Latest / Rusty's Garage / Tony Quinn (part 2)

Transcript

Tony Quinn (part 2) · Rusty's Garage

0:02
A listener production.
0:20
Rusty here at Highlands Motorsport Park in New Zealand for part two of my podcast with Tony Quinn.
0:25
If you haven't already caught the first lap, make sure you head to the Rusty's Garage Library and have a listen.
0:31
His story on the path to incredible business success is fascinating.
0:35
Lots of twists and turns, like racing really.
0:38
And that's how we begin part two, by reliving some of his early days competing.
0:47
So let's bounce through some cars.
0:49
Earlier on, you rattled off the fact that you had that fantastic Fiat.
0:53
Yeah, it was your first brand new car, your 131.
0:56
What other cars are your earliest recollectors?
0:59
You said Ford Escorts that you and your mate Geordie had, and I think you did some, like, Kana crosses or motor Kanas earlier on, didn't you?
1:05
Were they Mark IIs?
1:05
What were you in?
1:06
No, no, it was a Mark I 1300 GT, but with a 1600 cylinder head or whatever it was.
1:13
I can't remember.
1:14
With Weber carburetors?
1:15
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:17
It wasn't twin choke.
1:18
It was just the twin carburetor, I think, on top.
1:21
But Geordie was a bit of a fiddler and he would have tuned the car up good.
1:26
And I won the Gymkhana thing.
1:28
And that's what got me started.
1:30
And then I went and bought... And it's so ironic that we're sitting here in Highlands doing this interview.
1:39
So I bought a Maryland Formula Ford from a guy called Dave Steedman.
1:43
I think I paid 1,700 quid for it or something.
1:47
I went to Ingolston.
1:48
It was my first race in a Formula Ford.
1:51
You put it on the front row?
1:52
I put it on P2.
1:53
Now, I don't know.
1:54
I didn't bribe anybody.
1:56
Maybe they did it for a laugh, I don't know, but everybody was saying, who's this guy?
1:59
Where did he come from?
2:00
Who's this guy?
2:02
Anyway, I think I finished fifth or sixth.
2:04
I didn't better myself.
2:06
But what that did, obviously, was started that journey in Formula Ford.
2:12
I reconnected with the Marilyn about five, six years ago.
2:16
Yeah.
2:16
Did you find it?
2:17
Yeah, well, it's a bit of a story, but Geordie, my mate in Scotland, I left it to him, right?
2:22
When I left and he said it was the worst thing I ever did.
2:25
Yeah.
2:26
But he went on to become the Scottish Formula Ford champion, right?
2:30
And he'd used the Merlin for a couple of races and then he chucked it up on the roof of his garage and it sat there for years and years and years, yeah.
2:37
So anyway, he said, do you want the car?
2:38
I said, yeah, mate, it's your car.
2:40
I've moved on.
2:41
I'm into Porsches and Aston Martins and stuff now.
2:44
He says, no, no, I'll do it up and I'll take it out because I took him out to Highlands for a friend thing.
2:50
Anyway, he took it out and it's, I drove it once around the track and I loved it, but the gearbox blew up.
2:58
So that was the end of it.
3:00
We got the gearbox fixed.
3:01
It sat in the museum here for five years or whatever.
3:07
Right.
3:07
So it's fine.
3:09
Last weekend, I was racing a Raynard Formula Atlantic car at Hampton Dunes.
3:15
And my arch enemy, in fact, he's many people's arch enemy, is a wee fella called Kenny Smith, who's an absolute... Legend.
3:24
Legend.
3:25
With capital letters.
3:27
And he should be the Minister of Aged Care.
3:33
And he needs to go.
3:34
He's 78 years old.
3:36
He drives like a bloody mongrel on the track.
3:40
21, isn't he?
3:40
He's not slowing down.
3:42
He's good as...
3:44
Anyway, last weekend I beat him on one race and then he beat me in the other one and then I didn't do the third one.
3:49
But anyway, he was saying, oh, I don't know what I'm going to do next weekend.
3:53
I might go to Taupo to do a Formula 5.
3:55
I said, man, why don't you come to Highlands and I will give you my Formula Ford Maryland to race.
4:04
Right?
4:05
And he said, what?
4:06
I said, mate, yeah, absolutely.
4:07
You can come down and give the car a run.
4:10
It'd be good.
4:10
And of course, is it a good engine?
4:14
I've got a cylinder head that I could put on it.
4:18
But anyway, he's come down this weekend and he's out there banging around.
4:22
And it's lovely, mate.
4:24
It's crazy.
4:25
as the same color scheme you race?
4:27
Same thing, same red color.
4:28
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:29
But then I bought, I thought, here we go.
4:32
I'm better than this.
4:34
So I went and bought, there was two brothers called George and Paul Franchitti, right?
4:39
And they were set up the front of the field with their hawks and stuff like that.
4:43
And I went and bought their car.
