Latest / Rusty's Garage / The Motorsport Brief - Meet The New Supercars Commentators! ποΈ
Transcript
- 0:02A listener production.
- 0:04Welcome to the Motorsport Brief.
- 0:05A gaggle, a flock of commentators.
- 0:08Not sure what you call them, but I know we will not struggle for convo in this episode.
- 0:12That is for sure.
- 0:15Hi, everybody.
- 0:15Rusty with you in the garage at Listener in Melbourne with another GP Week Motorsport Brief.
- 0:20Now, supercars are a big part of the Albert Park offering, and this year there are some fresh voices who you'll know from the support categories.
- 0:29They've been taking turns and are going to take turns in the main role, the play-by-play commentary role.
- 0:33I have had the pleasure of knowing them for many years.
- 0:37We've all had the chance to work together on occasion.
- 0:39I just thought it would be really nice...
- 0:41to help you get to know them a little bit better today.
- 0:44They are proper, and I mean proper, car and bike fans, deeply committed to their craft and incredibly respectful of the history, the heritage in that baton that they get the chance to run with in 2026.
- 0:57I'll start this as professionally as I can.
- 1:00Chad Nalon, Matt Nolte, Richard Crail, welcome to the studio.
- 1:03That is my poor attempt at a Q&A hosting.
- 1:06Welcome.
- 1:07How are you?
- 1:08I didn't realise this was a brief.
- 1:09I thought we were getting the whole thing.
- 1:11I would have shown up on the wheel.
- 1:13He messaged, Kralse messaged me in the lead up and goes, you know us, right?
- 1:17We're not going to be able to cram this into half an hour.
- 1:19This is a two hour spectacular, this one.
- 1:21We're going to have to cram down in 30 minutes.
- 1:23Welcome to part one.
- 1:24You're so clear, part are coming on again.
- 1:26Exactly, exactly.
- 1:26Part two will come later this year.
- 1:27Yeah, yeah.
- 1:28You have all taken different paths to get here, but you've been friends, I want to say, for basically the better part of 20 years or if not more, haven't you?
- 1:37Bang on 20 years for Nolts and I.
- 1:38We started working 2006 Western Sydney International Dragway.
- 1:43Was it the Nationals or the Nitro Champs or the East Coast Nationals?
- 1:46East Coast Nationals, I think it was, yeah.
- 1:48We were on air 3 a.m. in the morning together for some reason.
- 1:52We might need to dig that photo up of us, the special one that we've got on our socials.
- 1:55This could be the thumbnail for this one.
- 1:56Yeah.
- 1:57It's the two of us, we've known each other for all of 12 hours and we're still on air together for the entire 12 hours.
- 2:02And we've decided at this point to break into the corporate boxes and start stealing the beers at this point.
- 2:07We've been on air too long.
- 2:08It's too late.
- 2:09And so I think there's a couple of VBs in the background.
- 2:11In telling your respective stories, what you've done in your youth creeps in here.
- 2:16And there's a lovely picture of you, Chad, Wanneroo as a youngster, kind of race-themed overalls, maybe hanging with Dick Johnson.
- 2:23Tell us a bit about that.
- 2:24Yeah, well, for me, that was it growing up, you know, going to Wanneroo, Claremont Speedway, Ravenswood Dragway.
- 2:29They were the three.
- 2:30And so getting to go with my mum and dad and my sister and whenever the big show was in town, it was Group A era.
- 2:35So I was a big Dick Johnson fan, had the little, like...
- 2:39race suit onesie sort of DJ onesie.
- 2:42Have you kept that?
- 2:43Yeah, yeah.
- 2:43He'd probably fit my son.
- 2:44He'd still fit in.
- 2:45He's just sun wearing.
- 2:46Yeah, it fits my kids.
- 2:47Great.
- 2:47That's awesome.
- 2:48Unreal.
- 2:48Awesome.
- 2:49Totally fits my eldest, Chase, which is pretty sweet.
- 2:52But yeah, I'll be getting a photo with Brockie and with DJ and all these guys.
- 2:55And there's the cool photo of me meeting Peter Brock, and it's the Channel 7 TV compound behind him.
- 3:01And it was like, little did I know that that was the pathway.
- 3:04But I remember Crowsley put up a post saying he was...
- 3:08as besotted by the commentators when he was growing up.
- 3:11And that was the same for me too.
- 3:12I was excited about meeting Mike Raymond as I would be about meeting Dick Johnson.
- 3:15Tell me about that, about being besotted.
- 3:17Yeah, well, it was.
- 3:18And we, like Chad, I grew up going to Malala and the seminal moment of growing up in Adelaide and the Barossa especially, which is quite close to Malala, where the touring cars were until 1998, the Adelaide 500 started.
- 3:31The seminal memory of my youth is being there in Peter Brock's final round in 97.
- 3:36And there were somehow...
- 3:38He was there too.
- 3:39We only learned this afterwards that Nolte and I were there opposite each other on the racetrack.
- 3:44Crazy.
- 3:44Because I was at the start finish line.
- 3:46I think you were directly over the other side, weren't you?
- 3:48Yeah.
- 3:48Running into the final complex.
- 3:50So the world's colliding there.
- 3:52So that was it.
- 3:54But a fundamental childhood memory for me.
- 3:55But then was Bathurst weekend was that special rite of passage that I think all motorsport families have is that you get up bright and early in the morning at 6.30.
- 4:04Camp on the lounge.
- 4:05Early for you guys over in the west.
- 4:07camp on the lounge, you know, mum and the little brother couldn't bother you all day because Bathurst was on and you'd sit there with dad, watch the great race.
- 4:14I'd remember sitting there with the VHS and recording it and pausing it during the ad breaks to take the ads out so you could try and fit it all on one four hour VHS and you get right into it.
- 4:24But I was as fascinated in the broadcast and the talking heads of my youth while
- 4:30on TV as I was with my hero, Peter Brock or Dickie Johnson or Larry Perkins.
