wheelers.
13:48
And a Formula 3, it's the proving ground for... We're here in Pit Lane at Singapore at the moment for F1, and there's a reason for it.
13:56
They are...
13:57
they don't have a huge amount of power so you make a mistake in that car and you know about it you are punished for making a mistake in those cars so you have to have a lot of finesse with them and it's a great great education I really miss those cars and back then it was an h pattern as well no fancy paddle shift not even sequential so I remember the bruised knuckles you'd get on the on the tub they were physical to drive
14:23
At the end of that season, there's an opportunity to go to Bahrain for the F3 Super Prix.
14:28
Is that really kind of when racing overseas and, you know, chasing that dream kind of kicked into gear for you?
14:36
Yeah, it definitely was.
14:38
The opportunity came about.
14:39
It was sort of an unofficial junior world championship in a way, this Bahrain F3 Super Prix.
14:48
It was invitation only, but the idea behind it is that the best Formula 3 drivers from all the championships around the world, which were pretty much like for like in rules and regulations, the tyres were different, but the chassis were all the same, engine choices were the same.
15:08
So I think there were something like, I reckon, 35 of the best young drivers in the world,
15:14
fresh off the back of winning an Australian championship, feeling quite confident.
15:18
And I got,
15:21
blitzed over there.
15:22
It was eye-opening, just the level up from Australian motorsport at the time to world-class motorsport.
15:29
And, look, I was racing against Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.
15:33
Romain Grigion was there.
15:35
Kobayashi was there as well.
15:37
Some guys, you know, I reckon 90% of that.
15:40
Or Kubica, I think, was there too.
15:42
So 90% of the grid have gone on to have very successful careers in motorsport in their respective disciplines.
15:49
So I remember it rained and they only get four days of rain a year in Bahrain and we got half of them.
15:56
So it was bucketing with rain.
15:58
I was with the Swiss racing team and even just working with a foreign team, we didn't have a...
16:06
I think I finished 12th or 13th out of the 30-something cars that were there.
16:10
But the education... One thing I...
16:13
For any young drivers out there that are listening, I always recommend being...
16:18
The value in being slightly out of your depth at every stage, you should always be challenged.
16:24
If you're comfortably winning in a championship, you haven't moved on soon enough.
16:28
I think the education you get from jumping in the deep end...
16:32
Being in a competitive space is so helpful, especially when you're trying to fast track your career.
16:37
I think young Aussies are on the back foot as it is coming from Australia.
16:41
You can't, like in New Zealand, you can jump into a Formula V at 12 years old, a Formula Ford at 12 years old over there.
16:49
So you're a little hamstrung in Australia when you can't get into these cars.
16:53
You're still racing go-karts until you're 15 years old.
16:56
So, yeah.
16:57
Plus the depth of competition internationally there.
17:00
yeah, the depth of competition was a big part of it.
17:04
Loved that experience, meeting all these guys.
17:07
And I, again...
17:12
It was a setback in a way.
17:14
I learned a lot from it, but I was demoralized at just how competitive these guys were, that the risks that they were willing to take in wet conditions, in dry conditions, that I, I guess, hadn't been exposed to up until that point.
17:27
It was almost gentlemanly in Australia in comparison.
17:30
I remember being squeezed up in practice, let alone qualifying or the race, squeezed up against the pit wall.
17:40
wheel to wheel, just, it was everyone for themselves.
17:44
And hard racing, yeah.
17:47
On the CV, mate, you got to race in Macau with some of the names that you've rattled off there as well, Romain Grosjean, Lucas de Grasse, even Seb Bedell and Robert Kubica was there.
17:57
For lots of races, that's a big tick, mate, an unforgiving place, kind of legendary in this part of the world where we are right now.
18:05
Pretty amazing to go there and get to race.
18:08
That was one of the greatest circuits.
18:10
It's probably the best circuit on the planet, I think, because it is so challenging.
18:14
Bathurst, absolutely not taking anything away from that.
18:16
But I have to say, Macau is so unforgiving.
18:21
To paint a picture, it's the longest straight.
18:24
It's over a mile long, the straight.
18:27
So you need to trim back all the aero on the car to have the straight line speed so you can actually be competitive and race.
