Latest / Rusty's Garage / Paul Weel | Part 2 - a frightening Supercars crash & the PWR juggernaut

Transcript

Paul Weel | Part 2 - a frightening Supercars crash & the PWR juggernaut · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:19
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:25
  G'day, it's Rusty here, all set for part two of my feature ep with Paul Weill.
• 0:28
  Lots of good chat to come in this one on supercars, a brutal crash at Bathurst, stadium truck racing and a whole lot more.
• 0:36
  If you've somehow arrived here and not given part one a listen, jump back to the library and check it out first.
• 0:42
  The post-event debrief.com.
• 0:44
  after a soul-destroying finish to the Baja 1000 recently when he and Toby Price were on course to win the off-road classic, to an emotional moment on his dad, Keyes, as he rebounds from a health scare and starting out the competitive racing journey on two wheels, plus a little-known plan in the coming years to take on Dakar.
• 1:05
  Let's get back to the convo now.
• 1:07
  You take quite an interest in the numbers side.
• 1:10
  I know you're quite clever in that regard, mate.
• 1:13
  What it has become is a great Australian business success story to think that we are supplying to Formula One and to all these other, not just NASCAR that you've talked about either in the intros that Lee did and the work that he did with you in those early days and so on.
• 1:29
  I mean, the supply that you do to so many different forms of motorsport and that it is a cutting edge, very tech savvy, always evolving product that's been built with aerodynamics in mind and all sorts of things like that.
• 1:42
  The company has had the likes of Roland Dane in a significant position for a time there on the board and so on.
• 1:48
  And you look, Paul, at its net result now.
• 1:52
  But when a company goes through big growth like that, it invariably has had
• 1:56
  hurdles along the way.
• 1:57
  You've talked about trying to figure a production line to cope with the demands of Formula One and how many they needed and so on for these almost bespoke things.
• 2:06
  And in the midst of this growth comes along a thing called the GFC, the global financial crisis.
• 2:11
  How did that impact you guys?
• 2:13
  Yeah, at the time, that impacted us a fair bit because we were building, you know, we were building a factory up at Yatla.
• 2:25
  And the bank at the time, we banked with, you know, like 20 years since we moved to Queensland.
• 2:32
  And we had the same bank manager.
• 2:34
  And he actually got moved on.
• 2:37
  And so at the time he was going, yep, here's more money, here's more money.
• 2:42
  We need more money to do this or we need more money to do that.
• 2:47
  And we're building this factory so that we could take on the rest of the world.
• 2:52
  Basically, that was the reason why.
• 2:56
  And anyway, so we had this new banker come in who was from credit and you always got to go up the guys from credit because they're, you know, they're the box tickers in the banks, I say.
• 3:10
  And basically he goes, oh, no, you're over your limit.
• 3:13
  You've got to, you know, you've got to give us credit.
• 3:18
  I think some of you in the region of $5 or $6 million back, or else we're going to foreclose on you.
• 3:23
  They're going to foreclose on you?
• 3:27
  Yeah, they'll go foreclose on us, and basically if we couldn't pay the money back, they're going to basically bankrupt us, which would ruin the business.
• 3:39
  So Keyes and I quickly...
• 3:44
  Went and put our houses on the markets.
• 3:47
  Emma was pregnant.
• 3:48
  She was eight months pregnant with Abby.
• 3:52
  And so, yeah, we decided, you know, we put both places, both our houses on the markets and all that sort of stuff.
• 4:00
  And so they both sold very quickly.
• 4:02
  But it was timing that was amazing was that we had – we still had the race team building in Melbourne that we ran the supercars out of, which is the old Gibson Motorsport building, which is – which was now –
• 4:20
  And unfortunately, you know, with Gary passing away, Gary Rogers bought both sides of the building when we ended up selling them.
• 4:28
  And so, yeah, so we had a loan through the CBA, Commonwealth Bank, and the guy in Queensland rang just out of the blue and said, hey –
• 4:41
  your loans up for renewal, do you want to renew it?
• 4:45
  And is there anything else I can actually do for you guys?
• 4:49
  And so he come down and he was into manufacturing and, you know, we showed him around and told him the whole story and what our –
• 5:00
  plan was and what we thought for the future and where we could go and everything like that.
• 5:06
  And he said, yep, no problem, I'll back you.
• 5:09
  And so we just found the right person at the right time.
• 5:13
  It was more luck than anything, but, you know, we already sold everything that we had to keep the company afloat and everything like that.