- 4:36So Mike Rayman's, Gary Wilkinson's, blah, blah, blah.
- 4:39And you'll laugh, but even that early Network 10 era, which was so fundamental to growing supercars to where it is now, when Cochrane got involved and it became commercialised.
- 4:52So Lee Diffie, yourself, the great Barry Sheen, they were all key elements to me getting in my brain, you know,
- 4:59I really want to do that.
- 5:00I want to tell the stories of our sport.
- 5:02Love it.
- 5:03Matt, for you, you've got vivid memories of Adelaide Grand Prix with your dad.
- 5:07That made a huge impact on you, didn't it?
- 5:08Yeah.
- 5:09Well, see, I was actually not really into motorsport when I was a kid.
- 5:12I was more cricket and footy, believe it or not.
- 5:13I wouldn't check by the athletic.
- 5:17Ditto.
- 5:17A lot of time at first league.
- 5:19Exactly, yeah.
- 5:20Dad took me out to the Speedway when I was younger, and a car backfired, and it freaked me out.
- 5:25And he said, all right, you're a bit too young to come to this.
- 5:28And then he gave it another chance and said, I'll take you out to the Speedway.
- 5:30It was a Sprint Car Masters at Speedway Park now shut, sadly.
- 5:34And Dad used to deliver the beer for Foster's.
- 5:36I got a phone call about 7.30 on a Friday night.
- 5:38Oh, no, that's where it all started.
- 5:41And we had to go and take beers into the Grand Prix track.
- 5:43And all of a sudden I'm looking at an F1 car in pit lane.
- 5:46I think it was Ferrari or McLaren, one of the first cars I saw there.
- 5:49And there they were revving away.
- 5:51And I was instantly in love.
- 5:53And forgetting the other sport, I was going motor racing.
- 5:55But I didn't think about the commentary.
- 5:57The commentary wasn't really β I wanted to race or be involved in it.
- 6:00I couldn't drive, couldn't afford to drive.
- 6:03And you were for a time with Toll and the Anthony Trail, maybe Porsches to begin with, were you?
- 6:07Yeah, it was the Porsches with 95.
- 6:09I was the gopher.
- 6:10with the toll team.
- 6:11Excellent.
- 6:11And it became pretty apparent after a couple of years that I couldn't do that either.
- 6:17And someone said, you should talk about it.
- 6:19You know what you're looking at.
- 6:20And there was an empty commentary box at Phillip Island years ago on a state round, and all I had was the local radios, you remember, Crowley.
- 6:27And I went up, there's a sound engineer there, and I said, oh, I'm here to do the commentary.
- 6:30And the guy goes, oh, good.
- 6:31Well, no one else has done anything today.
- 6:32So here I am calling a state round, and I couldn't see turn one.
- 6:37What were you talking there, like 944s or something like that?
- 6:38Yeah, I think it was Island Magic, I think the event was back then.
- 6:41And then away we went.
- 6:42I started doing Porsches, and then Speedway a year later.
- 6:45I talked a big game about, yeah, I can do Speedway, I can do Speedway.
- 6:48And then I got there the first night, and there was 10,000 people in front of the commentary box.
- 6:52And I'm like...
- 6:54I can't do this.
- 6:54And then, yeah, as time went on, I met Chad, I met Kralese.
- 6:59In fact, Kralese and I got pitted against each other.
- 7:01We were like rivals that didn't know each other in the early days.
- 7:03There was a rivalry that neither of us had any idea about.
- 7:06We were just going, oh, these two blokes from South Australia, young up and coming talent, oh, they're batting heads.
- 7:11They're each taking each other's gigs and all that.
- 7:13It's like, I had absolutely no idea of that.
- 7:16You had absolutely no idea of that.
- 7:18The first time we probably got together and hung out and had a beer, it got on like a house on fire.
- 7:23The rest is history.
- 7:24But, yeah, it was a rivalry that neither of us knew existed.
- 7:26No.
- 7:26I remember it was 2004.
- 7:27It might have been a pro car round.
- 7:29It was.
- 7:29He was doing F3, and I was there still learning.
- 7:32So I'd go out and call the state series rounds at Malala, and I said, do you want to help out with the pro car round?
- 7:35I went, yeah.
- 7:36Oh, hang on.
- 7:37Kralsey's going to be there.
- 7:38How's this going to go down?
- 7:39And even now, my heart's beating.
- 7:41And I remember he walked up in the commentary box, and he has this stance when he comes into a commentary box.
- 7:46And when he walked in, I went,
- 7:48How's this going to go?
- 7:50I don't have a stance.
- 7:51You do.
- 7:51I'll show it to you one day.
- 7:53If you have your sunnies on, the sunnies and your arms crossed like this, that can be very intimidating sometimes.
- 7:59With the notebook?
- 8:00Let me tell you, I've worked with him overseas.
- 8:02He's not intimidating.
- 8:03He's got a beautiful soul.
- 8:05Fine after that.
- 8:06And we sat down and just nailed it.
- 8:09Like, we just β we barely looked at each other, but we'd talk, and I'd whack him on the arm, he'd keep talking, and from that moment we clicked and away we went.
- 8:15So that was 20 years ago.
- 8:17That's crazy.
- 8:18I love some of the icebreaker moments here.
- 8:20I can't remember whether it's our good buddy Dean Neal or Cam Vandendungan, but one of them told me that maybe β
- 8:26A shared love of the Simpsons broke the ice between you two.
- 8:29Is that right?
- 8:30I think that was that day.
- 8:31It was.
- 8:31Sydney Dragway.
- 8:32We're in the MySpace era.
- 8:34We're going back.
- 8:35Oh, man.
- 8:35Yeah, pre-date Facebook, all right?
- 8:37So we're at MySpace, and I think I had a couple of photos up from a recent trip to the States.
- 8:41And you'd seen a few of them, and you instantly, I'd put a Simpsons caption or whatever on it.