18:33
But obviously by trimming back the aero, you lose all the grip.
18:36
You go up the side of a mountain, go back down the side of the mountain and just arm co-everywhere.
18:42
There's no runoff areas.
18:43
We've seen some enormous accidents there over the years.
18:46
It's last bastion stuff, isn't it?
18:48
It is.
18:52
It's unforgiving and that is, I mentioned the Bahrain race is sort of becoming the unofficial junior world championship.
19:00
Well, Macau has always been that for F3.
19:02
So you're right, there was, I think Sebastian Vettel finished third that year.
19:07
Kibitza, I think, was on the podium.
19:09
Degrassi won the race and I went there with a goal I wanted experienced.
19:15
The intention was to go back to Macau a second year and have a red hot go at it.
19:19
I was with a great team with Allen Docking Racing.
19:21
We didn't have the latest and greatest Honda engine that the front runners had, but for me, it was about...
19:29
I set the goal of finishing every single lap of every single session, and we ended up finishing, I think it was 12th off the top of my head.
19:36
But we did exactly that.
19:38
We finished...
19:38
I was the only driver that didn't, you know, connect with a wall.
19:43
So I think it was the perfect education to go back the following year, but I never...
19:47
If there's any regrets I have, I wish I got to go back to Macau because it's just such a special place.
19:53
How do you compartmentalise that time with Alan Docking Racing now?
19:56
Because there's lots of drivers, Aussies, that have gone through that path and worked with him in the UK.
20:02
For example, at this stage of your career, trying to stitch this together financially, I wouldn't imagine that was an easy prospect either.
20:09
It's one of the hardest things coming from Australia.
20:12
We didn't have a lot of financial backing.
20:14
We were on a shoestring budget compared to some of these young European drivers.
20:20
We missed all of the pre-season testing when I committed to British F3.
20:23
In fact, I missed the first couple of races of the season.
20:25
So my first race in British F3 in 2005 was at Monza.
20:30
So it's British F3, but we ventured to the Nürburgring.
20:32
We did Poe Street Circuit in the south of France.
20:36
Spa, we did Spa, which was one of the best experiences of my life there.
20:40
There you go.
20:42
So Doko, as he's affectionately known as, he looks after young Aussies.
20:48
He did a great deal for us.
20:52
We didn't have the best of equipment, and I wish we were able to tackle it properly, do the 30 days of pre-season testing that some of the other guys were doing, throwing 30, 40 sets of tyres at it.
21:09
I still don't regret going over there.
21:10
I think any young Aussie that goes over to Europe, no matter what they ultimately end up doing, whether they come back to Australia and commit to supercars, you just learn so much from that experience.
21:21
I was 19, I think, when I moved over and left home, literally gone from living with mum and dad at 19 to living in a foreign country.
21:30
And at that stage, there were no systems set up to assist young Aussies.
21:34
From the sport point of view.
21:35
Well, from a sporting point of view, but from a life point of view, you mentioned the program that Cam Vanden Nuggen ran for Motorsport Australia, then Cam's.
21:44
Yeah, there was some education about nutrition and sports science and things like that.
21:48
But now young Aussies go over and there's hubs that are set up and good education and people to kind of look after them so they can really focus on the sport.
21:59
But the one thing when you move to Europe or the UK for me –
22:05
is you are living and breathing the sport every single day of your life.
22:12
You wake up and you're thinking about it.
22:13
You go to bed, you're thinking about it.
22:15
And I think that's a great thing to kind of progress, you know, your skill sets and...
22:25
everything you do is working towards better performance on track.
22:30
And that was neat.
22:31
I lived in Silverstone Village, so I'd wake up to the sound of Formula 1s, the V10s back then, testing at the circuit.
22:40
It was a pretty good alarm bell, never got old.
22:43
And yeah, it was a great experience.
22:47
We'll get to your lovely wife a little bit later on, who I've had the chance to
22:50
work with over time in elite sailing.
22:53
She's a gold medal winning sailor, represented Australia.
22:57
You have represented Australia as well for A1 Grand Prix, rookie driver at Laguna Seca.
23:04
You got the chance to progress in 06-07 to be lead driver for the team and picked up that podium in China.