• 5:23
  And, you know, at the end of the day, it worked out very well for us.
• 5:28
  Sure did.
• 5:28
  It evolved too, Paul, I mean you talked about oil coolers there before and so on and with all the battery tech that's around now as well, I would imagine the cooling leans into that space too.
• 5:36
  Yeah, so it's funny, you know, I was actually at a dinner last night and, you know, people were talking about, you know,
• 5:45
  you know, the electric vehicles and all that sort of stuff.
• 5:48
  And, you know, electric vehicles actually take more cooling than a naturally aspirated car does.
• 5:55
  So, you know, not many people realise that, especially with the battery cooling.
• 6:01
  And we do a lot of battery cooling, especially for Formula One.
• 6:05
  And so, you know, we basically now we supply...
• 6:12
  every Formula 1 team on the grid.
• 6:15
  yeah, I'm not quite sure exactly if it's every single thing in their cars that we supply or not, but we do supply every Formula 1 team.
• 6:25
  But we, we, we've done a lot of stuff with Honda when they come into the sport with Formula 1.
• 6:33
  They designed this battery that they couldn't work out how to call it.
• 6:38
  And
• 6:40
  So we came up with a design that was, you know, very expensive, of course, to be able to do.
• 6:50
  But, you know, basically it was a, well, I say it was expensive or it's expensive for what we sold it to them for.
• 6:57
  But it was basically a radiator without fins in it.
• 7:01
  So we could turn, it was an extruded tube that we could turn braised together into a header plate with a water comes through, weld a tank on it, and then have another tank over the top.
• 7:17
  And we could turn the water around because it had four extrusion parts through the tube.
• 7:24
  And so we just put a little turn plate in the end of the tube
• 7:28
  And they would glue the battery and the cooler together.
• 7:37
  So it sort of sat like that.
• 7:39
  Okay.
• 7:41
  And it was great at the time because when Honda first started with Formula 1,
• 7:47
  They used to go through a lot of battery coolers because they had a lot of battery problems with their technology on their side of things.
• 7:58
  So it was great at the time.
• 7:59
  But, yeah, it's interesting with the new technology of, you know,
• 8:08
  like all the hybrids and battery sort of cars.
• 8:14
  I mean, you go to different countries, you've got trucks now, you've got aerospace stuff.
• 8:23
  There's a lot of pretty much everything –
• 8:28
  around the world, you know, needs calling.
• 8:30
  So, you know, we're quite fortunate in that way.
• 8:33
  Cool.
• 8:34
  This stuff all interlinks in some ways.
• 8:36
  I want to dabble about your own kind of four-wheel career for a moment.
• 8:40
  Let's sort of hook right for a second, Paul, if we can.
• 8:43
  I got to come to what was a home workshop back in the day.
• 8:47
  There was a Ford Falcon in there that ran white, green, and maybe a bit of yellow paint scheme.
• 8:53
  You were training with Guy Andrews back in the day as well.
• 8:57
  You had a decent crack made in supercars, didn't you?
• 9:01
  Yeah, we did.
• 9:02
  It was funny.
• 9:04
  It was actually I'd done, after I finished racing motocross and supercross, I went and raced Stadium Off-Road.
• 9:15
  Yes.
• 9:15
  And so they were the cars that were from the Mickey Thompson series from America.
• 9:23
  So when that series went bust, a heap of Australians went over and bought all these cars.
• 9:31
  I can't remember the promoter.
• 9:33
  It wasn't Phil Christensen.
• 9:35
  He was the Supercross promoter, but it was another promoter.
• 9:39
  And anyway, so we went and started racing that.
• 9:44
  I was only 17.
• 9:46
  I don't even think I had my license or anything like that.
• 9:49
  And basically it was awesome because it was –
• 9:53
  It was motocross with a roll cage around you.
• 9:55
  So, you know, it didn't make a difference what you hit, really, to a point.
• 10:01
  But, yeah, so I started off racing that and it was after the first race that we raced, I had a guy from Yokohama, a guy called Alan Bradshaw, who was an off-road guy.
• 10:17
  for them and, and that come up to us and said, Hey, cause we had no sponsors or anything.
• 10:22
  Oh, we want to sponsor you and do this and do that.
• 10:25
  And at the end of that season, he said, yeah, I think you should, you guys should go and race supercars.
• 10:32
  And, um,
• 10:34
  Yeah, never raced a go-car, never raced on tarmac, anything like that.
• 10:39
  And so we went and bought Steve Alry's Ford supercar and, yeah, not nice.