- 8:46And Noltz got it straight away.
- 8:48And he's like, oh, hang on a minute.
- 8:49Now.
- 8:50Yeah, you realize your kindred spirits.
- 8:51And I think that's why people like us clicked straight away because growing up, we'd go to primary school and you'd have mates who are into footy and cricket and soccer or whatever, but you didn't have mates who liked motor racing.
- 9:01Yes.
- 9:02And so when you found your brethren in life, people who are like you, it was like why would you be rivals with them when you could be mates with them, like the people that were missing through your childhood.
- 9:10Matt and I in much later life now just bombard each other with flying high memes all the time.
- 9:16Check your phone after this moment.
- 9:19He's standing one of the left on the way up.
- 9:20I'd love that.
- 9:21Chad, can I stick with you?
- 9:22You've done some great work, mate, on the two-wheel side too with MotoGP.
- 9:26Your late dad would have been so proud of what you did at Sydney Motorsport Park.
- 9:30He had some bikes too, didn't he?
- 9:32Oh, yeah.
- 9:32Did you?
- 9:32Tell me about that.
- 9:35Uh, maybe, maybe one was a standout.
- 9:37Yeah.
- 9:37Yeah.
- 9:37Well, dad, dad was always a bike guy, which is why I became a bike guy.
- 9:40And certainly that's dad was happy.
- 9:43You take another racetrack and he could see that.
- 9:44I like going to watching cars and bikes race, but he was happier in the car park, looking at things being still, how have they done that?
- 9:50And how have they connected this thing up?
- 9:51And all that's rare because of this.
- 9:52And.
- 9:53fascinating mind with that sort of stuff.
- 9:55And so he started to build his own bikes a little bit as well.
- 9:58And so he had a β still has, sadly he's not with us, but the bikes are β the GSX 1100, so Suzuki.
- 10:05And he's for some reason done that up to be full Street Fighter mode for a guy that was like, you know, way too old today.
- 10:10Have you ridden some of those?
- 10:11I've ridden all the bikes, yeah.
- 10:12Awesome.
- 10:13Uh, my favorites, the Kawasaki, cause I bleed green, uh, Kawasaki Eddie Lawson replica, which was a proper barn find for like a thousand bucks.
- 10:22And they'd painted it.
- 10:22Obviously Kawasaki's a green.
- 10:24This one was black.
- 10:25And it was because the dealer had brought it in and be like, who wants a green motorcycle?
- 10:28This is the eighties.
- 10:29And so they painted it black and then sold it.
- 10:32And it's just been living in some dude's shed under a tarp.
- 10:35And dad's as he does found it.
- 10:37And then I'll give you a thousand bucks for it.
- 10:39The bloke like had no idea what he had, so to speak.
- 10:42And so Dad's got it home and done a full Renault on it.
- 10:44And the thing is resplendent bright green Eddie Lawson replica.
- 10:47Love it.
- 10:48And then he's got a BMW S1000XR, I think it is.
- 10:53And that's the sort of adventure style 1,000cc bike.
- 10:55But it's got the full 1,000cc superbike engine in it, so it hauls.
- 10:59It's got a quick shift to everything else.
- 11:00I hear in the Barossa from time to time, there are swear words in a garage around your first car, maybe an old Porsche that you work on from time to time that...
- 11:11Tell me about this.
- 11:12Well, I'm a very... Do you cuss?
- 11:13Do you?
- 11:14Yeah, and there genuinely are scars on my hands for working on cars.
- 11:20As a commentator, I'm a pretty good commentator as far as a mechanic goes, Rusty.
- 11:24But you kept your first car.
- 11:25You've kept your first car.
- 11:26Yeah, I did.
- 11:26So my first car was a 1976 Holden Tirana.
- 11:29Awesome.
- 11:29And we found it, I think it was in the trading post.
- 11:32And for people at home, that was a newspaper back in the day.
- 11:35What was he asking for?
- 11:37Well, I can take it and we beat him down.
- 11:41So it was owned by this painter in Adelaide's northern suburbs, a real working-class area, and he was asking $400 for this 173 automatic Holden Tirana with a vinyl roof.
- 11:53It was blue.
- 11:54There's a couple of different shades of blue, but it was blue.
- 11:57And he was asking $400 for this 173 automatic Holden Tirana
- 12:00So for 350 bucks, we beat him down 50 bucks because that was all I had at the time at 15.
- 12:06And we bought it.
- 12:07And then we took it home and dad and with a little bit of assistance from myself.
- 12:11And I remember my late grandfather coming in and waving the spray gun around it a little bit when we were painting it.
- 12:17We restored it.
- 12:18And that was my first car.
- 12:19So when I got my P-plates...
- 12:21That was the car I drove to high school in year 12.
- 12:23It was the coolest car in the year 12 car park, which was awesome.
- 12:26And I still have that.
- 12:27I kept it to this day.
- 12:28I will never sell it.
- 12:30Is it red jade?
- 12:32It is at the moment.
- 12:32It's off the road.
- 12:33It's due for a rebuild that I've been promising it for the last three or four years, but haven't quite got there yet.
- 12:39But I think it will happen this year.
- 12:40I love that thing.
- 12:41It is the last possession I will part with when I have to sell everything off inevitably.
- 12:46And then as you referenced, Rusty, my cantankerous old 944-1190.
- 12:51which I bought for two grand from Mark Buick, who's a Porsche dealer and repairer in Adelaide.
- 12:56And I've been involved with that brand for a long time.
- 12:59So I felt like I needed to have one.
- 13:00And I bought it because it's got pop-up headlights.
- 13:03And it was two grand.
- 13:04I'm not joking.
- 13:04That's the reason I love the 944.
- 13:06That's exactly why I wanted an MR2.
- 13:08Put an engine in it.
- 13:09There's a great story that when we do our second episode this year for Rusty Scratch, because we're going to need the follow-up.
- 13:15I'll tell you about how...