23:11
I absolutely loved that category.
23:14
Those cars, they were so different from the F3 that I was used to.
23:17
I spoke about the finesse required to drive an F3.
23:21
The A1 GP was the first car I drove where you had to grab it by the scruff of the neck and just drive the hell out of it.
23:29
I can't remember how much horsepower they had.
23:31
They were pretty reasonable, wasn't it?
23:32
550, 550 horsepower.
23:35
They were a bit heavier than the F3 as well, but they had that enormous, famous and very wide rear tyre.
23:43
They sort of looked similar to the Formula One cars from the 70s with that big rear tyre.
23:48
It's the first time I got used to tyre blankets as well.
23:51
We had tyre warmers.
23:53
So you'd go out of the gate at a circuit you'd never been to before, and the degradation of those tyres was so high.
24:00
I remember going to Brno in Czech Republic, and my very first lap on that circuit was my fastest lap for all of practice because of the degradation, having never seen the circuit before.
24:12
World-class drivers, great championship.
24:15
We went to some amazing circuits.
24:17
I got to work with Ryan Briscoe for the first time.
24:19
I learned a lot from working with Ryan, who I think is the utmost professional in everything that he does.
24:26
So he drove it at Zanvoort.
24:28
He got a podium at Zanvoort.
24:29
I was there as the rookie driver.
24:32
It was inspirational to just be in that environment, to be rubbing shoulders with Ryan and learning from him.
24:38
And then Ryan had some other races that conflicted with A1GP.
24:43
So in the end, I got the call up to race, I think it was the Czech Republic that was my first event.
24:50
Did the Chinese race as well, the Australian round of it, the New Zealand round, which is at Taupo.
24:58
And they were hugely physical cars to drive because of the mechanical grip that they had.
25:04
The aero was a bit agricultural, just fun cars.
25:08
We got the podium in China, which was pretty special.
25:10
That was a funny weekend in itself because they had received the FIA circuit approval.
25:17
It was in Beijing, it was a street circuit.
25:19
It was a street circuit in Beijing in 2007.
25:23
We did so many fun activities off the track as well.
25:26
But we got onto the circuit and everyone was concerned about this hairpin corner, whether the cars could physically get around it with their corner radius.
25:36
We got to the first practice session and there was a car park down at this hairpin.
25:40
No one had actually sat down to do the maths on whether the cars could make it around.
25:44
So they had to go back to the drawing boards, change the circuit, get FIA approval.
25:49
And eventually we got back out there.
25:52
But it was all a bit rough around the edges because they also had manhole covers, these 20-kilo manhole covers that were lifting, that the tack welds that they put on were pretty dodgy.
26:03
I remember there were no crowds for practice or qualifying.
26:06
Suction being sucked up off the road, dude.
26:08
The ground effects of the car sucked one of these manhole covers off the ground, over the fence and into the grandstand that happened to be empty.
26:16
And I don't think it ever hit the news.
26:17
They tried to sweep it under the carpet, but it was so rough around the edges.
26:22
But some of these experiences all over the world, in Indonesia, Ryan raced in Indonesia, Durban, the street circuit in Durban was one of the coolest street circuits I've ever raced on.
26:33
So it was a lot of fun.
26:35
I got to work with Ian Dyke, who I'd competed against in F3 as well, and he ended up taking the reins and continuing the championship.
26:43
Such a fun car.
26:44
The off-track stuff as well as the on-track stuff, they looked after us.
26:49
The parties were fun, the activities were fun, but the cars were just mega.
26:53
Shortly after this period, there is an appearance at the Daytona 24 Hour in 2008, and the commencement
26:59
of a move into Super 2, what was known at the time as the Fujitsu series.
27:04
Was there a conscious switch from you here?
27:06
Did you think, right, the open-wheel dream, I've gone as far as I can with this, you know, without some incredible backer or a massive amount of funding, I have to switch tact here?
27:17
And where did you kind of make that decision?
27:20
Exactly as you say, Rusty.
27:21
That was a really tough pill to swallow at the end of the stint in A1 GP and the second season I did in British F3.
27:32
Learned a lot, but as I said, we didn't have the funding to do it properly in the first place, and money talks in this sport, as we all know.