• 10:49
  what we were doing or anything like that.
• 10:51
  We knew a few people who'd been in supercars, hired them, and I think the first time I drove a supercar was down around the cul-de-sac at K&J Radio in Grumman.
• 11:05
  LAUGHTER
• 11:06
  And just to make sure that I could change the gears before we went to Lakeside for a club day or whatever it was.
• 11:15
  So, yeah, my learning curve was very, very steep.
• 11:20
  Yeah, that was back in –
• 11:23
  1997, late 1997 and then 1998 was my first year racing in the supercar series.
• 11:34
  And I think there's a very famous moment on TV.
• 11:38
  of uh dick johnson taking me out at um lakeside when he was lapping me and um you know me waving him to go down the inside and took me out and um he was leading the race and i think it was the last race that he was actually leading before he retired and um he um yeah i'm sure you know
• 11:59
  obviously took me out and John Bell beat him.
• 12:02
  And anyway, that was probably a famous moment back then.
• 12:08
  I think it made play of the day on Channel 10, if I seem to recall, mate.
• 12:11
  So it got replayed a little bit.
• 12:15
  You had quite a chapter there with supercars and it probably, you can fill in the blanks here for me, it probably helped in parallel with the growth of ultimately what PWR has gone on to become in a performance sense and in a global sense.
• 12:29
  Was it something that you wanted to do just purely from a competition sense as Paul Wheel or you saw it as a business vehicle in the same breath?
• 12:36
  Well, it started out as a competition thing, really.
• 12:41
  Mostly, you know, it was one of those things of, you know, we'd been around racing our whole life and it was, you know, really the next step in motorsport and it was a pinnacle of motorsport and still is a pinnacle of motorsport in Australia.
• 13:00
  And, you know,
• 13:02
  We ran as a privateer up until 2003, end of 2002.
• 13:06
  We swapped, you know, 2003, we swapped to Holden.
• 13:10
  And it was actually the stage of where –
• 13:21
  the story was that where TWR was, had too many drivers.
• 13:27
  So, you know, they had Mark Skaith and Jason Bright and Todd Kelly and Rick and Murph and, and, and everything like that.
• 13:36
  And then also they had still had Peter Brock in the background and, and Brocky was, you know, you know, we all know, you know, the history of Peter and how, how great he was as a, as a driver and, and what he achieved.
• 13:49
  And,
• 13:50
  and TWR owned all those teams, and it was back in the day where you only owned a certain amount of teams.
• 14:01
  And so we had a couple of licences, and they needed a spot for Jason Bright to go to because there was too much of a clash there with Scafie.
• 14:12
  Yeah.
• 14:14
  And so we were fortunate enough to be able to do a deal with them and we ended up owning Team Brock and that.
• 14:25
  So which we only ran the Team Brock thing for a year under Team Brock and so it was Jason Bright and myself and –
• 14:36
  And it was a little bit weird because in 2002, I drove with Marcus Ambrose at the Bathurst 1000.
• 14:44
  And at that stage, I already knew that we were, you know, we were moving to Holden.
• 14:54
  And, um, so it was a little bit weird of, um, you know, drive, driving, driving with one of the best Ford teams that there was stone brothers and, um, and, uh, not driving my own car with my own team and, um, and then moving, basically moving, you know, straight away to, to Holden.
• 15:14
  And we, you know, it was, uh, yeah.
• 15:17
  The supercar's biggest thing was that we weren't allowed to cross data and all this sort of stuff and interlinked us.
• 15:27
  And they put so many restrictions on us at the time that made it very difficult for us to actually, you know, we weren't allowed to test.
• 15:35
  We weren't allowed to do anything, you know, really at the time.
• 15:38
  And I think the first year was, um, yeah, I think, uh, Jason basically finished second in the championship and, um, and, uh, and so that was, um, that was quite a good time of, um, you know, going to, to Holden and over, over the years we, you know, we sort of stepped away from, from the HSV side of things and, and sort of took our own route, but we were fortunate enough to have, um,
• 16:08
  Great drivers, as in, you know, got to work with Jason Bright.
• 16:14
  You're a good mate, Greg Murphy.
• 16:16
  Murphy.
• 16:17
  Murphy was very, very good, very, very passionate, as we know.
• 16:20
  You know, he didn't like toilets at Bathurst very much, poor to lose.
• 16:27
  But, you know, he spent about five minutes, I think, in one.
• 16:30
  I don't know what he was doing.
• 16:32
  But...