- 13:16How Matt Campbell, the Porsche factory racing car driver, bought the engine that's currently in my 944, but that might be a story for another day.
- 13:23Another day.
- 13:24I own a rubbish 944 that is almost always broken, but I love it for that.
- 13:29Can I come to your respective careers and how you've come to this point?
- 13:32Yours is a true hard yards story, Matt.
- 13:36We just so happen to have outside the door a forklift.
- 13:39Do you reckon you could run that for us?
- 13:41Could you show me?
- 13:43It's still current?
- 13:44Yeah.
- 13:45Technically, yeah.
- 13:45We joke about midlife crisis, right?
- 13:47But it was a significant change for you, wasn't it?
- 13:49Yeah, I grew up in a transport family.
- 13:52So all I lived and breathed, like Chad did, we were around trucks, we were around warehouses.
- 13:57That's what we knew.
- 13:58And I remember one of Dad's mates said to me one day, I was 13 or 14, he goes, you cannot be doing this.
- 14:04You need to get out and do something with your life.
- 14:05Yeah.
- 14:06Anyway, 12 years later, I listened to him after working full time at a job.
- 14:11When I say working, I probably attended full time, but I didn't get much done.
- 14:15If you looked at my parting resignation form, I love the social aspect of working, but they said, you've got to go out and chase this dream.
- 14:21And I would often work, you know, four full days at work a week, jump in a car, drive to Melbourne or drive anywhere, go racing and drive back Sunday night.
- 14:30And I thought that's what everyone did.
- 14:32because I was chasing something, but I thought, cool, go car racing.
- 14:36It might come to say, it might not eventuate to anything, but it was going out and just picking up any race event you could just to learn because I was no good.
- 14:44I had no formal training.
- 14:45I didn't go to school properly to do that.
- 14:47Um, and,
- 14:49But I knew that driving forklifts, you could go back to one day.
- 14:52It certainly wasn't something you want to do for your career.
- 14:54But getting into this, this has exceeded any expectations I've ever had.
- 14:58You've applied yourself, though.
- 14:59So, look, you're really good around you are the custodian of the stats for Trans Am and things like that in this country.
- 15:08The craft might be hands-on learned.
- 15:10But for all of you, in many respects, the PA-style commentary serves you immensely well, doesn't it?
- 15:16I think the trackside commentary that we did for years and years, I think we've done over 400 events, maybe more now since 2007.
- 15:24We would work, me and Chad would work Wednesday nights every week at the Perth Motorplex.
- 15:29And I tell anybody now, and he'll back me up, if you want to learn, go to the Motorplex over in Perth.
- 15:35And so many good ones have gone through and come out of there because it was just the frequency of events.
- 15:39Like I worked in Adelaide, I worked at both the Speedways.
- 15:42spectacularly fell out with both of them in the end.
- 15:44I thought, well, where do I go?
- 15:45Do I go to Sydney or do I go to Perth?
- 15:47He just β Chad had just moved to Sydney at that point.
- 15:50I went to Perth on a big gamble.
- 15:51I mean, there was a handshake agreement to go across.
- 15:55And my first year, I did 120 nights of racing there.
- 15:58Like, their calendar was on two A4 sheets of paper.
- 16:01And it was grinding.
- 16:02It was Wednesday nights.
- 16:03It was Friday nights.
- 16:03And there'd be β
- 16:04three men and a dog at some of these events, but you just learned how to call.
- 16:08I mean, we did a boxing day, yeah, 12 hours.
- 16:10I mean, we had the test match on the commentary box while we were calling, but if you learn how to do drag racing over a 12 hour day, you can call anything.
- 16:17Absolutely.
- 16:18And you get good at filling delays and figuring out where you're going to steer the ship.
- 16:24If there's no action happening on track, you get totally okay with the idea of not knowing where you're going.
- 16:28I think there's an element that's missing currently with younger people looking to come up through the ranks to try and do what we're doing now.
- 16:36I don't think that element's there as much now as well in getting out and actually putting in those hard yards.
- 16:42And you might be sitting there.
- 16:44My first live commentary was at a go-kart track, dirt karts in the Riverland of South Australia up at Morgan.
- 16:50Morgan.
- 16:51Yeah, on the river.
- 16:52Wonderful little kart club.
- 16:53But on a smaller club show, there might be 50 competitors.
- 16:56There'd be 25 races over the night.
- 16:58But there was probably 15 people there.
- 17:00You knew it was busy when the local coppers would rock up and park up at turn one and spectate and get a hot dog and just enjoy for a couple of hours.
- 17:08But if you can, I always thought the highest praise you could get out of that was when some of the old people from the club, so that they'd been there for 15 years.
- 17:15would come and went, oh, I really enjoyed that.
- 17:18That was great.
- 17:18And that was, you left that going, oh, maybe I am actually contributing something to this.
- 17:22And even if it's only a hundred people listening to it, you're always working at your craft and working and entertaining at them.
- 17:30And like you guys said with the drag racing, if you can call and make interesting a really quiet day at a go-kart club or at a drag strip, calling supercars or Formula One or whatever it might be, it's really easy because there's so.
- 17:43much stuff going on and there's all this information.
- 17:45And when you grow up not having any of that, when you walk into this world and you get gifted with the stuff that we get, it's phenomenal.
- 17:52It's such a different change, but I think it's those core skills that we all developed in our own separate ways that have helped get us all to this point now.
- 18:01Yeah, and it also gives you an appreciation for the production equipment and the people, producers that you get to work with.
- 18:07We've all had a decent spell on Speed Week and great shows like that when they were great spots to learn.
- 18:12Yeah.
- 18:13Because sometimes you might show up at a go-kart track and it might be a microphone that's pretty much two tin cans and a piece of string that have been put together.
- 18:18To your point, I called once at Fairbairn Park in Canberra with DIFF.
- 18:22We had this old boombox.
- 18:25and two handheld mics.