4:47
which was a 22B, I think it was.
4:49
Hawk was a good car back then, but it was the first car that had a square chassis, and it never worked.
4:56
And we boxed along with it and did it.
4:58
We won some races, or 30.
5:00
I remember getting lots of...
5:02
prize money, you know, like cheques and stuff.
5:05
But it was like 50 quid and 100 quid.
5:07
But I boxed along there for a while.
5:10
And then, of course, the story about... You came up against Eddie Cheever, didn't you?
5:15
Oh, that's a good story.
5:16
I mean, for people that don't know, I mean, he went on to race in Formula One, won the Indy 500, for example.
5:21
But that was...
5:24
The moment that you understood, didn't you?
5:26
Yeah.
5:26
Just explain that.
5:27
You underrate your own ability, but I think you have this sort of reality check courtesy of Eddie.
5:32
I thank Eddie like no one else.
5:36
Yeah.
5:37
He was the guy that made me realize that, you know, so you're banging around Scotland.
5:42
There's one track in Scotland.
5:43
At that time it was Ingolston.
5:45
Knockhill only just opened when I left.
5:49
So I only drove in the pissing rain around Knock Hill on a practice day.
5:53
But so Engleston was the track that we went to.
5:57
Now, I was in the top bunch of guys, you know, in any sport, you're with the top guys, you know, you're mixing and mingling with them.
6:04
And everybody knows everybody and everybody's psyching each other out.
6:06
And it was all good fun.
6:08
Anyway, somehow this guy had come from Italy.
6:13
But he had an American accent, go-kart champion, or whatever the hell he was.
6:18
Nobody cared, because, you know, so what?
6:21
They gave him a Crossley, which was an Irish Formula Ford car, which was a midfield car.
6:25
It wasn't a great car.
6:27
They gave him that car, and off we went and off we raced.
6:30
And he, the first race, so it was two races, he just absolutely blitzed us.
6:38
Now, this guy had never been to Ingolston before, never sat in a car before, and yet he...
6:44
So, of course, as former Ford people do, he's cheating.
6:48
He's got to be cheating.
6:49
There's something happening, you know.
6:51
And so what happened here?
6:54
So the second race...
6:55
We're away, we go.
6:56
And he's away again.
6:57
He's gone out the front.
6:58
It was like 10 laps or something.
6:59
It was a short track.
7:01
But by about midway, we're catching him, right?
7:03
We've got the measure of him.
7:05
Beginner's luck.
7:06
Call it what you like, you know.
7:08
We're catching him.
7:09
And at Ingolston, the finish line, start line, was on a curve, believe it or not.
7:14
And Eddie Cheever, well, we didn't know who the hell he was.
7:16
This fella...
7:18
ended up on top of Stuart Lawson across the finish line because he knows that, you know, he tangled wheels and stuff and across, because we were all catching him, but he had a slow puncture.
7:28
Yeah.
7:29
And at that point, I worked out that for as good as you think you are in your hometown, in your national, your local circuit, whatever it is you want to call it, when you come up against raw talent, and people have got to, can accept that in those days, there was no Motec data.
7:51
There was nothing.
7:52
We jumped in the car, we altered the rake or the sway bar or whatever, and we drove them.
7:58
Yeah.
7:58
There wasn't adjustable suspension.
8:00
There wasn't any of that.
8:02
We just drove these frigging things as best we could.
8:05
And this guy just made a mess of us.
8:08
And so you're right.
8:10
From that day on, Eddie was my god.
8:13
And I thought, this guy's going to kill everybody.
8:15
Like, he's going to win everything.
8:17
But he actually didn't, really.
8:19
He did very well.
8:20
But not many people have heard of Eddie Cheever.
8:24
And yet he made it to Formula One.
8:25
I think he drove for Wolf or something.
8:27
I can't remember.
8:28
But, you know, I think the best result he ever heard was seventh in a race in Formula One.
8:32
Yet in our Ingolston track, he was a king.
8:36
I typically don't like interrupting the conversation, but I just want to dive in here quickly.
8:40
We can't expect our guests to remember every stat and fact.
8:44
Keep the essence of what Tony is saying here in mind.
8:47
It's his view.
8:48
TQ was clearly blown away by how good Cheever was in the junior formula.
8:53
Eddie went on to start more than 130 F1 races driving for teams like Tyrrell, Ligier and Renault.
8:59
He scored nine podiums, but a win there eluded him, and that's, I think, what surprised Tony.
9:05
Victory at the Indy 500 in the late 90s is a pretty special one, though, on the Cheever CV.
9:11
Right, let's get back to it.
9:13
So that was my introduction.
9:14
So at that point, I basically left motorsport and got on with mortgages and houses and businesses and working and doing all of that stuff.
9:25
And it wasn't until, bloody hell, when I was 45, my accountant in Australia said, do you want to do Targa, Tasmania?