• 16:33
  But, you know, those sort of guys, you know, Cameron McConville, Paul Dunbarrow, and I think, you know, the thing was Supercars helped us as a company to be able to, you know, try different things, try new technology, try R&D, everything like that with the radiators and with the oil coolers.
• 16:59
  And I think it, you know, played a big part of, you know,
• 17:04
  especially in Australia, of getting our brand out there in front of people.
• 17:11
  So that definitely did play a big part.
• 17:14
  Your career, mate, I mean, you're over 100 starts, a decade long in supercars.
• 17:19
  Probably one of the moments, and I know you've opened up about this in the last year or two that immediately comes to people's minds, I think is 08 and that crash at Bathurst, which you described, I think, as something that you were pretty fortunate to survive, mate.
• 17:34
  Just share what unfolded that day and the way you dealt with it.
• 17:38
  Yeah, it was, yeah, two, yeah, I had...
• 17:44
  I was actually co-driving for our own team.
• 17:47
  We had Andrew Thompson, who was a young guy who was driving for us.
• 17:52
  And it was a practice session.
• 17:57
  And I was actually a little bit quicker than Andrew was.
• 18:02
  And so we were tossing up whether to have me qualify for a car or have him qualify for a car.
• 18:08
  And so I went out at the start of the session just to see sort of, you know, what sort of, you know, lap time we could do and what the car had and made a mistake over the top there, you know, where the grate is there where we dropped down over the grate and actually, you know, scraped the wall and had too much steering angle on.
• 18:33
  And when I bounced off the wall, spun.
• 18:36
  backwards and spun across the track.
• 18:41
  And it was always in the back of my mind because we lost a great friend in 2006 with Mark Porter there in a similar spot who crashed and got hit by another car and got killed.
• 18:54
  And it was always in my mind that, you know, if I was in that situation that I'd start the car and try to, you know, move it no matter what.
• 19:05
  But, you know,
• 19:07
  You know, when that happens, you don't even think about that.
• 19:11
  And then so I sat there, you know, I was talking to the guys on the radio and then Chris Pither thought that he was going to be a world champion and set the world alight and basically center punched me, you know, probably if he had got me two inches to the right further to the driver's side door, I probably wouldn't be here.
• 19:31
  You know, I had –
• 19:33
  Yeah, split my spleen in half, fractured my L1 to L5, punctured my lung and everything like that.
• 19:44
  And, yeah, it was one of those things, very, very fortunate to be able to – I didn't walk away.
• 19:52
  I got stretched away, but very fortunate and –
• 19:57
  And it was funny because, well, funny now looking back, but it was funny because, you know, I don't remember, I remember going into the ambulance at the top of the hill and I don't remember actually hopping out of the ambulance in the medical centre.
• 20:18
  So I remember everything else.
• 20:21
  except for that part.
• 20:23
  And my wife, usually my good friend Tim Lay, who lives in Orange, so my wife usually flies to Orange and goes out for lunch on the Friday with his wife, Alicia.
• 20:36
  And anyway, they had the TV on and they'll walk him, but it was on mute, and I'll walk him past and everything like that.
• 20:43
  And anyway, they're trying to get ready and Emma's phone starts blowing up and...
• 20:50
  And they go, oh, yeah, Paul's had a bad accident and all that sort of stuff.
• 20:54
  And she goes, oh, well, he'll be all right.
• 20:56
  They'll just take him to hospital or something like that, won't they?
• 20:59
  Or, you know, they'll probably bring him to Orange or he'll be in hospital at Bathurst or whatever.
• 21:03
  We're getting ready to go to lunch.
• 21:05
  And anyway, Tim said, oh, yeah.
• 21:08
  or it might have been Daryl or Tim, one of the two, Daryl Beatty, goes, no, I think you need to get your ass here right now.
• 21:17
  This is pretty serious.
• 21:19
  And it was one of those times, you know, when you're, you know, like every time at Bathurst you get checked at every checkpoint for a pass.
• 21:30
  And anyway, they never got checked for a pass whatsoever.
• 21:33
  I just drove straight through.
• 21:34
  I had no passes, drove straight through.
• 21:37
  And because we were waiting for her so that they could put me in the helicopter and fly me to Sydney.
• 21:44
  And so anyway, so it was a little bit more serious than, yeah, going to Orange Base Hospital just for a checkup.
• 21:55
  So, yeah, flew me to Sydney and I'm strapped in.
• 21:58
  Yeah.
• 22:00
  Yeah, I'm on the bottom of the, well, not on the bottom of the helicopter, but strapped in and sat, you know, on the floor of the helicopter and looking at the roof.