27:40
So I had to make the really hard decision, and to me it felt like I was giving up on a dream.
27:47
For me, the dream was always Formula One,
27:50
And we discussed what our options might be.
27:54
This is with your dad or this is... With dad, who effectively was my manager at the time.
28:00
And we decided to make the transition to touring car racing.
28:07
Didn't really... And it's such a different world.
28:09
I felt like...
28:10
I almost felt like I was starting from scratch in a way.
28:13
So it was a good introduction doing the Daytona 24-hour race.
28:17
Had a couple of great teammates there.
28:19
We finished the race, which for a 24-hour race is an achievement in itself.
28:25
It all went – we qualified third in the GT category.
28:28
There were two categories back then.
28:30
There was the prototype category and the GTs.
28:33
And we were in a Pontiac GTOR, which was – it's a Monaro, basically –
28:38
Fun car.
28:39
It was a pretty agricultural car as well.
28:42
And I remember going over to Daytona and doing the test day in January and then back there for the 24-hour.
28:48
And I remember Diego, my teammate, started the race from P3, which is a great starting position for a big race.
28:57
And two laps in, we've lost our bonnet.
28:59
The bonnet clips weren't done up properly.
29:02
And poor Diego has come back to the pits with his bonnet.
29:05
bonnet, you know, dangling around.
29:06
I don't know how we even made it back, but that was the start of all these issues we had with the car, mechanical issues.
29:14
But it's my first and only ever 24 hour race.
29:18
And it's kind of like a choose your own adventure story.
29:21
You duck off to the camper van and try to get some sleep, which is almost impossible with the adrenaline that's going through your system.
29:27
You come back and you need an update of what's happened in the last hour.
29:31
So much can change so quickly.
29:34
I got to finish the race.
29:35
It was pretty special to see the chequered flag after 24 hours.
29:38
I think I had quite possibly the best sleep of my life off the back of that race.
29:43
It was a good introduction.
29:45
Very different car to supercars, but it was still a great introduction to what was the start of my supercar career.
29:53
Stint in sedan racing.
29:54
As you and I talk, sadly, has been hit by a hurricane over there, but that's an amazing race that I've been to today, Tone at 24 hour.
30:01
Very, very cool, mate.
30:02
Thank you.
30:12
Can you feel the energy from Carl through the microphone?
30:15
Because I can.
30:17
Up next, we head to Queensland for the start of Carl's supercar adventure.
30:22
Take it away, Rusty.
30:24
Let's talk supercars.
30:26
Can you recall for our audience where you were, first time you set foot in one, and what it was like to drive, the experience, the feeling that it left you with?
30:36
I remember exactly where it was.
30:37
My brother and dad were both there as well.
30:40
Queensland Raceway with Dick Johnson.
30:43
Dick was at the track as well.
30:44
In fact, he had a drive on the same day.
30:47
Will Davison was out there and Adrian Burgess, who I knew very well from my stint in F3 in the UK.
30:55
He was actually tested with Carl in Motorsport.
30:59
We actually met Alan Vandermeer, which we'll probably talk about Alan, I think a little bit later.
31:05
So the introduction came through ATB, Adrian Burgess, and we were invited to this test day at QR.
31:13
And I remember the first time, it was on the 17 inch wheel back then, 2008.
31:17
Well no, it might've even been the end of 2007 that I actually, yeah, I think it was the end of 2007.
31:24
And I remember my first feedback was, it feels like it's oversteering through every corner.
31:30
And Adrian went on to say, well, I think you'll probably find it's actually just the sidewall of the tyre moving around.
31:36
I've never experienced something so heavy.
31:39
And I've used the word agricultural before for open wheelers, but nothing quite like this.
31:44
This tank, it felt unrefined in a way compared to the perfect purpose-built open wheelers that I was used to.
31:54
And I felt, in a way, out of my depth.
31:59
It just felt foreign to me, but at the same time really enjoyed the experience.
32:03
And my brother had a steer as well.
32:05
He was sort of not committed to a career in motorsport, but still loved it like I did.
32:11
Ultimately, he chose to go down a different pathway.
32:13
But it was just a really nice experience to work with Dick on that day, who was one of the loveliest guys up and down the grid, in my opinion.