9:35
Mm-hmm.
9:36
And to be honest, I didn't watch Formula One.
9:38
I might have watched the Bathurst 1000.
9:41
That was all I watched in motorsport.
9:42
I was too busy doing other stuff, right?
9:44
Because I worked seven days a week, daylight hours, whatever it was, you know?
9:49
And Tony Alford was his name.
9:52
He said, do you want to hire my, lease my, he's an accountant, you know, do you want to lease?
9:56
They don't give anything away.
9:58
Do you want to lease my car that I ran last year?
10:00
Because I've got a much better one for this year and blah, blah, blah.
10:02
So I said, yeah, that's fine.
10:04
I'll do that.
10:05
It was a BMW 320i or something, whatever it was.
10:09
It was a 2002 style or whatever it was.
10:12
Anyway, it was the lesser brother of the one that he had.
10:15
He had an Alpina, which had the duck's nuts.
10:17
The duck's nuts, yeah.
10:19
Anyway, when I passed him across the top of Sathana, he wasn't so happy.
10:23
I remember that.
10:25
Anyway, I entered Targa, and I think it's like...
10:28
I think it's like a lot of things.
10:30
If you're good at riding a bike or swimming, you're always going to be pretty good at it.
10:34
You know, you don't forget how to do it.
10:37
And I did very well in Targa that first year.
10:39
I won Rookie of the Year.
10:41
I won category six.
10:43
And I thought, wow, this is good.
10:46
And it was good for, and that's what got me back into motorsport.
10:49
Targa, for those that don't know, is a tarmac rally.
10:52
They have them here in New Zealand, Targa New Zealand as well.
10:54
The Tasmanian one is famous and has been going for a long time.
10:58
And Safana is a signature stage for it.
11:02
It clearly enabled you to escape from business in some ways, but it also had some parallels, didn't it, about calculated risk and things like that.
11:11
Yeah, absolutely.
11:12
I mean, I think my business style is a conservative entrepreneur, right?
11:20
I don't mind taking a risk, but it's kind of got to be calculated.
11:24
It's not just a seat of your pants, hold on, risk.
11:28
It's got to be kind of, if we do this, this could happen, but this should happen.
11:34
Do you know what I mean?
11:35
It's like, that's kind of how to... And I approach race... Yeah, I'm sure many people that I've crashed into over the years will disagree with that description.
11:45
There hasn't been too many.
11:46
But fundamentally, you know, you take a calculated risk.
11:50
And, you know, I'm not good enough to make a living at it at all.
11:54
And thank God for Eddie Cheever for showing me that.
11:58
And I take my hat off to the guys that, you know, you can count on two hands basically how many guys are really good at each individual category.
12:07
And I've followed it now and I've been a supporter and I like the actual series.
12:11
I like the business of the series.
12:13
I think it's a...
12:15
when Tony Cochran had it, built it into what it is, what it was, and what's happened to it.
12:20
It's all good.
12:21
It's a difficult business.
12:23
Not easy.
12:24
And I like the...
12:26
I think they've done it.
12:27
The one thing I can say about VH Supercars, business-wise...
12:31
It would have been so easy for them to cut costs, right?
12:36
Cut down on things, reduce the quality of the show or whatever.
12:40
But the one thing I admire about, particularly during James Warburton's era, was that he absolutely believed that they should have a top-class television show.
12:52
And that was the thing.
12:53
He probably promised that.
12:55
And that was the thing that's going to add value to that business.
12:58
And that's what I see.
13:00
So I think...
13:01
that content has become so important in television land.
13:05
And I think that by the way they've done it, by sticking to the quality line, I think they're going to have a good result next time round when it comes to television rights because they haven't wavered.
13:16
And, you know, there'll be different champions and he's cheating, he's not cheating, and that shouldn't have happened.
13:21
That's all the sport.
13:22
But the business side of the sport, I think, has run well.
13:26
I have been fortunate to spend a bit of time in it, and you're right, the coverage is world-class.
13:32
Listeners to the podcast here will want to know about some cars in the collection.
13:36
We're here, as you said before, at Highlands Motorsport Park.
13:39
There's a wonderful, if you've not been here before, we're about an hour out of Queenstown.
13:43
There's an awesome museum here that you must, must come and see.
13:47
But the first thing that kind of grabs your eye as you walk into the museum is the Aston Martin Vulcan.
13:56
7 litre V12, what are we talking, 820 horsepower, maybe only 24 in the world built.
14:02
What is that thing like to drive?
14:05
It's just like a GT3 car, to be honest.
14:09
I could give a big story about how special it is.
14:12
It is special, without a doubt.
14:13
There's only 23 of them now.
14:15
But you use it.
14:17
That's the important thing.
14:18
It just doesn't sit gathering dust.
14:19
Yeah, no, no.
14:20
It's a good thing.
14:21
We do mainly charity runs, hot lap things.