• 22:08
  And she's going, oh, you should have a look at this view over the Blue Mountains.
• 22:12
  This is beautiful.
• 22:13
  And I'm going, do you just shut up?
• 22:16
  I said, all I can see is a roof.
• 22:17
  I can't even move my head.
• 22:19
  Yeah.
• 22:20
  And then so they fly me into Westmead and anyway, she's there and she goes, oh, it goes to the pilots and the doctor who was with me goes, oh, hang on, can we just take a selfie up on the roof of the helipad?
• 22:37
  And I'm like, oh, God, this is unbelievable.
• 22:40
  And so we get into the emergency and –
• 22:47
  And so they go over everything and check everything, and this guy sticks his finger up my bottom to see if I had, yeah, there's obviously something up there that has a reflex, that gives you a reflex to tell something, you know.
• 23:08
  And I said, well, mate, what are you doing there?
• 23:10
  I said, we haven't even changed names.
• 23:12
  It's not even the first day.
• 23:13
  We haven't had a beer or anything.
• 23:15
  Like, what are you doing?
• 23:17
  Anyway, and so that was interesting.
• 23:21
  And Westmead Hospital on a Friday night in Sydney is very interesting with police and everything like that.
• 23:30
  And it was about three days in.
• 23:33
  The physio come in to me and goes, hey, you've got to get up and –
• 23:38
  start walking around and all that sort of stuff.
• 23:40
  And I said, mate, I can't get up.
• 23:42
  Like I, you know.
• 23:44
  And anyway, so he hops me up and I go, you know, got to take a step and, you know, start screaming like a baby.
• 23:52
  And...
• 23:55
  And he goes back to the, I was in the neuro and spinal ward, and he goes back to the doctor on call, and they relook at the x-rays, and they missed, in emergency, they missed all the fractures that I had in my back.
• 24:10
  So, yeah.
• 24:12
  So, yeah, it was a quite interesting one, that one.
• 24:18
  But, you know, quite fortunate, you know, getting hit at, you know, probably 180 Ks, you know, close to 200 Ks and, you know,
• 24:27
  You know, you look back at the photos and you look back at the photos of the car and the roll cage had split behind the driver's seat and actually had started to come up into the driver's seat and puncture the back of the driver's seat.
• 24:43
  So, yeah, we're quite fortunate because if that had gone through, it probably would have come out through my chest somewhere and, you know, we would have been on a whole lot of different, you know, might have been a different story.
• 24:55
  Oh, wow.
• 24:57
  That sort of ended the V8 supercar career of, you know, I was only driving part-time there because I was working full-time with PWR.
• 25:10
  So, yeah, that sort of ended that.
• 25:12
  The great thing is, though, mate, you've been able to get back behind the wheel, which I think is tremendous.
• 25:17
  I mean, the doctors could very easily have just said to you, no, stop, no more.
• 25:21
  You dabble again, I think, if I've got the timeline right here, again in stadium trucks, there's a little bit of success in that too, mate, isn't there?
• 25:27
  Yeah, doubled again in the stallion truck stuff with the Robbie Gordon thing.
• 25:34
  And so, yeah, doubled with that a little bit.
• 25:40
  I think I probably made another play of the day again there in Darwin when I went off the jump sideways and rolled six times and landed back on his wheels and drove it back to the pits just because I didn't want to get out and...
• 25:56
  fall over because I was too dizzy.
• 25:58
  Yeah.
• 25:59
  And my eyes were, you know, rolling around my head.
• 26:03
  And so I drove back to the pits.
• 26:06
  But yeah, we won a couple of races there.
• 26:09
  We had some fun there.
• 26:10
  Yeah, I sort of got to know, sort of, I knew Toby.
• 26:16
  Before that, I went to the pits.
• 26:18
  I met Toby in 2017 at Fink, but yeah, I got to race against Toby and Robbie Gordon and the dude with Paul Morris doing it, and we had some great fun doing that sort of stuff.
• 26:34
  It wasn't very nice on the body.
• 26:36
  I can give you the hot tip.
• 26:38
  It wasn't very nice on the body whatsoever doing that, but yeah, we won some races and we had some success there and yeah.
• 26:47
  had some fun and you know it was a shame to see um that uh you know that series didn't keep on going here and you know in australia with the with the supercar rounds because you know i think some at some rounds there was more people watching the stadium trucks and then the supercars
• 27:15
  Come to Baja for us.
• 27:16
  So we've talked about this year.