32:24
And yeah.
32:26
I really, really loved the experience and I thought, you know what?
32:29
It was a tough pill to swallow to walk away from the open wheeler career, but I can see myself really, really enjoying supercars and touring cars moving forward.
32:40
Let's talk a little more about that.
32:42
In your first season, I think, eighth that year, but importantly you chalked up some very big milestones, mate.
32:48
The Mike Cable Rookie of the Year is one that springs to mind.
32:51
And you look at the list of names that have won
32:53
that title along the way, Marcus Ambrose, Mark Winterbottom, James Courtney, Chas Mostert, Scott McLaughlin, very cool company to be recognised in that regard.
33:02
Yeah, I, it was a bit of a surprise.
33:06
I didn't think, you know, I think as a professional athlete, and we are athletes, I think motor racing drivers don't give themselves enough credit.
33:16
Yeah, we work hard off the track as well as on, and it is physical.
33:21
We're our own biggest critic and I had a good season.
33:25
It was a very competitive field.
33:27
I think John O. Webb was in there.
33:28
Slady was in there as well.
33:31
Reynolds, I can't remember who ended up winning it, but when I got called and told I'd won the Mike Cable Rookie of the Year Award, I was blown away.
33:42
And then I didn't know much about the award or Mike Cable and then obviously did a bit of research to realize who had won it previously.
33:49
So that was a nice thing to win at the end of that first season.
33:54
And I also had my very first Bathurst 1000 experience that year as well, which was a very – it was unusual circumstances.
34:02
I wasn't planning on doing – I didn't feel I was ready to tackle a Bathurst 1000.
34:08
Some people – sometimes it's good to jump in the deep end, as I mentioned before.
34:12
Sometimes you need to do the time before you tackle a race like that.
34:18
And I have –
34:19
the hugest amount of respect for that race and that circuit.
34:23
It demands so much respect.
34:24
And we see some people go out and bin it in the first practice session, and I didn't want to be that guy.
34:33
I got a call from the Ford Rising Star racing team.
34:36
Grant Denier was supposed to be driving with Michael Patrizzi.
34:40
He'd had the monster truck crash, hadn't he, from memory?
34:42
Exactly.
34:43
So Grant had been driving a monster truck and had a similar compression fracture to what I'd had and was told, you're not allowed to race.
34:52
So I reckon it was less than two weeks out from the Bathurst 1000.
34:57
I get a call saying, hey...
35:00
Are you free and would you be interested in racing at the Bathurst 1000?
35:03
And of course, while I thought I didn't think I was quite ready to tackle the race, the most famous race in the Southern Hemisphere, I thought, you know what, going back to what I said before, it's one of those opportunities that's come by my desk.
35:18
How can you say no to that?
35:20
So I jumped in and we finished the race, which was a good start, but it was a real rollercoaster ride.
35:25
I loved that event, that experience.
35:29
It was a satellite operation to what was FPR back then, or ProDrive.
35:36
So we got to meet some of their engineers.
35:37
We had some good data.
35:40
It was a really great event.
35:42
Learned a lot, loved driving that car, and fell in love with the mountain, as we all do.
35:48
You can't not when you drive around that place.
35:51
It seems in that little window like it's almost a meteoric rise to the main game, relatively speaking.
36:00
You get your first full-time season with Brad Jones Racing in 2010.
36:04
How did that opportunity come about?
36:05
And did you feel like you were ready at that stage?
36:07
Were you chomping at the bit?
36:08
I'm not sure you ever feel like you're quite ready, but...
36:14
I guess how it came about, I remember meeting Brad Jones at Barbagallo Raceway for the supercar round in, I guess it's typically in May, first weekend of May every year.
36:26
And he'd been watching some of the results in that development series year.
36:33
And we continued the conversations and
36:36
I guess towards the end of the year, we were getting closer and closer.
36:40
We had a couple of sponsors on board that we were able to bring to the table.
36:43
And Kim Jones had been working on Fair Dinkum Sheds in the background.
36:49
So it was Kim that brought Fair Dinkum Sheds to the background.
36:51
I met the Fair Dinkum people and it worked out.