14:24
I think it's raised 130 grand so far or whatever in charity stuff.
14:29
But look, it came about...
14:31
Because there's no...
14:32
It cost 4 million or something, I can't remember, which is awful, but it was a lot of money.
14:38
But, you know, it came about because I had a windfall of chairs in America that I had forgotten about.
14:50
Yeah, I hadn't forgotten about them, but I had forgotten them because they were worth nothing.
14:55
And it was a pet food company that I set up in America, in the US called Fresh Pet.
15:00
It's still going to this day.
15:01
It has a capital valuation today of $1.7 billion.
15:07
Now, there is no way that I can justify that to you because I don't believe it's made
15:14
any or much profit in its existence.
15:16
I don't know how the American NASDAQ market works, I've got no idea.
15:21
However, I was gifted shares in it when I, so three of us set it up, I was the main guy, and then there was two other American guys, Canadian and American, and we each put in five million roughly.
15:35
Nine months later we sold it for 36 million.
15:39
Yeah, I know, it's crazy, isn't it?
15:42
But as part of the deal for me, because I was the 34% shareholder and the other two were 33s, only because it was my ideas and manufacturing ability that would make the thing work.
15:55
And anyway, they gave me 284,000 shares, right?
15:56
So, and honestly, I forgot about them.
16:02
I actually offered them to somebody if they would come and work for me, free.
16:07
I said, you can have these shares if you come and work for me.
16:10
And it wasn't that he didn't want to come and work for me, but that deal just didn't go ahead, so he didn't come and work for me, if you know what I mean.
16:17
So anyway, years, a year later or so, they sent me a thing saying, we're going to launch it on the NASDAQ.
16:23
And honestly, I said, how can you do that?
16:26
It's not even making a penny, you know.
16:28
In your mind, you wrote it off basically.
16:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
16:30
Just not worth anything, you know.
16:31
If they asked me to put more money in, I'd say absolutely not.
16:35
So anyway, so yeah, oh, you're going to launch it in an ad.
16:39
That'd be good.
16:40
It'd be worth about two cents a share, I'm sure.
16:43
And they said, no, we're going to try and launch it.
16:45
Goldman Sachs will underwrite it at $5 a share.
16:49
I said, not a chance, why would they do that?
16:52
That doesn't make any sense.
16:54
Anyway, I could work out when they launched it, but they launched it, it went very quick, it went to $14, went to such and such, ended up at $24 a share, right?
17:09
I couldn't sell my shares because of an escrow situation that you're not allowed to sell your shares for six months because you're one of the original shareholders and stuff.
17:20
Anyway, on May the 12th, I can't remember which year it was, but whatever year I bought the Vulcan, on May the 12th was my six months up.
17:29
And I said, sell.
17:30
They were worth $21 by then.
17:33
Sell, sell, sell.
17:34
Christ, sell the bloody thing.
17:36
Sold them.
17:37
And about three months after that, they were down to about five bucks a share.
17:41
But since then, now I don't know, today's share would be $50, $60 a share.
17:45
No.
17:46
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:49
And don't ask me how that makes sense because I can't work that out for you.
17:53
So anyway, so the story about the Vulcan.
17:55
I say to people, there's no way in God's earth can a man work...
18:00
seven days, two days a week, pay tax, do all those things, and then go out and buy a Vulcan.
18:06
You can't.
18:07
You couldn't do it.
18:08
Nobody should do that.
18:10
But because of this windfall I had from America, and by this time I was well and truly not a poor gentleman,
18:19
And I was quite confident of my life and stuff like that.
18:22
And I thought, well, what am I going to spend this money on?
18:25
Like it was 5 million US or something.
18:27
And that's why I bought the Vulcan, because I thought, well, I'll treat myself to that.
18:31
But I've actually treated New Zealand to it.
18:34
Do you know what I mean?
18:35
I don't drive it much, and when I'm here, they want me to do something, I will.
18:40
Interestingly, in the new thing that we've done at Highlands Museum, it will feature within the next six months as a hot lap thing and stuff like that.
18:52
So people will be able to 3D visualise or be involved or whatever they do, virtual reality, around Highlands or whatever.
19:00
No, my life is all about living as honestly as I can and, you know, as legally as I can.
19:08
You know, living on the edge, but, you know, conservative entrepreneur.
19:12
That's how I best describe myself.
19:15
You must go and see that new section of the museum, actually, that you talk about, the Young Gun section, is phenomenal.
19:22
Across the other side of the museum, from the Aston Martin,
19:27
is a Michael Schumacher 1990s Benetton Formula One car.
19:33
And in working order, you drive it on occasion.
19:36
Is that true?
19:37
Absolutely.
19:39
It's sitting over there.
19:40
It's the fastest car I have ever driven.
19:44
It is...
19:45
I have...
19:46
I used to say I have no idea how they drove those cars, because they are brutal.