• 27:18
  Let's talk about next year.
• 27:20
  You have a new truck coming.
• 27:22
  The events of recent weeks with the refueling drama and going so damn close to winning the Baja 1000 has not in any way dampened or tempered your commitment, the peer review to this.
• 27:35
  There's a new gen truck, I think, in the pipeline.
• 27:37
  What can you tell us about that truck technically, what it will be like?
• 27:41
  And then secondly, when you get your hands on it so you can start the prep for next year.
• 27:45
  Yeah, so basically what we had done was there's only two new Gen 2 Mason four-wheel drives getting made and we were able to, for a guy called Jesse Jones who actually gave Toby his first star in a trophy truck in America, helped us out and he had one ordered
• 28:16
  And so we bought that off him.
• 28:20
  We've had some hold-ups.
• 28:22
  Unfortunately, Mason has, we've been able to get the machining done and programming and everything like that.
• 28:31
  It's a totally new designer truck where we can change camber caster.
• 28:37
  We've got a lot more flexibility of being able to change a lot of different stuff compared to the first-generation truck.
• 28:45
  still four-wheel drive.
• 28:48
  We can run a bigger engine in there, which we run a Toyota engine, which is made by Joe Gibbs.
• 28:59
  So the NASCAR team made that engine.
• 29:01
  So we're running around about –
• 29:04
  1150 horsepower.
• 29:06
  So just a few ponies under, under the hood.
• 29:09
  Um, and that, so we're sort of being delayed until about Christmas time.
• 29:15
  Um, so we're hoping to be able to start testing, um,
• 29:20
  you know, the start of next year.
• 29:22
  It's got a bigger fuel cell.
• 29:25
  So if you put up enough fuel in it, you should be able to finish a race.
• 29:30
  But we've got a bigger fuel cell.
• 29:32
  So we got it right now.
• 29:33
  Our current truck has about 105 gallons of fuel.
• 29:37
  to be able to go in there.
• 29:39
  This has around about 140 going.
• 29:42
  So we can do something like a San Felipe 250, which is a 250-mile race, without having to do a tyre or fuel stop.
• 29:52
  So it gives us a great advantage.
• 29:56
  The thing that, you know, for me was the biggest, the thing was, you know, the...
• 30:04
  development side of things and being involved with a manufacturer to, to actually develop something, um, different and something new was exciting.
• 30:14
  Um,
• 30:16
  We don't know, we're taking a gamble of, we don't know how good this truck's going to be, but if anyone in America who builds trophy trucks, Mason are the best in the business, and I believe in those guys.
• 30:33
  They prep our race car for us as well.
• 30:38
  So I believe that they're the best, and I think that they are going to be able to,
• 30:45
  you know, pull something off straight out of the box, that's going to be very competitive and step up the game even more.
• 30:54
  You know, as we're seeing these races, you know, we've finished second twice this year at the 400 and 500.
• 31:03
  we lost the 500 by 35 seconds.
• 31:06
  So 500 miles and first and second were covered by 35 seconds.
• 31:12
  So it just shows how close the racing is getting, the game and the level is stepping up.
• 31:21
  There's a team called Concrete Motorsport.
• 31:23
  They've got four four-wheel drives so that they can pre-run in
• 31:29
  in the four-wheel drives and they race and, you know, they got, yeah, you know, two, one spare race car and that and they race in a four-wheel drive.
• 31:39
  So it just shows how the, you know, competition level is just going up and up and up like in every sport.
• 31:46
  You know, it doesn't make a difference if it's supercars or if it's,
• 31:49
  Well, supercars probably a little bit restricted now compared to what it used to be, but you look at Formula One and everything like that, your level of technology is just always growing.
• 32:05
  Yeah, it's coming into the off-road world, which for me is exciting.
• 32:10
  They're an amazing piece of machinery, more than a million bucks worth, and super cool to watch from the side of the road.
• 32:18
  I want to bounce through a few things to finish here, and we'll go kind of quick fire here, Paul, with your answers, all right?
• 32:24
  So firstly, true or false?
• 32:27
  When you call time on the supercars or tin top chapter of your career, you get a gig with Thomas Mazira doing some driver training at Porsches.
• 32:37
  How was the white knuckle fever and all that?
• 32:39
  How long did you last?
• 32:41
  I think I lasted about 12 months because it was very scary sitting in the passenger seat, especially with some of these special people who buy Porsches.
• 32:53
  Yeah.
• 32:55
  It was a lot of fun, but it was a passenger seat, definitely not my side.