36:54
It was a great relationship.
36:55
Love those guys still.
36:58
Yeah, I thought, well, we were planning on a two-year arrangement in the development series, or Fujitsu series back then.
37:07
And again, we thought, well, the opportunity is here to jump into the main game.
37:11
I'm probably not quite ready yet.
37:12
I haven't done the time in the second tier championship, but...
37:18
heck, let's just give this a go.
37:20
And I loved working with BJR.
37:24
I had JR, Jason Richards, as a teammate.
37:28
I had Bridie as a teammate.
37:32
Sorry, we missed a year here, 2009.
37:34
All but took the year off in 2009.
37:39
Walk me through that.
37:40
Why?
37:40
It was financial.
37:41
We just didn't have the funding to continue to do a second season.
37:45
I did one race at Sandown in the development series, but Bridie actually...
37:53
needed a teammate in the Fujitsu car, which was run by Stone Brothers as a satellite operation.
37:59
Dave Stewart was the engineer.
38:01
And that was, sorry, that was my second, we've skipped ahead, but the, that was a fantastic experience.
38:06
Bridie is one of the cleverest blokes up and down pit lane.
38:10
He's amazing.
38:11
And working alongside him was one of the best things I could have done.
38:17
That year, he won races that year in that car working with Dave Stewart.
38:23
We had the Phillip Island race instead of the Sandown 500 that year.
38:26
The Bathurst race, it was a wild ride in itself because Bridie Binder, turn one, lap one of the big race.
38:37
I remember sitting there in pit lane, you know, head in my hands, thinking it's – we're done, we're all over.
38:42
They dragged him out.
38:44
So we were a lap down on lap two for the big race.
38:48
And we thought, well, we're just going to be circulating.
38:50
We're just making up numbers now.
38:53
And then Dave Stewart, I remember sitting in the pit lane waiting for my stint and it starts raining.
38:59
and a panic station, safety car.
39:01
Dave looks at me and goes, Carl, would you be prepared to go out on slick tires in the wet at the Bathurst 1000?
39:11
And I felt sick.
39:12
I thought, you're kidding me.
39:13
This is my second Bathurst 1000 and you're about to send me out on slicks in the wet.
39:18
I said, he said, Carl, this is the only way I can see us making up the lap that we're down.
39:24
He said, we're doing it.
39:26
He made the decision.
39:28
Put your helmet on.
39:29
Bright is pitting this lap.
39:31
No time to prepare, which is probably the best thing.
39:33
I'm an overthinker.
39:34
So just jump in and deal with it.
39:37
And I remember jumping in.
39:39
could barely keep up with a safety car.
39:41
It was that treacherous out there.
39:44
It's tricky enough around the mountain in dry conditions on a slick tire, let alone wet tire in the wet, let alone a slick tire in the wet.
39:53
But it worked out, the track dried out.
39:55
I remember passing guys around the outside at McPhilamy feeling like a superstar on my slick tyres while they were trying to keep their wet tyres cool.
40:05
Everyone else had to pit for wets.
40:07
There was another safety car.
40:08
We got our lap back and we ended up finishing 11th in the race, which from where we were on turn one, lap one in the Sand Trap was a great comeback.
40:17
But yeah, working with Bridie, Dave Stewart,
40:20
Love them both to bits.
40:22
Still, I work very closely with Dave Stewart currently.
40:26
Still catch up with Bridie every so often.
40:29
That was a great experience.
40:30
And that, it was off the back of that experience that led to the Brad Jones Racing year in 2010.
40:38
Awesome, mate.
40:39
So can we skip ahead a little bit here in terms of... My question now really is about
40:48
your first impressions of the main game.
40:51
You detailed before about the Super Prix and the quality of the competition when you went to Bahrain that year, the step up from Australia to what it was like in Europe.
40:59
What was it like stepping from the second tier of supercars to the main game and how eye-opening was that?
41:04
It was ruthless.
41:06
I remember, again, transitioning from an open-wheeler background where you can't afford to bang wheels, although we still did in Europe, and...
41:19
I couldn't believe just how aggressive it was out there.
41:23
No, yeah, no love lost at all.
41:27
And the physicality of it, I think, was the other thing that I really struggled with, the heat in the car.