19:52
But the reason that they drove them was because they were allowed to test and test and test, and they got used to it, I guess.
19:59
But me jumping in it once or twice a year, it's horrific.
20:03
I mean, my eyes, and I'm 62, but my eyes cannot keep up with the vibrations and the speed.
20:11
It's, you know, I'm happy for somebody else to drive it and see what they think, but it's scary.
20:17
I mean, coming out of the hairpin in Highlands in first gear, you're in fifth gear before the bridge and you're hammering and it's so fast.
20:27
It's so fast.
20:28
And, like, I don't know, good on them for driving those things.
20:32
I don't know how they all weren't killed, the whole lot of them.
20:35
Special car to one, great history.
20:37
Yeah, it's a great history.
20:38
And, you know, obviously everybody knows what happened to Michael and stuff like that.
20:42
And actually his son, Mick, was going to drive it at Goodwood last year, but he had plenty of other things to drive.
20:50
And I think he was a Ferrari guy, so Benetton didn't get it, so...
20:54
Yeah, it's good.
20:55
But I drove it at Goodwood up the hill last year.
20:58
It's a terrible thing to start and run and do all that stuff.
21:02
But once you get into second gear and you're away, it's horrific.
21:07
Honestly, it's scary ass.
21:21
Backseat driving.
21:22
You hate it all your life, but become an expert at it as soon as your kids start to drive.
21:28
Thank heavens for modern brake assist.
21:32
Are there other cars that you have a soft spot for?
21:34
You've had a long association with GT racing as well, and throughout that, there have been all sorts of different marks that you've competed at and around the world, Tony, at all sorts of great racetracks, not just Bathurst.
21:46
I mean, here at the Highlands 101, you've been to Spa, Nürburgring, all sorts of places.
21:51
Yeah, look, I was the leader of the team that went to Nürburgring in whatever year it was, you'll have to do your research.
22:00
But we had this black and yellow Porsche.
22:03
It was a 996 Cup car.
22:05
It was my Cup car, and she was called the Princess because it was a good car.
22:10
And we went there.
22:12
There was myself, my son Clark, Kevin Bell, a Kiwi guy, a mate, and Bardo.
22:20
And Clark actually qualified the quickest.
22:25
And yeah, we didn't know the rules back then, but we had done something under yellow flags or something, and we got the quickest lap taken from us, and the second quickest lap put us 21st, we were 17th, put us 21st, but the top 20 get a blue light that, it's, excuse my French, it's a fuck off light.
22:46
So when you've got this blue light flashing,
22:49
in the car behind you, you're obliged to let them pass because they're one of the hot guys, right?
22:54
Anyway, we didn't get our blue light that year.
22:56
We finished an absolutely incredible race, 24 hours, gruelling, through the night, unbelievable.
23:07
We finished ninth.
23:09
And that is, I believe, that's the highest a team has ever done from Australia and New Zealand, outright.
23:15
And the guys were... We made some great friends over there.
23:19
We did it for five years.
23:21
And Olsen's... Uwe Olsen and those guys, fantastic.
23:26
And they said...
23:27
What kind of car is that?
23:28
What kind of engine have you got in there?
23:30
And we said, it's a cup car.
23:34
They could not believe that a car like that had finished in ninth place.
23:39
So buoyed by that experience...
23:42
We came home and I bought a brand new RSR and we're going back to show them how it's, yeah, how we people from the Southern Hemisphere do things.
23:52
And it was very popular because it was a black car with the yellow paw prints.
23:56
And we got the blue light the next year and all that.
23:58
We were up to speed with the system, you know.
24:01
But you know what?
24:02
I think we crashed or something happened or whatever.
24:06
And we went there five years and we finished ninth twice.
24:10
We could never bet a ninth, and I'm telling you, good luck to anybody that doesn't live there doing better than, yeah, top ten.
24:19
It's so hard.
24:20
Those guys do a thousand laps around.
24:23
Clark would tell you a story.
24:26
He was, it's fog, right?
24:27
It's thick fog, pea soup fog at the top, the ho-ach thing, the top of the L. Fog.
24:33
He couldn't see a thing.
24:33
He's following the white line along the side of the track because you lose...
24:38
You lose your place where you are, you know?
24:40
And he's doing his best he could be.
24:42
He's following the white line.
24:44
And this BMW with Hans Stuckiner, he said, came past me like a jumbo jet just went flying past.
24:52
He said, he couldn't see a thing for sure.
24:56
But they just knew where they were going.
24:58
Yeah, yeah.
24:59
But so, you know, it's a great place.
25:02
I call it the Olympics of motorsport.
25:04
I just think it's such a journey to go to and to compete in.
25:09
And we won the first Porsche to win at Dubai, the Dubai 24-hour.
25:14
We raced at Sepang.
25:16
That was the worst endurance race I ever did.
25:20
It was so hot and so humid.
25:23
It was horrible.
25:24
Six, maybe, I can't remember.