• 32:59
  I'm told you were reaching for a brake pedal that wasn't often there on your side of the car.
• 33:04
  Let's come to your good mate, Timmy Lay.
• 33:06
  He is a great supporter, and as you're going through your recovery from a life-threatening, basically, crash, he was your wheelchair man for a little bit.
• 33:16
  Is he a terrible assistant in that regard?
• 33:18
  He is a terrible assistant and especially, well, a terrible assistant, a terrible friend at the time.
• 33:28
  Whatever button he could push on the bed to do whatever it done, oh, what's this button do?
• 33:33
  Push.
• 33:34
  What's this button do?
• 33:35
  Push.
• 33:36
  And then I had to go to the toilet and so obviously,
• 33:41
  when you got your hospital gown on, the little rear end is showing and he was trying to push the wheelchair and take photos of me, half my ass and at the same time to be able to show everyone.
• 34:00
  Yeah.
• 34:02
  Oh, what a champion.
• 34:02
  What a champion.
• 34:03
  Did, true or false, your wife hit a record amount of potholes on the way back to the Gold Coast from Westmead?
• 34:10
  Yes, she did.
• 34:10
  She hit every single pothole on the way back from the Gold Coast because we tried to – we said to them, can we fly a helicopter back?
• 34:21
  No.
• 34:21
  Playing low?
• 34:22
  No.
• 34:24
  And I'm like, oh, God, we've got to drive.
• 34:26
  And, yeah, every pothole.
• 34:29
  The Formula One connection with PWR has meant that you've had the opportunity along the way to meet some star-studded operators in that field.
• 34:38
  I think, is it true, Carlos Sainz might have driven you in the boat at Monaco to the track one day?
• 34:44
  He was your chauffeur fundamentally.
• 34:46
  Is this true?
• 34:47
  Yes.
• 34:48
  Well, yeah, Monaco in 2013.
• 34:51
  big massive fanboy moment and Emma's going like, who's this old dude?
• 34:55
  And I'm like, this is Carlos Sainz, he's a two-time world rally champion and Carlos Sainz Jr. was actually on the boat as well and wasn't in Formula 1 yet.
• 35:06
  And yeah, had massive fanboy moment and one of the best experiences I've ever actually had and it was with Red Bull fans.
• 35:15
  was kindly enough to invite us over there back in 2013.
• 35:21
  But, yeah, he was a great chauffeur.
• 35:24
  I love it.
• 35:25
  Lunch with Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, I think, too, which is pretty special, mate.
• 35:29
  Toby Price says, How expensive is it to take a piss at the borderline?
• 35:35
  It is very expensive.
• 35:37
  It wasn't me who was taking the piss.
• 35:41
  It was someone in my truck, which was a marketing guy, Matty McAlpine, and I think it cost us about $300.
• 35:51
  I did tell the policeman to take him to jail first.
• 35:54
  Oh.
• 35:56
  and that because they go, oh, you've got to come with us, you've got to go to jail, da-da-da, you know, they're now very corrupt over there.
• 36:04
  And I said to him, I said, mate, I can't control what this guy does out of my car.
• 36:10
  And he's in your car.
• 36:12
  I said, well, he's outside of my car, Wayne, not inside of my car, Wayne.
• 36:15
  So I said, he's not my problem.
• 36:18
  I said, take him to jail.
• 36:19
  I don't care.
• 36:20
  And he goes around to Matty and goes, oh, your friend, your friend don't like you.
• 36:25
  He said, take you to jail.
• 36:29
  So it ended up costing us $300 US, so it was a very expensive piss.
• 36:33
  Two to finish.
• 36:35
  You get to, with your crazy mates, enjoy a bit of two wheels again.
• 36:39
  He's stopped doing them nowadays, but Darrell Beattie ran some fantastic outback dirt bike tours across the Simpson Desert and all these wonderful places.
• 36:48
  And if memory serves, you and Wheelie and others went to the very top, mate.
• 36:53
  You went to Cape York.
• 36:54
  Is that right?
• 36:55
  Yeah, went to Cape York and then through COVID he couldn't get a lead rider.
• 37:02
  So I went and done three tours with him up there in Cape York.
• 37:08
  And I had the last tour we'd done, we had Troy Bayless and some of the guys from Ducati and being the lead rider, yeah.
• 37:20
  Yeah, so every day was a race with those guys, and especially with Troy and Nat.
• 37:27
  And I was just like, boys, I'm not fit enough.
• 37:31
  Back then I was like, I'm not fit enough to do this every single day.