- 18:27So we'd go, okay, we're going to take a quick break up next, the 250s, and you'd put the microphone down to Jimmy Barnes for 15 seconds and then figure out.
- 18:37But it made you so good at your craft.
- 18:39It did, totally.
- 18:40And if anything, rarer as it does, does go wrong with a microphone or anything.
- 18:45Your levels and your ears aren't what you want it to be.
- 18:47You get around it because you're so used to things not working.
- 18:50And what I think it also did is it makes you really aware of how important going and talking to people in the paddock is.
- 18:57Go up to them and go, hey, Rusty, what happened to your go-kart early on?
- 19:00I saw you had a drama.
- 19:01Steering wheel fell off.
- 19:02Steering wheel fell off.
- 19:04tripped over a tree or something like that.
- 19:06I think the little nuggets of information you pick up there, and I think if we all do one thing well as a group, is that we all make sure we're armed with as much of that kind of stuff that makes it interesting to people.
- 19:18And that, for me, comes out of wandering down through the paddock between races in a go-kart club 25 years ago.
- 19:24An old boss at Channel 10, Mike Ortsent, who's now gone to God, would always say, tell them what they can't see.
- 19:29Tell them that stuff.
- 19:30We need a quick commercial break here.
- 19:31Chad is best dressed in-house.
- 19:33He's got to go to a function.
- 19:35We're going to try and squeeze in a bit more.
- 19:36Stick around.
- 19:37This is the Motorsport Brief.
- 19:41G'day everybody, Rusty with you for the latest edition of The Garage.
- 19:44We have three guys ripping human beings that are commentating on the supercars this year.
- 19:50And I thought we'd take the chance for you to get to know them a little bit better.
- 19:54Joined by Richard Crowell, Matt Nolte and Chad Nailon.
- 19:57Chad, can I come back to you?
- 19:59You're proper trained.
- 20:01Whopper?
- 20:02Can you tell people a little bit about that?
- 20:03And there's been some good operators come out of that in the West.
- 20:06Absolutely.
- 20:07So WAPA stands for WA Academy of Performing Arts.
- 20:10It's run by the Edith Cowan University in Western Australia.
- 20:14And to be able to get into it, you have to, first of all, have a degree.
- 20:17So you have to have already gone to university.
- 20:19So it's a postgraduate course.
- 20:20And then after that, you have to apply to get in, sit and audition, and then they'll only take 20 people a year at best.
- 20:27So it was, I did it in 2011.
- 20:30So it's gone back a bit and I'd already been working on the Andrew Drag Racing stuff on 1HD.
- 20:34And I thought, we'll take a bit of a risk here.
- 20:35I'm
- 20:36give up what is already my dream job and I want to go tool up a little bit more.
- 20:40And the person running the course, people in WI know this name, a legend by the name of Peter Holland, who was our ABC newsreader.
- 20:47He was the guy who ran the course.
- 20:48And it's like, this guy's been on TV for 50 years hosting the news every night.
- 20:53And so it was just a factory for pumping out.
- 20:56really solid presenters.
- 20:58So first six months, we're just learning radio.
- 21:00And then the second six months was learning television.
- 21:02And we had our own radio and TV studios, like we're sitting in right now at our disposal.
- 21:06And it was just a fantastic way to learn.
- 21:08But a lot of it was learning how to use your voice better.
- 21:10And I still don't have a voice nearly half as good as the two guys across from me, which is frustrating.
- 21:14But we were trained by people who would do the voice training for opera students on the other side of the campus.
- 21:22And you'd get $5 tickets to a musical theatre show, ballet, whatever it was.
- 21:27You could just go and enjoy everything for a whole year.
- 21:29And I just ate it up.
- 21:30He did a stint on Telethon too one night.
- 21:32I ate a Telethon one night.
- 21:33Midnight till four or five.
- 21:34Whatever it was, yeah.
- 21:35And I'd been out, surprise, surprise, and got home.
- 21:38And he was still going at three o'clock.
- 21:39The guy's a machine, but that's how they learn.
- 21:41I hope he fleece you about a hundred bucks.
- 21:43That's not easy done with Matthew Nolte.
- 21:44That's not extra zero on that.
- 21:45What's that about?
- 21:46Someone rang up and they're like...
- 21:48I'm going to donate 20 bucks to the kids' hospital if I get to speak to Xavier from Home and Away.
- 21:52And so this producer comes over and goes, Just say you're Xavier from Home and Away.
- 21:57I can't do that.
- 21:58It's like, yeah, this is Xavier from Summer Bay.
- 22:0420 bucks, good on you, thanks.
- 22:07You brought up 1HD before.
- 22:08That was a great chapter at the TED Network when they forged into an all-sport channel.
- 22:14Awesome period.
- 22:15And there's a cool photo of you, like spiky hair, and our mate.
- 22:20You've got to impersonate him, our mate Dean.
- 22:22Hello, mate.
- 22:22Yes, he does a good job on the comms there, mate.
- 22:25He's very good.
- 22:25He was so good.
- 22:26He was awesome.
- 22:27Yeah.
- 22:27He should still be commentating now, and we ride him so much going, mate, get out there and just call a session, because one might have a deep voice, and he has knowledge.
- 22:36Dino has this voice that just you instantly know it's motor racing when he calls.
- 22:40But he works with you now in the West, producing the Speedway, producing AFL and all sorts, doesn't he?
- 22:45He's doing amazing.
- 22:46He's way up with Channel 7 AFL coverage now.
- 22:48Very, very talented guy.
- 22:50So that, I'm not sure which photo it might be, but I have the blue 1HD shirt on.
- 22:53Yep.
- 22:54And they gave me the shirt.
- 22:56And I think I told you this is the first time I ever met you.
- 22:59I took it off and I looked on the tag.
- 23:02Rusty.
- 23:02I got your shirt for the Grand Prix.
- 23:04I was like, this is the coolest thing ever.
- 23:06I've got a rusty shirt.