25:26
But I kind of don't do that endurance thing anymore.
25:31
Even the Bathurst 12-hour, the last twice we did it, we were on the podium basically and we got taken out by cars that were two or three laps down.
25:42
And I just got sick of it.
25:43
And I find the guys that come to Bathurst to race the 12-hour from overseas, they don't own the cars, they don't respect other drivers, they think we should just all get out of the way.
25:54
And, you know, I just didn't have a good run the last few years.
25:58
The plan was to go back next year, not this year, but next year.
26:04
But, you know, I would love to do Bathurst 12-Hour with my son Clark and his son Ryder.
26:10
And, you know, whenever Ryder's up and gone, he's actually here in New Zealand right now getting his New Zealand licence because they can actually get one at 14 and not 16.
26:21
So there's work in progress.
26:22
I don't think you've heard the last of the Quinn name in Australian motorsport.
26:29
I think Ryder will be somebody or something.
26:32
I mean, he's a top soccer player.
26:34
He's very much an Aussie kid that plays lots of sport.
26:38
And he's very, very good at driving a car at 14 years old.
26:43
And that's his grandpa talking.
26:45
But he genuinely is.
26:47
I love the idea of three generations together.
26:49
I reckon that would be just phenomenal.
26:51
The list of co-drivers is huge, and it's probably hard to talk about all of them.
26:57
Let's pick just a couple that maybe have stood out for you.
27:00
Shane Van Gisbergen is one of them.
27:02
What are your thoughts on him as a driver and a racing identity?
27:08
Well, Shane is an absolute natural talent.
27:12
Shane, I don't think needs more tech or data or any of that stuff.
27:17
I think he's just, he's a Jim Richards.
27:19
He's a natural driver that can drive anything, any time, in any conditions.
27:26
And sure, he probably needs data to be with the team and to hone the skill.
27:32
But he's just got that natural skill, a bit like Craig Lowndes and those kind of guys.
27:37
I think they've just got a natural ability to do it.
27:41
Shane, when I first met Shane, was very much a country shy boy.
27:46
He is now a professional race car driver and a true man and a true gentleman.
27:52
And, you know, like if people could, the thing that he did at Indy, and I know that he got into trouble and congratulated for at the same time.
28:01
when he stopped his car, jumped out and rushed over to help.
28:04
That's Shane.
28:05
That wasn't put on for the media.
28:07
That wasn't the circus show.
28:09
That was Shane.
28:09
And, you know, sure, he gets upset if he doesn't do well and you need to go and sit in the trailer or whatever it is, you know.
28:16
But, Jesus, he puts everything into it and he works hard and he is one of the sports true and, I believe, enduring champions.
28:27
He's a proper, proper enthusiast as well.
28:30
I'm glad you brought up Jimmy Richards a moment ago too because you two have battled each other at Targa Tasmania.
28:36
I mean, you've had wins at Targa Tasmania, five wins here in Targa New Zealand.
28:40
He's been a great benchmark for you in lots of ways in racing terms, hasn't he?
28:44
He's been a great mate throughout the years and a great mentor.
28:49
However, I would counter that by saying, the gentleman, Jim, I don't know about that so much.
28:58
And he is a gentleman, don't get me wrong.
29:00
But he will tell you what he wants you to know.
29:03
And, you know, I raced him against Targa for years and years and I was a bridesmaid and all the rest of it.
29:09
And I used to say to Jim, geez, I have trouble with these tyres, Pirelli.
29:13
Because I was kind of a one brand guy, you know.
29:16
I'm going to drive Pirellis and that's what I'm driving, Michelins or whatever.
29:21
And Jimmy always, I always thought he got his tyres for nothing, so he would put on whatever, and he could drive around whatever situation, you know.
29:28
And I'm talking, it may have been eight years, five years, whatever it was, we're battling away there, and I'm saying, Jim, jeez, mate, I have some terrible understeer.
29:36
When I'm really pushing, I get understeer with the front tyres.
29:40
And, you know, he said, have you tried the Dunlops?
29:44
I said, no, I don't.
29:46
He said, you should try the Dunlops.
29:48
You know, five years I've been battling away.
29:50
He's been controlling me.
29:51
But Jim and I did the Sandown 500 together way back when Procar did it.
29:58
And Jim drove my car and he...
30:01
took it out in practice.
30:03
Fitzy had just done the engine and gearbox and Fitzy wanted to take it to Calder Park to test it and run it in and stuff.
30:10
And Jimmy had said, nah, don't bother with that.
30:12
We'll just, we'll do it at the track.
30:13
It's sand down.
30:14
I said, fine, no problem.
30:16
So Jim took it out and practiced and then qualifying came.
30:20
But Jim's very good, let's be honest.
30:25
So did practice, I did practice.
30:27
Even in practice, I was about a second and a half off, or whatever it was.
30:31
I'm sure people could check it out.