• 37:34
  And it's my third week in Aurora.
• 37:36
  Give me a break.
• 37:37
  So, yeah, great fun.
• 37:41
  Got to see, you know, stuff that you never –
• 37:44
  Never would see, you know, going across riverbeds, carrying bikes, you know, across because the water was so high, you know, crocodiles, all that sort of stuff.
• 37:56
  It was amazing.
• 37:57
  Crazy.
• 37:58
  To finish, the girls have a passion for a different kind of horsepower and you are about to go and join them, aren't you?
• 38:06
  Yes, I am.
• 38:08
  My oldest daughter is a very good dressage rider and very, very, very proud of her.
• 38:15
  She was the youngest at 13 to be representing Australia at an international dressage event.
• 38:24
  as an official Australian team and done very well.
• 38:28
  And so we're going to Florida.
• 38:30
  Emma, my wife, and Abby are already in Florida now.
• 38:36
  And the youngest, Miller, and I actually leave tomorrow morning.
• 38:41
  So we're in Florida up until April, which is great for two reasons.
• 38:48
  Great for Abby to be able to follow her passion and,
• 38:52
  And one day, hopefully, hopefully make it to the Olympics and make it as a professional sport, you know, as a professional.
• 39:02
  And that's her goal, which I think she will be able to do and achieve.
• 39:08
  And on the second thing, I've been over there.
• 39:13
  It helps us, you know, with the racing side and R&D in testing of this new car.
• 39:21
  you know, the horses has been a passion of Emma's, you know, ever since she was a kid.
• 39:28
  And, you know, I believe, you know, at the end of the day, it doesn't make a difference if it's for recreation or fun or whatever, professional-wise, you know, you should always follow your dream of what you want to do and what you're passionate about.
• 39:45
  And, you know, that's, you know, one of our mottos, you know, of, you know,
• 39:52
  what we do with our family is no risk, no fun.
• 39:54
  And, you know, we definitely take a lot of risks in what we do.
• 39:59
  It doesn't make a difference if it's in business or in sport, in motorsport, horses and everything like that.
• 40:05
  So, you know, it will be a very good learning experience for her, for Abby, and hopefully it's a, you know, it's a Kickstarter for her to, you know, you know,
• 40:19
  follow on to go, you know, higher places in the sport.
• 40:23
  And, you know, her ultimate goal is to represent Australia.
• 40:29
  And, you know, most of the competitions and most of the, you know, all the good riders are in Germany.
• 40:37
  And, you know, one of her goals is to be, you know, based as a professional out of Germany.
• 40:42
  So, you know, if we can...
• 40:44
  If we can contribute and help her to be able to achieve that, it will be a great goal.
• 40:53
  Great stuff, mate.
• 40:54
  Hey, nice to chat with you about that and nice to see that you're supporting her in her own endeavours.
• 40:59
  Great to reflect a bit on your own career.
• 41:02
  You talked about no risk before.
• 41:03
  There's been some risks taken along the way in a business sense that have paid big dividends.
• 41:09
  You've proven, mate, the kind of hands-on learning, even though you left school at year nine, has still served you immensely well.
• 41:16
  And you've continued to play in the motorsport arena in an area that is deeply loved by your family.
• 41:24
  Give your dad our best, mate.
• 41:25
  Tell him to keep powering.
• 41:26
  Merry Christmas.
• 41:27
  And thank you very much for coming on the pod today.
• 41:29
  No problem, mate.
• 41:30
  Thank you very much.
• 41:31
  And same to you, Rusty.
• 41:33
  And it was great to see you in Mexico and have you experience what we get to do four times a year of how mad that place is and how passionate the people are down there.
• 41:48
  And, yeah, Merry Christmas to you and to your family.
• 41:51
  And thanks for having me.
• 41:53
  It's been a pleasure.
• 41:54
  Thank you for having me there.
• 41:55
  It opened my eyes immensely to that event, and I've got a little bit of an understanding now of why you and Toby love it so much.
• 42:02
  So to conclude, mate, you've gone ultra close with that 1,000.
• 42:05
  Go and win it next year.
• 42:07
  We wish you all the very best.
• 42:08
  Yeah, mate, that'll be the goal.
• 42:09
  That's what we said on the, I think, the Wednesday night when we'd done the interview that we're going to win this race, and we come damn close.
• 42:17
  So, yeah, definitely next year, or next year one isn't going to get away from us.
• 42:22
  So we'll, you know, we'll be trying our best to win everything we can.