- 23:06Baswater City, what second prize?
- 23:10You are properly self-taught, if you will, and you expanded your skill set to include the PR and comms side, and you have been immersed in β
- 23:19the Porsche framework in this country for a long time now.
- 23:22How long?
- 23:23How long?
- 23:24Oh, 2008 when what was, well, what is now sprint challenge started and Carrera cup went away for a couple of years.
- 23:32Um, sprint challenge was started as a, um, um,
- 23:36as a sort of fill the void kind of category, more club level racing.
- 23:39And then when Carrera Cup came back in 2011, I was the guy already, um, and ended up being the caller for that.
- 23:45The PR and comm stuff is interesting because it's, it's quite a big chunk of what I do, but for a lot of the early stages, especially it was a means to an end to commentate.
- 23:55I've missed a chapter here.
- 23:56Cause did that start in Formula three?
- 23:57Formula three racing was, was where I, Formula three in Australia is hugely significant to me because it, it,
- 24:04Karl Rindler and all these people coming through.
- 24:06Yeah, and Bronte Rundler, in BRM at the time, took a chance on a young South Australian kid and said, oh, do you want to help us write some press releases?
- 24:12And then, long story short, went to Gold Coast Indy with him in 2004, which was my first real trip away to go racing.
- 24:18Lee Diffie heard you there.
- 24:19Did he?
- 24:20Yeah, and he was very complimentary.
- 24:21Yeah, well, that's pretty special.
- 24:24I didn't know that.
- 24:24Yeah, it's either that year or the year after.
- 24:26I can't remember.
- 24:26But he heard you and he was like, who is this guy?
- 24:28And he asked me about you.
- 24:30Yeah, right.
- 24:30It was very complimentary.
- 24:31And Formula 3, it would have been the year after because Formula 3, doing the stuff with BRM, got me into Formula 3.
- 24:36And then a week before their opening round, their PR guy disappeared and got a proper job.
- 24:41And so I got the PR gig, which was like 500 bucks a weekend.
- 24:46And that was about it.
- 24:47That was fine, by the way.
- 24:48That was a riches at that time.
- 24:50And I was calling it.
- 24:51And then by the end of that year, I started doing Speed Week.
- 24:53So that period was hugely responsible for me ending up doing TV.
- 24:58But the PR, the comms, the writing, the press releases, that paid the bills so I could go to the racetrack and commentate.
- 25:06Because people, it seemed, were more willing to go, oh, yeah, we'll pay you to write a press release or we'll pay you to...
- 25:10But one complimented the other, obviously.
- 25:12It did.
- 25:13I think it helped.
- 25:13But it was a means to an end for me to be able to actually commentate, which is what I wanted to do.
- 25:18The PR and writing stuff was just an aside.
- 25:21Awesome.
- 25:21Some of the iconic moments, I mean, I can't remember again whether it's Dino or Cam that reminded me...
- 25:27But you guys got to do Bathurst 2014 over the PA. Oh, yeah.
- 25:32I mean, what a memorable race.
- 25:34I just remember sitting in shell shock at the end of that one.
- 25:36And then you ringing me being like, are you coming to this press conference?
- 25:38Because I used to host the press conference.
- 25:40And I was like, oh, come on.
- 25:42I was just completely, I was just like zonked after eight hours of just flat out warfare that day.
- 25:47It's still the best race I've ever seen.
- 25:49And that was the first one you and I ever got to call together as well.
- 25:52And I don't think we'll ever get a better one.
- 25:53Like that was just like...
- 25:55absolutely crazy that day.
- 25:56That was my audition for Supercars that weekend.
- 25:59Oh, yeah.
- 25:59Really?
- 25:59Yeah.
- 26:00And I'd done the track commentary for seven years.
- 26:03So 2008, Mike Drew or Penny Gordon got me involved up in Hidden Valley.
- 26:07And after four or five years, I thought, this is not making an impact.
- 26:10It turned out that Supercars Media never heard any of the stuff I'd done because it was a separate broadcast.
- 26:17Anyway, I'd gone back into forklift driving.
- 26:18So there's a bit of a pattern here.
- 26:20Chad rings me one day and he goes, hey, I reckon there might be a chance at Bathurst this year.
- 26:24And I went, okay, we'll try it out, see what happens.
- 26:26And 10 minutes later, he rings me up and he goes, yeah, you're in.
- 26:28You've got to get yourself there.
- 26:29And I went, all right, we're doing this.
- 26:31So off I went and called a β I was there to call a Super 2 race that day.
- 26:36And we ended up calling that together and they threw me in for the top 10 shootout and for the race on Sunday.
- 26:42At the end of it, like him, I reckon I sat there for an hour just looking out the window going, what the hell just happened?
- 26:48And I was actually going to stop that day.
- 26:50I was actually going to say that's enough because I've been trying for years.
- 26:53I was never going to get anywhere.
- 26:54And I thought if you're going to stop, stop at the best race in the world.
- 26:57You'll never see nothing like this.
- 26:59And one of the guys from Supercars Media was packing up and he goes, I don't think you're going anywhere anytime soon.
- 27:04I said, why?
- 27:04He goes, oh, they're pretty happy with you.
- 27:06And by that night, they were throwing ideas around for 2015.
- 27:08So you had the Gold Coast.
- 27:10Yeah.
- 27:10Went to the Gold Coast, ended up doing Sydney Olympic Park.
- 27:12And then this guy persisted with me because I didn't want to move from Perth.
- 27:16I was in tears.
- 27:17In fact, he dragged me across the country.
- 27:19I come across on a plane in 2015.
- 27:21Literally had to give him a bedroom in my house.
- 27:22Yeah.
- 27:23And I still didn't want to go.
- 27:24Like I got there.
- 27:25I'm like, I never really settled.
- 27:26And, you know, it was a means to climb in the ladder.
- 27:29And, you know, it was just amazing.
- 27:32Yeah, that moment.