30:32
It may have been five seconds.
30:33
It wasn't.
30:34
It was like a second and a half off his pace.
30:36
You know, like, I'm not feeling too bad about that.
30:38
That's fine.
30:39
And anyway, out he goes in qualifying, and the third lap breaks the lap record.
30:44
in my car, in a Porsche that had just been redone.
30:47
Anyway, we were leading that thing, I think, and then the gear stick broke or something.
30:52
But one of my fond memories of Jim was when we were racing Nations Cup, we all had 996 Cup cars and Porsches, yeah.
31:04
And we were at Orem Park, and there's a dogleg at the top of the hill, and then it goes down and then up into a sharp left-hander.
31:12
And inside my car, it's like mayhem, right?
31:17
Coming over that dog lid, on the brakes, going down two, three gears, line up for the corner and getting onto the front straight.
31:26
It's mayhem.
31:26
It's hectic, right?
31:28
Jimmy passed me, going into the tight left-hander, and waved to me.
31:39
I have no idea who that man did that.
31:42
I have no idea.
31:44
And anyway, so we've been good friends, good buddies.
31:46
He's helped me out when I've needed help.
31:49
And I don't think I've ever helped him out.
31:51
He doesn't ask.
31:53
But he's been one of those guys that I believe in his day, he was one of the top 20 drivers in the world.
32:02
But he chose to stay in this part of the world for family reasons, and he did a great job.
32:09
And, you know, he's one of the few people...
32:12
that I've seen, and Peter Brock was the other one, that really knew how to look after a sponsor.
32:19
Yeah, Jim was a professional.
32:21
And Jim would phone me at nine o'clock at night and ask me subtle questions about what I was doing for Targa next year and what, you know, he was working at his craft all the time.
32:34
Look, a lot of good memories with those guys.
32:38
But, you know, I think and I'd hope, I'd like to think that a lot of the guys that I've raced with and against have got some fond memories about me and my stories because...
32:50
One of the things that I do when I do do tag and stuff is that I usually come with a fresh joke each year.
32:55
And by the time I tell 200 people, they've all heard it and stuff like that.
32:59
And Barry Oliver was the same.
33:01
He said we'd always have a fresh joke for each other and stuff.
33:04
So, you know, it's been a great journey.
33:06
You know, probably my competitive journey.
33:09
Targa and circuit days are all but over.
33:13
However, it's not a career move for me.
33:16
So it is genuinely enjoyable to go out there on any track and race around.
33:23
Like if it was pouring rain, I'd probably come in because it's not enjoyable and I don't need to do it and I'll be done.
33:31
But for as long as I can do it and mix with the people that have been around, it's where my mates are.
33:38
You know, like, I don't have many mates because of my life.
33:42
You know, my schoolmates that I wouldn't even know would be back in Scotland.
33:46
And you don't have many mates in business.
33:49
It's usually an acquaintance or a customer or whatever.
33:52
But in motorsport, that's where my friends are.
33:55
It's your family.
33:56
Well, it's my family.
33:59
I can tell you that my racing family upset my real family because my racing family more than my...
34:05
So you have to manage that situation.
34:07
But it's been a great life, and there's lots, lots more to tell, lots more stories to tell, but that's probably enough for today.
34:19
We'll finish with one final one though.
34:21
You're big on legacy at the moment, right?
34:23
You have a world-class, unbelievable venue at Highlands.
34:29
You have the Hampton Circuit on the North Island of New Zealand as well.
34:33
What in your mind is the future for great venues like this?
34:38
And, you know, we love so many great things about motorsport, but it's clear to me that you want it to perhaps appeal beyond that as well.
34:46
Well, it's going to have to.
34:48
I think classic racing will continue for my lifetime, and the cars that are petrol-driven today will become classic cars and will fade very quickly, I think.
34:59
And I can't tell you what EV and Google Woogle is going to do to the sport, but it's going to have a massive influence in who gets involved in it, who watches it, who cares about it, who can do it.
35:15
You know, the older I get...
35:18
the less visionary I become.
35:20
Because I would never have been able to tell you about Google or an iPhone, mobile phone.
35:28
I wouldn't have been able to, I couldn't visualize that.
35:33
And now everybody's talking about artificial intelligence, which absolutely is going to happen.
35:38
And what's that going to do?
35:39
I mean, if we go back to Paddy's statement about the backhoe digger that was going to change the way that we
35:47
We work and build roads, which it did.
35:49
I don't know what AI is going to do.
35:53
For sure, if you're doing a job, a repetitive job, your children won't be doing it.
35:58
Do you know what I mean?
35:59
These things, and I know from experience, I have many robots in the factories that I've had.
36:05
They're brilliant.
36:06
They actually do the same thing day in, day out, every day, every hour, without stopping.
36:15
You know, I remember in one of my factories, I said to the guy that was going to put in robots, my first robot that went in.