41:34
I remember the first Adelaide 500 or Eclipsa 500 back then.
41:37
And I...
41:41
I barely got through it.
41:43
I was a fit guy, I took my fitness seriously, very seriously.
41:47
In fact, the year off in 2009, I started competing in triathlons to channel my competitiveness and qualified for age group world championship, which conflicted with the Phillip Island race, unfortunately.
42:00
But I took my fitness seriously and I didn't feel equipped or ready for supercars.
42:08
And,
42:10
So that felt like a baptism of fire in a way.
42:13
And I just felt like every weekend for the first half of that season was a real struggle mentally, physically.
42:22
And I just felt...
42:23
I didn't understand how to extract the most out of a supercar.
42:26
It felt like the window for setup was quite small.
42:29
When you're in the window and everything was working, it felt great.
42:34
But trying to get it into the window as quickly and efficiently as possible in those early practice sessions, I always felt like I was one step behind.
42:42
So we'd quite often, the final session on track for the weekend, the final race was the best
42:49
you know, best the car felt.
42:50
Because you'd unlocked it by that stage.
42:51
We'd unlocked it, but it was too little too late.
42:54
So it took a long time to really get my head around the supercar.
42:57
What was important for setup, what we were chasing, and eventually you get your head around it and you understand what you like in the car.
43:07
I had great teammates with JR and Bridie that year to lean on, but that first year,
43:16
Just it felt like a real grind.
43:19
And then it was the second year with BJR, we actually started to make some headway and get some good results.
43:27
Qualifying was probably a weak point for me.
43:30
And we had some good qualifying results.
43:33
We qualified sixth at Barba Gallo, fifth at Queensland Raceway.
43:38
Good result at Sandown, I think, later that year.
43:40
But trying to be...
43:43
I think coming from an open-wheeler background, I didn't probably give supercars the respect it deserved in that first season or two seasons.
43:53
It is, in my opinion, the most competitive championship in the world, Formula 1 included.
44:00
I look at that field.
44:01
You look at the times.
44:03
You go to a Simmons Plains, you have 24 cars separated by...
44:09
three-tenths of a second, four-tenths of a second.
44:11
There's no championship in the world quite like it.
44:13
So I don't think other championships around the world quite give supercars the respect it deserves in that regard.
44:21
And the one round every year that it came to light was the Gold Coast 600 race when we had the internationals that came over that were, you know, eyes wide open, right?
44:31
Eyes wide open, superstars in their own right.
44:34
Most of them had won major titles in world-class international championships.
44:39
And no one could believe just how, that was probably one of the best things supercars ever did to put it on the, it was on the world stage, but to really showcase how competitive it actually was.
44:50
I love that event.
44:52
Can we talk before we get to,
44:54
Barba Gallo 2011, mate, just spend a little bit of time on that.
44:57
Can we just discuss that fitness you mentioned there a moment ago?
45:00
Am I right in saying you did an event where you competed against Jenson Button as well?
45:04
Yeah, that's exactly right.
45:06
I almost forgotten about that one.
45:07
Jensen was doing a training camp in Perth.
45:11
I was still living in Perth at the time.
45:14
I moved to Melbourne in 2012.
45:16
So it must have been 2010, 2011 that Jensen came over and he was into triathlons.
45:23
He's still into triathlons as far as I'm aware.
45:26
And, of course, Jensen rolls up to town.
45:29
You dig deep and you're out there to beat him.
45:32
And I think I beat him by...
45:35
It was 50 seconds overall.
45:37
He had my measure in the swim.
45:39
I passed him on the bike and yeah, that healthy competition was there.
45:43
But that was a really cool experience racing against him.
45:52
Their competitive side doesn't take long to surface, no matter what the discipline.
45:56
That's the end of part one of my podcast with racer turned F1 medical car driver, Carl Reindler.
46:03
Part two is in the library and ready to go right now, and you don't want to miss that one.
46:08
The recollections of his supercars crash are spine tingling.
46:12
The world-leading burn specialist he worked with, getting back on the horse,
46:16
and a moment of realisation of the toll it took on family, plus the moves he made that, with the benefit of time, he'd do differently and the difficult decision to stop.