- 27:33So when we called together Darwin 2014, I don't even know that you knew it, but I hit record on the phone and put it on the table while we're calling the race together.
- 27:41Excellent.
- 27:41And then knowing that I was going to try and get him in the door.
- 27:44And then Scott Young, who was then head of the production for Supercars, I had a meeting with him about 2015.
- 27:49And I said, oh, I reckon we're a voice short for Bathurst.
- 27:51And he's sort of halfway walking out the door.
- 27:53And I go, what do you reckon of this bloke?
- 27:54Play.
- 27:55And oh, yeah, here we are at Darwin, Hidden Valley, blah, blah.
- 27:58He goes, yep, he's in.
- 27:58Yeah.
- 27:59That was it.
- 28:01I rang him, mate, you better get yourself to Bathurst.
- 28:02You got the train there, I think, from every day.
- 28:04Yeah, we had to do a drag race in Adelaide the weekend before, so I managed to get a flight to Adelaide and then got a flight to Sydney paid for to call 30 minutes of HQ Holden Racing for Speed Week.
- 28:13Speed Week, bless it.
- 28:14I jumped on the XPT on Friday, went up to Bathurst, walked from the train station of Bathurst to the track, and I went, not doing that again.
- 28:20Slept on the floor, we called the race, and then I remember...
- 28:23We left Monday morning and it had been 25, 26 all weekend and this almighty thunderstorm hit Monday morning.
- 28:30The time I got back to Perth that night, it was snowing in Bathurst.
- 28:34Amazing.
- 28:35And it was just an incredible weekend.
- 28:36The big screen chapter with Peely, with Rob Peel, was very special for you guys.
- 28:40I know that a lot of good stuff came out of that for you.
- 28:44Your individual work in support categories, super important to where you are today from Toyota 86 to Porsche that we've covered to Super Ute, Super 2 and more.
- 28:55That has been an element of your story that leads to where you are today.
- 28:59So important, that role that you've played and you've garnered the support of the constituents in the paddock around that stuff, haven't you?
- 29:04Yeah.
- 29:04Yeah, and a lot of that has been, for me, formed around junior motorsport.
- 29:09So I had a bit of an involvement with the Australian Car Championship.
- 29:12I try and keep that going today.
- 29:13Toyota 86 is Dunlop Series.
- 29:15So I've got to a point now where David Reynolds and Chas Mostad are the only two drivers on the supercars grid that I didn't commentate in some kind of junior category.
- 29:25That's awesome.
- 29:25And that's hugely helpful for when you need to walk up to Thomas Randall at the 12 hour.
- 29:30Woke's in tears because he's just, you know, he's had a faux pas and he's stuffed the thing in the fence.
- 29:34But I've known him since he was racing, I don't know, whatever, KF3 or whatever it was when he was a kid in karting.
- 29:40And you know, these guys for so long that you have their trust to better walk in in a really tough situation.
- 29:44And that has really served me well.
- 29:46So even that I'm calling supercars now, I want to try and keep the junior stuff up where I can because it's hugely beneficial.
- 29:52Can I, with time is going to beat us here, I want to just focus on some international highlights for all of you because that's another thing that I feel like you bring to the table here.
- 30:00Firstly, you're about to go and do another, we are not worthy, Channel 10 Formula One call this weekend.
- 30:08Nice of me to be here.
- 30:10Work with Mark Webber, with Damon Hill, among others, and you have made the Bathurst 12-hour with John Hindoff and all of the team there.
- 30:18You've made it your own.
- 30:20Yeah, the 12-hour is, if someone put a gun to my head and said, you can call one race a year, it would be the 12-hour.
- 30:27I love that race.
- 30:28It's hugely fundamental to me being where I am today.
- 30:32But in the same way as Chad said, building those relationships with the young guys and girls, and I've done the same and Nolts has done the same, what that race has enabled me to do as well is build relationships with some of the international people.
- 30:45stars and genuine friendships.
- 30:47So when you went to Le Mans, you knew some of them.
- 30:49Yeah, absolutely.
- 30:49I could walk in the paddock and see Murrow and go, oh, g'day, mate, how are you?
- 30:52Good to see you.
- 30:52All right, all right.
- 30:53So, yeah, in the same way as you building relationships with the Toyota kids as they're coming through, or Super 2, that event has been fundamental for me as well in forging some of those relationships.
- 31:05And the Grand Prix is still one of those things I can't believe I get to do.
- 31:07It's great that you do it.
- 31:08Still a dream.
- 31:09And you do it brilliantly.
- 31:10Robbie Gordon took a shine.
- 31:11Yeah.
- 31:12to you and he got you to do stadium trucks, not just in this country, but in the US as well, mate.
- 31:18Yeah, that was something I never saw coming.
- 31:20I didn't even know what a stadium super truck was in 2015 and Simon Fordham, who was our boss at the time, he goes, I'm going to get you to call this stadium super truck stuff because your speedway background will bring hype to it.
- 31:29And I went...
- 31:30YouTube.
- 31:30Oh, wow.
- 31:31These are cool.
- 31:32Yep, no worries.
- 31:33Anyway, called the event.
- 31:34It was still one of the most viewed crashes on YouTube history.
- 31:37Sheldon Creed's rollover, and Sheldon won a race last weekend too, which was awesome to see in NASCAR.
- 31:43Robbie come up to me at the end of the weekend and goes, I want to take you to the States.
- 31:45And I started laughing.
- 31:46I'm going, why would you want to take an Aussie to the States?
- 31:49He goes, because you're damn good.
- 31:50Nice.
- 31:51And Chad and I had done Puka Koei later that year.
- 31:55Never been on an A380 until I went to Puka Koei with him and I was still buzzing about that.
- 31:59Anyway, I get a phone call at four o'clock in the morning.
- 32:02They wanted me to go to LA and call the race that had been done in Las Vegas.
- 32:06Yeah.
- 32:07I just went over and did it.
- 32:08We had no agreement.