36:22
And, you know, it's a bit of a mission deciding what robot you're going to put in, because I know nothing about them.
36:29
Anyway, the guy said, no, no, they're good.
36:32
That was a sales guy, right?
36:33
So the technician was there.
36:35
So I took him aside.
36:36
Mm-hmm.
36:36
And I said, mate, here's the deal.
36:38
You and me are going to become the best of friends.
36:42
And he sort of looked at me and went, yeah.
36:44
He said, yeah, what?
36:46
I said, because you're going to be here all the fucking time fixing this thing.
36:50
Because, you know, this is back in the day.
36:53
And he said, no, I won't be.
36:55
And this is a technician.
36:56
So the sales guy had done his job.
36:58
The technician guy was saying, no.
37:00
He said, I've got seven of these robots in Holden in South Australia that work all the time, every day, all day.
37:07
He says, once a year, we strip them down and repair, maintain them and stuff.
37:12
He said, but I'm guaranteeing you, you won't see me.
37:15
And you know what?
37:16
He was absolutely true.
37:18
Yeah, they are what's coming.
37:21
They're the iPhone in 20 years' time.
37:24
And, you know, like, I once made a speech to Hyundai in New Zealand, and I asked them, how many factories have you got, you know, making cars?
37:32
I think they said seven in the Asia region.
37:36
And I said, well, I want you to shut one.
37:37
I think you should shut one down completely.
37:40
And they all looked at me, you know, and I said, I think you should be making drones.
37:45
Drones for humans, two-seater drone, and that's the future of transport for humans.
37:55
You know, the autonomous car thing is only a transition.
37:58
We're going to die of boredom if we go on those things.
38:01
You know, and that's just part of the way that you control humans.
38:05
Humans need to be controlled.
38:08
For 2,000 years, God controlled, you know, the fear of God was how we controlled...
38:13
Most humans, you know, nowadays humans are going, really?
38:18
You really think there's a go?
38:19
You know, a lot of the younger generation are doubting our ways.
38:23
And so you need to control humans.
38:26
Otherwise, they get out of control and they become rebellious and stuff like that.
38:30
And I think that drones, if there was a drone available now that didn't have a steering wheel, we're not going to be steering them.
38:38
The computer's going to be taking us where we're going.
38:42
But we're going to be looking down on things.
38:44
A man has a great liking for looking down on things as he's flying ahead or helicopters or whatever.
38:51
Women don't really care, but men love looking down on things.
38:55
And I believe that a 200-kilo payload drone
39:00
Like the Uber deal, you know?
39:02
I mean, that Uber thing, what a fantastic idea that is.
39:07
I couldn't have told you that was going to happen.
39:09
You know, all these guys buying taxi licences and being rude and arrogant and charging you a fortune and expecting a tip and all that stuff.
39:18
I thought that was going to continue.
39:20
Along comes Uber, pleasant people, they're on the spot where you want them, how you want them, delivery to your destination, pleasant, good night, hello, whatever, half the price, a third of the price.
39:34
Who thought of that?
39:36
That's a brilliant service and a brilliant idea.
39:39
Apparently, American, they're not making any money.
39:44
But they must have a plan.
39:47
And, you know, the car thing, the Tesla thing, that's all good and that's fine.
39:52
That's not the future.
39:53
We're not going to be driving about in cars.
39:56
So when you ask me about motorsport and venues and stuff, I think it's a little bit of we're living for today, we're enjoying today.
40:04
Most racetracks anyway become houses or factories.
40:09
So for the investors, it's just a journey.
40:12
For the sport...
40:15
Well, I think the sport at the New Zealand, if I can talk about the New Zealand and the Australian level, if they wanted to progress and do well, they need to embrace the business pillars.
40:32
They need to surround themselves with, they need to get good people doing the jobs that they're supposed to be doing.
40:38
Now I'm not here saying that they're not.
40:40
But you need to get the best people for the job to do the job.
40:45
And in some cases, from what I see, it's a club kind of mentality thing.
40:50
There's jobs for the boys.
40:51
There's all that stuff going on.
40:53
It's particularly in New Zealand.
40:54
But the new guy that I met yesterday, the new CEO, yeah, I think he's going to do a good job.
41:00
I hope he does.
41:01
Congratulations on everything you've achieved, mate, in New Zealand.
41:05
business, behind the wheel of race cars.
41:08
I'm glad you'll still continue to enjoy some of the heritage of the sport, even if you are jumping into an Uber that flies you somewhere in the future.
41:18
But we want to end this by saying, I think in the past you've said stuff like talk fast, I'm fucking busy.
41:26
Well, thank you mate for making time to share your story on business, on cars, on motorsport and how they've intertwined and worked for you.
41:33
Thank you TQ.
41:34
I'm honoured to be even asked.
41:35
Thank you.
41:41
Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
41:45
Series producer and editor is Alex Mitchell.
41:49
Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
41:57
Listener.