- 32:09It was just like, call it.
- 32:10We'll work it out afterwards.
- 32:11And then from 2016, Robbie with Jess, it'll be a handshake agreement at Adelaide.
- 32:16And I travelled 30 times over the next three or four years, back and forth to the US from Perth.
- 32:22The updates we'd get.
- 32:24were just amazing.
- 32:24He loves the story.
- 32:25He's a good storyteller, isn't he?
- 32:26I'm on a plane.
- 32:27I don't know where I am.
- 32:28I'm in Indy.
- 32:29I'm now back on a plane again.
- 32:30Rocks up at a track.
- 32:31Oh, I've just got back from the States again.
- 32:33Oh, it's crazy.
- 32:33And there were stories that can't be published that come out of it.
- 32:37But I think if you looked at the jumpy trucks and then if you knew Matt Nolte, there would be no one better to commentate that series than I made.
- 32:46He sort of became linked to it, he did have been linked to it, didn't he?
- 32:48Totally.
- 32:48Short of like Darrell Eastlake doing it.
- 32:50I can't imagine it.
- 32:51Exactly right.
- 32:51He could call that stuff better.
- 32:53Yeah.
- 32:53Yeah.
- 32:54So we come to this season, the sports mixing it up a little bit, taking almost a bit of a cricket approach, maybe what they do in NRL, different commentators and so on, which I think is ace, and you'll all get a turn at it.
- 33:04My overarching wish is that you all three hit it out of the park, but you can stay friends too.
- 33:08Yeah.
- 33:09You've got clearly from this conversation, we can tell the depth of your friendship.
- 33:12You're all immensely proud of each other getting this chance too.
- 33:16I think it's really special that the three of us get to do it at the same time because we genuinely are β well, I think we are β all mates.
- 33:23But I think the thing is β and you guys can disagree if you like β but if we got the phone call at the start of the year and Nath Prendergast said it TV or James Warburton rang Nolts and I and said, Chad's the guy, I think β
- 33:36I can't speak for you, Nolts, but I would have gone, good call, great decision.
- 33:40And I'd like to believe it would work the other way with the three of us.
- 33:43So we're genuinely all really good mates.
- 33:47And I think we're all just sit there and have a bit of a laugh that we've all been presented with this opportunity at the same time.
- 33:54And all these various pathways have come together to this point and the three of us end up doing it at the same time is really special.
- 34:02Yeah, and it's up to us to get the most out of the two blokes or one bloke next to us.
- 34:07You know, Garth is such a natural at it.
- 34:08And moving seats between Frosty and JC, we proved in the first event that we're willing to try something different.
- 34:14Three supercars races had three different commensure teams in three days.
- 34:17Yeah.
- 34:17Has that ever happened in the sport before?
- 34:19So we were...
- 34:20Willing to mix it up.
- 34:22We'll be doing that.
- 34:22We'll be hot seating that extra spot throughout the course of the year as well.
- 34:25And then that may even change again in the Enduros, depending on how Nathan and James and the rest of the guys want to make that decision.
- 34:31But I don't think however it changes will change the friendship.
- 34:34And you can't go 20 years working together and loving each other's company and then just be like, oh, now we're rivals.
- 34:40And the experimentation with the three callers, I mean, I love that IndyCar chapter with Diff and what have you.
- 34:47I mean, the three callers in NASCAR, it works, doesn't it?
- 34:50I think it works really well.
- 34:51I like it being conversational.
- 34:52I think when it works at its absolute best is when...
- 34:55Our role is just very much hop in and, oh, hype moment, that's cool.
- 34:59And then your two expert guys go at it, chatting away, discussing it, debating it, disagreeing over it, whatever.
- 35:05But it should be about them bouncing off each other.
- 35:07We can sit there for a lap and not say anything.
- 35:09And that's fine if those two are talking but also informing and educating and letting people know what's going on.
- 35:15They're the legends of the sport.
- 35:17Absolutely.
- 35:17King of storytelling, would you like a parting thought here before we wrap up today's episode?
- 35:21You can bring us all back down to earth.
- 35:23You can... What would you like to know?
- 35:25What's this rated?
- 35:26BG, M, A.
- 35:27This is Rosie's Garage After Dark Edition.
- 35:30There's a bar at Indianapolis.
- 35:31Right, yeah.
- 35:34No, I say exactly what these guys said.
- 35:36This is, as you know, Rusty, an industry that, you know, it's such a competitive little market, and it's really hard to stay friends or make friends in it because you're all ultimately going for the same thing.
- 35:48We go back 20 years.
- 35:49You and I go back 20 years.
- 35:50You and I, Rusty, go back over 10 years.
- 35:52We all know our lane, and we all just want to do a good job.
- 35:55There's no ego bashing here.
- 35:57It's just we all know we've got our own strengths, and we work to them.
- 36:01And Chad said, if we haven't had a blue in 20 years, I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon.
- 36:06It is the biggest opportunity that all three of us are going to get in this country.
- 36:10So it's a matter of just let's work together and make the product even better than what it is.
- 36:15I hope you all have a chance to stop, save at the moment, be proud of the chance that you get from my side.
- 36:22I don't mean it to sound wrong, but it...
- 36:24I'm proud for you guys.
- 36:25So I reckon that's a pleasure.
- 36:27Outside the door, Chad's people are saying we're out of time here.
- 36:30He's got to go.
- 36:31He's got to go to a function in the city.
- 36:33So that is it for this episode.
- 36:35I just want to wrap up by saying I know in the bottom of their hearts, these three are incredibly respectful of the opportunity here.
- 36:43the responsibility that comes with it.
- 36:44And I hope this enables you watching and listening just to get to know them a little bit better as they've been through your telly or your phone during the season.
- 36:52They are there genuinely through sheer hard work and on merit.
- 36:57And most importantly, as you would have heard in this conversation, because they genuinely love the sport.
- 37:02We'll catch you next time, everybody.
- 37:03Bye for now.